If your deck isn't comically durdly, being multiple turns ahead of the table on mana from the get go is insanely broken. There's a reason why Sol Ring is banned in every format with banlist. It is easily one of the most powerful cards ever printed. It is an easy first pick in Cubes with Ancestral Recall and Time Walk. It creates pointless non-games and definitely needs to be banned. I imagine EDH players are just so used to its omnipresence that its true power just goes unnoticed.
Keep in mind that when you look at the Legacy banlist or Vintage restricted list and see Sol Ring on there, remember that if it wasn't on there it would be legal to play 4 copies in a 60 card deck.
Having a 1% chance to draw 1 and only 1 Sol Ring is a lot less powerful then having an almost 7% chance to draw one and also having the possibility to see a 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th copy. With 4 sol Rings in a 60 card deck: You have a 44.5% chance to see 1 Sol Ring by turn 1 on the draw and a 10.3% chance to draw 2 Sol Rings by turn 2 if on the draw.
These Statistics are not insignificant, with an unrestricted or unbanned sol Ring in Legacy or Vintage, the card has the ability to come out turn 1 in between, 1/3rd and half of all games, which means in a 3 game match, one game has a good chance statistically of being heavily impacted by a turn 1 Sol Ring.
In EDH, since everything is singleton the chance of drawing a Sol Ring, much less having it your opening hand is but a fraction of what it is could be if it was left off the Legacy or Vintage list. Statistically, you're looking at is a 1.01% chance of getting the card, which is roughly 7% of it being in your opener. Statistically, Sold ring can't be an issue; because 1.) Sol Ring is only fast mana on turn one. 2.) You getting Sol Ring on turn one happens in fewer then 1/10th of all games you'll play.
The other issue with Sol Ring is that people are so quick to decry it's power because they always have that one "I got Sol Ring and won" or "He or she got Sol Ring and won" story. From my experience, most of the time Sol Ring doesn't make to big of an impact in the early turns, it may put someone ahead on turn 2, but usually by turn 4 everyone has had a chance to ramp a little and the mana race look a lot tighter. It also has the potential to just be swept away by a kicked Vandelblast and actually set you back, where Rampant Growth would not have.
I think that the twin factors of 1.) Rare to see in opening hand and 2.) Only a chance that it will propel the person that plays it to quick victory; means that Sol Ring is a fair card and not nearly worthy of the amount of vitriol that is thrown at it.
If your deck isn't comically durdly, being multiple turns ahead of the table on mana from the get go is insanely broken. There's a reason why Sol Ring is banned in every format with banlist. It is easily one of the most powerful cards ever printed. It is an easy first pick in Cubes with Ancestral Recall and Time Walk. It creates pointless non-games and definitely needs to be banned. I imagine EDH players are just so used to its omnipresence that its true power just goes unnoticed.
Keep in mind that when you look at the Legacy banlist or Vintage restricted list and see Sol Ring on there, remember that if it wasn't on there it would be legal to play 4 copies in a 60 card deck.
Having a 1% chance to draw 1 and only 1 Sol Ring is a lot less powerful then having an almost 7% chance to draw one and also having the possibility to see a 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th copy. With 4 sol Rings in a 60 card deck: You have a 44.5% chance to see 1 Sol Ring by turn 1 on the draw and a 10.3% chance to draw 2 Sol Rings by turn 2 if on the draw.
These Statistics are not insignificant, with an unrestricted or unbanned sol Ring in Legacy or Vintage, the card has the ability to come out turn 1 in between, 1/3rd and half of all games, which means in a 3 game match, one game has a good chance statistically of being heavily impacted by a turn 1 Sol Ring.
In EDH, since everything is singleton the chance of drawing a Sol Ring, much less having it your opening hand is but a fraction of what it is could be if it was left off the Legacy or Vintage list. Statistically, you're looking at is a 1.01% chance of getting the card, which is roughly 7% of it being in your opener. Statistically, Sold ring can't be an issue; because 1.) Sol Ring is only fast mana on turn one. 2.) You getting Sol Ring on turn one happens in fewer then 1/10th of all games you'll play.
The other issue with Sol Ring is that people are so quick to decry it's power because they always have that one "I got Sol Ring and won" or "He or she got Sol Ring and won" story. From my experience, most of the time Sol Ring doesn't make to big of an impact in the early turns, it may put someone ahead on turn 2, but usually by turn 4 everyone has had a chance to ramp a little and the mana race look a lot tighter. It also has the potential to just be swept away by a kicked Vandelblast and actually set you back, where Rampant Growth would not have.
I think that the twin factors of 1.) Rare to see in opening hand and 2.) Only a chance that it will propel the person that plays it to quick victory; means that Sol Ring is a fair card and not nearly worthy of the amount of vitriol that is thrown at it.
I don't know about that, broken is broken. You can't use the logic that just because Sol Ring and Mana Crypt are only 2 of 99 cards in deck, and the frequency isn't common opening (not factoring Mulls btw) that this takes away from how degenerate they are. It doesn't matter if everyone is allowed, its the effect it has early game, if one player opens with Sol Ring and the other 3 players don't, that player will have a dramatically unfair edge on the rest, which if put in the right deck like the Blue one I mentioned can cause them to steal the game far more early than should be allowed in a group format.
What if Library of Alexandria was mass reprinted so it was cheap and was decided to be allowed in EDH, you could use the same logic for that right? Players would come and complain how its absurdly OP for the players that get to start the game with it, but then naysayers could say "well everybody is allowed to use it so its balanced and you can only have 1 in your deck so the chance isn't that great it will happen" completely ignoring how it can screw everyone else for those it does happen though.
Et cetera. It suddenly becomes interesting on turn 3, because South called out his general (albeit a 1/1). Though I wouldn't be surprised if Animar was banned in the format you're proposing, so it'd probably be Riku instead. On turn 5 at the earliest.
Why the hell would everyone's curves be starting at 3? By turn 3, decks should be starting in on their midgame, even without fast mana.
Yep. I actually think the primary upside of banning ramp would be the return of more interaction in turns 1-3, which is often lacking in EDH where those turns are spent ramping or setting up. Playing early game action that isn't either ramp/draw/stax often feels like a mistake in EDH. Take away some ramp and I think that changes, as you don't stand to see your 1-3 drops get outclassed so quickly and reliably.
Yep. I actually think the primary upside of banning ramp would be the return of more interaction in turns 1-3, which is often lacking in EDH where those turns are spent ramping or setting up. Playing early game action that isn't either ramp/draw/stax often feels like a mistake in EDH. Take away some ramp and I think that changes, as you don't stand to see your 1-3 drops get outclassed so quickly and reliably.
This is pretty interesting, and I think I agree. Even thinking as casual as possible, I am a lot more loathe to give up on a huge 6-drop density if I have a Sol Ring and a Mana Crypt in my deck. With ramp that busted, there's not as much reason to run a trim curve, because really, you are going to be over-budget on mana when you do draw Sol Ring unless you have some giant things. You can be sitting there with a near empty hand on Turn 4 if your average CMC is less than 3, because you're playing 2 spells a turn from Turn 2. At that point, you'd rather have a Rampaging Baloths than a few 4/4's at 3 mana. Or worse, you're wiping lands on Turn 3 because your deck's over budget with just one of these rocks.
People think that banning artifact mana would put Green even more ahead a a ramp color, but I'm not so sure. Green runs these mana rocks itself anyway, and is even running a higher curve than it otherwise would because it has access to them.
This is pretty interesting, and I think I agree. Even thinking as casual as possible, I am a lot more loathe to give up on a huge 6-drop density if I have a Sol Ring and a Mana Crypt in my deck. With ramp that busted, there's not as much reason to run a trim curve, because really, you are going to be over-budget on mana when you do draw Sol Ring unless you have some giant things. You can be sitting there with a near empty hand on Turn 4 if your average CMC is less than 3, because you're playing 2 spells a turn from Turn 2. At that point, you'd rather have a Rampaging Baloths than a few 4/4's at 3 mana. Or worse, you're wiping lands on Turn 3 because your deck's over budget with just one of these rocks.
Even adding Mana Vault you still don't have enough broken ramp to run 6 drop.dec simply because you don't have enough of it in your deck to be consistent. I tend to play low curve decks and these cards are still fantastic because they let me vomit my hand before I refuel with a draw spell and are just generally broken on just about any turn if you have a deck full of tutors and wheels.
This is pretty interesting, and I think I agree. Even thinking as casual as possible, I am a lot more loathe to give up on a huge 6-drop density if I have a Sol Ring and a Mana Crypt in my deck. With ramp that busted, there's not as much reason to run a trim curve, because really, you are going to be over-budget on mana when you do draw Sol Ring unless you have some giant things. You can be sitting there with a near empty hand on Turn 4 if your average CMC is less than 3, because you're playing 2 spells a turn from Turn 2. At that point, you'd rather have a Rampaging Baloths than a few 4/4's at 3 mana. Or worse, you're wiping lands on Turn 3 because your deck's over budget with just one of these rocks.
Even adding Mana Vault you still don't have enough broken ramp to run 6 drop.dec simply because you don't have enough of it in your deck to be consistent. I tend to play low curve decks and these cards are still fantastic because they let me vomit my hand before I refuel with a draw spell and are just generally broken on just about any turn if you have a deck full of tutors and wheels.
I have to agree with Donald. I've played when decks had 4 Sol Rings, Moxen, B. Lotus, etc. and they were 60 card decks! Now that is fast and linear. At the time we would play 4 player games, and yes, it was like flipping quarters. But in a 100 card singleton 4-5 player game, it happens but not all the time and not always in the right sequence. But if you do stick it on turn 1, better have enough in your hand to back it up because the table will be gunning you down.
This is pretty interesting, and I think I agree. Even thinking as casual as possible, I am a lot more loathe to give up on a huge 6-drop density if I have a Sol Ring and a Mana Crypt in my deck. With ramp that busted, there's not as much reason to run a trim curve, because really, you are going to be over-budget on mana when you do draw Sol Ring unless you have some giant things. You can be sitting there with a near empty hand on Turn 4 if your average CMC is less than 3, because you're playing 2 spells a turn from Turn 2. At that point, you'd rather have a Rampaging Baloths than a few 4/4's at 3 mana. Or worse, you're wiping lands on Turn 3 because your deck's over budget with just one of these rocks.
Even adding Mana Vault you still don't have enough broken ramp to run 6 drop.dec simply because you don't have enough of it in your deck to be consistent. I tend to play low curve decks and these cards are still fantastic because they let me vomit my hand before I refuel with a draw spell and are just generally broken on just about any turn if you have a deck full of tutors and wheels.
Yeah, but it isn't hard to keep going from Ring/Crypt to Vault/Monolith/Monolith/Powerstone/Key/etc...i.e. play enough ramp that you are likely to have 5 mana on turn 3 most games despite playing a singleton 100 card deck.
Personally I would be fine with seeing Ring/Crypt/Vault/Monolith/Monolith banned.
Basalt Monolith doesn't really help that happen and is not even a very good card. Regarding fast broken starts Grim Monolith is OK but it's basically Mana Vault that costs double so I don't really see it as a big problem. Worn Powerstone costs 3 and is a strong card but again not something I consider problematic. So really the only ones I consider really explosive are Mana Crypt, Sol Ring and to a lesser extent Mana Vault.
People think that banning artifact mana would put Green even more ahead a a ramp color, but I'm not so sure. Green runs these mana rocks itself anyway, and is even running a higher curve than it otherwise would because it has access to them.
Banning Sol Ring would be a huge boon to green while being the most harmful to the weakest colors, white and red.
Green decks play enough ramp where they can cast there spells before curve even if they don't draw a Sol Ring. It's not like the green players are sitting around looking at their bombs like Avenger of Zendikar, Tooth and Nail and Creatorhoof Behemoth only to bemoan that those cards are uncastable because they didn't draw their single Sol Ring. No, green drecks often play 10-12 cards that are dedicated to ramping them, most of which don't even play Mana Crypt. A Sol Ring ban only takes away one card from their ramp package, which they can easily replace with a 2 cost common.
White and red are the most effected by a Sol Ring ban. The fact that 1 or 2 mana rocks gets banned doesn't suddenly make 6+ cost spells not good anymore. It makes them slightly harder to play, but they don't just drop off like stones in favor of 4-cost spells being the new centers of power. In EDH cards are played because of how powerful there effects are, and not invalidated because of how much they cost. The other issue is that white and red are the colors that depend most on high cost cards to get things done in EDH, because most low mana cards in those colors are designed as part of a weenie rush strategy that is supplemented by low power combat tricks or weak burn. The issue is that these cards and strategies don't scale up to be something competative in EDH, which means these colors are always looking to the high end for cards that push the boundaries of what white and red are capable of. Taking away Sol Ring hinders their main strategy of 'play very expensive spells with very powerful effects' and these colors are already heavily relying on artifacts for ramp and don't have any alternatives other then 'play a worse mana rock in the same slot'.
For example, we had the perfect example tonight, a Mono Blue player opened with Sol Ring into Thran Dynano and Concecrated Sphinx on turn 3, by turn 5 he had a Reliquary Tower and like 20 cards in his hand (long story short, we all fought him well that game but he slaughtered us... and it ALL stemmed from what a disgusting start he had).
The thing about this story (and the many like it) is that I can't really gain from reading a sense 'Look, turn 1 Sol Ring won this game. It's such a broken card.' Instead, what I see is story about "They had Sol Ring and they had Consecrated Sphinx and drew 20 cards and we lost." I don't ever see the much much more common story of turn 1 Sol Ring into turn 2, an innocuous card, say Lingering Souls; just a good card, but not a card that gets thrown about in the "ban this card" threads.
Sol Ring (and tutors too!) are enabler cards. We often want to tell stories of "sol Ring into X, gg man gg, no fun at all." and that does happen, but why do we always blame Sol Ring? When the vast majority of the time 'card X' is something super powerful that because it went unanswered would end the game on it's own even if it came down naturally on the manacurve.
This is pretty interesting, and I think I agree. Even thinking as casual as possible, I am a lot more loathe to give up on a huge 6-drop density if I have a Sol Ring and a Mana Crypt in my deck. With ramp that busted, there's not as much reason to run a trim curve, because really, you are going to be over-budget on mana when you do draw Sol Ring unless you have some giant things. You can be sitting there with a near empty hand on Turn 4 if your average CMC is less than 3, because you're playing 2 spells a turn from Turn 2. At that point, you'd rather have a Rampaging Baloths than a few 4/4's at 3 mana. Or worse, you're wiping lands on Turn 3 because your deck's over budget with just one of these rocks.
Even adding Mana Vault you still don't have enough broken ramp to run 6 drop.dec simply because you don't have enough of it in your deck to be consistent. I tend to play low curve decks and these cards are still fantastic because they let me vomit my hand before I refuel with a draw spell and are just generally broken on just about any turn if you have a deck full of tutors and wheels.
Well, there are plenty of high-powered cards at 3cmc and less, it's just that they're not Timmy creature-style cards. On those, there's a pretty steep incline in power as you go from 3cmc to 6. Take a creature like Loxodon Smiter, which is considered efficient in this game for 3cmc but generally won't be played in EDH. You can get something like Hound of Griselbrand for 1 more mana, and at 6 mana you can get a steady stream of 4/4's with something like Rampaging Baloths or Sun Titan. Most of the playable 3cmc creatures are ramp, draw, or other such cards. Even Goyf and TNN are not played in EDH. That's the difference of a Sol Ring. But in non-creature slots, you've got Demonic Tutor versus Diabolic, and generally just a lot better stuff for this format in non-creatures. So even decks with low curves, they are mostly gas, mostly pointed at trying to access stuff like Sol Ring more quickly in the event that they have any kind of creature-based win condition.
Play a game without mana, packwars style! Every turn your mana automatically increases by one.
However I like having games where crazy ramp happens. I think that while killing fast mana (sol ring, crypt, monolith) may make the format more fair I don't know if it would make it better. It's easy for people who play decks that are in a different tier than the rest of their meta to go "X is broken, Y should be banned" instead of trying to improve their decks or find groups that play at the same level. Sol Ring is one of the most powerful cards in magic but it also lets Timmys have fun while also allowing Spikes to win and Johnnys to do their thing.
I feel like people want to play Legacy decks with a Commander instead of EDH.
Banning Sol Ring would be a huge boon to green while being the most harmful to the weakest colors, white and red.
If banning any one card changes your game plan significantly in EDH, then you have built your deck badly and deserve what you get.
That's hardly a good argument because the counterpoint is just as coercive:
If your game plan is derailed or is beaten by one card in EDH, then you have built your deck poorly and deserve what you get.
Seriously, though, a lot of the examples provided in this thread are things such as a Consecrated Sphinx surviving for at least 3 of its controller's turns (being anywhere from 9 to 12 turns active, possibly more, depending on how many players were in the game which simply makes how long it survived that much more extraordinary) without being eliminated. That's certainly not Sol Ring's fault: That is the result of no one at the table running the proper number of answers for the easiest to deal with permanent type in the entirety of Magic: The Gathering.
Beyond even that, banning the good artifact fast mana would make it more difficult for nongreen Commanders to handle green ones, as green decks have access to Ancient Tomb, Gaea's Cradle, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, etc., the middle of which can only be run in green decks, and it's entirely possible for a well built deck running green to flood the table with enough creatures to produce assloads of mana and attack in the same turn, before anyone else gets a fourth or fifth turn (and my wife managed to try and kill a whole table of four other players without resorting to an infinite). Getting to 2WW (or whatever), to answer multiple creatures simultaneously before those kinds of decks go off, would be a lot easier if they could play the good mana rocks that green doesn't even have to run if they don't wish to.
The right combination of cards isn't difficult to reach when you can have redundancy upon redundancy on top of tutors to achieve them, and I couldn't fathom banning something like Sol Ring before taking a look at Gaea's Cradle, which I've seen aid in third turn Tooth and Nails practically by itself into an attempt at a quick win before anyone else has reached their third turn (and it's not like you can Strip Mine it before they get anything from it when they play and tap it then untap it the same turn lol). Losing Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, etc., wouldn't hurt some of the green-based decks in my meta game at all, but it would hurt how easily the opposing decks could answer them by forcing them to play bad mana rocks for their second or third turns, which is when green decks can vomit their libraries onto the table with a mana rock-less Godhand that's even more difficult to surmount without access to good mana rocks to make casting answers easier.
The problem here seems to be treating the symptom rather than the disease and kneejerk reactions at best. Is Sol Ring really the fault of why the game was lost, or was it because someone allowed an opponent to draw a ton of fuel via Consecrated Sphinx and didn't try to do anything about it until after it was too late?
Consecrated Sphinx is a powerful card, possibly even broken in a multiplayer format like EDH, but its power is balanced by the fact that it asks you to have 6 mana to cast it. Sol Ring disrupts the natural flow of a game of Magic by allowing you to play powerful cards like Consecrated Sphinx earlier than decks can answer it effectively. If you just hit land drops and cast a Consecrated Sphinx on curve on turn 6, your opponents have had turns to draw answers, develop their own resources, or even hold counter mana up. People keep saying Sol Ring is just an enabler like that somehow makes it less broken, but casting a 4 drop on turn 2 is one of the single most powerful things you could possibly do in Magic. Fast mana was one of the first things developers realized needed to be nerfed. The way this format's banlist is managed is entirely backwards.
At least Tolarian Academy and Gaea's Cradle ask you construct a certain kind of deck in order for them to actually be broken. Turn 1 Sol Ring is insane in any decent deck.
I play very competitively, and I can comfortably say that fast mana is bad for the format. The banlist should mimic the French banlist and/or the Legacy banlist to be a more healthy format. Unfortunately the RC doesn't quite understand the power level of many cards as they all play casually. But alas, I have to play those cards to stay competitive.
That's hardly a good argument because the counterpoint is just as coercive:
If your game plan is derailed or is beaten by one card in EDH, then you have built your deck poorly and deserve what you get.
Seriously, though, a lot of the examples provided in this thread are things such as a Consecrated Sphinx surviving for at least 3 of its controller's turns (being anywhere from 9 to 12 turns active, possibly more, depending on how many players were in the game which simply makes how long it survived that much more extraordinary) without being eliminated. That's certainly not Sol Ring's fault: That is the result of no one at the table running the proper number of answers for the easiest to deal with permanent type in the entirety of Magic: The Gathering.
Beyond even that, banning the good artifact fast mana would make it more difficult for nongreen Commanders to handle green ones, as green decks have access to Ancient Tomb, Gaea's Cradle, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, etc., the middle of which can only be run in green decks, and it's entirely possible for a well built deck running green to flood the table with enough creatures to produce assloads of mana and attack in the same turn, before anyone else gets a fourth or fifth turn (and my wife managed to try and kill a whole table of four other players without resorting to an infinite). Getting to 2WW (or whatever), to answer multiple creatures simultaneously before those kinds of decks go off, would be a lot easier if they could play the good mana rocks that green doesn't even have to run if they don't wish to.
The right combination of cards isn't difficult to reach when you can have redundancy upon redundancy on top of tutors to achieve them, and I couldn't fathom banning something like Sol Ring before taking a look at Gaea's Cradle, which I've seen aid in third turn Tooth and Nails practically by itself into an attempt at a quick win before anyone else has reached their third turn (and it's not like you can Strip Mine it before they get anything from it when they play and tap it then untap it the same turn lol). Losing Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, etc., wouldn't hurt some of the green-based decks in my meta game at all, but it would hurt how easily the opposing decks could answer them by forcing them to play bad mana rocks for their second or third turns, which is when green decks can vomit their libraries onto the table with a mana rock-less Godhand that's even more difficult to surmount without access to good mana rocks to make casting answers easier.
The problem here seems to be treating the symptom rather than the disease and kneejerk reactions at best. Is Sol Ring really the fault of why the game was lost, or was it because someone allowed an opponent to draw a ton of fuel via Consecrated Sphinx and didn't try to do anything about it until after it was too late?
Umm... So? The one of the two that I put up can easily be seen as more reprehensible. If your deck loses to, say, Warp World, but otherwise is very powerful, that's not necessarily bad deck design. If you complain a ton whenever someone casts Warp World, that's not really okay, but if you just go with the flow, and have a good attitude, then you will go far. Similarly, there are a decent amount of decks that die to Rest in Peace, Stranglehold, Ruination, Vandalblast, etc...
Meanwhile, if you are relying heavily on exactly one card, that means that you are trying to make every game the exact same, and if that single card somehow gets obstructed, in any way, then you are in trouble. I mean, let's say that you have a Kiki-Jiki, Mirror-Breaker deck, with your only creature and only method of winning besides attacking with Kiki-Jiki for no more than 2, being a single Zealous Conscripts. I think it's pretty straight-forward that this person is building their deck badly, since it is ABSOLUTELY relying on a single card exclusively to win.
While you're at it, you can even use Sinkhole, Stone Rain, Ice Storm, Wasteland, and Strip Mine to hurt the Gaea's Cradle decks well enough, honestly. You don't even necessarily have to hit the Cradle to have them work well against that deck. If someone Strip Mine's the green deck's first land, the deck is pretty seriously delayed.
On a side note, generally the only cards on the table for banning in terms of artifact fast mana are Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, and Mana Vault... If you really feel that those are essential to the format, as expressed earlier, you should learn how to deck-build better.
If you're having such an issue with the green decks (by the way, Gaea's Cradle gets turned off pretty hard by wraths, land removal, and deck hate), then run answers. Plenty exist.
Also, you use the word "god-hand." A-ha! So you admit that this shouldn't actually be happening reliably enough that no-one can deal with it ever! Yeah, if people are getting out an insurmountable board presence turn 2 even before Gaea's Cradle is out, then something is very wrong with your meta.
As a final point after all of this jazz, I can't believe that you're complaining about Gaea's Cradle when Hermit Druid exists...
Hermit Druid doesn't make mana while Gaea's Cradle does- I can go on and on about cards that are completely busted that don't make mana, but I refrained because, well, what sense would it make to draw the line of comparison to a non-mana producing card? I mean, Hermit Druid doesn't even need Sol Rings in order to win a game because you effectively just need GU on your turn after casting him (thinking of the Dread Return loop with Saffi and Crypt Champion, obv), and it doesn't matter if it's Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond (which the OP says are fine, to him) or Lotus Petal that's getting him in turn 1.
Do you want to just talk about every single broken card in the format? I can do that. I tried adhering to strictly mana producing cards, but, you know...
Anyway, I want to draw attention to a couple of things:
1) Why do people keep saying that decks rely on Sol Ring? I see no evidence of this and dying to a Vandal Blast is literally the worst analogy I can think of. I can't think of a deck that relies solely on one or two mana producing cards; generally speaking they're, "Great when you have 'em, oh well when you don't." I'm simply addressing that green gets a lot better when they're the only ones who have access to large pools of mana like that without many drawbacks.
2) Why is it fine to say, "Volcanic Fallout prevents green's mana ramping from going insane" and that be fine and logical when some of the players in this thread can't find one instant/sorcery/creature with an ETB trigger to eliminate a single Consecrated Sphinx?
3) Propaganda, Ghostly Prison, etc., are literally the worst things you could suggest after what I have described (the game from my first post, where my wife's deck produced 30 mana on her fourth turn, before anyone else had a third? I don't need advice on how to beat a deck, but appreciate your thoughts anyway. Like I said in my previous post, she didn't win the game.
4) Answers to Gaea's Cradle exist, even though Gaea's Cradle and various other acceleration cards can create way more mana than Sol Ring ever could in the 7% of the time you draw it to cast first turn (which is what everyone else here is complaining about, and you have more methods to draw into or put the Cradle out in the first couple turns than you do Sol Ring), but answers exist to Gaea's Cradle, some of which you'd have to wait to cast without fast mana cards like Sol Ring in, for example, a white deck, so the Cradle is fine? Seems asinine.
5) Isn't the definition of overcentralization forcing someone to run very specific cards in order to counteract a single one in the opponent's deck? Isn't that what everyone is complaining about regarding Sol Ring, which you seemingly support the ban of for roughly this same reason, but then recommend things like Strip Mine that don't actually stop the Gaea's Cradle player from taking full advantage of it for one turn. Like in Legacy, you only need one turn for something like Cradle to seriously affect the game state and put one player significantly ahead, Wrath of God or not. If Volcanic is so much an answer to Gaea's Cradle, then why is Shattering Spree not so much an answer to Sol Ring, and if so, why is Cradle fine while Ring isn't?
6) So referring to something regarding Gaea's Cradle as a Godhand is awful but drawing into a Sol Ring and those perfect cards to just ruin a game for other players.... isn't even remotely similar? Okay. You can complain about the verbiage used all you like but that doesn't really change the content of the statement, so dismissing it based off one word when the comparison is seemingly valid is pretty weak.
7) As in Legacy, a lot of decks running Cradle don't expect to keep it beyond the turn, and Sinkhole, Stone Rain, Ice Storm, Wasteland and Strip Mine (the latter of which I specifically addressed in my last post) don't keep the person with the Cradle from drawing large amounts of mana when they start casting things one after another like Combo Elves. Yes, they're vulnerable to sweeper blowouts, but that'd require someone to get to larger amounts of mana to cast one of those cards.
I play Gaea's Cradle in Legacy Elves, so I understand how powerful the card is. You need 1 turn with it, and that's it. Holding mana open for Volcanic Fallout on your third turn to be forced to deal with something like that seems like the definition of overcentralization in the metagame, to me, as it practically forces you to run a select few cards depending upon color, but that's already what's being complained about with Sol Ring, but Cradle is fine, apparently. The comparison still seems like it works, to me. Cradle and Ring both put one player ahead by a margin greater than their buy-in costs (the one land drop per turn versus a single mana) and most of the answers to the former are sorcery speed, so generally speaking, when you play it you're getting full effect of it and both can lead to early turn Consecrated Sphinxes that no one can answer for several turns. So, why is Sol Ring so much worse that so many players are up in arms about it when there are still enabler cards available?
I play very competitively, and I can comfortably say that fast mana is bad for the format. The banlist should mimic the French banlist and/or the Legacy banlist to be a more healthy format. Unfortunately the RC doesn't quite understand the power level of many cards as they all play casually. But alas, I have to play those cards to stay competitive.
I think they understand how broken the cards are they just play them in bad decks and expect that we do the same. The format is geared for bad decks.
@Gaea's Cradle - This is a very powerful card but it's not ubiquitous. Not even all green decks want it. Sol Ring is a super staple in nearly every deck in the format. That's a big difference.
Anyway, I want to draw attention to a couple of things:
1) Why do people keep saying that decks rely on Sol Ring? I see no evidence of this and dying to a Vandalblast is literally the worst analogy I can think of. I can't think of a deck that relies solely on one or two mana producing cards; generally speaking they're, "Great when you have 'em, oh well when you don't." I'm simply addressing that green gets a lot better when they're the only ones who have access to large pools of mana like that without many drawbacks.
2) Why is it fine to say, "Volcanic Fallout prevents green's mana ramping from going insane" and that be fine and logical when some of the players in this thread can't find one instant/sorcery/creature with an ETB trigger to eliminate a single Consecrated Sphinx?
3) Propaganda, Ghostly Prison, etc., are literally the worst things you could suggest after what I have described (the game from my first post, where my wife's deck produced 30 mana on her fourth turn, before anyone else had a third? I don't need advice on how to beat a deck, but appreciate your thoughts anyway. Like I said in my previous post, she didn't win the game.
4) Answers to Gaea's Cradle exist, even though Gaea's Cradle and various other acceleration cards can create way more mana than Sol Ring ever could in the 7% of the time you draw it to cast first turn (which is what everyone else here is complaining about, and you have more methods to draw into or put the Cradle out in the first couple turns than you do Sol Ring), but answers exist to Gaea's Cradle, some of which you'd have to wait to cast without fast mana cards like Sol Ring in, for example, a white deck, so the Cradle is fine? Seems asinine.
5) Isn't the definition of overcentralization forcing someone to run very specific cards in order to counteract a single one in the opponent's deck? Isn't that what everyone is complaining about regarding Sol Ring, which you seemingly support the ban of for roughly this same reason, but then recommend things like Strip Mine that don't actually stop the Gaea's Cradle player from taking full advantage of it for one turn. Like in Legacy, you only need one turn for something like Cradle to seriously affect the game state and put one player significantly ahead, Wrath of God or not. If Volcanic is so much an answer to Gaea's Cradle, then why is Shattering Spree not so much an answer to Sol Ring, and if so, why is Cradle fine while Ring isn't?
6) So referring to something regarding Gaea's Cradle as a Godhand is awful but drawing into a Sol Ring and those perfect cards to just ruin a game for other players.... isn't even remotely similar? Okay. You can complain about the verbiage used all you like but that doesn't really change the content of the statement, so dismissing it based off one word when the comparison is seemingly valid is pretty weak.
7) As in Legacy, a lot of decks running Cradle don't expect to keep it beyond the turn, and Sinkhole, Stone Rain, Ice Storm, Wasteland and Strip Mine (the latter of which I specifically addressed in my last post) don't keep the person with the Cradle from drawing large amounts of mana when they start casting things one after another like Combo Elves. Yes, they're vulnerable to sweeper blowouts, but that'd require someone to get to larger amounts of mana to cast one of those cards.
I play Gaea's Cradle in Legacy Elves, so I understand how powerful the card is. You need 1 turn with it, and that's it. Holding mana open for Volcanic Fallout on your third turn to be forced to deal with something like that seems like the definition of overcentralization in the metagame, to me, as it practically forces you to run a select few cards depending upon color, but that's already what's being complained about with Sol Ring, but Cradle is fine, apparently. The comparison still seems like it works, to me. Cradle and Ring both put one player ahead by a margin greater than their buy-in costs (the one land drop per turn versus a single mana) and most of the answers to the former are sorcery speed, so generally speaking, when you play it you're getting full effect of it and both can lead to early turn Consecrated Sphinxes that no one can answer for several turns. So, why is Sol Ring so much worse that so many players are up in arms about it when there are still enabler cards available?
I'll start by precluding the rest of this post by saying that I actually agree with a lot of your sentiment here. I don't like the presence of either Gaea's Cradle or Sol Ring in the format. My idea of an optimal ban list would be around twice as long as the current one.
That said, there's some things going for Sol Ring that are exactly why it becomes more contentious.
1. Ubiquity. Gaea's Cradle is run solely in green decks, Sol Ring is run in almost every deck in the format.
2. Price. Gaea's Cradle is over $150. Sol Ring is in every precon and can be picked up for $8.
3. Lack of conditions. Gaea's Cradle requires a creature presence. The more cutthroat the meta, the harder it can be to get that creature presence.
4. Ability to deckbuild. The average EDH player is not necessarily a good Magic player. I'm sorry to burst all those bubbles, but it's true. Sol Ring can be much easier for people to play (and copy other people playing) than Gaea's Cradle.
5. Analytical power level. Both personally and otherwise, I have seen some amount of the research, and it turns out, that if you unban every single card in Magic, Sol Ring and Mana Crypt are the most powerful cards in the format. While you might think "Well, hey, wouldn't Black Lotus and Moxen be too amazing, 99% of the time, Sol Ring is better than a Mox. And while Lotus allows for some pretty ridiculous first turns, Sol Ring still works out better in the long run. When you get past the first turn with the Sol Ring, its sheer advantage becomes absurd.
I think they understand how broken the cards are they just play them in bad decks and expect that we do the same. The format is geared for bad decks.
Donald, I think you have it exactly right. If they chose to play good decks and playtested the cards in good decks, the banlist would be quite different. I heard that Sheldon doesn't ban Hermit Druid because he actually runs it in a deck full of basics just to make his land drops.
I think it's clear from this thread that banning fast mana would be healthy for the format, that's why the French banlist provides such a fair and balanced format, and even the Legacy one is better suited to this format than the current banlist. I thank the creators of the format for what they've done to bring it where it is today, but I hope for the days when we have some new influence in the RC.
5. Analytical power level. Both personally and otherwise, I have seen some amount of the research, and it turns out, that if you unban every single card in Magic, Sol Ring and Mana Crypt are the most powerful cards in the format. While you might think "Well, hey, wouldn't Black Lotus and Moxen be too amazing, 99% of the time, Sol Ring is better than a Mox. And while Lotus allows for some pretty ridiculous first turns, Sol Ring still works out better in the long run. When you get past the first turn with the Sol Ring, its sheer advantage becomes absurd.
No. No. No. No. No.
I don't know how long you've been playing magic or if you've ever played actual hardcore vintage or legacy, but I think you are VASTLY underestimating the power of the cards called the POWER 9.
I understand that card like Sol Ring ramps you 2 mana and that is really good on turn 2 and turn 3 and on turn 4, but you're assuming that you get to even take a turn 2 and that is a very very big thing to assume you just get to do in a format where Black Lotus and Moxen would be legal.
5. Analytical power level. Both personally and otherwise, I have seen some amount of the research, and it turns out, that if you unban every single card in Magic, Sol Ring and Mana Crypt are the most powerful cards in the format. While you might think "Well, hey, wouldn't Black Lotus and Moxen be too amazing, 99% of the time, Sol Ring is better than a Mox. And while Lotus allows for some pretty ridiculous first turns, Sol Ring still works out better in the long run. When you get past the first turn with the Sol Ring, its sheer advantage becomes absurd.
No. No. No. No. No.
I don't know how long you've been playing magic or if you've ever played actual hardcore vintage or legacy, but I think you are VASTLY underestimating the power of the cards called the POWER 9.
I understand that card like Sol Ring ramps you 2 mana and that is really good on turn 2 and turn 3 and on turn 4, but you're assuming that you get to even take a turn 2 and that is a very very big thing to assume you just get to do in a format where Black Lotus and Moxen would be legal.
I've played a rather large amount of vintage and legacy. And I still do. And I've also played a decent amount of no-ban edh. And the latter is very different; games last longer because every single player is running countermagic. If anything, you are sounding like one of those naive newer players who says "Vintage. That's only turn 1 wins, right?" In no-ban EDH, if you get off the turn 1 win, congrats. You just got rather lucky. In general, though, it takes longer. Also, another way of looking at it is unbanning them one-by-one, for a clearer comparison. Not realizing that in a multiplayer format, two turns ahead of mana after the first turn is much more significant than 1 turn ahead after the first turn, is silly.
My third category is "too much mana too easily," cards that generate mana at a higher ratio than is healthy. This is different than "too much mana too quickly." It still takes some investment for this third category, but instead of mana getting additive, it gets multiplicative. The banner-carrying card here is Cabal Coffers. Cabal Coffers leads to fifteen mana on turn 7 tomfoolery, and I'd prefer to see games develop a little more slowly. Once the game turns the corner on turn 10 or so, I'm fine with it creating 50 or 100 mana, but that explosion in the mid-turns leads to yawn-inspiring games.
The card that doesn't go here is Gaea's Cradle. I think the situations that it creates too much mana too early or too much too easily at the wrong time are rare enough to not be a cause of concern. Yes, it can happen, but there has to be a sufficient star alignment for it to come about that I don't see it as worrisome (ditto for Serra's Sanctum). I'm not quite sure about Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. I suspect that it's in the Gaea's Cradle category, although closer to Cabal Coffers. I'd want to see more evidence of brokenness, so I wouldn't make it one of my forced ten.
I agree. For Cradle to power out an game-winning Tooth & Nail entwine before Turn 4, you need to have spent turn 1 and 2 on something like Magus of the Candelabra and a card that creates 3 other creatures. And you have to have both Cradle and T&N. Speaking of God-hands, that's 5 cards + 2 land necessary by Turn 3. So essentially, it's not happening before Turn 4. After Turn 4, that's more than enough time for Control in this format to set up with a 3cmc counter or removal. And at that point, it really doesn't matter what type of Control it is, either. It just needs high enough answer density to have 1 or more counterspells or removal cards < 3cmc by Turn 4. That is not hard.
Sol Ring and Mana Crypt don't rely on setup, and can turn a really high number of hands into game-breakers without trying. And whatever they do, they are always broken before Turn 4.
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Keep in mind that when you look at the Legacy banlist or Vintage restricted list and see Sol Ring on there, remember that if it wasn't on there it would be legal to play 4 copies in a 60 card deck.
Having a 1% chance to draw 1 and only 1 Sol Ring is a lot less powerful then having an almost 7% chance to draw one and also having the possibility to see a 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th copy. With 4 sol Rings in a 60 card deck: You have a 44.5% chance to see 1 Sol Ring by turn 1 on the draw and a 10.3% chance to draw 2 Sol Rings by turn 2 if on the draw.
These Statistics are not insignificant, with an unrestricted or unbanned sol Ring in Legacy or Vintage, the card has the ability to come out turn 1 in between, 1/3rd and half of all games, which means in a 3 game match, one game has a good chance statistically of being heavily impacted by a turn 1 Sol Ring.
In EDH, since everything is singleton the chance of drawing a Sol Ring, much less having it your opening hand is but a fraction of what it is could be if it was left off the Legacy or Vintage list. Statistically, you're looking at is a 1.01% chance of getting the card, which is roughly 7% of it being in your opener. Statistically, Sold ring can't be an issue; because 1.) Sol Ring is only fast mana on turn one. 2.) You getting Sol Ring on turn one happens in fewer then 1/10th of all games you'll play.
The other issue with Sol Ring is that people are so quick to decry it's power because they always have that one "I got Sol Ring and won" or "He or she got Sol Ring and won" story. From my experience, most of the time Sol Ring doesn't make to big of an impact in the early turns, it may put someone ahead on turn 2, but usually by turn 4 everyone has had a chance to ramp a little and the mana race look a lot tighter. It also has the potential to just be swept away by a kicked Vandelblast and actually set you back, where Rampant Growth would not have.
I think that the twin factors of 1.) Rare to see in opening hand and 2.) Only a chance that it will propel the person that plays it to quick victory; means that Sol Ring is a fair card and not nearly worthy of the amount of vitriol that is thrown at it.
I don't know about that, broken is broken. You can't use the logic that just because Sol Ring and Mana Crypt are only 2 of 99 cards in deck, and the frequency isn't common opening (not factoring Mulls btw) that this takes away from how degenerate they are. It doesn't matter if everyone is allowed, its the effect it has early game, if one player opens with Sol Ring and the other 3 players don't, that player will have a dramatically unfair edge on the rest, which if put in the right deck like the Blue one I mentioned can cause them to steal the game far more early than should be allowed in a group format.
What if Library of Alexandria was mass reprinted so it was cheap and was decided to be allowed in EDH, you could use the same logic for that right? Players would come and complain how its absurdly OP for the players that get to start the game with it, but then naysayers could say "well everybody is allowed to use it so its balanced and you can only have 1 in your deck so the chance isn't that great it will happen" completely ignoring how it can screw everyone else for those it does happen though.
GWRUB[EDH] Reaper KingGWRUB
GW[Legacy] BEARS (#1 Threat in America)GW
UR[Legacy] Arcane MeleeUR
Why the hell would everyone's curves be starting at 3? By turn 3, decks should be starting in on their midgame, even without fast mana.
This is pretty interesting, and I think I agree. Even thinking as casual as possible, I am a lot more loathe to give up on a huge 6-drop density if I have a Sol Ring and a Mana Crypt in my deck. With ramp that busted, there's not as much reason to run a trim curve, because really, you are going to be over-budget on mana when you do draw Sol Ring unless you have some giant things. You can be sitting there with a near empty hand on Turn 4 if your average CMC is less than 3, because you're playing 2 spells a turn from Turn 2. At that point, you'd rather have a Rampaging Baloths than a few 4/4's at 3 mana. Or worse, you're wiping lands on Turn 3 because your deck's over budget with just one of these rocks.
People think that banning artifact mana would put Green even more ahead a a ramp color, but I'm not so sure. Green runs these mana rocks itself anyway, and is even running a higher curve than it otherwise would because it has access to them.
Even adding Mana Vault you still don't have enough broken ramp to run 6 drop.dec simply because you don't have enough of it in your deck to be consistent. I tend to play low curve decks and these cards are still fantastic because they let me vomit my hand before I refuel with a draw spell and are just generally broken on just about any turn if you have a deck full of tutors and wheels.
I have to agree with Donald. I've played when decks had 4 Sol Rings, Moxen, B. Lotus, etc. and they were 60 card decks! Now that is fast and linear. At the time we would play 4 player games, and yes, it was like flipping quarters. But in a 100 card singleton 4-5 player game, it happens but not all the time and not always in the right sequence. But if you do stick it on turn 1, better have enough in your hand to back it up because the table will be gunning you down.
Yeah, but it isn't hard to keep going from Ring/Crypt to Vault/Monolith/Monolith/Powerstone/Key/etc...i.e. play enough ramp that you are likely to have 5 mana on turn 3 most games despite playing a singleton 100 card deck.
Personally I would be fine with seeing Ring/Crypt/Vault/Monolith/Monolith banned.
Banning Sol Ring would be a huge boon to green while being the most harmful to the weakest colors, white and red.
Green decks play enough ramp where they can cast there spells before curve even if they don't draw a Sol Ring. It's not like the green players are sitting around looking at their bombs like Avenger of Zendikar, Tooth and Nail and Creatorhoof Behemoth only to bemoan that those cards are uncastable because they didn't draw their single Sol Ring. No, green drecks often play 10-12 cards that are dedicated to ramping them, most of which don't even play Mana Crypt. A Sol Ring ban only takes away one card from their ramp package, which they can easily replace with a 2 cost common.
White and red are the most effected by a Sol Ring ban. The fact that 1 or 2 mana rocks gets banned doesn't suddenly make 6+ cost spells not good anymore. It makes them slightly harder to play, but they don't just drop off like stones in favor of 4-cost spells being the new centers of power. In EDH cards are played because of how powerful there effects are, and not invalidated because of how much they cost. The other issue is that white and red are the colors that depend most on high cost cards to get things done in EDH, because most low mana cards in those colors are designed as part of a weenie rush strategy that is supplemented by low power combat tricks or weak burn. The issue is that these cards and strategies don't scale up to be something competative in EDH, which means these colors are always looking to the high end for cards that push the boundaries of what white and red are capable of. Taking away Sol Ring hinders their main strategy of 'play very expensive spells with very powerful effects' and these colors are already heavily relying on artifacts for ramp and don't have any alternatives other then 'play a worse mana rock in the same slot'.
The thing about this story (and the many like it) is that I can't really gain from reading a sense 'Look, turn 1 Sol Ring won this game. It's such a broken card.' Instead, what I see is story about "They had Sol Ring and they had Consecrated Sphinx and drew 20 cards and we lost." I don't ever see the much much more common story of turn 1 Sol Ring into turn 2, an innocuous card, say Lingering Souls; just a good card, but not a card that gets thrown about in the "ban this card" threads.
Sol Ring (and tutors too!) are enabler cards. We often want to tell stories of "sol Ring into X, gg man gg, no fun at all." and that does happen, but why do we always blame Sol Ring? When the vast majority of the time 'card X' is something super powerful that because it went unanswered would end the game on it's own even if it came down naturally on the manacurve.
Well, there are plenty of high-powered cards at 3cmc and less, it's just that they're not Timmy creature-style cards. On those, there's a pretty steep incline in power as you go from 3cmc to 6. Take a creature like Loxodon Smiter, which is considered efficient in this game for 3cmc but generally won't be played in EDH. You can get something like Hound of Griselbrand for 1 more mana, and at 6 mana you can get a steady stream of 4/4's with something like Rampaging Baloths or Sun Titan. Most of the playable 3cmc creatures are ramp, draw, or other such cards. Even Goyf and TNN are not played in EDH. That's the difference of a Sol Ring. But in non-creature slots, you've got Demonic Tutor versus Diabolic, and generally just a lot better stuff for this format in non-creatures. So even decks with low curves, they are mostly gas, mostly pointed at trying to access stuff like Sol Ring more quickly in the event that they have any kind of creature-based win condition.
However I like having games where crazy ramp happens. I think that while killing fast mana (sol ring, crypt, monolith) may make the format more fair I don't know if it would make it better. It's easy for people who play decks that are in a different tier than the rest of their meta to go "X is broken, Y should be banned" instead of trying to improve their decks or find groups that play at the same level. Sol Ring is one of the most powerful cards in magic but it also lets Timmys have fun while also allowing Spikes to win and Johnnys to do their thing.
I feel like people want to play Legacy decks with a Commander instead of EDH.
Building silly decks for silly games.
If banning any one card changes your game plan significantly in EDH, then you have built your deck badly and deserve what you get.
That's hardly a good argument because the counterpoint is just as coercive:
If your game plan is derailed or is beaten by one card in EDH, then you have built your deck poorly and deserve what you get.
Seriously, though, a lot of the examples provided in this thread are things such as a Consecrated Sphinx surviving for at least 3 of its controller's turns (being anywhere from 9 to 12 turns active, possibly more, depending on how many players were in the game which simply makes how long it survived that much more extraordinary) without being eliminated. That's certainly not Sol Ring's fault: That is the result of no one at the table running the proper number of answers for the easiest to deal with permanent type in the entirety of Magic: The Gathering.
Beyond even that, banning the good artifact fast mana would make it more difficult for nongreen Commanders to handle green ones, as green decks have access to Ancient Tomb, Gaea's Cradle, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, etc., the middle of which can only be run in green decks, and it's entirely possible for a well built deck running green to flood the table with enough creatures to produce assloads of mana and attack in the same turn, before anyone else gets a fourth or fifth turn (and my wife managed to try and kill a whole table of four other players without resorting to an infinite). Getting to 2WW (or whatever), to answer multiple creatures simultaneously before those kinds of decks go off, would be a lot easier if they could play the good mana rocks that green doesn't even have to run if they don't wish to.
The right combination of cards isn't difficult to reach when you can have redundancy upon redundancy on top of tutors to achieve them, and I couldn't fathom banning something like Sol Ring before taking a look at Gaea's Cradle, which I've seen aid in third turn Tooth and Nails practically by itself into an attempt at a quick win before anyone else has reached their third turn (and it's not like you can Strip Mine it before they get anything from it when they play and tap it then untap it the same turn lol). Losing Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, etc., wouldn't hurt some of the green-based decks in my meta game at all, but it would hurt how easily the opposing decks could answer them by forcing them to play bad mana rocks for their second or third turns, which is when green decks can vomit their libraries onto the table with a mana rock-less Godhand that's even more difficult to surmount without access to good mana rocks to make casting answers easier.
The problem here seems to be treating the symptom rather than the disease and kneejerk reactions at best. Is Sol Ring really the fault of why the game was lost, or was it because someone allowed an opponent to draw a ton of fuel via Consecrated Sphinx and didn't try to do anything about it until after it was too late?
Sig and Avatar drawn by me.
At least Tolarian Academy and Gaea's Cradle ask you construct a certain kind of deck in order for them to actually be broken. Turn 1 Sol Ring is insane in any decent deck.
I play very competitively, and I can comfortably say that fast mana is bad for the format. The banlist should mimic the French banlist and/or the Legacy banlist to be a more healthy format. Unfortunately the RC doesn't quite understand the power level of many cards as they all play casually. But alas, I have to play those cards to stay competitive.
cEDH: [G(U/R) Animar] - [(U/B)(G/W) Redless Wheels] - [(G/U)(W/B) Redless Pod] - [(B/G)W Ghave Metapod]
Umm... So? The one of the two that I put up can easily be seen as more reprehensible. If your deck loses to, say, Warp World, but otherwise is very powerful, that's not necessarily bad deck design. If you complain a ton whenever someone casts Warp World, that's not really okay, but if you just go with the flow, and have a good attitude, then you will go far. Similarly, there are a decent amount of decks that die to Rest in Peace, Stranglehold, Ruination, Vandalblast, etc...
Meanwhile, if you are relying heavily on exactly one card, that means that you are trying to make every game the exact same, and if that single card somehow gets obstructed, in any way, then you are in trouble. I mean, let's say that you have a Kiki-Jiki, Mirror-Breaker deck, with your only creature and only method of winning besides attacking with Kiki-Jiki for no more than 2, being a single Zealous Conscripts. I think it's pretty straight-forward that this person is building their deck badly, since it is ABSOLUTELY relying on a single card exclusively to win.
As for this imaginary skew towards green... Black and red each has a decent number of three-mana or less wraths (Or effectively wraths, like Volcanic Fallout) that can deal with a lot of small creatures. White has some too. If you're worried about individual creatures, every color has solid low-cost point removal of some sort or other. Blue has countermagic in either scenario. White also has Fog effects, which can push into late game pretty well. Oh, and while we're at it... Ghostly Prison, Propaganda, Web of Inertia, and War Tax. Colorless cards like Ensnaring Bridge, Glacial Chasm, and Halls of Mist. Island Sanctuary. Orim's Chant. The Vow enchantment cycle. Peacekeeper. Yes, green decks will have a distinct advantage on mono-red decks. But what is one of the other colors that can play particularly heavy quick creatures and non-artifact accel besides green? Oh hey, red! What else? Oh, well we can hurt their ability to search their library with Aven Mindcensor, Leonin Arbiter, Shadow of Doubt, Chronic Flooding (remarkably significant), Memory Erosion, Sadistic Sacrament (You can even hit Gaea's Cradle turn 1 off of a Dark Ritual), Mesmeric Orb, Psychogenic Probe, Widespread Panic, Bitter Ordeal, Extract, Praetor's Grasp, Rootwater Thief, Seek...
While you're at it, you can even use Sinkhole, Stone Rain, Ice Storm, Wasteland, and Strip Mine to hurt the Gaea's Cradle decks well enough, honestly. You don't even necessarily have to hit the Cradle to have them work well against that deck. If someone Strip Mine's the green deck's first land, the deck is pretty seriously delayed.
On a side note, generally the only cards on the table for banning in terms of artifact fast mana are Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, and Mana Vault... If you really feel that those are essential to the format, as expressed earlier, you should learn how to deck-build better.
If you're having such an issue with the green decks (by the way, Gaea's Cradle gets turned off pretty hard by wraths, land removal, and deck hate), then run answers. Plenty exist.
Also, you use the word "god-hand." A-ha! So you admit that this shouldn't actually be happening reliably enough that no-one can deal with it ever! Yeah, if people are getting out an insurmountable board presence turn 2 even before Gaea's Cradle is out, then something is very wrong with your meta.
As a final point after all of this jazz, I can't believe that you're complaining about Gaea's Cradle when Hermit Druid exists...
Do you want to just talk about every single broken card in the format? I can do that. I tried adhering to strictly mana producing cards, but, you know...
Anyway, I want to draw attention to a couple of things:
1) Why do people keep saying that decks rely on Sol Ring? I see no evidence of this and dying to a Vandal Blast is literally the worst analogy I can think of. I can't think of a deck that relies solely on one or two mana producing cards; generally speaking they're, "Great when you have 'em, oh well when you don't." I'm simply addressing that green gets a lot better when they're the only ones who have access to large pools of mana like that without many drawbacks.
2) Why is it fine to say, "Volcanic Fallout prevents green's mana ramping from going insane" and that be fine and logical when some of the players in this thread can't find one instant/sorcery/creature with an ETB trigger to eliminate a single Consecrated Sphinx?
3) Propaganda, Ghostly Prison, etc., are literally the worst things you could suggest after what I have described (the game from my first post, where my wife's deck produced 30 mana on her fourth turn, before anyone else had a third? I don't need advice on how to beat a deck, but appreciate your thoughts anyway. Like I said in my previous post, she didn't win the game.
4) Answers to Gaea's Cradle exist, even though Gaea's Cradle and various other acceleration cards can create way more mana than Sol Ring ever could in the 7% of the time you draw it to cast first turn (which is what everyone else here is complaining about, and you have more methods to draw into or put the Cradle out in the first couple turns than you do Sol Ring), but answers exist to Gaea's Cradle, some of which you'd have to wait to cast without fast mana cards like Sol Ring in, for example, a white deck, so the Cradle is fine? Seems asinine.
5) Isn't the definition of overcentralization forcing someone to run very specific cards in order to counteract a single one in the opponent's deck? Isn't that what everyone is complaining about regarding Sol Ring, which you seemingly support the ban of for roughly this same reason, but then recommend things like Strip Mine that don't actually stop the Gaea's Cradle player from taking full advantage of it for one turn. Like in Legacy, you only need one turn for something like Cradle to seriously affect the game state and put one player significantly ahead, Wrath of God or not. If Volcanic is so much an answer to Gaea's Cradle, then why is Shattering Spree not so much an answer to Sol Ring, and if so, why is Cradle fine while Ring isn't?
6) So referring to something regarding Gaea's Cradle as a Godhand is awful but drawing into a Sol Ring and those perfect cards to just ruin a game for other players.... isn't even remotely similar? Okay. You can complain about the verbiage used all you like but that doesn't really change the content of the statement, so dismissing it based off one word when the comparison is seemingly valid is pretty weak.
7) As in Legacy, a lot of decks running Cradle don't expect to keep it beyond the turn, and Sinkhole, Stone Rain, Ice Storm, Wasteland and Strip Mine (the latter of which I specifically addressed in my last post) don't keep the person with the Cradle from drawing large amounts of mana when they start casting things one after another like Combo Elves. Yes, they're vulnerable to sweeper blowouts, but that'd require someone to get to larger amounts of mana to cast one of those cards.
I play Gaea's Cradle in Legacy Elves, so I understand how powerful the card is. You need 1 turn with it, and that's it. Holding mana open for Volcanic Fallout on your third turn to be forced to deal with something like that seems like the definition of overcentralization in the metagame, to me, as it practically forces you to run a select few cards depending upon color, but that's already what's being complained about with Sol Ring, but Cradle is fine, apparently. The comparison still seems like it works, to me. Cradle and Ring both put one player ahead by a margin greater than their buy-in costs (the one land drop per turn versus a single mana) and most of the answers to the former are sorcery speed, so generally speaking, when you play it you're getting full effect of it and both can lead to early turn Consecrated Sphinxes that no one can answer for several turns. So, why is Sol Ring so much worse that so many players are up in arms about it when there are still enabler cards available?
Sig and Avatar drawn by me.
I think they understand how broken the cards are they just play them in bad decks and expect that we do the same. The format is geared for bad decks.
@Gaea's Cradle - This is a very powerful card but it's not ubiquitous. Not even all green decks want it. Sol Ring is a super staple in nearly every deck in the format. That's a big difference.
I'll start by precluding the rest of this post by saying that I actually agree with a lot of your sentiment here. I don't like the presence of either Gaea's Cradle or Sol Ring in the format. My idea of an optimal ban list would be around twice as long as the current one.
That said, there's some things going for Sol Ring that are exactly why it becomes more contentious.
1. Ubiquity. Gaea's Cradle is run solely in green decks, Sol Ring is run in almost every deck in the format.
2. Price. Gaea's Cradle is over $150. Sol Ring is in every precon and can be picked up for $8.
3. Lack of conditions. Gaea's Cradle requires a creature presence. The more cutthroat the meta, the harder it can be to get that creature presence.
4. Ability to deckbuild. The average EDH player is not necessarily a good Magic player. I'm sorry to burst all those bubbles, but it's true. Sol Ring can be much easier for people to play (and copy other people playing) than Gaea's Cradle.
5. Analytical power level. Both personally and otherwise, I have seen some amount of the research, and it turns out, that if you unban every single card in Magic, Sol Ring and Mana Crypt are the most powerful cards in the format. While you might think "Well, hey, wouldn't Black Lotus and Moxen be too amazing, 99% of the time, Sol Ring is better than a Mox. And while Lotus allows for some pretty ridiculous first turns, Sol Ring still works out better in the long run. When you get past the first turn with the Sol Ring, its sheer advantage becomes absurd.
Donald, I think you have it exactly right. If they chose to play good decks and playtested the cards in good decks, the banlist would be quite different. I heard that Sheldon doesn't ban Hermit Druid because he actually runs it in a deck full of basics just to make his land drops.
I think it's clear from this thread that banning fast mana would be healthy for the format, that's why the French banlist provides such a fair and balanced format, and even the Legacy one is better suited to this format than the current banlist. I thank the creators of the format for what they've done to bring it where it is today, but I hope for the days when we have some new influence in the RC.
cEDH: [G(U/R) Animar] - [(U/B)(G/W) Redless Wheels] - [(G/U)(W/B) Redless Pod] - [(B/G)W Ghave Metapod]
No. No. No. No. No.
I don't know how long you've been playing magic or if you've ever played actual hardcore vintage or legacy, but I think you are VASTLY underestimating the power of the cards called the POWER 9.
I understand that card like Sol Ring ramps you 2 mana and that is really good on turn 2 and turn 3 and on turn 4, but you're assuming that you get to even take a turn 2 and that is a very very big thing to assume you just get to do in a format where Black Lotus and Moxen would be legal.
I've played a rather large amount of vintage and legacy. And I still do. And I've also played a decent amount of no-ban edh. And the latter is very different; games last longer because every single player is running countermagic. If anything, you are sounding like one of those naive newer players who says "Vintage. That's only turn 1 wins, right?" In no-ban EDH, if you get off the turn 1 win, congrats. You just got rather lucky. In general, though, it takes longer. Also, another way of looking at it is unbanning them one-by-one, for a clearer comparison. Not realizing that in a multiplayer format, two turns ahead of mana after the first turn is much more significant than 1 turn ahead after the first turn, is silly.
I agree. For Cradle to power out an game-winning Tooth & Nail entwine before Turn 4, you need to have spent turn 1 and 2 on something like Magus of the Candelabra and a card that creates 3 other creatures. And you have to have both Cradle and T&N. Speaking of God-hands, that's 5 cards + 2 land necessary by Turn 3. So essentially, it's not happening before Turn 4. After Turn 4, that's more than enough time for Control in this format to set up with a 3cmc counter or removal. And at that point, it really doesn't matter what type of Control it is, either. It just needs high enough answer density to have 1 or more counterspells or removal cards < 3cmc by Turn 4. That is not hard.
Sol Ring and Mana Crypt don't rely on setup, and can turn a really high number of hands into game-breakers without trying. And whatever they do, they are always broken before Turn 4.