Meh, people always say "You can play it fair" and sure, you can. But in the end, we all know that rarely happens with T&N unlike, say, Worldly Tutor who usually grabs answers relevant to the current boardstate.
Last time I recall casting it, I got Elesh Norn and Archetype of Endurance to shut down the two token swarm decks that were dominating the game. Since I don't build my decks to win - or lose - based on whether I have in play a specific card or combination of cards ( I typically rely more on cumulative advantage and answers), more often than not I use non-land tutors to answer board conditions or deal with threats.
on one hand, you might as well have won that game, since most token decks ive seen don't run that many creature removal spells. on the other hand, its a crazy-high CMC spell that probably SHOULD be winning players the game.. it IS like turn 10+ by that point, right? so after that point when everyone's had their chance to steal the win (but couldn't), it should be anyone's game, and people should be able to look back and be proud of their victories.
therefore, if T&N isn't banned, coalition victory should be unbanned. from what ive seen, a good 75% of the time, T&N is an insta-win, almost-one-card-combo (since so long as the other pieces are in your library/hand, it works 'single-handedly') card that costs 9 mana. many times, you need an instant-speed answer to whatever it pukes out or stack manipulation against the T&N itself or the table loses. whats the difference in reality between that and coalition victory? coalition victory as it is requires even more work than T&N.. having to get at minimum the 5c commander plus a couple of dual lands/shock lands/actual basics in play while getting up to 8 mana (so at minimum, a 5c creature, combination of 3 dual/shocklands, wubrg+3 mana) seems a lot more effort than its worth compared to just having 7gg and having your combo pieces in your hand/library.
more than that, the people who put TN in their decks, sure they can argue that they don't/won't abuse it as such, but if you can search out your win but don't, aren't you just trolling the people you're playing the game with? its a bit like saying i COULD win, but ill just let you chumps go through the motions a bit till i feel like winning.. some people also deliberately take out their T&N combo pieces, and that i can commend; though if i'm sitting across from you, theres no way for me to know.
having said that, i think coalition victory creates a kinda deflating win, and like most alternative victory cards like battle of wits, the rest of the table would be pretty content 'playing for seconds' (though in their minds they're still playing for the win); though i think that can be said for the times people play a T&N here too actually. i think almost everyone i play with has taken T&N out of their decks as it is even though it isn't on a banlist of any sort.
edit: forgot to mention, for the dream ban-list, i think there was mention of splitting it up under various sub-categories. is there a possibility to make a category for chaos orb and falling star aka dexterity cards?
edit: forgot to mention, for the dream ban-list, i think there was mention of splitting it up under various sub-categories. is there a possibility to make a category for chaos orb and falling star aka dexterity cards?
Those would go in with Shahrazad under "Vintage-Banned Cards", so yes, they will have their own section.
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Rest in RIP My Signature, I guess. 2015-2016, we hardly knew ye.
Total side note but I like how people are discussing running this over itself.
Well, it has to be said that Kolaghan is clearly better than Kolaghan. Considering what BR decks usually want and how stiff the competition in this guild is, there is no way that I would run Kolaghan over Kolaghan! Kolaghan might make it in as the sixth guild card or so. Kolaghan on the other hand ranks several places below that.
It was so funny to me when they described this as a downgrade to the original Zurgo during the Pax East panel. I was thinking if this is a downgrade, they should really "downgrade" all legendary creatures. Haha.
My deck designing is quite concise at this point:
1. Come up with deck idea
2. Realize this idea is somehow fundamentally similar to another deck I have or that is commonly played in my group
3. Decide I don't want to disassemble one of my existing decks
4. Give up and do nothing
I don't see the point of this new shroud mechanic. It's strictly worse than Hexproof. Threshold is pretty bad too, Delirium is a much better mechanic and probably easier to activate.
Otherwise this card is a pretty neat guy. Dodges removal and grows into a Primal Huntbeast. 3/5
edit: forgot to mention, for the dream ban-list, i think there was mention of splitting it up under various sub-categories. is there a possibility to make a category for chaos orb and falling star aka dexterity cards?
Those would go in with Shahrazad under "Vintage-Banned Cards", so yes, they will have their own section.
i just meant in terms of dexterity cards. the vintage-restricted list is filled with pretty busted cards power-wise; falling star is far from busted; it just makes your opponents place their creatures at least 9cm away from each other.
edit: i'd like to think that if they are put in a separate section, people won't just clump them all together and treat them all as waay-broken for edh. Oh, and i calculated that if people use unsleeved cards, and cards are considered to be 88mm by 57mm; you'd need a minimum of 104.8mm distance so you won't get 2-for-1 with falling star. if you use sleeves, it kinda bumps the distance needed a bit.
whats the difference in reality between that and coalition victory? coalition victory as it is requires even more work than T&N.
Tooth and Nail can be played fairly (I use it to grab Avenger of Zendikar + Regal Force). The RC has said that they don't ban cards because of their busted uses but because of their nominal uses.
Which does kind of contradict the bannings of cards like Painter's Servant and Panoptic Mirror, but then contradictions are something a commander player learns to live with.
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My Commander decks:
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras. Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power. Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza. Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall. Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana. Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die. Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
T and N says to put "up to two" creatures into play from your hand; Containment Priest in response merely delays the win by a turn or two (which, granted, is pretty good for 2 mana in white) as they spend 9 mana to tutor for 2 creature cards.
If you want a white response to TnN, Aven Mindcensor is where it's at.
edit: forgot to mention, for the dream ban-list, i think there was mention of splitting it up under various sub-categories. is there a possibility to make a category for chaos orb and falling star aka dexterity cards?
Those would go in with Shahrazad under "Vintage-Banned Cards", so yes, they will have their own section.
i just meant in terms of dexterity cards. the vintage-restricted list is filled with pretty busted cards power-wise; falling star is far from busted; it just makes your opponents place their creatures at least 9cm away from each other.
edit: i'd like to think that if they are put in a separate section, people won't just clump them all together and treat them all as waay-broken for edh. Oh, and i calculated that if people use unsleeved cards, and cards are considered to be 88mm by 57mm; you'd need a minimum of 104.8mm distance so you won't get 2-for-1 with falling star. if you use sleeves, it kinda bumps the distance needed a bit.
Banned in Vintage =/= Restricted in Vintage.
The only things banned in Vintage is Ante cards, manual dexterity cards, Conspiracies, and Shahrazad
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Rest in RIP My Signature, I guess. 2015-2016, we hardly knew ye.
Total side note but I like how people are discussing running this over itself.
Well, it has to be said that Kolaghan is clearly better than Kolaghan. Considering what BR decks usually want and how stiff the competition in this guild is, there is no way that I would run Kolaghan over Kolaghan! Kolaghan might make it in as the sixth guild card or so. Kolaghan on the other hand ranks several places below that.
It was so funny to me when they described this as a downgrade to the original Zurgo during the Pax East panel. I was thinking if this is a downgrade, they should really "downgrade" all legendary creatures. Haha.
My deck designing is quite concise at this point:
1. Come up with deck idea
2. Realize this idea is somehow fundamentally similar to another deck I have or that is commonly played in my group
3. Decide I don't want to disassemble one of my existing decks
4. Give up and do nothing
I don't see the point of this new shroud mechanic. It's strictly worse than Hexproof. Threshold is pretty bad too, Delirium is a much better mechanic and probably easier to activate.
Otherwise this card is a pretty neat guy. Dodges removal and grows into a Primal Huntbeast. 3/5
I know it's not white, but I like Dualcaster Mage-ing it and winning while their Tooth and Nail is still on the stack :3
I've done that before, except it was after they T&N for DEN/Pally and I won with their soulbond trigger still on the stack.
Edit: I can neither confirm nor deny that I had Prophet in play.
See, those are the sorts of plays that argue against banning things like TnN, DEN, etc. If you ban them, you can't pull off cool wins that play off others' attempts to do broken stuff.
See, those are the sorts of plays that argue against banning things like TnN, DEN, etc. If you ban them, you can't pull off cool wins that play off others' attempts to do broken stuff.
Which I guess begs the inevitable question: what cards currently on the ban list enable giant plays like that?
See, those are the sorts of plays that argue against banning things like TnN, DEN, etc. If you ban them, you can't pull off cool wins that play off others' attempts to do broken stuff.
Which I guess begs the inevitable question: what cards currently on the ban list enable giant plays like that?
Unban Biorhythm because I can use Polymorph, Radiate, Containment Priest, and Vedalken Orrery to turn it into a loss for the caster. //sarcasm
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Rest in RIP My Signature, I guess. 2015-2016, we hardly knew ye.
Total side note but I like how people are discussing running this over itself.
Well, it has to be said that Kolaghan is clearly better than Kolaghan. Considering what BR decks usually want and how stiff the competition in this guild is, there is no way that I would run Kolaghan over Kolaghan! Kolaghan might make it in as the sixth guild card or so. Kolaghan on the other hand ranks several places below that.
It was so funny to me when they described this as a downgrade to the original Zurgo during the Pax East panel. I was thinking if this is a downgrade, they should really "downgrade" all legendary creatures. Haha.
My deck designing is quite concise at this point:
1. Come up with deck idea
2. Realize this idea is somehow fundamentally similar to another deck I have or that is commonly played in my group
3. Decide I don't want to disassemble one of my existing decks
4. Give up and do nothing
I don't see the point of this new shroud mechanic. It's strictly worse than Hexproof. Threshold is pretty bad too, Delirium is a much better mechanic and probably easier to activate.
Otherwise this card is a pretty neat guy. Dodges removal and grows into a Primal Huntbeast. 3/5
I'm a fan of banning cards that I call "one-card combos"; cards that basically end the game regardless of board state. Hermit Druid, Ad Nauseam, and Tooth and Nail are the three worst offenders, but Enter the Infinite, Doomsday, Primal Surge, and Omniscience are right up there. The RC often talks about how cards can be deflating to the EDH experience and how a combo finish feels anticlimactic and boring, and I tell you that 90%+ of the time Tooth and Nail is cast the game is over despite whatever happened before and often feels anticlimactic and boring.
I kind of disagree with banning cards that require a lot of work to actually break, unless they cause for too fast a win. Druid and Nauseam are borderline for me, they require a crazy amount of work before their builds are stable enough to kill, but they do it fast enough to merit discussion. Tooth and Nail, Omniscience and Enter the Infinite generally require very little work to actually break, but do come late in the game. This warrants discussion to be sure. Doomsday is a bit of an odd one, it falls kinda in between the two catagories to me. Primal Surge, however, requires 98 permanents, stifling a lot of deckbuilding options, and is 10 mana, so that one is much less bad. Just my opinion.
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My Commander decks:
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras. Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power. Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza. Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall. Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana. Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die. Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
in terms of ad nauseum and hermit druid, most the work involves building the entire deck around it; something which isn't necessarily the case for T&N. and much like coalition victory, druid and nauseum only really works in a specific kind of deck, and requires an instant-speed/stack-based answer otherwise the game is done.
i'm not so bothered that there are inconsistencies in the RC's banlist though, its a format thats been going on for a long time, and there will definitely be cases where things that were not ok a few years ago becomes much more ok now [read: worldgorger dragon, kokusho, staff of domination]. it probably just requires a bit of work to test/prove that something isn't all that bad anymore/is a huge problem.
and i think its quite unfair of me to say that coalition victory, druid, nauseum, T&N are essentially the same thing, but it would seem to me that though there are definitely 'fair' uses for those cards, they are mostly 'win the game' cards. its just that only one of them literally says that.
edit: forgot to mention, for the dream ban-list, i think there was mention of splitting it up under various sub-categories. is there a possibility to make a category for chaos orb and falling star aka dexterity cards?
Those would go in with Shahrazad under "Vintage-Banned Cards", so yes, they will have their own section.
i just meant in terms of dexterity cards. the vintage-restricted list is filled with pretty busted cards power-wise; falling star is far from busted; it just makes your opponents place their creatures at least 9cm away from each other.
edit: i'd like to think that if they are put in a separate section, people won't just clump them all together and treat them all as waay-broken for edh. Oh, and i calculated that if people use unsleeved cards, and cards are considered to be 88mm by 57mm; you'd need a minimum of 104.8mm distance so you won't get 2-for-1 with falling star. if you use sleeves, it kinda bumps the distance needed a bit.
Banned in Vintage =/= Restricted in Vintage.
The only things banned in Vintage is Ante cards, manual dexterity cards, Conspiracies, and Shahrazad
for some reason it completely skipped my mind that vintage actually had banned cards; i just thought so long as black lotus was only restricted, everything else must surely be fair game!
I'm a fan of banning cards that I call "one-card combos"; cards that basically end the game regardless of board state. Hermit Druid, Ad Nauseam, and Tooth and Nail are the three worst offenders, but Enter the Infinite, Doomsday, Primal Surge, and Omniscience are right up there. The RC often talks about how cards can be deflating to the EDH experience and how a combo finish feels anticlimactic and boring, and I tell you that 90%+ of the time Tooth and Nail is cast the game is over despite whatever happened before and often feels anticlimactic and boring.
I'm going to agree with Lou on this one (although you do raise a valid point). Dedication of deck space to a combo should be a real consideration. Omniscience is just lazy infinite mana, so while it loses style points it's not so much of an issue. Enter the Infinite is just a won condition for your infinite mana; it's rare that you see the person survive another round of turns after casting this, so it might as well be a Rocket Luncher with infinite colorless mana. As for HD, AN, and Primal Surge: those require your whole deck to be dedicated to the one card (even more so than a deck with its general). The ones I agree with you on are T&N and Doomsday (however this does require a decent amount of dedicated slots, so it might be on the edge). Another one that I personally love, but feel fits this criteria is Survival of the Fittest. It's basically a 1-card combo with Necrotic Ooze in the same way T&N is with its respective combos.
I'm going to agree with Lou on this one (although you do raise a valid point). Dedication of deck space to a combo should be a real consideration. Omniscience is just lazy infinite mana, so while it loses style points it's not so much of an issue. Enter the Infinite is just a won condition for your infinite mana; it's rare that you see the person survive another round of turns after casting this, so it might as well be a Rocket Luncher with infinite colorless mana. As for HD, AN, and Primal Surge: those require your whole deck to be dedicated to the one card (even more so than a deck with its general). The ones I agree with you on are TN and Doomsday (however this does require a decent amount of dedicated slots, so it might be on the edge). Another one that I personally love, but feel fits this criteria is Survival of the Fittest. It's basically a 1-card combo with Necrotic Ooze in the same way TN is with its respective combos.
Completely agree with this.
Tho I would add that Survival has it's fair ways to use as a tool box enabler and if you want to assemble Ooze-combo, it means you have to cast Survival, activate it four times given you had a creature in hand, then cast Ooze. So it's 10 mana chain with several opportunities to be disrupted.
And again, the real problem there is that you're choosing to play that way.
The banned list is not intended to stop people who are intent on breaking the game, since EDH is a format which by its nature is easy to break if that's one's intent. It's intended to stop accidental breakage.
I think one can argue that given its casting cost, Survival of the Fittest might be too 'broken" for the format, but not just because of things like combos with Necrotic Ooze, as that combo is unlikely to happen accidentally.
No, the point is that one SINGLE card lets one win too easily without any real effort put behind it. Tooth and Nail definitely does this. (Note: I am not specifically in favor of banning T&N, I can just see why) On the other hand, Survival of the Fittest requires a specific chain of creatures to insta-win, and even then, you still must cast the Survival AND whatever you pull up with it, giving a bit more room for interaction. Then you have Omniscience which, if it resolves, basically reads "Either this card's controller will win or he's made some hilariously bad plays." That also falls in the no-effort-1-card-kills catagory. Biorhytm is an example of a banned card that also does this.
"The real problem there is that you're choosing to play that way" is something that can go for a lot of banned cards too. Painter's Servant? How about not pairing it with Iona, Ugin or Grindstone? Hey, it's fair. Panoptic Mirror? Avoid time magic and voila. Protean Hulk is even easier to NOT break as it requires very specific combinations of cards to actually go off.
So we got 3 cards on the banlist right there to completely destroy your argument. Any others?
I think the banlist criteria should be:
If this card on it's own can win the game pretty much the moment it is cast, without requiring heavy investments in deckbuilding, it should be banned.
On this criteria, Tooth and Nail should get banned because it can fetch every 2-creature-combo in the game. Some of which are instant-kills, others which simply provide infinite mana. On the same token, Hermit Druid should not be banned, because it requires a full deck specifically tailored around him before he goes from "A decent value engine" to "Stupidly broken."
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras. Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power. Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza. Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall. Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana. Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die. Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
i know, right? like many of the other 'fair-use' cards like ad nauseum and hermit druid, black braids also requires some warping when it comes to deckbuilding for it to go from challenging to outright unfair.
i know, right? like many of the other 'fair-use' cards like ad nauseum and hermit druid, black braids also requires some warping when it comes to deckbuilding for it to go from challenging to outright unfair.
If Hermit Druid could be your commander he would probably be banned.
Protean Hulk does need a fair bit of more work to break than Tooth and Nail if only due to its CMC restrictions. Coalition Victory can be slotted into any 5CMC deck and just needs its commander out to usually be an insta-win, so that one can stay gone. Braids is a whole different kettle of fish, she's not a wincon, she's a stax piece. A very good one at that.
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My Commander decks:
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras. Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power. Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza. Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall. Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana. Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die. Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
i know, right? like many of the other 'fair-use' cards like ad nauseum and hermit druid, black braids also requires some warping when it comes to deckbuilding for it to go from challenging to outright unfair.
Braids wouldn't be banned if we still had the "banned as commander" category. The only reason she got the axe was because it was removed.
Protean Hulk does need a fair bit of more work to break than Tooth and Nail if only due to its CMC restrictions. Coalition Victory can be slotted into any 5CMC deck and just needs its commander out to usually be an insta-win, so that one can stay gone. Braids is a whole different kettle of fish, she's not a wincon, she's a stax piece. A very good one at that.
how many people play all 5 basic types for their 5c decks? i cant afford the ABU duals, and i dont have all the shocks either. i'm not sure if they are really all that different in its in-game application. its usually a lot less work to T&N win than coalition victory win. i actually need to put specific lands into play, ramp up mana AND have the general out at minimum, whereas with T&N, its just ramp up to the mana, then pick and choose combo pieces from deck.
i truly dont think black braids is nearly as bad as many people think. it does require a bit of work building the deck in a way that makes her a problem; and at that point, is the card the problem here, really?
Last time I recall casting it, I got Elesh Norn and Archetype of Endurance to shut down the two token swarm decks that were dominating the game. Since I don't build my decks to win - or lose - based on whether I have in play a specific card or combination of cards ( I typically rely more on cumulative advantage and answers), more often than not I use non-land tutors to answer board conditions or deal with threats.
therefore, if T&N isn't banned, coalition victory should be unbanned. from what ive seen, a good 75% of the time, T&N is an insta-win, almost-one-card-combo (since so long as the other pieces are in your library/hand, it works 'single-handedly') card that costs 9 mana. many times, you need an instant-speed answer to whatever it pukes out or stack manipulation against the T&N itself or the table loses. whats the difference in reality between that and coalition victory? coalition victory as it is requires even more work than T&N.. having to get at minimum the 5c commander plus a couple of dual lands/shock lands/actual basics in play while getting up to 8 mana (so at minimum, a 5c creature, combination of 3 dual/shocklands, wubrg+3 mana) seems a lot more effort than its worth compared to just having 7gg and having your combo pieces in your hand/library.
more than that, the people who put TN in their decks, sure they can argue that they don't/won't abuse it as such, but if you can search out your win but don't, aren't you just trolling the people you're playing the game with? its a bit like saying i COULD win, but ill just let you chumps go through the motions a bit till i feel like winning.. some people also deliberately take out their T&N combo pieces, and that i can commend; though if i'm sitting across from you, theres no way for me to know.
having said that, i think coalition victory creates a kinda deflating win, and like most alternative victory cards like battle of wits, the rest of the table would be pretty content 'playing for seconds' (though in their minds they're still playing for the win); though i think that can be said for the times people play a T&N here too actually. i think almost everyone i play with has taken T&N out of their decks as it is even though it isn't on a banlist of any sort.
edit: forgot to mention, for the dream ban-list, i think there was mention of splitting it up under various sub-categories. is there a possibility to make a category for chaos orb and falling star aka dexterity cards?
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
Those would go in with Shahrazad under "Vintage-Banned Cards", so yes, they will have their own section.
i just meant in terms of dexterity cards. the vintage-restricted list is filled with pretty busted cards power-wise; falling star is far from busted; it just makes your opponents place their creatures at least 9cm away from each other.
edit: i'd like to think that if they are put in a separate section, people won't just clump them all together and treat them all as waay-broken for edh. Oh, and i calculated that if people use unsleeved cards, and cards are considered to be 88mm by 57mm; you'd need a minimum of 104.8mm distance so you won't get 2-for-1 with falling star. if you use sleeves, it kinda bumps the distance needed a bit.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
Which does kind of contradict the bannings of cards like Painter's Servant and Panoptic Mirror, but then contradictions are something a commander player learns to live with.
I've already aven mindcensored both Bribery and Tooth and Nail so the dream has been lived
The tempo gain of making them hard cast the creatures is totally going to be worth it I think. But we'll see when it happens I guess.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
cEDH: [G(U/R) Animar] - [(U/B)(G/W) Redless Wheels] - [(G/U)(W/B) Redless Pod] - [(B/G)W Ghave Metapod]
Banned in Vintage =/= Restricted in Vintage.
The only things banned in Vintage is Ante cards, manual dexterity cards, Conspiracies, and Shahrazad
I've done that before, except it was after they T&N for DEN/Pally and I won with their soulbond trigger still on the stack.
Edit: I can neither confirm nor deny that I had Prophet in play.
Misc. EDH Stuff: Commander Cube | Zombies (Horde)
Resources:Commander Rulings FAQ | Commander Deckbuilding Guide
Follow me on Twitter! @cryogen_mtg
See, those are the sorts of plays that argue against banning things like TnN, DEN, etc. If you ban them, you can't pull off cool wins that play off others' attempts to do broken stuff.
Which I guess begs the inevitable question: what cards currently on the ban list enable giant plays like that?
Misc. EDH Stuff: Commander Cube | Zombies (Horde)
Resources:Commander Rulings FAQ | Commander Deckbuilding Guide
Follow me on Twitter! @cryogen_mtg
Unban Biorhythm because I can use Polymorph, Radiate, Containment Priest, and Vedalken Orrery to turn it into a loss for
the caster. //sarcasmi'm not so bothered that there are inconsistencies in the RC's banlist though, its a format thats been going on for a long time, and there will definitely be cases where things that were not ok a few years ago becomes much more ok now [read: worldgorger dragon, kokusho, staff of domination]. it probably just requires a bit of work to test/prove that something isn't all that bad anymore/is a huge problem.
and i think its quite unfair of me to say that coalition victory, druid, nauseum, T&N are essentially the same thing, but it would seem to me that though there are definitely 'fair' uses for those cards, they are mostly 'win the game' cards. its just that only one of them literally says that.
for some reason it completely skipped my mind that vintage actually had banned cards; i just thought so long as black lotus was only restricted, everything else must surely be fair game!
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
I'm going to agree with Lou on this one (although you do raise a valid point). Dedication of deck space to a combo should be a real consideration. Omniscience is just lazy infinite mana, so while it loses style points it's not so much of an issue. Enter the Infinite is just a won condition for your infinite mana; it's rare that you see the person survive another round of turns after casting this, so it might as well be a Rocket Luncher with infinite colorless mana. As for HD, AN, and Primal Surge: those require your whole deck to be dedicated to the one card (even more so than a deck with its general). The ones I agree with you on are T&N and Doomsday (however this does require a decent amount of dedicated slots, so it might be on the edge). Another one that I personally love, but feel fits this criteria is Survival of the Fittest. It's basically a 1-card combo with Necrotic Ooze in the same way T&N is with its respective combos.
And again, the real problem there is that you're choosing to play that way.
The banned list is not intended to stop people who are intent on breaking the game, since EDH is a format which by its nature is easy to break if that's one's intent. It's intended to stop accidental breakage.
I think one can argue that given its casting cost, Survival of the Fittest might be too 'broken" for the format, but not just because of things like combos with Necrotic Ooze, as that combo is unlikely to happen accidentally.
"The real problem there is that you're choosing to play that way" is something that can go for a lot of banned cards too. Painter's Servant? How about not pairing it with Iona, Ugin or Grindstone? Hey, it's fair. Panoptic Mirror? Avoid time magic and voila. Protean Hulk is even easier to NOT break as it requires very specific combinations of cards to actually go off.
So we got 3 cards on the banlist right there to completely destroy your argument. Any others?
I think the banlist criteria should be:
If this card on it's own can win the game pretty much the moment it is cast, without requiring heavy investments in deckbuilding, it should be banned.
On this criteria, Tooth and Nail should get banned because it can fetch every 2-creature-combo in the game. Some of which are instant-kills, others which simply provide infinite mana. On the same token, Hermit Druid should not be banned, because it requires a full deck specifically tailored around him before he goes from "A decent value engine" to "Stupidly broken."
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
Now don't get me started on Braids. She shouldn't be banned from the 99 in the first place.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
If Hermit Druid could be your commander he would probably be banned.
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Protean Hulk does need a fair bit of more work to break than Tooth and Nail if only due to its CMC restrictions. Coalition Victory can be slotted into any 5CMC deck and just needs its commander out to usually be an insta-win, so that one can stay gone. Braids is a whole different kettle of fish, she's not a wincon, she's a stax piece. A very good one at that.
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how many people play all 5 basic types for their 5c decks? i cant afford the ABU duals, and i dont have all the shocks either. i'm not sure if they are really all that different in its in-game application. its usually a lot less work to T&N win than coalition victory win. i actually need to put specific lands into play, ramp up mana AND have the general out at minimum, whereas with T&N, its just ramp up to the mana, then pick and choose combo pieces from deck.
i truly dont think black braids is nearly as bad as many people think. it does require a bit of work building the deck in a way that makes her a problem; and at that point, is the card the problem here, really?
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom