You seem to keep missing specific points and cherry-picking what to reply to. If you're to the point of bringing up ancestral in this argument then I'm thinking this is just a waste if time.
Honestly when someone gets this defensive over a topic of comparison, it immediately makes me assume that they are just wanting to ban something specific you personally dislike. Especially when they simply refuse to acknowledge a comparison. Your replies just makes it sound like you hate loosing to someone running DT but can't handle the idea of banning land-ramp.
My main table has had this conversation years ago and our outcome was, as I reiterated above, that it boils down to cmc and competitive nature of the deck. We have all agreed that green tends to get forgotten in these conversation.
It doesn't really matter what I think. If DT gets to you so much then just talk to your own friends about it and develop house rules that are agreed upon all of your friends. Above all, you need to be able to compromise with your friends.
seem to keep missing specific points and cherry-picking what to reply to. If you're to the point of bringing up ancestral in this argument then I'm thinking this is just a waste if time.
Yeah... your argument still doesn't make sense. I can maybe get it for crop rotation and sylvan scrying, but farseek? cultivate? explosive vegetation? ...really?. It's like saying that if you want to ban 3 cmc tutors, then you have to ban divination too.
Color pie give each color different advantages. Blue has card advantage, green has ramp, black has tutors. This still doesn't make 1 and 2 cmc tutors any less broken, like ancestral recal and time walk are broken at 1-2 mana.
By the way i already house banned the tutors i mentioned times ago and me and my friends are really happy about that.
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How i feel about competitive players and casual players in EDH: The competitive are german tourists, the casual are italian tourists, both in a italian beach. The italians asking themselves "why are the germans here?" make a legitimate question, the answer is because the beach is beautiful, no matter the country you came from. The italians wanting to ban the germans are dumb, because if the germans pay for their stay and follow the rules like everyone else, they have the right to be in the beach. Hovewer, if the germans started to ask themselves "why are the italians here?"... they would be dumb as hell.
It is interesting to see where these threads go, which is why I brought it up.
ilovesaprolings is wasting their time, as Macabre is using the false equivalence logical fallacy. Just because Demonic Tutor and Rampant Growth both cost two mana and search a library does not make them equal. Either Macabre is blind to their own rhetoric, or is being facetious. Either way, those posts cannot be taken seriously.
In my Edgar Markov deck I tutor for Necropotence, so I still have variance for cards that I draw.
I am not sure what style your Edgar Markov deck is, but if it is anything like mine - which I stole/copy from ISBPathfinder - then you are kind of proving my point rather than refuting it. In a "go-wide" Edgar deck, it doesn't matter what you draw with Necro... simply that your hand remains full. that brings up the whole debate about whether a deck is inherently good, or simply good because it has a collection of the most degenerate cards in Magic's history.
I am not calling for a ban or a house rule of anything. Instead, as somebody who has played this game at a high level in my 20's and now only plays casually in my mid 30's, I find myself questioning game balance, game theory, card design, deck construction and so forth... rather than how to make the most powerful and consistent decks.
I do not care if other players want to use tutors or not, but in my older age, I find myself agreeing with the tutor-less/tutor free crowed more.
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"Whatever style you wish to play, be it fast and frenzied or slow and tactical, the surest way to defeat your opponent consistently is by dominating him or her in the war of card advantage." - Brian Wiseman, April 1996
Instead, as somebody who has played this game at a high level in my 20's and now only plays casually in my mid 30's, I find myself questioning game balance, game theory, card design, deck construction and so forth...
I often think about these things too, and i can't possibly fathom how people take demonic tutor for granted.
It's way weaker in 60 cards format than in commander. With 60 cards and 4 copies, you have way more chance to get the card you want at the right moment than in commander, where you have 100 cards and 1 copy. Demonic tutor is way more strong in commander than in Legacy and Vintage for this mathematical reason alone. Yet it is banned and restricted in those format and untouched in commander.
It's a similar reason to why lightning bolt is one of the best modern cards but is mediocre in commander. It's simple math. The math at the basis of the formats is different.
Fun fact: wotc is still printing tutors at 1-2 mana, we got one in m20 and one in Eldraine. But these ones, of course, are balanced. But why even caring about balanced cards when you have demonic tutor?
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How i feel about competitive players and casual players in EDH: The competitive are german tourists, the casual are italian tourists, both in a italian beach. The italians asking themselves "why are the germans here?" make a legitimate question, the answer is because the beach is beautiful, no matter the country you came from. The italians wanting to ban the germans are dumb, because if the germans pay for their stay and follow the rules like everyone else, they have the right to be in the beach. Hovewer, if the germans started to ask themselves "why are the italians here?"... they would be dumb as hell.
I am going to assume that you have never played Vintage. Every tutor is a copy of your best cards.
I have played in tournaments in 2008 where I have cast:
Dark ritual - Dark Ritual - Dark ritual - demonic tutor for YawgWill - Cast YawgWill - do it again from the graveyard to then find and cast Tendrills of Agony as the 10th spell and win.
Demonic Tutor for Lotus or Time Vaul or Flash or Gifts Ungiven - which ends up being a Demonic Tutor for 6 cards because one pile is to get YawgWill + Recoup + Lotus + Dark Ritual. No matter what they give you, you win.
I played and won a mox ruby in a 30 man event with mono black null rod agro. Leyline of the void, duress, Hymn to tourach, hypnotic spector, phyrexian negator, dark confidant, wasteland, stripmine, sink hole, amd a suite of Demonic Tutor, Vampiric, Imperial Seal, YawgWill, one tendrils, 4 rituals, Mox Jet and a pile of swamps. The main plan was to play resource denial and finish hard. Open the game with leyline, Turn 1 ritual into duress and Demonic tutor for null rod, then win through attrition.
The lists and examples go on and on.
That colorless and a black makes a difference when you can fetch an underground sea, cast a mana crypt or off color mox (red/green/white) and tutor up a combo card or force of will or whatever is strong.
But in Commander? Ome reason why I am "burnt out" on the format is how leniar my decks become with tutors.
Personal tutor for merchant scroll, maybe cast a can trip to draw it; merchant scroll for Intuition; Intuition into a game winning pile, of which there are many.
I was thinking to myself: How good or useless is any given commander if it is not trying to combo?
I love Breya and how we got an esper commander with red which can use Goblin Welder, Deretti, Scrap Mastry, Shaali and all of those fun cards. I live the idea of looting and rummaging through my deck on the cheap and then reanimating artifacts. However, I must explain each time I play with new people that it is a red esper artifact goodstuff deck and not a fast 4 color combo with cheap tutors.
If I play Mizzix, only combo is viable. I do not buy into the Earthquake game plan and relying on X spells and Mizzix surviving. Without tutors, it is trash. With it, it is versitile and strong. Not cEDH strong, but it can defend itself and has many play lines to end games with different synergystic combos... but strugles without a boat load of obvious tutors.
The list goes on and on as well. I found many decks I love leaned on tutors to carry tye deck to victory in games it would have otherwise had no business winning if tutors were cut from the deck. That is why I began to question if the concepts were even good, or if I was just leaning on a powerful game mechanic - tutors - in a game and format designed around variance and the mistery of the draw.
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"Whatever style you wish to play, be it fast and frenzied or slow and tactical, the surest way to defeat your opponent consistently is by dominating him or her in the war of card advantage." - Brian Wiseman, April 1996
Commander is a 40 life game with basically unlimited access to a free, usually powerful card beyond your starting hand. As such, players have a roster of resources that can be hard to circumvent. It's an engine/battlecruiser format at its core. This fundamentally pushes it towards massive combo advantages or wins. Luckily, decks are 100 card singleton, which should circumvent this.
But it doesn't. Tutors and deep or selective draw completely screws over the format's deckbuilding restrictions. It doesn't just counteract it or add diversity (like group slug does), but is a fundamental detriment to the format's core spirit: "I don't want to play a 100-card singleton deck, so I'll just add a load of tutors so I can win fast."
Of course, this isn't always the case when players add the tutors. But groups self-check both in the direction of relaxation and power. People passively empower their decks as time passes, depowering takes self control. The game shop I play at has a very interchangable and large roster of players, so combo and nasty kinds of control is rampant there.
Yes, battlecruiser is still legitimate, but I have been playing Magic since 10th edition, and boy has Commander seen an unhealthy crapload of battlecruiser power creep since then. Stuff like Omnath 2 has become necessary to countact infinite combos. Which is just sad.
EDIT Oh, and for the record, I hate to play battlecruiser myself - well, I do kind of like it, but I'm more enjoying it at the power of stuff like Pelakka Wurm; later, more ridiculously potent cards are not my thing. I tend to make engine builds of fair cards and durdle a lot for incremental gain instead, and my more powerful stuff has real weaknesses I refuse to fix in order, usually intentionally subpar win paths, to let other players beat me.
I am going to assume that you have never played Vintage. Every tutor is a copy of your best cards.
I have played in tournaments in 2008 where I have cast:
Dark ritual - Dark Ritual - Dark ritual - demonic tutor for YawgWill - Cast YawgWill - do it again from the graveyard to then find and cast Tendrills of Agony as the 10th spell and win.
Demonic Tutor for Lotus or Time Vaul or Flash or Gifts Ungiven - which ends up being a Demonic Tutor for 6 cards because one pile is to get YawgWill + Recoup + Lotus + Dark Ritual. No matter what they give you, you win.
I played and won a mox ruby in a 30 man event with mono black null rod agro. Leyline of the void, duress, Hymn to tourach, hypnotic spector, phyrexian negator, dark confidant, wasteland, stripmine, sink hole, amd a suite of Demonic Tutor, Vampiric, Imperial Seal, YawgWill, one tendrils, 4 rituals, Mox Jet and a pile of swamps. The main plan was to play resource denial and finish hard. Open the game with leyline, Turn 1 ritual into duress and Demonic tutor for null rod, then win through attrition.
The lists and examples go on and on.
That colorless and a black makes a difference when you can fetch an underground sea, cast a mana crypt or off color mox (red/green/white) and tutor up a combo card or force of will or whatever is strong.
But in Commander? Ome reason why I am "burnt out" on the format is how leniar my decks become with tutors.
Personal tutor for merchant scroll, maybe cast a can trip to draw it; merchant scroll for Intuition; Intuition into a game winning pile, of which there are many.
I was thinking to myself: How good or useless is any given commander if it is not trying to combo?
I love Breya and how we got an esper commander with red which can use Goblin Welder, Deretti, Scrap Mastry, Shaali and all of those fun cards. I live the idea of looting and rummaging through my deck on the cheap and then reanimating artifacts. However, I must explain each time I play with new people that it is a red esper artifact goodstuff deck and not a fast 4 color combo with cheap tutors.
If I play Mizzix, only combo is viable. I do not buy into the Earthquake game plan and relying on X spells and Mizzix surviving. Without tutors, it is trash. With it, it is versitile and strong. Not cEDH strong, but it can defend itself and has many play lines to end games with different synergystic combos... but strugles without a boat load of obvious tutors.
The list goes on and on as well. I found many decks I love leaned on tutors to carry tye deck to victory in games it would have otherwise had no business winning if tutors were cut from the deck. That is why I began to question if the concepts were even good, or if I was just leaning on a powerful game mechanic - tutors - in a game and format designed around variance and the mistery of the draw.
Vintage is really different now. 2008 is a long time ago in MTG time. Demonic Tutor is definitely played in non-combo decks. While it's a copy of your best card, the "best" card changes from turn to turn and game to game. I play my Lands.dec (link) with a heavy tutor suite. And even with a heavy-hitter like Ad Nauseam in my 99, I tutor for answers or engine pieces just as often.
You sound burnt out but it's not because of tutors. I suspect there are several other culprits, especially if you're going to look at every single deck based on it's combo potential or theoretical power-level (i.e. "tier). When you do that, of course, there is no reason to play certain decks or build certain ways. After all, very few things are worth doing when you get to play Black Lotus or Ancestral Recall. Same things happen in EDH also. And you know what, bans don't really fix anything. Restrict Ancestral, and there's still Treasure Cruise and enough facsimiles to make Blue the best color.
In your ISBpathfinder Edgar deck, forget any discussion about tutors->Necro...aren't you glossing over the fact that Edgar Markov is just a stupidly designed magic card? I can't imagine a worse deck to play if you feel "jaded." There is basically no other way to build Edgar than to jam vampires. Only difference is that the good deck builders found out way earlier that crappy, cheap vampires were best. Even the bad deck builders have found that by now since they've been thoroughly creamed by enough good Edgar players by now (Edgar is ridiculously popular according to EDHrec). Yeah, Markov and most CMDR-set legendaries are garbage for the format. Just don't play Edgar Markov.
If combo and infinite loops are the only way to reliably win in your meta, that's not a problem tutor-bans will fix. Like I said in another thread, if Joe's mono black deck wins by DT into Exsanguinate/Torment of Hailfire or Tim's etb Bant deck always goes for Craterhoof, what good does a tutor ban do? Isn't he still going to win with the same card in every game that goes long?
I think for some Breya players, it's only fun because it's Esper + Red. Some players don't really care to infinite loop everyone else out each game. But since it's the only option, they run it. I know vintage players long for a place where Goblin Welder can dominate once more. You mentioned all of the fun cards. Well, aren't tutors just access to your fun cards? I say tutors just enable fun. Fun isn't necessarily game ending. The corollary of course is that being able to actually play your spells is fun and that mana enables fun. I believe both. Get that notion of tutors bans out of here.
If you propose that tutors enable a weak/poor strategy but otherwise potentially fun strategy (e.g. Mizzix) to exist, how exactly is that a negative? Especially since you're also saying that a tutor-enabled "has many play lines" and "different synergistic combos?" I'd say that my lands.dec deck is otherwise extremely weak besides its tutors. I don't play any fast mana, have no stack interaction/instant speed removal (since it's completely lands based), and doesn't play enough permanents/card draw that I can ever snowball value. But that I play 5 colors and can tutor for lands that act as spells or engines that allow me to use lands is what makes my deck good.
If a tutor for a single card, can turn a game around where you are otherwise dead-to-rights, maybe that card and the tutor should be discussed together?
I say that match-ups and the multiple odd-interactions and truly-unique board states possible in EDH are what really drive variance in commander games. I mean, the card that people most build their decks around is already tutor'd out each and every single game. A blanket tutor-ban isn't going to make games more fun just because.
I know that a thoughtful, reflective deck builder can put together something to get them out of a funk. Blaming certain cards is just too easy. But if someone or group is stuck playing the infinite loop/instant win game or won't let go over always playing the same high power'd cards, then games can seem same-ish.
Yeah, Macabre's Demonic Tutor = Rampant Growth shouldn't be taken seriously. Both power-level and effect are massively different. No green ramp spell approaches DT's power. And Rampant Growth isn't good for much besides loot fodder in the late game (but this can be said of other good cards as well), whereas DT is someone I'm happy to draw at any time in any game (but this can be said of other good cards as well). However, I must bring up that green land ramp = consistency. And that can mean repetitive as well. I mean, some of the same people who complain about tutors being repetitive for some reason refuse to acknowledge that T2 ramp, T3 ramp, T4 ramp, T5 Maelstrom Wanderer, T6 Maelstrom Wanderer, T7 Maelstrom Wanderer is also repetitive and enabled with green land ramp.
Edit: hit post by accident. I was not finished. I will keep editing and adding to this.
Thanks for the reply umtiger. While I do not agree with everything and do not have the energy to explain where and why, I do appriciate the feedback.
I do not know how to organized my thoughts and feeling about the Magic. I love the art, flavor text, mechanics, rules and how the card bend and break them. Theory crafting and evaluating cards is lots of fun as well.
Actually playing? Rock-paper-scissors gets old after while, and tutors accelerate that process.
If you are playing for prizes, then you want your deck to go off as quickly and consistantly as possoble. If we are playing for fun and just enjoying the interactions of decks and cards, then tutors get in the way of the random nature of the format.
"Whatever style you wish to play, be it fast and frenzied or slow and tactical, the surest way to defeat your opponent consistently is by dominating him or her in the war of card advantage." - Brian Wiseman, April 1996
Philosophically I don't think tutors should be banned or anything as they are part of the game, and is a piece of black's color pie, but LD is part of red's and has a real stigma to the point it's almost bad form to play that, so I think tutors fall into that category.
I'm of the belief that limitations breed creativity not just in deck building but in actually playing the game. If you have access to any card in your deck you are not really limited but without tutors if someone goes to resolve a big threat and you don't have the card in hand you have to puzzle out a way around it by using other resources (other players, build more generalized answers into the cards you play, etc). Granted this has limitations too as instant speed combo doesn't really give you a chance to find an answer but that's another topic.
Removing the tutors, won't lead to winning more games but will allow more interactive game play with the table which I think is more important than actually winning the game.
Is it really fun to go tutor for the perfect card in any given situation? For some the answer is probably yes, but the games I remember most are the ones where someone (maybe not even myself) had to lean on weird corner case interactions with the cards they had to pull out some crazy solution to a problem. No one remembers who won the game, but the big plays within were what really stuck. The whole "Its not the destination, but the journey" sort of applies here.
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Honestly when someone gets this defensive over a topic of comparison, it immediately makes me assume that they are just wanting to ban something specific you personally dislike. Especially when they simply refuse to acknowledge a comparison. Your replies just makes it sound like you hate loosing to someone running DT but can't handle the idea of banning land-ramp.
My main table has had this conversation years ago and our outcome was, as I reiterated above, that it boils down to cmc and competitive nature of the deck. We have all agreed that green tends to get forgotten in these conversation.
If you want to ban vampiric tutor, then go ahead and ban mystical tutor and enlightened tutor, but you still need to ban crop rotation and green suns zenith. If you want to ban demonic tutor that's fine, but you would need to ban all the 2cmc farseeks and sylvan scrying. If you want to ban cruel tutor and fabricate then it's only fair to ban cultivate. If you really think diabolic tutor is ban-worthy then you need to ban explosive vegetation.
It doesn't really matter what I think. If DT gets to you so much then just talk to your own friends about it and develop house rules that are agreed upon all of your friends. Above all, you need to be able to compromise with your friends.
Links to my most current deck lists;
Primary EDH; Rakka Mar Token Perfection, Crosis Mnemonic Betrayal, Cromat Villainous, Judith Gravestorm, Rakdos Empty Storm, Exava Artifacts, Bant Trash, & Fumiko Voltron!
EDH kept at home; Ruzzian Isset & Rakdos LoR!
EDH (nostalgic/pimp/retired) in storage;
Latulla Burns, Akroma Smash, Jeska Voltron, Rakdos Storm, Bladewing Darghans, Lyzolda Worldgorger, Xantcha Steals your Heart, Jori Storm, Wydwen Permission, Gwendlyn Paradox, Jeleva Warps, & Sigarda Brick!
Legacy Showanimator and High Tide!
So you can do it but i can't? Ok i guess
Yeah... your argument still doesn't make sense. I can maybe get it for crop rotation and sylvan scrying, but farseek? cultivate? explosive vegetation? ...really?. It's like saying that if you want to ban 3 cmc tutors, then you have to ban divination too.
Color pie give each color different advantages. Blue has card advantage, green has ramp, black has tutors. This still doesn't make 1 and 2 cmc tutors any less broken, like ancestral recal and time walk are broken at 1-2 mana.
By the way i already house banned the tutors i mentioned times ago and me and my friends are really happy about that.
ilovesaprolings is wasting their time, as Macabre is using the false equivalence logical fallacy. Just because Demonic Tutor and Rampant Growth both cost two mana and search a library does not make them equal. Either Macabre is blind to their own rhetoric, or is being facetious. Either way, those posts cannot be taken seriously.
Moving on...
I am not sure what style your Edgar Markov deck is, but if it is anything like mine - which I stole/copy from ISBPathfinder - then you are kind of proving my point rather than refuting it. In a "go-wide" Edgar deck, it doesn't matter what you draw with Necro... simply that your hand remains full. that brings up the whole debate about whether a deck is inherently good, or simply good because it has a collection of the most degenerate cards in Magic's history.
I am not calling for a ban or a house rule of anything. Instead, as somebody who has played this game at a high level in my 20's and now only plays casually in my mid 30's, I find myself questioning game balance, game theory, card design, deck construction and so forth... rather than how to make the most powerful and consistent decks.
I do not care if other players want to use tutors or not, but in my older age, I find myself agreeing with the tutor-less/tutor free crowed more.
I often think about these things too, and i can't possibly fathom how people take demonic tutor for granted.
It's way weaker in 60 cards format than in commander. With 60 cards and 4 copies, you have way more chance to get the card you want at the right moment than in commander, where you have 100 cards and 1 copy. Demonic tutor is way more strong in commander than in Legacy and Vintage for this mathematical reason alone. Yet it is banned and restricted in those format and untouched in commander.
It's a similar reason to why lightning bolt is one of the best modern cards but is mediocre in commander. It's simple math. The math at the basis of the formats is different.
Fun fact: wotc is still printing tutors at 1-2 mana, we got one in m20 and one in Eldraine. But these ones, of course, are balanced. But why even caring about balanced cards when you have demonic tutor?
I have played in tournaments in 2008 where I have cast:
Dark ritual - Dark Ritual - Dark ritual - demonic tutor for YawgWill - Cast YawgWill - do it again from the graveyard to then find and cast Tendrills of Agony as the 10th spell and win.
Demonic Tutor for Lotus or Time Vaul or Flash or Gifts Ungiven - which ends up being a Demonic Tutor for 6 cards because one pile is to get YawgWill + Recoup + Lotus + Dark Ritual. No matter what they give you, you win.
I played and won a mox ruby in a 30 man event with mono black null rod agro. Leyline of the void, duress, Hymn to tourach, hypnotic spector, phyrexian negator, dark confidant, wasteland, stripmine, sink hole, amd a suite of Demonic Tutor, Vampiric, Imperial Seal, YawgWill, one tendrils, 4 rituals, Mox Jet and a pile of swamps. The main plan was to play resource denial and finish hard. Open the game with leyline, Turn 1 ritual into duress and Demonic tutor for null rod, then win through attrition.
The lists and examples go on and on.
That colorless and a black makes a difference when you can fetch an underground sea, cast a mana crypt or off color mox (red/green/white) and tutor up a combo card or force of will or whatever is strong.
But in Commander? Ome reason why I am "burnt out" on the format is how leniar my decks become with tutors.
Personal tutor for merchant scroll, maybe cast a can trip to draw it; merchant scroll for Intuition; Intuition into a game winning pile, of which there are many.
I was thinking to myself: How good or useless is any given commander if it is not trying to combo?
I love Breya and how we got an esper commander with red which can use Goblin Welder, Deretti, Scrap Mastry, Shaali and all of those fun cards. I live the idea of looting and rummaging through my deck on the cheap and then reanimating artifacts. However, I must explain each time I play with new people that it is a red esper artifact goodstuff deck and not a fast 4 color combo with cheap tutors.
If I play Mizzix, only combo is viable. I do not buy into the Earthquake game plan and relying on X spells and Mizzix surviving. Without tutors, it is trash. With it, it is versitile and strong. Not cEDH strong, but it can defend itself and has many play lines to end games with different synergystic combos... but strugles without a boat load of obvious tutors.
The list goes on and on as well. I found many decks I love leaned on tutors to carry tye deck to victory in games it would have otherwise had no business winning if tutors were cut from the deck. That is why I began to question if the concepts were even good, or if I was just leaning on a powerful game mechanic - tutors - in a game and format designed around variance and the mistery of the draw.
But it doesn't. Tutors and deep or selective draw completely screws over the format's deckbuilding restrictions. It doesn't just counteract it or add diversity (like group slug does), but is a fundamental detriment to the format's core spirit: "I don't want to play a 100-card singleton deck, so I'll just add a load of tutors so I can win fast."
Of course, this isn't always the case when players add the tutors. But groups self-check both in the direction of relaxation and power. People passively empower their decks as time passes, depowering takes self control. The game shop I play at has a very interchangable and large roster of players, so combo and nasty kinds of control is rampant there.
Yes, battlecruiser is still legitimate, but I have been playing Magic since 10th edition, and boy has Commander seen an unhealthy crapload of battlecruiser power creep since then. Stuff like Omnath 2 has become necessary to countact infinite combos. Which is just sad.
EDIT Oh, and for the record, I hate to play battlecruiser myself - well, I do kind of like it, but I'm more enjoying it at the power of stuff like Pelakka Wurm; later, more ridiculously potent cards are not my thing. I tend to make engine builds of fair cards and durdle a lot for incremental gain instead, and my more powerful stuff has real weaknesses I refuse to fix in order, usually intentionally subpar win paths, to let other players beat me.
Vintage is really different now. 2008 is a long time ago in MTG time. Demonic Tutor is definitely played in non-combo decks. While it's a copy of your best card, the "best" card changes from turn to turn and game to game. I play my Lands.dec (link) with a heavy tutor suite. And even with a heavy-hitter like Ad Nauseam in my 99, I tutor for answers or engine pieces just as often.
You sound burnt out but it's not because of tutors. I suspect there are several other culprits, especially if you're going to look at every single deck based on it's combo potential or theoretical power-level (i.e. "tier). When you do that, of course, there is no reason to play certain decks or build certain ways. After all, very few things are worth doing when you get to play Black Lotus or Ancestral Recall. Same things happen in EDH also. And you know what, bans don't really fix anything. Restrict Ancestral, and there's still Treasure Cruise and enough facsimiles to make Blue the best color.
In your ISBpathfinder Edgar deck, forget any discussion about tutors->Necro...aren't you glossing over the fact that Edgar Markov is just a stupidly designed magic card? I can't imagine a worse deck to play if you feel "jaded." There is basically no other way to build Edgar than to jam vampires. Only difference is that the good deck builders found out way earlier that crappy, cheap vampires were best. Even the bad deck builders have found that by now since they've been thoroughly creamed by enough good Edgar players by now (Edgar is ridiculously popular according to EDHrec). Yeah, Markov and most CMDR-set legendaries are garbage for the format. Just don't play Edgar Markov.
If combo and infinite loops are the only way to reliably win in your meta, that's not a problem tutor-bans will fix. Like I said in another thread, if Joe's mono black deck wins by DT into Exsanguinate/Torment of Hailfire or Tim's etb Bant deck always goes for Craterhoof, what good does a tutor ban do? Isn't he still going to win with the same card in every game that goes long?
I think for some Breya players, it's only fun because it's Esper + Red. Some players don't really care to infinite loop everyone else out each game. But since it's the only option, they run it. I know vintage players long for a place where Goblin Welder can dominate once more. You mentioned all of the fun cards. Well, aren't tutors just access to your fun cards? I say tutors just enable fun. Fun isn't necessarily game ending. The corollary of course is that being able to actually play your spells is fun and that mana enables fun. I believe both. Get that notion of tutors bans out of here.
If you propose that tutors enable a weak/poor strategy but otherwise potentially fun strategy (e.g. Mizzix) to exist, how exactly is that a negative? Especially since you're also saying that a tutor-enabled "has many play lines" and "different synergistic combos?" I'd say that my lands.dec deck is otherwise extremely weak besides its tutors. I don't play any fast mana, have no stack interaction/instant speed removal (since it's completely lands based), and doesn't play enough permanents/card draw that I can ever snowball value. But that I play 5 colors and can tutor for lands that act as spells or engines that allow me to use lands is what makes my deck good.
If a tutor for a single card, can turn a game around where you are otherwise dead-to-rights, maybe that card and the tutor should be discussed together?
I say that match-ups and the multiple odd-interactions and truly-unique board states possible in EDH are what really drive variance in commander games. I mean, the card that people most build their decks around is already tutor'd out each and every single game. A blanket tutor-ban isn't going to make games more fun just because.
I know that a thoughtful, reflective deck builder can put together something to get them out of a funk. Blaming certain cards is just too easy. But if someone or group is stuck playing the infinite loop/instant win game or won't let go over always playing the same high power'd cards, then games can seem same-ish.
Yeah, Macabre's Demonic Tutor = Rampant Growth shouldn't be taken seriously. Both power-level and effect are massively different. No green ramp spell approaches DT's power. And Rampant Growth isn't good for much besides loot fodder in the late game (but this can be said of other good cards as well), whereas DT is someone I'm happy to draw at any time in any game (but this can be said of other good cards as well). However, I must bring up that green land ramp = consistency. And that can mean repetitive as well. I mean, some of the same people who complain about tutors being repetitive for some reason refuse to acknowledge that T2 ramp, T3 ramp, T4 ramp, T5 Maelstrom Wanderer, T6 Maelstrom Wanderer, T7 Maelstrom Wanderer is also repetitive and enabled with green land ramp.
Thanks for the reply umtiger. While I do not agree with everything and do not have the energy to explain where and why, I do appriciate the feedback.
I do not know how to organized my thoughts and feeling about the Magic. I love the art, flavor text, mechanics, rules and how the card bend and break them. Theory crafting and evaluating cards is lots of fun as well.
Actually playing? Rock-paper-scissors gets old after while, and tutors accelerate that process.
If you are playing for prizes, then you want your deck to go off as quickly and consistantly as possoble. If we are playing for fun and just enjoying the interactions of decks and cards, then tutors get in the way of the random nature of the format.
Philosophically I don't think tutors should be banned or anything as they are part of the game, and is a piece of black's color pie, but LD is part of red's and has a real stigma to the point it's almost bad form to play that, so I think tutors fall into that category.
I'm of the belief that limitations breed creativity not just in deck building but in actually playing the game. If you have access to any card in your deck you are not really limited but without tutors if someone goes to resolve a big threat and you don't have the card in hand you have to puzzle out a way around it by using other resources (other players, build more generalized answers into the cards you play, etc). Granted this has limitations too as instant speed combo doesn't really give you a chance to find an answer but that's another topic.
Removing the tutors, won't lead to winning more games but will allow more interactive game play with the table which I think is more important than actually winning the game.
Is it really fun to go tutor for the perfect card in any given situation? For some the answer is probably yes, but the games I remember most are the ones where someone (maybe not even myself) had to lean on weird corner case interactions with the cards they had to pull out some crazy solution to a problem. No one remembers who won the game, but the big plays within were what really stuck. The whole "Its not the destination, but the journey" sort of applies here.