not really.
All you need is a board wipe or evacuation and the teferi/pool combos is pretty hard to get rid of. I have never seen anybody cast it without everybody else just conceding on the spot. As far as I know(off the top of my head) only a few cards(at least 1 is a land) can kill the combo. It's like Emrakul, only a little harder to get out.
No offense but you sound like you don't have enough experience with it to make those statements. Blue has exactly one board wipe that isn't bounce and doesn't destroy knowldge pool, two if you count oblivion stone fate counters and maybe if you experienced a game where people didn't just scoop you would know what I mean. The emrakul statement doesn't make sense either. You're comparing a creature that time walks after being cast,kills six permanents,flys,does 15 damage and has very effective protection to a card that doesn't let people cast things from hand.
1) with Tef+Pool out, you can add Evacuation and bounce to the wraths, because they are with the pool lock. You can't play anything that just got bounced.
2) A wrath effect doesn't do much, tef+pool doesn't stop commanders.
All you need is a board wipe or evacuation and the teferi/pool combos is pretty hard to get rid of. I have never seen anybody cast it without everybody else just conceding on the spot. As far as I know(off the top of my head) only a few cards(at least 1 is a land) can kill the combo. It's like Emrakul, only a little harder to get out.
Quote from Knowledge Pool »
Imprint - When Knowledge Pool enters the battlefield, each player exiles the top three cards of his or her library.
Whenever a player casts a spell from his or her hand, that player exiles it. If the player does, he or she may cast another nonland card exiled with Knowledge Pool without paying that card's mana cost.
Knowledge pool does not stop commanders from being re-played. They are not coming from your hand. If they are, pool exiles them, so you can move them to the command zone. Then, you can replay them, and they are not coming from your hand.
Pool alone is obnoxious, and the lock just downright annoying. If someone pulled that against me, I would probably not invite them to play again, or simply gun them from turn 1, since I don't know when they'll just say I win, and end the game. That's pretty much also my policy against infinite combo.
It's unlikely to get banned. People who want to build degenerate Hermit Druid combo decks are never going to build decks that match, as Sheldon puts it, the "narrative of the format". We're not going to take that toy away from people to try to balance a degenerate format.
Your reason for not banning the main piece of the fastest combo deck in a format, according to your own committee, that is wholeheartedly against that type of deck is because it's a mana fixer? There are so many fixers that are hands down better than Hermit Druid.
From close to two years of personal experience, I've never seen Hermit Druid used as a fixer. In fact, most new players are transplants from Standard, so their card pool is generally made up of newer cards. By the time they become aware of more obscure cards like the Druid, they've probably become aware of the combo and the stigma attached to it. At this point, a player would have to ask himself if a) he wants to run the combo and generally win games by turn 4, or b) not run the card because he doesn't want people to assume he is running the combo, or c) run the card without combos. Two of those options are directly tied into the fact that this card is a well-known combo piece. That's seems to me like it's warping the format (to a degree).
Your reason for not banning the main piece of the fastest combo deck in a format, according to your own committee, that is wholeheartedly against that type of deck is because it's a mana fixer? There are so many fixers that are hands down better than Hermit Druid.
From close to two years of personal experience, I've never seen Hermit Druid used as a fixer. In fact, most new players are transplants from Standard, so their card pool is generally made up of newer cards. By the time they become aware of more obscure cards like the Druid, they've probably become aware of the combo and the stigma attached to it. At this point, a player would have to ask himself if a) he wants to run the combo and generally win games by turn 4, or b) not run the card because he doesn't want people to assume he is running the card, or c) run the card without combos. Two of those options are directly tied into the combo deck.
Around my LGS there is only one player who runs Hermit Druid. It is in his Mimeoplasm dredge deck, which plays ~8 basic lands and does not play Necrotic Ooze. It's a scary deck, but it's power is in-line with what a lot of other people are doing. I've had games where Hermit Druid was activated last for 45-60m easy. There are casual uses, powerful uses, and degenerate uses of the card, and there is no reasonable banned list that would prevent someone from building a wholly degenerate deck in this format.
That said, the same could be stated about Painter's Servant.
I guess I have a question for the RC, regarding the rules change for face-down exiled commanders, so they don't get locked out.
Praetor's Grasp brought about a clarification in the rules, to prevent it from permanently removing generals.
Currently, there remain 3 loopholes in the rules (of varying difficulties), to permanently remove a General. Should these loopholes be fixed? Why or why not?
1) Mindslaver/Sorin. Turn control is currently the easiest way to perform this, and is the one way in which the owner of the General really never had a say to prevent it.
2) Blink/Stifle tricks. Mystifying Maze is viewed as a poor man's Maze of Ith, there are also a number of Bant blink decks about, and especially Blink/Rasputin decks. These decks, with the inclusion of stifle, allow a permanent removal of a general, by stifleing the delayed return trigger. While this trick will really only happen once, it quickly makes Mystifying maze and Mistmeadow witch straight up General-killers, as they have to keep sending it back to the command zone, or risk getting stifled.
3) The last loophole will likely never see play, and also includes a mindslaver (or an unsuspecting opponent), and involves phasing. Objects that are attached to a permanent that phases out, phase out with it by proxy. When the permanent phases in, they phase in with it; they do not phase themselves in. Tokens cease to exist when they phase out, anything attached to a token that gets phased out, phase out with it, and never return. The hideously complex combo then, is to control their turn, use Soul Sculptor to turn their Commander into an enchantment, and not a creature, then use something like Liquidmetal coating, to make it an artifact as well, which also makes it an equipment with Bludgeon Brawl out, give them a token with Forbidden Orchard, equip the token with their Commander, and then Reality Ripple it.
So yeah, aside from the third option, which is silly, I think the first two are actually semi-serious loopholes. Thoughts?
Your reason for not banning the main piece of the fastest combo deck in a format, according to your own committee, that is wholeheartedly against that type of deck is because it's a mana fixer? There are so many fixers that are hands down better than Hermit Druid.
This seems like a very good point.
--
From my own experiences; I've only been playing the game since just before Lorwyn. I think... Magic was my new roommates number one hobby and my dining room table was overtaken by this weird dorky card game. He and his friends played 60 card casual (affinity, pox, elfball, casual) and some also were heavily into standard. I've probably made 15 different 60 card decks that ranged in power level from slightly better then a precon to slightly worse than affinity (with no ban list mind you - those are for tournaments).
Speaking of tournaments I've played in two FNM's and drafted about a dozen times. I like playing what I want to and not just what is legal and both FNM's consisted of a large number of mouthy spikes determined to convince me I had lost before I shuffled. "You're really trying to play that?"
Then I was introduced to EDH about two years a go. Started off with Brion Stoutarm and wraths a plenty. The people I was playing with enjoyed their creature battles and were terribly dissapointed that I was ruining all the fun by killing stuff. So I evolved and so did they. Sadly 'they' evolved to other citys, having kids, or just losing interest. One of them though, introduced me to MTGO.
So now I get to play against a mostly type 2 legal Karrthus with too high a curve, a heavily tuned combo GAAIV, and mono white prison, all in the same game. I've still yet to see a hermit druid combo deck but I've lost to a turn 4 armageddon after ascendant and geist of saint traft hit the field, infinitely recurrable extra turns, exsanguinate ftw with coffers-temple-rings-gauntlet, vorinclex prison, my own mana crypt dealing lethal to me on my upkeep, and any number of other degenerate unfun decks. Still having fun playing commander. Still playing mono red aggro without LD and winning. When people crush the table, the table tells them they're playing the wrong format and this is online in the dark depths of a completely unsocial medium.
This little edh player is fine with the ban list and stand firmly in the whole "self regulating social format" group even playing with the emotionally unavailable online community. But I reserve the right to change my mind. I also only share this for perspective.
ALSO!! For those of you reading this that play on mtgo. When someone goes to combo off, don't instaconcede. Ask the person comboing to concede if they have the win. If they refuse, /eject "username" in the chat window and play for second place. It's amazingly more efficient to have 1 player find a new game then all 4 because someone wanted to pee on the parade that is casual commander. It is a social format after all and you'd be surprised how many people just want to play nether void turn 2 and contamination turn 3 because it was awesome and are cool with not actually killing the table while everyone else does nothing but draw 1 card a turn and pray for an all is dust.
I think I forgot to mention this but I wanted to thank Sheldon and Papa Funk for coming here. EDH/Commander is a very enjoyable part of my life and I owe it to Sheldon/the RC and the work you continue to do. Nobody is perfect but I must say for the most part I'm pleased with the job you've done and the ban list not being too oppressive. Thank you!
What do you think of the 1vs1 variant?
Did you test it?
If yes with which banlist?
Thanks.
1. We recognize that there is a group of 1v1 players that very much enjoy the variant, and wish them the best fun while playing it. The format is officially a multiplayer format, so all of the RC's work will be done without considering the implications of banning or unbanning cards because of their 1v1 impact.
2. I personally do not play it and am unlikely to.
Fun post, but it makes a couple incorrect assumptions.
At no point did I say "new" players. There's a vast swath of casual players between new players and serious competitors.
Hermit Druid is quite a popular land fixer.
It's unlikely to get banned. People who want to build degenerate Hermit Druid combo decks are never going to build decks that match, as Sheldon puts it, the "narrative of the format". We're not going to take that toy away from people to try to balance a degenerate format.
How can that argument not be made for most of the cards on the list? I could want to play Painter's Servant for all my cool Liege effects, and have my black Balthar deck bring back all of everyone's creatures, but obviously that fun is compromised "for the greater good." Maybe it's just me, but I've seen more casual players want to do fun things with PS than HD (I could also make the same argument for quite a few cards on this list, Panoptic Mirror, etc).
1) "A commander may activate abilities from the command zone as though it was in its owners hand but must pay any additional commander taxes if appropriate"
2) "A commander cast from the command zone is treated as though it is cast from its caster's hand"
(I'm sure that 1) can be worded better ) This, while not affecting the way people the game on an everyday basis, would allow for a plethora of new generals to be used in the manner in which they were originally designed.
Edit: Also, thank you for taking the time to go through some of the mtgsalvation threads, (overall) everyone here is grateful
I would like to take a moment to second this notion. I was originally against these sort of "corner case" additions to the rules, but since the redefinition of color identity (which felt had largely to do with the addition of 4 or 5 new generals), I have felt that perhaps the RC doesn't see them as such (also, I've wanted to build ninja Ink-Eyes EDH for a while now).
Other than that, thank you RC, for all you have done to help make this great format into what it is today.
It's unlikely to get banned. People who want to build degenerate Hermit Druid combo decks are never going to build decks that match, as Sheldon puts it, the "narrative of the format". We're not going to take that toy away from people to try to balance a degenerate format.
I'm really having difficulty grasping the thought process behind this.
A card with very minimal use outside of the degenerate, and enables arguably the worst offender in terms of degenerate decks out there, but it's "okay" because it's a toy for land fixing (which I have never seen).
At the same time, Painter's Servant enables a lockdown combo with Iona and a couple of other powerful but basically irrelevant interactions (Teysa already has Darkest Hour, and Grindstone is a slow and weak two-card combo), so it's banned despite the fact that it has lots of very interesting potential combinations.
I'm just trying to understand the difference here.
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I'm really having difficulty grasping the thought process behind this.
A card with very minimal use outside of the degenerate, and enables arguably the worst offender in terms of degenerate decks out there, but it's "okay" because it's a toy for land fixing (which I have never seen).
At the same time, Painter's Servant enables a lockdown combo with Iona and a couple of other powerful but basically irrelevant interactions (Teysa already has Darkest Hour, and Grindstone is a slow and weak two-card combo), so it's banned despite the fact that it has lots of very interesting potential combinations.
I'm just trying to understand the difference here.
I'll agree with this if it will help getting an explanation. The cognitive dissonance is hard to wrap my head around.
Just a few things to make life easier for the RC who has been so kind as to grace us with answers here.
1) Please make your question short and to the point if possible. It is annoying to have to read through several paragraphs when all you really are saying why dont you ban / unban card X? You have a better chance of having your question answered if it is less complicated.
2) Please try not to repeat questions that have already been asked and responded to. While I dont mind a little discussion on the matter once they give you the answer to a question it doesnt really help to argue their answer.
Thanks and enjoy.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
It's unlikely to get banned. People who want to build degenerate Hermit Druid combo decks are never going to build decks that match, as Sheldon puts it, the "narrative of the format". We're not going to take that toy away from people to try to balance a degenerate format.
LOL. And "personal handheld massagers" are quite popular among women with sore backs.
In any case... EDH is already the most fractured format I've ever played in Magic. Every time I sit down to play someone, there's a 3 minute period of time in which we go over the rules we each *expected* to play by, 3 more minutes to negotiate the rules for the match we're about to play, then another 5 minutes while we fish through our decks to remove cards that are banned in this newly created hybrid format.
The WotC banned list, while much maligned at various times over the years, is in my opinion pretty well received these days. They have a clear philosophy of what types of cards and interactions need to be banned, and I think they're good at applying this properly. A brand new "Rules Committee" in an already fractured format, with their own philosophy of what should/shouldn't be banned, is going to find their rules less and less frequently used (IMO). I wouldn't expect a group of players - especially one so inbred - to make a banned list for Type 2, let alone a format as complex as EDH.
I think it's also helpful to note that while I hope that not everything folks choose to ask will be about the banned list, it'll probably be the lion's share, so I want to point out that coming up with a reasonable objective measure on whether or not a card should be banned is next to impossible--meaning there will be a fair amount of subjectivity to it, which is understandably upsetting to some folks. Again, the over-arching "keep the format healthy" philosophy is what's going to drive things.
Despite some difficulty in making a flow chart, I can tell you a few things that aren't immediate factors:
1. Me personally hating a card.
2. Me personally losing to a card.
3. Lack of real evidence that the card is bad. This would include "pre-banning" or "Steamflogger Boss is wrecking my local environment! Ban it!").
4. A card being part of a game-winning combo.
5. The card's impact on 1v1
6. Similarity to another card on the banned list.
#6 is the one that I think troubles most folks, but it's the one that I think would get us into the most difficulty because of the cascading effect. Again, a 200 card banned list is horrible for everyone. I'm not saying that a similar card wouldn't get banned, I'm just saying that the similarity of the card isn't the offense, it's the evidence that the card is similarly bad for the format (and here's hoping I haven't talked in a circle).
Also consider that the RC, while all having a nearly identical desire for the health of the format, have slightly differing views on how to best bring that about. We speak with a unified voice on decisions, but certainly "I think it's kind of bad, but not nearly as bad as you think" has come up. The good news is that there are no politics among us ("I'll vote to ban this card if you drop your objection to unbanning that one"), just honest debate, discussion, sometimes disagreement, and then implementation. Those disagreements I believe are extremely healthy for the format.
In any case... EDH is already the most fractured format I've ever played in Magic. Every time I sit down to play someone, there's a 3 minute period of time in which we go over the rules we each *expected* to play by, 3 more minutes to negotiate the rules for the match we're about to play, then another 5 minutes while we fish through our decks to remove cards that are banned in this newly created hybrid format.
Really? I sit down with strangers, play immediately, and everyone has fun. I rarely lose and never get any complaints about things being "unfair."
And for all the complaints on MTGSal, I've never played against a degenerate Hermit Druid deck across four states and many game stores and GPs.
I took apart Merieke mostly because I was bored with it. I like her as a General and there are some really nice cards out recently in the Esper colors, so I want to revisit her. The deck will still be based around using her ability and associated shenanigans (like with Thousand-Year Elixir), but will probably otherwise be a little more aggressive than it was in the past. I'm not sure if it'll be theme-y or just 'cards which are cool and work together.'
I gave my Riku deck to poker star David Williams at Worlds, and haven't rebuilt it. I actually haven't considered what to do with it, save for wanting it to be REALLY outside-the-box. Yes, there are ridiculous cards to copy with Riku. I wouldn't mind find some that are ridiculous but aren't getting commonly played. Maybe we'll do something akin to the Isperia Challenge (see next week's SCG article for details).
Undying is certainly a mechanic that warrants attention, and I know I'm not the only one who wants to do some exploring with Mikaeus, the Unhallowed.
How can that argument not be made for most of the cards on the list? I could want to play Painter's Servant for all my cool Liege effects, and have my black Balthar deck bring back all of everyone's creatures, but obviously that fun is compromised "for the greater good." Maybe it's just me, but I've seen more casual players want to do fun things with PS than HD (I could also make the same argument for quite a few cards on this list, Panoptic Mirror, etc).
So, if such a line exists, where do you draw it?
An excellent question, and one that has generated a lot of thought and conversation over the years. I come back to the concept of "accidental" degeneracy that I alluded to earlier. It's very hard for Hermit Druid to be accidentally degenerate - until you actively set out to abuse Hermit Druid, it's a fine card. Banning it just means the player who wants to play the fastest and least interactive combo deck in the format goes and finds the second fastest, and trying to chase that game is not something we're interested in. You'll note over the past year that we've been taking degenerate combo pieces - Worldgordger, LED - off the list. We like to keep the banlist short, and having cards like that, which don't appeal to casual players anyway, while others that are just as powerful are out there, seemed pointless. This isn't an endorsement that you should play these cards, but a recognition that if you're going to, we're not building a format for you.
Our experience has shown that Servant (and Mirror) just seem to wreck games through unplanned interactions. You aren't setting out to abuse Mirror when you put it in your deck; it looks like a really fun card. But you threw in a Time Warp or an Armageddon at one point because it might also be fun and you just drew them both. Oops. You can either end the game randomly or make a suboptimal play, and making a suboptimal play, though sometimes necessary, is a feel-bad and we'd like to avoid it. It's a balancing act.
Note that folks asking about our playtesting groups miss the point a bit. We will occasionally have a group try something out and see what they think, but where playtesting excels is in balancing a format, and that's way down on the list of priorities.
We mostly figure out where the line is by lots of discussion, play, and theorycrafting and asking ourselves "would this change improve the type of game that we like to play". I'm sure this'll drive all the folks who find fun an arbitrary concept, but we didn't start out trying to create a popular format. We evolved a format that we enjoyed playing, and it turned out to resonate with an awful lot of people. Our goal is to continue resonating with those people, which means going with our gut and what we learn from talking to people rather than a more empirical measure.
(This is also a strong argument for being pretty conservative with change. We're clearly doing something right, so the pressure is strongly on the side of not screwing it up.)
I would like to take a moment to second this notion. I was originally against these sort of "corner case" additions to the rules, but since the redefinition of color identity (which felt had largely to do with the addition of 4 or 5 new generals), I have felt that perhaps the RC doesn't see them as such (also, I've wanted to build ninja Ink-Eyes EDH for a while now).
Color identity led to the addition of the new generals, not the other way around. As a general rule, we are very opposed to adding corner cases.
The majority of the Rules Committee consists of high-level judges. We're very rules-focused and write the rules we want, then see where the chips fall in terms of what cards actually get affected on the margins. This means things like Garruk Relentless only being playable in G/B isn't because we wanted to keep it out of mono-G decks, but because we figured out how it made sense for the rules to work with color identity and DFCs, then applied it. Off-color fetchlands aren't something we endorse as awesome, but the rules make them legal, and fixing that 'hole' isn't worth adding a pretty ugly corner case.
Color identity came about because WotC wanted to put Commander in the rulebook. That meant tightening things up, and because we cared about mana symbols on all parts of the card, part of the tightening it up was separating the concept from color. So, we worked with the Rules Manager to write a color identity rule that we liked and felt was clean. Making some generals work was a nice bonus, but making cards work is not really a goal. We like putting restrictions on the format - building and playing around them is fun.
We've discussed various play-from-hand options over the years, but haven't felt the addition was a rules improvement, and making a few more cards legal as generals isn't enough impetus to drive a serious effort. The proposed one here is about as good as we've come up with (and getting there identified many of the pitfalls in trying to do it!) and it still feels kind of clunky. (As a judge, the phrase "as though" gives me hives for all the problems it's caused over the years!)
That being said, we need formal rules so that they can appear in the Rulebook, but I'm not averse to tweaking things yourself within the spirit of the format. I used to play against a Genju of the Realm deck all the time (it was appropriately all lands and enchantments), and would certainly play against a flavorful Ink-Eyes or Ith deck. I might look at you funny if you showed up with Myojin of Night's Reach, but I guess I prefer knowing that it's coming, at least.
Posts merged. Using the multiquote function can help split the questions up. -ISB
An excellent question, and one that has generated a lot of thought and conversation over the years. I come back to the concept of "accidental" degeneracy that I alluded to earlier. It's very hard for Hermit Druid to be accidentally degenerate - until you actively set out to abuse Hermit Druid, it's a fine card. Banning it just means the player who wants to play the fastest and least interactive combo deck in the format goes and finds the second fastest, and trying to chase that game is not something we're interested in. You'll note over the past year that we've been taking degenerate combo pieces - Worldgordger, LED - off the list. We like to keep the banlist short, and having cards like that, which don't appeal to casual players anyway, while others that are just as powerful are out there, seemed pointless. This isn't an endorsement that you should play these cards, but a recognition that if you're going to, we're not building a format for you.
This does actually explain quite a bit about the card selection for the banlist. Thanks for the in depth response.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
We are definitely focused on the players who want to play EDH so that everyone enjoys themselves as opposed to those who play it to just win. There's nothing inherently wrong with either approach, but the former is our audience.
Thank you papa_funk and Sheldon, your explanations are well-received. I can understand the overall "I accidentally the whole game" thing, but one thing still bothers me, and I'd assume bothers everyone else as well. You probably already know where I am going with this, as it's most likely the single most brought up topic or card you guys have heard about.
There. I said it. I'm not trying to re-hash an argument, or try and beat a dead horse. I do, however, play Kaalia of the Vast as my favorite general of all time, and would be interested in playing this guy. He's no Panoptic Mirror. He doesn't lock people under Limited Resources. He's not a mass bounce like Upheaval. He just gains some life, and probably makes you a bit of a target. He's not even capable of a lock engine like Yosei, the Morning Star is(who I've used in conjunction with Sword of Light and Shadow + Phyrexian Tower to make someone never untap again). Kaalia is a pretty strong enabler for said Yosei-Lock to happen.
Maybe it's just me, I want to use a card like this to counteract all the life I spend in a game, from the card draw, fetchlands, shocklands, and etc. Maybe I don't understand how it's broken, or how to break it(I'm the only guy I know to play Survival of the Fittest in a fair, non-broken manner, to tutor for answer cards every so often).
I guess for me, all I see him as is a bunch of life gain. Which is cool, but isn't that what general damage is used for? To counteract such a swing in life? If it was even a finisher, can't Exsanguinate(for example) be used more efficiently? Which is a card that isn't anywhere near the potential to be removed from the format. Between efficient exile removal, appropriate levels of graveyard hate, counterspells and stifle effects, even theft such as Treachery, or Vedalken Shackles, it just doesn't seem like he is even as powerful as a lot of the other guys that make up the format(such as everyone's favorite Titan).
I apologize for bringing up such a dead horse topic. I hope this doesn't cause the topic to derail more, this is just something I've often wondered, and I'm sure others want to know as well. I'm anxious to hear your guys' thoughts' on the matter.
I admire the Rules Committee's view that the rules are more guidelines than laws, and that individual playgroups are free to tweak the rules as they see fit, whether to allow Haakon, proxies, or whatever. Unfortunately, it seems that most people treat the rules as the only right way to play the game. Of the groups I have played with, most allow the occasional unplayable commander or nephilim, but it is generally frowned upon and often allowed only because nobody wants to go through the trouble of starting an argument about it. Using banned cards is met with even more disdain. Most of the time the player is told that they may not use that card and have to remove it. That's just my experience though.
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No offense but you sound like you don't have enough experience with it to make those statements. Blue has exactly one board wipe that isn't bounce and doesn't destroy knowldge pool, two if you count oblivion stone fate counters and maybe if you experienced a game where people didn't just scoop you would know what I mean. The emrakul statement doesn't make sense either. You're comparing a creature that time walks after being cast,kills six permanents,flys,does 15 damage and has very effective protection to a card that doesn't let people cast things from hand.
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1) with Tef+Pool out, you can add Evacuation and bounce to the wraths, because they are with the pool lock. You can't play anything that just got bounced.
2) A wrath effect doesn't do much, tef+pool doesn't stop commanders.
Knowledge pool does not stop commanders from being re-played. They are not coming from your hand. If they are, pool exiles them, so you can move them to the command zone. Then, you can replay them, and they are not coming from your hand.
This also means a number of flashback spells work spectacularly against Pool lock. Including:
Bash to Bits, Ancient Grudge, Ray of distortion, Dematerialize, Silent Departure, Unburial Rites, Chainer's edict; among others.
That said, I have seen few (to say the least) of these played in EDH. Ancient Grudge really being the only one currently, though I expect to see unburial rites do good things, especially considering the number of creature ETB answers people run.
Pool alone is obnoxious, and the lock just downright annoying. If someone pulled that against me, I would probably not invite them to play again, or simply gun them from turn 1, since I don't know when they'll just say I win, and end the game. That's pretty much also my policy against infinite combo.
Retired EDH - Tibor and Lumia | [PR]Nemata |Ramirez dePietro | [C]Edric | Riku | Jenara | Lazav | Heliod | Daxos | Roon | Kozilek
Your reason for not banning the main piece of the fastest combo deck in a format, according to your own committee, that is wholeheartedly against that type of deck is because it's a mana fixer? There are so many fixers that are hands down better than Hermit Druid.
From close to two years of personal experience, I've never seen Hermit Druid used as a fixer. In fact, most new players are transplants from Standard, so their card pool is generally made up of newer cards. By the time they become aware of more obscure cards like the Druid, they've probably become aware of the combo and the stigma attached to it. At this point, a player would have to ask himself if a) he wants to run the combo and generally win games by turn 4, or b) not run the card because he doesn't want people to assume he is running the combo, or c) run the card without combos. Two of those options are directly tied into the fact that this card is a well-known combo piece. That's seems to me like it's warping the format (to a degree).
Standard
GWB Junk Rites GWB
Brewing
GWBU 4-Color Rites/Aggro GWBU
Rules Advisor
Around my LGS there is only one player who runs Hermit Druid. It is in his Mimeoplasm dredge deck, which plays ~8 basic lands and does not play Necrotic Ooze. It's a scary deck, but it's power is in-line with what a lot of other people are doing. I've had games where Hermit Druid was activated last for 45-60m easy. There are casual uses, powerful uses, and degenerate uses of the card, and there is no reasonable banned list that would prevent someone from building a wholly degenerate deck in this format.
That said, the same could be stated about Painter's Servant.
Praetor's Grasp brought about a clarification in the rules, to prevent it from permanently removing generals.
Currently, there remain 3 loopholes in the rules (of varying difficulties), to permanently remove a General. Should these loopholes be fixed? Why or why not?
1) Mindslaver/Sorin. Turn control is currently the easiest way to perform this, and is the one way in which the owner of the General really never had a say to prevent it.
2) Blink/Stifle tricks. Mystifying Maze is viewed as a poor man's Maze of Ith, there are also a number of Bant blink decks about, and especially Blink/Rasputin decks. These decks, with the inclusion of stifle, allow a permanent removal of a general, by stifleing the delayed return trigger. While this trick will really only happen once, it quickly makes Mystifying maze and Mistmeadow witch straight up General-killers, as they have to keep sending it back to the command zone, or risk getting stifled.
3) The last loophole will likely never see play, and also includes a mindslaver (or an unsuspecting opponent), and involves phasing. Objects that are attached to a permanent that phases out, phase out with it by proxy. When the permanent phases in, they phase in with it; they do not phase themselves in. Tokens cease to exist when they phase out, anything attached to a token that gets phased out, phase out with it, and never return. The hideously complex combo then, is to control their turn, use Soul Sculptor to turn their Commander into an enchantment, and not a creature, then use something like Liquidmetal coating, to make it an artifact as well, which also makes it an equipment with Bludgeon Brawl out, give them a token with Forbidden Orchard, equip the token with their Commander, and then Reality Ripple it.
So yeah, aside from the third option, which is silly, I think the first two are actually semi-serious loopholes. Thoughts?
Retired EDH - Tibor and Lumia | [PR]Nemata |Ramirez dePietro | [C]Edric | Riku | Jenara | Lazav | Heliod | Daxos | Roon | Kozilek
I'd vote in that poll.
Technically Gaka said new players to the format and to the game.
This seems like a very good point.
--
From my own experiences; I've only been playing the game since just before Lorwyn. I think... Magic was my new roommates number one hobby and my dining room table was overtaken by this weird dorky card game. He and his friends played 60 card casual (affinity, pox, elfball, casual) and some also were heavily into standard. I've probably made 15 different 60 card decks that ranged in power level from slightly better then a precon to slightly worse than affinity (with no ban list mind you - those are for tournaments).
Speaking of tournaments I've played in two FNM's and drafted about a dozen times. I like playing what I want to and not just what is legal and both FNM's consisted of a large number of mouthy spikes determined to convince me I had lost before I shuffled. "You're really trying to play that?"
Then I was introduced to EDH about two years a go. Started off with Brion Stoutarm and wraths a plenty. The people I was playing with enjoyed their creature battles and were terribly dissapointed that I was ruining all the fun by killing stuff. So I evolved and so did they. Sadly 'they' evolved to other citys, having kids, or just losing interest. One of them though, introduced me to MTGO.
So now I get to play against a mostly type 2 legal Karrthus with too high a curve, a heavily tuned combo GAAIV, and mono white prison, all in the same game. I've still yet to see a hermit druid combo deck but I've lost to a turn 4 armageddon after ascendant and geist of saint traft hit the field, infinitely recurrable extra turns, exsanguinate ftw with coffers-temple-rings-gauntlet, vorinclex prison, my own mana crypt dealing lethal to me on my upkeep, and any number of other degenerate unfun decks. Still having fun playing commander. Still playing mono red aggro without LD and winning. When people crush the table, the table tells them they're playing the wrong format and this is online in the dark depths of a completely unsocial medium.
This little edh player is fine with the ban list and stand firmly in the whole "self regulating social format" group even playing with the emotionally unavailable online community. But I reserve the right to change my mind. I also only share this for perspective.
ALSO!! For those of you reading this that play on mtgo. When someone goes to combo off, don't instaconcede. Ask the person comboing to concede if they have the win. If they refuse, /eject "username" in the chat window and play for second place. It's amazingly more efficient to have 1 player find a new game then all 4 because someone wanted to pee on the parade that is casual commander. It is a social format after all and you'd be surprised how many people just want to play nether void turn 2 and contamination turn 3 because it was awesome and are cool with not actually killing the table while everyone else does nothing but draw 1 card a turn and pray for an all is dust.
Thank You Rivenor/Miraculous Recovery Studios!
GGGSKamahl's Band of Monstosities SGGG
RRRSFreaki-Kiki, The Goblin DoucheSRRR
BBGGNath, Raper of Hands and Spewer of Tokens!GGBB
BUGDamia, Sage of AnswersBUG
WIPs
BBBXiahou Dun, the Bitter Stax Enabling BastardBBB
On Break
BBBSKagemaro, First to RetireSBBB
BBBThe Walking DeadBBB
UUUSTeferi Combo PrimerSUUU
1. We recognize that there is a group of 1v1 players that very much enjoy the variant, and wish them the best fun while playing it. The format is officially a multiplayer format, so all of the RC's work will be done without considering the implications of banning or unbanning cards because of their 1v1 impact.
2. I personally do not play it and am unlikely to.
How can that argument not be made for most of the cards on the list? I could want to play Painter's Servant for all my cool Liege effects, and have my black Balthar deck bring back all of everyone's creatures, but obviously that fun is compromised "for the greater good." Maybe it's just me, but I've seen more casual players want to do fun things with PS than HD (I could also make the same argument for quite a few cards on this list, Panoptic Mirror, etc).
So, if such a line exists, where do you draw it?
I would like to take a moment to second this notion. I was originally against these sort of "corner case" additions to the rules, but since the redefinition of color identity (which felt had largely to do with the addition of 4 or 5 new generals), I have felt that perhaps the RC doesn't see them as such (also, I've wanted to build ninja Ink-Eyes EDH for a while now).
Other than that, thank you RC, for all you have done to help make this great format into what it is today.
GX Tron XG
UR Phoenix RU
GG Freyalise High Tide GG
UR Parun Counterspells RU
BB Yawgmoth Token Storm BB
WB Pestilence BW
I'm really having difficulty grasping the thought process behind this.
A card with very minimal use outside of the degenerate, and enables arguably the worst offender in terms of degenerate decks out there, but it's "okay" because it's a toy for land fixing (which I have never seen).
At the same time, Painter's Servant enables a lockdown combo with Iona and a couple of other powerful but basically irrelevant interactions (Teysa already has Darkest Hour, and Grindstone is a slow and weak two-card combo), so it's banned despite the fact that it has lots of very interesting potential combinations.
I'm just trying to understand the difference here.
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
I'll agree with this if it will help getting an explanation. The cognitive dissonance is hard to wrap my head around.
1) Please make your question short and to the point if possible. It is annoying to have to read through several paragraphs when all you really are saying why dont you ban / unban card X? You have a better chance of having your question answered if it is less complicated.
2) Please try not to repeat questions that have already been asked and responded to. While I dont mind a little discussion on the matter once they give you the answer to a question it doesnt really help to argue their answer.
Thanks and enjoy.
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[Modern] Allies
LOL. And "personal handheld massagers" are quite popular among women with sore backs.
In any case... EDH is already the most fractured format I've ever played in Magic. Every time I sit down to play someone, there's a 3 minute period of time in which we go over the rules we each *expected* to play by, 3 more minutes to negotiate the rules for the match we're about to play, then another 5 minutes while we fish through our decks to remove cards that are banned in this newly created hybrid format.
The WotC banned list, while much maligned at various times over the years, is in my opinion pretty well received these days. They have a clear philosophy of what types of cards and interactions need to be banned, and I think they're good at applying this properly. A brand new "Rules Committee" in an already fractured format, with their own philosophy of what should/shouldn't be banned, is going to find their rules less and less frequently used (IMO). I wouldn't expect a group of players - especially one so inbred - to make a banned list for Type 2, let alone a format as complex as EDH.
Despite some difficulty in making a flow chart, I can tell you a few things that aren't immediate factors:
1. Me personally hating a card.
2. Me personally losing to a card.
3. Lack of real evidence that the card is bad. This would include "pre-banning" or "Steamflogger Boss is wrecking my local environment! Ban it!").
4. A card being part of a game-winning combo.
5. The card's impact on 1v1
6. Similarity to another card on the banned list.
#6 is the one that I think troubles most folks, but it's the one that I think would get us into the most difficulty because of the cascading effect. Again, a 200 card banned list is horrible for everyone. I'm not saying that a similar card wouldn't get banned, I'm just saying that the similarity of the card isn't the offense, it's the evidence that the card is similarly bad for the format (and here's hoping I haven't talked in a circle).
Also consider that the RC, while all having a nearly identical desire for the health of the format, have slightly differing views on how to best bring that about. We speak with a unified voice on decisions, but certainly "I think it's kind of bad, but not nearly as bad as you think" has come up. The good news is that there are no politics among us ("I'll vote to ban this card if you drop your objection to unbanning that one"), just honest debate, discussion, sometimes disagreement, and then implementation. Those disagreements I believe are extremely healthy for the format.
What mechanics would you use?
EDH:
UBGMimeoplasm (Reanimator Control)
WGBURProgenitus (Dream Halls//Good Stuff)
RNorin, the Wary (Metaddited Gaka List)
Thanks to Heroes of the Plane Studios!
Really? I sit down with strangers, play immediately, and everyone has fun. I rarely lose and never get any complaints about things being "unfair."
And for all the complaints on MTGSal, I've never played against a degenerate Hermit Druid deck across four states and many game stores and GPs.
The next two I have planned are actually rebuilds: Merieke Ri Berit and Riku of Two Reflections.
I took apart Merieke mostly because I was bored with it. I like her as a General and there are some really nice cards out recently in the Esper colors, so I want to revisit her. The deck will still be based around using her ability and associated shenanigans (like with Thousand-Year Elixir), but will probably otherwise be a little more aggressive than it was in the past. I'm not sure if it'll be theme-y or just 'cards which are cool and work together.'
I gave my Riku deck to poker star David Williams at Worlds, and haven't rebuilt it. I actually haven't considered what to do with it, save for wanting it to be REALLY outside-the-box. Yes, there are ridiculous cards to copy with Riku. I wouldn't mind find some that are ridiculous but aren't getting commonly played. Maybe we'll do something akin to the Isperia Challenge (see next week's SCG article for details).
Undying is certainly a mechanic that warrants attention, and I know I'm not the only one who wants to do some exploring with Mikaeus, the Unhallowed.
This is converging evidence that your local metagame is likely more casual than mine and that of folks here.
Never played against one, but I've seen one before, and it was brutal. I've played against Zur, and the likes too.
EDH:
UBGMimeoplasm (Reanimator Control)
WGBURProgenitus (Dream Halls//Good Stuff)
RNorin, the Wary (Metaddited Gaka List)
Thanks to Heroes of the Plane Studios!
An excellent question, and one that has generated a lot of thought and conversation over the years. I come back to the concept of "accidental" degeneracy that I alluded to earlier. It's very hard for Hermit Druid to be accidentally degenerate - until you actively set out to abuse Hermit Druid, it's a fine card. Banning it just means the player who wants to play the fastest and least interactive combo deck in the format goes and finds the second fastest, and trying to chase that game is not something we're interested in. You'll note over the past year that we've been taking degenerate combo pieces - Worldgordger, LED - off the list. We like to keep the banlist short, and having cards like that, which don't appeal to casual players anyway, while others that are just as powerful are out there, seemed pointless. This isn't an endorsement that you should play these cards, but a recognition that if you're going to, we're not building a format for you.
Our experience has shown that Servant (and Mirror) just seem to wreck games through unplanned interactions. You aren't setting out to abuse Mirror when you put it in your deck; it looks like a really fun card. But you threw in a Time Warp or an Armageddon at one point because it might also be fun and you just drew them both. Oops. You can either end the game randomly or make a suboptimal play, and making a suboptimal play, though sometimes necessary, is a feel-bad and we'd like to avoid it. It's a balancing act.
Note that folks asking about our playtesting groups miss the point a bit. We will occasionally have a group try something out and see what they think, but where playtesting excels is in balancing a format, and that's way down on the list of priorities.
We mostly figure out where the line is by lots of discussion, play, and theorycrafting and asking ourselves "would this change improve the type of game that we like to play". I'm sure this'll drive all the folks who find fun an arbitrary concept, but we didn't start out trying to create a popular format. We evolved a format that we enjoyed playing, and it turned out to resonate with an awful lot of people. Our goal is to continue resonating with those people, which means going with our gut and what we learn from talking to people rather than a more empirical measure.
(This is also a strong argument for being pretty conservative with change. We're clearly doing something right, so the pressure is strongly on the side of not screwing it up.)
Color identity led to the addition of the new generals, not the other way around. As a general rule, we are very opposed to adding corner cases.
The majority of the Rules Committee consists of high-level judges. We're very rules-focused and write the rules we want, then see where the chips fall in terms of what cards actually get affected on the margins. This means things like Garruk Relentless only being playable in G/B isn't because we wanted to keep it out of mono-G decks, but because we figured out how it made sense for the rules to work with color identity and DFCs, then applied it. Off-color fetchlands aren't something we endorse as awesome, but the rules make them legal, and fixing that 'hole' isn't worth adding a pretty ugly corner case.
Color identity came about because WotC wanted to put Commander in the rulebook. That meant tightening things up, and because we cared about mana symbols on all parts of the card, part of the tightening it up was separating the concept from color. So, we worked with the Rules Manager to write a color identity rule that we liked and felt was clean. Making some generals work was a nice bonus, but making cards work is not really a goal. We like putting restrictions on the format - building and playing around them is fun.
We've discussed various play-from-hand options over the years, but haven't felt the addition was a rules improvement, and making a few more cards legal as generals isn't enough impetus to drive a serious effort. The proposed one here is about as good as we've come up with (and getting there identified many of the pitfalls in trying to do it!) and it still feels kind of clunky. (As a judge, the phrase "as though" gives me hives for all the problems it's caused over the years!)
That being said, we need formal rules so that they can appear in the Rulebook, but I'm not averse to tweaking things yourself within the spirit of the format. I used to play against a Genju of the Realm deck all the time (it was appropriately all lands and enchantments), and would certainly play against a flavorful Ink-Eyes or Ith deck. I might look at you funny if you showed up with Myojin of Night's Reach, but I guess I prefer knowing that it's coming, at least.
Posts merged. Using the multiquote function can help split the questions up. -ISB
This does actually explain quite a bit about the card selection for the banlist. Thanks for the in depth response.
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[Modern] Allies
Kokusho, the Evening Star
There. I said it. I'm not trying to re-hash an argument, or try and beat a dead horse. I do, however, play Kaalia of the Vast as my favorite general of all time, and would be interested in playing this guy. He's no Panoptic Mirror. He doesn't lock people under Limited Resources. He's not a mass bounce like Upheaval. He just gains some life, and probably makes you a bit of a target. He's not even capable of a lock engine like Yosei, the Morning Star is(who I've used in conjunction with Sword of Light and Shadow + Phyrexian Tower to make someone never untap again). Kaalia is a pretty strong enabler for said Yosei-Lock to happen.
Maybe it's just me, I want to use a card like this to counteract all the life I spend in a game, from the card draw, fetchlands, shocklands, and etc. Maybe I don't understand how it's broken, or how to break it(I'm the only guy I know to play Survival of the Fittest in a fair, non-broken manner, to tutor for answer cards every so often).
I guess for me, all I see him as is a bunch of life gain. Which is cool, but isn't that what general damage is used for? To counteract such a swing in life? If it was even a finisher, can't Exsanguinate(for example) be used more efficiently? Which is a card that isn't anywhere near the potential to be removed from the format. Between efficient exile removal, appropriate levels of graveyard hate, counterspells and stifle effects, even theft such as Treachery, or Vedalken Shackles, it just doesn't seem like he is even as powerful as a lot of the other guys that make up the format(such as everyone's favorite Titan).
I apologize for bringing up such a dead horse topic. I hope this doesn't cause the topic to derail more, this is just something I've often wondered, and I'm sure others want to know as well. I'm anxious to hear your guys' thoughts' on the matter.
Steel Sabotage'ng Orbs of Mellowness since 2011.