If people are sick of reading about stuff just stop taking part. You have 100% control over what you read. Simic Ascendancy isn't going to get banned just because you didn't tell someone to shut up on the internet.
I'm fine with Prophet and mull changes, but removing rule 4 completely has me a little irked.
The concept of color identity stems directly from a deck's general. This is the theme of this format, and one of the few things that separates us from highlander. Tampering with this makes the concept of EDH feel less flavorful.
It just doesn't feel right for Sen Triplets to play an opponents mountain and be able to cast a lightning bolt in a format designed around limiting deck construction to some legendary card's colors.
Wait, what? The Sen Triplets specialize in mind control. How is it not in-flavor for them to get their opponents to bind lands and cast spells for them?
I'm good with this announcement. I don't think the Prophet was bad enough that she really needed to go, but she was bad enough that I don't really expect to miss her, and I will enjoy thinking about what to replace her with in decks that run her. Having one less "automatically include it where you can" card makes for more interesting deckbuilding.
Rule 4... it makes some things better, but not enough to run them if you weren't already.
Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary is stupid, and you never have to 'build for him'. Although many people seem to think he is fine when not used as a Commander, he really is not. While being a Commander does increase both his consistency and resiliency, it actually does not add much outside of simply making the problem more noticeable, as it happens every game. He is just as much of a problem as Mana Crypt and Sol Ring, for very similar reasons.
Painter's Servant & Recurring Nightmare are both far better choices for unbanning than Braids, Cabal Minion, but she also is worthy of coming off the list (simply not first).
The fear is a turn two Braids locking down the game. The reality is that while this can happen, it is very fragile when enabled off of Ritual effects, only truly a problem when following Mana Crypt or Sol Ring (and to a much lesser extent Mana Vault), and I would easily place the blame on the first two. Further, while locking the game with Braids is very strong, she dies quite easily, and is no more powerful than other top tier Commanders, such as Zur the Enchanter, or decks like Hermit Druid. It is also very easy for a prepared multiplayer group to deal with Braids.
In a competitive setting, she is good, but not really a big deal. In a casual setting, it is very obvious the type of effect she has. She will not accidentally 'ruin' a game. The primary reason I believe she is banned is as an 'example banning' - ie 'don't play cards like this' - a tactic that simply does not work. I also distinctly remember a member of the rules committed (Papa Funk, I think) admitting as much, despite them still using this as a banning criteria.
I literally run Prophet because I'm not spending like $15 on a Seedborn Muse
Idiotic.
I kinda agree with this. Granted they both have their pros and cons, but PoK is a much cheaper alternative than Seedborn with out sacrificing too much. They should ban Seed born muse too.
Seedborn Muse is not nearly as dangerous as the Prophet, which is why it's been around for years and never even been seriously considered for a ban. Don't hold your breath waiting for one now. It's a very good card, but nowhere near banworthy.
As far as its cost, that's a good reason why I'd love to see the Muse reprinted in an upcoming Commander project.
Casual groups should apparently just self moderate and form house rules to curve problems..... but they can't get around Prophet of Kruphix so we'll ban it
Boy I can't wait for the casuals to get their hands on other good cards. Or do they then stop being casual and not your problem? Or they'll just be told to "house rule" it too aka "please stop talking because lalala you can't play with multiple groups"
And oh man I can't wait for you guys to learn about the REALLY broken cards like Sol Ring and Mana Cry.... oh you know about those? Not a problem? Ok..
Casual groups should apparently just self moderate and form house rules to curve problems..... but they can't get around Prophet of Kruphix so we'll ban it
Boy I can't wait for the casuals to get their hands on other good cards. Or do they then stop being casual and not your problem? Or they'll just be told to "house rule" it too aka "please stop talking because lalala you can't play with multiple groups"
And oh man I can't wait for you guys to learn about the REALLY broken cards like Sol Ring and Mana Cry.... oh you know about those? Not a problem? Ok..
<snip>
If someone WASN'T a Casual, they would find another card for the slot and move on. Do what you can with the tools you're given, don't whine about the one that just broke.
I literally run Prophet because I'm not spending like $15 on a Seedborn Muse
Idiotic.
I kinda agree with this. Granted they both have their pros and cons, but PoK is a much cheaper alternative than Seedborn with out sacrificing too much. They should ban Seed born muse too.
"sacrificing too much"? The only thing you sacrifice by playing Prophet is untapping artifacts and 1 point of toughness.
These seems like good decisions, it seems that they are actually listening to us.
1. Prophet ban, I didn't think it was broken but in groups on the more causal side of the game probably not even on this forum to complain about it, it was extremely centralising. kill it or lose. Seedborn requires you have instant speed cards prophet made your creatures instants and got pretty close to giving creature heavy decks extra turns. played well such deck could even avoid overextending whille having overwhelming value. There are other broken cards that are legal but most aren't as accessible for more causal players. I will see what I can replace it with, it was powerful in my deck but I may want seedborn muse or even Murkfiend Liege more since it was dangerous for my to let my opponents clone it when I was mostly using it to abuse Azami, lady of scrolls.
2. Mana rules change. Now stealing creatures with off colour activated abilities doesn't feel so bad. Celestial dawn doesn't just kill people. Converge cards can be played. It is probably a little flavour breaking but it makes the game work better. The mana restrictions were cumbersome.
3. Normal mulligans. This is throwing a bone to the more powerful play groups, the implementation of the scry rule into magic made mulliganing not quite as punishing. paving the way for this. Partial mulligans was leading to too much hand sculpting and too many sol rings eary in the game. The more powerful out decks got the more this seemed like something we would want to do on our own. I and many others may want to make some hard cuts to add more lands to some of our decks. Perhaps some additional redunancy if that is what you want.
[EDH] It's built to be a casual format and to a specific vision, and if you don't like the vision, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's not going to change to accommodate everyone. Big tent is not a goal.
I literally run Prophet because I'm not spending like $15 on a Seedborn Muse
Idiotic.
I kinda agree with this. Granted they both have their pros and cons, but PoK is a much cheaper alternative than Seedborn with out sacrificing too much. They should ban Seed born muse too.
"sacrificing too much"? The only thing you sacrifice by playing Prophet is untapping artifacts and 1 point of toughness.
I agree with banning Prophet, but not Seedborn. To get the same effect with Seedborn, you would have to combine it with yet another card, which makes it inherently more vulnerable to removal, and inherently more police-able by casual groups. Prophet, as a 2 in 1 package of awesome, let people abuse it much easier than seedborn can be abused. Put another way, Seedborn muse gives you a ton of mana, but not necessarily an outlet for that mana. Prophet both gives you the mana, and opens the floodgates, allowing you several extra turns to play creatures.
As good of an update as this was, I'm annoyed that there weren't any unbans. Many excellent cases have been made in this thread for the unbanning of numerous cards. At least having a trial period for things like Painter's Servant would have been good. Experimenting with cards would go a long way I think towards legitimizing the banlist more. It certainly helped when the RC showed they were willing to change their minds on Kokusho. Without even experimenting on unbans, the banlist seems stagnant, and seems to be too large. It's all well and good to say you considered unbanning some cards, but I don't think that's enough. Consider the great amount of evidence that the RC offers whenever they put a card on the list. They talk about casual groups as if they've experienced themselves, and they've taken into account the experiences of others. With prophet, it seems like they listened to a lot of complaints, and took action.
That's good. Complaints are evidence that something was wrong with the format, and when you have a lot of evidence, that justifies action. I think a similar standard should be used for maintaining a card's banned status: Rather than simply conversing about cards on the list and deciding with little fanfare that everything on the list belongs, I'd like to see the RC actively experimenting with a card or two per banlist period, perhaps with a short term provisional unbanning until the next update. The only exceptions to this desire of mine are cards banned from vintage play: manual dexterity cards, and ante cards, since those all have fundamental and completely obvious problems.
EDH is a living format. And I think experimentation both ways (unbanning/banning) is the best way to move forward to the ideal banlist.
I'll get off my soapbox now, and back to the review:
The rule changes are great. I always thought that rule 4 brought with it some flavor fails (such as Sen Triplets being unable to mind control their opponents 100% effectively without assistance). Flavor wise then, I'd call it a flavor wash. It was both good and bad, and in the absence of a decisive ruling flavorfully, the cleaner of the two rule options should be adopted.
The mulligan rule helps to address a lot of competitive and casual concerns with the format. It's a win/win for both groups.
All in all, 9/10 banlist update (for a 10/10 banlist update, Sheldon could you unban Painter's Servant?). The RC did much better with their format than Wizards did with Modern this week.
Can you include 5 colored cards in a 3 color commander deck with the rule 4 change? Can someone please clarify rule 4?
Rule 4 was a restriction that prevented players from generating mana outside of their color identity; converting it to colorless instead. With it gone, players can now use cards like City of Brass to generate off-color mana, but does not change the color identity restrictions of your Commander (so no Obelisk of Alara in your tri-color decks, and no Forests in you UBR deck). By and large this is a minor mechanical change that will have two minor, but welcome, impacts:
1) You won't have a free out towards creating colorless mana; making the new eldrazi cards no easier to cast than they would be in other formats.
2) Cards that allow you to control/cast an opponent's creatures/spells will have a bit more freedom than before so long as they're running cards like City of Brass and Darksteel Ingot.
I'm not being sensationalist, at least not intentionally. I really do mean that. Bargain is infinitely more broken in 1v1 or in a deck designed to break it, certainly. But in the vast majority of multiplayer EDH decks, mana is already much more of a limitation than cards. Getting enough mana to use all the cards Bargain gives you and win the game is hard (and generally requires tailoring your deck pretty specifically to it). Getting enough cards to spam out with Prophet and win the game is easy as hell and requires nothing special.
So, you're saying that any random deck without alteration is prepared to use untapped lands on each players turn, but you need to do something special in deck construction to get value out of "draw 40 cards"? I appreciate the dislike of Prophet of Kruphix, but that to Bargain is a silly comparison. One can take over the game, the other pretty much ends it.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
Can you include 5 colored cards in a 3 color commander deck with the rule 4 change? Can someone please clarify rule 4?
No, you cannot. All cards in your deck must conform to the rules for Color Identity per Rule 3.
Quote from Rule 3 »
3.A card's colour identity is its colour plus the colour of any mana symbols in the card's rules text. A card's colour identity is established before the game begins, and cannot be changed by game effects. Details
Cards in a deck may not have any colours in their color identity which are not shared with the commander of the deck. (The identity of each card in the deck must be a subset of the Commander's)
The old Rule 4 was in regards to mana generation that stated basically that a deck may not generate mana outside its Commander's color identity and anything that would generate mana of an illegal color generates colorless mana instead. Under this Rule, a WUBSen Triplets deck would only be able to tap a City of Brass for W, U, or B. If you attempted to tap it for R or G, the mana would turn colorless. Removal of this rule now allows that City of Brass to tap for any color of mana independent of your Commander's color identity.
Free Braids for the 99, that rule is stupid, too complicated to have banned as commander. This is Magic and not for everyone if they cannot understand ban lists. Prophet was strong but cannot say I totally agree. In game after game playing Prophet just made you enemy #1. Oh and it dies to removal:)
Huh. Actually, just looked at the rules, and there doesn't seem to be any rules at all regarding the inclusion of off-color basic lands. The lands themselves are colorless and their ability to tap for a certain colored mana is not on the card, but built in to their basic land type. Therefore, like Extort, the "T: add G to your mana pool" that may otherwise be there is reminder text and thus doesn't count toward color identity.
Does this mean people running colorless decks never actually needed a colorless basic land before now because they could put any basic land they wanted in their deck?
Does this mean we can now run any basic land we want in our decks and have them produce a color?
Huh. Actually, just looked at the rules, and there doesn't seem to be any rules at all regarding the inclusion of off-color basic lands. The lands themselves are colorless and their ability to tap for a certain colored mana is not on the card, but built in to their basic land type. Therefore, like Extort, the "T: add G to your mana pool" that may otherwise be there is reminder text and thus doesn't count toward color identity.
Does this mean people running colorless decks never actually needed a colorless basic land before now because they could put any basic land they wanted in their deck?
Does this mean we can now run any basic land we want in our decks and have them produce a color?
This is annoying, but the current rules are split up.
If you want the most current banlist, you need to go to mtgcommander. If you want the comprehensive rules, you need to go check out the comprehensive rules. The rules on the RC's official site (mtgcommander) are worded poorly and misleadingly.
In relevant part:
903.5d A card with a basic land type may be included in a Commander deck only if each color of mana it could produce is included in the commander’s color identity. #
Example: Wort, the Raidmother’s color identity is red and green. A Wort Commander deck may include land cards with the basic land types Mountain and/or Forest. It can’t include any land cards with the basic land types Plains, Island, or Swamp.
Huh. That is annoying. Should really be on the same site. Oh well. Just thought it was funny when I went to check the rules there. Obviously had to be some reason people weren't running off-color basics, but it was conspicuously missing.
It's so rare I have anything positive to say about a rules update. I mean, I could focus on what I think is missing in the update, but overall, I think it's better to be positive and appreciate what's there.
Sheldon and crew, today, you didn't #### up. All three of these changes are going to visibly improve the format. And I think the mulligan rules change is the most important one, it is definitely going to affect how people build and play. The Prophet ban is just the nice cherry on top.
Rule 4... it makes some things better, but not enough to run them if you weren't already.
The new mulligan rule is a very welcome thing.
All in all, good news.
Painter's Servant & Recurring Nightmare are both far better choices for unbanning than Braids, Cabal Minion, but she also is worthy of coming off the list (simply not first).
The fear is a turn two Braids locking down the game. The reality is that while this can happen, it is very fragile when enabled off of Ritual effects, only truly a problem when following Mana Crypt or Sol Ring (and to a much lesser extent Mana Vault), and I would easily place the blame on the first two. Further, while locking the game with Braids is very strong, she dies quite easily, and is no more powerful than other top tier Commanders, such as Zur the Enchanter, or decks like Hermit Druid. It is also very easy for a prepared multiplayer group to deal with Braids.
In a competitive setting, she is good, but not really a big deal. In a casual setting, it is very obvious the type of effect she has. She will not accidentally 'ruin' a game. The primary reason I believe she is banned is as an 'example banning' - ie 'don't play cards like this' - a tactic that simply does not work. I also distinctly remember a member of the rules committed (Papa Funk, I think) admitting as much, despite them still using this as a banning criteria.
A Dying Wish
To Rise Again
Chainer, Dementia Master
Muldrotha, the Gravetide
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice
Seedborn Muse is not nearly as dangerous as the Prophet, which is why it's been around for years and never even been seriously considered for a ban. Don't hold your breath waiting for one now. It's a very good card, but nowhere near banworthy.
As far as its cost, that's a good reason why I'd love to see the Muse reprinted in an upcoming Commander project.
Boy I can't wait for the casuals to get their hands on other good cards. Or do they then stop being casual and not your problem? Or they'll just be told to "house rule" it too aka "please stop talking because lalala you can't play with multiple groups"
And oh man I can't wait for you guys to learn about the REALLY broken cards like Sol Ring and Mana Cry.... oh you know about those? Not a problem? Ok..
<snip>
If someone WASN'T a Casual, they would find another card for the slot and move on. Do what you can with the tools you're given, don't whine about the one that just broke.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
1. Prophet ban, I didn't think it was broken but in groups on the more causal side of the game probably not even on this forum to complain about it, it was extremely centralising. kill it or lose. Seedborn requires you have instant speed cards prophet made your creatures instants and got pretty close to giving creature heavy decks extra turns. played well such deck could even avoid overextending whille having overwhelming value. There are other broken cards that are legal but most aren't as accessible for more causal players. I will see what I can replace it with, it was powerful in my deck but I may want seedborn muse or even Murkfiend Liege more since it was dangerous for my to let my opponents clone it when I was mostly using it to abuse Azami, lady of scrolls.
2. Mana rules change. Now stealing creatures with off colour activated abilities doesn't feel so bad. Celestial dawn doesn't just kill people. Converge cards can be played. It is probably a little flavour breaking but it makes the game work better. The mana restrictions were cumbersome.
3. Normal mulligans. This is throwing a bone to the more powerful play groups, the implementation of the scry rule into magic made mulliganing not quite as punishing. paving the way for this. Partial mulligans was leading to too much hand sculpting and too many sol rings eary in the game. The more powerful out decks got the more this seemed like something we would want to do on our own. I and many others may want to make some hard cuts to add more lands to some of our decks. Perhaps some additional redunancy if that is what you want.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
PoK I never saw as a problem in my group, but clearly the outcry is real - sad she's gone.
VERY happy that parital paris is no longer a thing. Mulitplayer mulligan is welcome.
You're missing out on all the absolutely busted combos you can do with getting a free Flowstone Embrace, Second Wind, Witch's Mist, and Snow Mercy every turn.
I agree with banning Prophet, but not Seedborn. To get the same effect with Seedborn, you would have to combine it with yet another card, which makes it inherently more vulnerable to removal, and inherently more police-able by casual groups. Prophet, as a 2 in 1 package of awesome, let people abuse it much easier than seedborn can be abused. Put another way, Seedborn muse gives you a ton of mana, but not necessarily an outlet for that mana. Prophet both gives you the mana, and opens the floodgates, allowing you several extra turns to play creatures.
As good of an update as this was, I'm annoyed that there weren't any unbans. Many excellent cases have been made in this thread for the unbanning of numerous cards. At least having a trial period for things like Painter's Servant would have been good. Experimenting with cards would go a long way I think towards legitimizing the banlist more. It certainly helped when the RC showed they were willing to change their minds on Kokusho. Without even experimenting on unbans, the banlist seems stagnant, and seems to be too large. It's all well and good to say you considered unbanning some cards, but I don't think that's enough. Consider the great amount of evidence that the RC offers whenever they put a card on the list. They talk about casual groups as if they've experienced themselves, and they've taken into account the experiences of others. With prophet, it seems like they listened to a lot of complaints, and took action.
That's good. Complaints are evidence that something was wrong with the format, and when you have a lot of evidence, that justifies action. I think a similar standard should be used for maintaining a card's banned status: Rather than simply conversing about cards on the list and deciding with little fanfare that everything on the list belongs, I'd like to see the RC actively experimenting with a card or two per banlist period, perhaps with a short term provisional unbanning until the next update. The only exceptions to this desire of mine are cards banned from vintage play: manual dexterity cards, and ante cards, since those all have fundamental and completely obvious problems.
EDH is a living format. And I think experimentation both ways (unbanning/banning) is the best way to move forward to the ideal banlist.
I'll get off my soapbox now, and back to the review:
The rule changes are great. I always thought that rule 4 brought with it some flavor fails (such as Sen Triplets being unable to mind control their opponents 100% effectively without assistance). Flavor wise then, I'd call it a flavor wash. It was both good and bad, and in the absence of a decisive ruling flavorfully, the cleaner of the two rule options should be adopted.
The mulligan rule helps to address a lot of competitive and casual concerns with the format. It's a win/win for both groups.
All in all, 9/10 banlist update (for a 10/10 banlist update, Sheldon could you unban Painter's Servant?). The RC did much better with their format than Wizards did with Modern this week.
Mana you tap for a color no longer becomes colorless if outside the Color Identity of the Commander.
Rule 4 was a restriction that prevented players from generating mana outside of their color identity; converting it to colorless instead. With it gone, players can now use cards like City of Brass to generate off-color mana, but does not change the color identity restrictions of your Commander (so no Obelisk of Alara in your tri-color decks, and no Forests in you UBR deck). By and large this is a minor mechanical change that will have two minor, but welcome, impacts:
1) You won't have a free out towards creating colorless mana; making the new eldrazi cards no easier to cast than they would be in other formats.
2) Cards that allow you to control/cast an opponent's creatures/spells will have a bit more freedom than before so long as they're running cards like City of Brass and Darksteel Ingot.
RRR - Bosh's School of Hard(cover) Knocks
So, you're saying that any random deck without alteration is prepared to use untapped lands on each players turn, but you need to do something special in deck construction to get value out of "draw 40 cards"? I appreciate the dislike of Prophet of Kruphix, but that to Bargain is a silly comparison. One can take over the game, the other pretty much ends it.
No, you cannot. All cards in your deck must conform to the rules for Color Identity per Rule 3.
The old Rule 4 was in regards to mana generation that stated basically that a deck may not generate mana outside its Commander's color identity and anything that would generate mana of an illegal color generates colorless mana instead. Under this Rule, a WUB Sen Triplets deck would only be able to tap a City of Brass for W, U, or B. If you attempted to tap it for R or G, the mana would turn colorless. Removal of this rule now allows that City of Brass to tap for any color of mana independent of your Commander's color identity.
The complete Commander Rules can be found here.
Does this mean people running colorless decks never actually needed a colorless basic land before now because they could put any basic land they wanted in their deck?
Does this mean we can now run any basic land we want in our decks and have them produce a color?
This is annoying, but the current rules are split up.
If you want the most current banlist, you need to go to mtgcommander. If you want the comprehensive rules, you need to go check out the comprehensive rules. The rules on the RC's official site (mtgcommander) are worded poorly and misleadingly.
In relevant part:
Sheldon and crew, today, you didn't #### up. All three of these changes are going to visibly improve the format. And I think the mulligan rules change is the most important one, it is definitely going to affect how people build and play. The Prophet ban is just the nice cherry on top.