>Cast PH, Find Viscera Seer, Saffi Eriksdotter
>Sac Saffi, Target PH, Sac PH to VS
>PH comes back, Find Reveillark, Sac Rev to get back Saffi
>Sac Saffi, Target PH, Sac PH to VS
>PH comes back, Find Karmic Guide, Bring Back Rev with Guide
>Board state is now PH - Rev - Guide - VS
>Sac Guide, then Rev, Bring back Guide and Saffi with Rev and then Rev with Guide
>Sac Saffi, Targeting PH, Sac PH Find Gray Merchant or Blood Artist
>Board State is now PH - Gary - Guide - Rev - VS
>Sac Guide and Gary, Sac Rev recur Guide and Gary, Guide brings back Rev
>Continue loops until opponents no long have a life total.
Protean Hulk has to die to start finding stuff. So your first step is wrong. What are you using to get it to die on an empty board? If you already have a Sac Outlet, you don't need to find Viscera Seer.
I personally am fine with it staying banned, but I just wanted to make sure that everyone understands the way Protean Hulk finds the combo pieces. It is not an Enter the Battlefield trigger or a Cast trigger.
My post laying out how PH can win out of nowhere seems to have disappeared but trust me it can. It just needs Viscera Seer, Saffi Eriksdotter, Reveillark, Karmic Guide, and a kill condition below 6 cmc like Blood Artist or Gary.
You can currently get the same effect with Boonweaver Giant as long as Pattern of Rebirth is somewhere in your deck. Although in both cases, you do need a way to kill the creature that first time.
Sheldon's philosophy is diametrically opposed to that of the competitive Pokemon video game community and I can't help but wonder if there's a substantial amount of overlap between the people who play that and the people who are currently complaining. The over-regulation of the banned list there is what makes it really unappealing to me because what wins in March gets banned in April.
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I still really, really don't see Hulk getting reanimated much with the insane fat played in groups I've been in. Unless you're going to combo with it, there's much better value. It's not as good as praetors, primordials, titans, fof sphinx, demonic demon, or any number of other targets.
Oh, as far as turn 1 Sol Ring, I saw it into turn 2 Urza's Incubator naming Giants in Kalemne yesterday. They both stuck the whole game and it lasted 1.5 hours. Kalemne did eventually win the game, though, so I guess it's technically another point in the column for turn 1 Sol Ring player won the game. It wasn't really the ramp that did it, though. Kalemne eventually got huge and gained lifelink, trample, shroud, haste, and unblockable.
I still really, really don't see Hulk getting reanimated much with the insane fat played in groups I've been in. Unless you're going to combo with it, there's much better value. It's not as good as praetors, primordials, titans, fof sphinx, demonic demon, or any number of other targets.
Oh, as far as turn 1 Sol Ring, I saw it into turn 2 Urza's Incubator naming Giants in Kalemne yesterday. They both stuck the whole game and it lasted 1.5 hours. Kalemne did eventually win the game, though, so I guess it's technically another point in the column for turn 1 Sol Ring player won the game. It wasn't really the ramp that did it, though. Kalemne eventually got huge and gained lifelink, trample, shroud, haste, and unblockable.
If the game lasted 1.5 hours, then turn 1 Sol Ring was definitely not a problem.
If the game lasted 1.5 hours, then turn 1 Sol Ring was definitely not a problem.
But the player won the game and had a turn one Sol Ring. THEY'RE LINKED!!!!
In seriousness though, is Mana Crypt at all linked to the fate of Sol Ring, or is there a (realistic) non-zero chance of it being your sacrificial "overkill mana rocks are bad" card on the list? With it getting a slight boost in numbers soon, the format is very likely going to see more decks containing both.
If the game lasted 1.5 hours, then turn 1 Sol Ring was definitely not a problem.
But the player won the game and had a turn one Sol Ring. THEY'RE LINKED!!!!
In seriousness though, is Mana Crypt at all linked to the fate of Sol Ring, or is there a (realistic) non-zero chance of it being your sacrificial "overkill mana rocks are bad" card on the list? With it getting a slight boost in numbers soon, the format is very likely going to see more decks containing both.
I'd venture a guess that in the kind of games the RC wants to encourage, Mana Crypt is pretty much just a fun, coin-flippy mana rock that has just as much of a chance to kill you as it does to help you win. I had one in my Beast tribal deck for a while and it I lost to it on several occasions. Fun times.
EDH/Commander is a social format, right? So why don't people use their social skills to discuss what they like and don't like, instead of adopting a list with 60+ banned cards?
I'd venture a guess that in the kind of games the RC wants to encourage, Mana Crypt is pretty much just a fun, coin-flippy mana rock that has just as much of a chance to kill you as it does to help you win. I had one in my Beast tribal deck for a while and it I lost to it on several occasions. Fun times.
Disagree. There is some very convincing argument that regardless of deck tiers a turn one Sol ring is a huge power swing (and there has been plenty of math to back up the likelihood of at least one player getting one in their opening hand). Up until now Mana Crypt has been much pricier and difficult to obtain. Sure it's going to be a mythic and the supply won't drastically increase nor the price drastically decrease, but it will happen to a degree.
The Rules Committee has said that Sol Ring is the type of card the format likes, but do they want TWO of them constantly showing up? If I read his article correctly, Sheldon even implied that Sol Ring is sort of borderline and tolerated (sorry not trying to put words in your mouth).
Yeah, Sol Ring is borderline for sure. The numbers of Mana Crypts coming into the format will as far as I can at the moment be statistically negligible. Like with anything, if it becomes a problem we'll address it, but I'm not pre-panicking.
Yeah, Sol Ring is borderline for sure. The numbers of Mana Crypts coming into the format will as far as I can at the moment be statistically negligible. Like with anything, if it becomes a problem we'll address it, but I'm not pre-panicking.
I'm not panicking yet either, but I would wager that of the ones that don't sit i n trade binders, more will end up in Commander decks than Vintage ones.
If the game lasted 1.5 hours, then turn 1 Sol Ring was definitely not a problem.
There's not nearly enough information given to make this call. Players change their behavior based on the situation, and somebody could have been forced by this line of play to sit on their hands waiting to counter a scary 6 mana giant instead of establishing a board presence.
Or they could have spent an hour in the middle of the game flipping coins for a Frenetic Efreet for fun and it was only actually a 6 turn game.
You've gotta think of all the possibilities.
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Yeah, Sol Ring is borderline for sure. The numbers of Mana Crypts coming into the format will as far as I can at the moment be statistically negligible. Like with anything, if it becomes a problem we'll address it, but I'm not pre-panicking.
But this is the best kind of panic, its purest expression.
EDH/Commander is a social format, right? So why don't people use their social skills to discuss what they like and don't like, instead of adopting a list with 60+ banned cards?
Yeah, Sol Ring is borderline for sure. The numbers of Mana Crypts coming into the format will as far as I can at the moment be statistically negligible. Like with anything, if it becomes a problem we'll address it, but I'm not pre-panicking.
I'm not panicking yet either, but I would wager that of the ones that don't sit i n trade binders, more will end up in Commander decks than Vintage ones.
The vintage playerbase is measured in dozens.
I'd say 99% of newly printed mana crypts are going into commander decks.
Hoping to chime in here as an r/competitiveEDH player. I'm the guy who wrote the giant "Why EDH and CEDH are under the Same Roof" post the other day on reddit, so I've been stuck in the middle of this whole thing for literally the last 48 hours because I'm a big dumb weebus with no sleep schedule. But just crashed for 13 hours, feel recharged enough to keep going.
First thing, Sheldon, I really liked your Star City Games post the other day, totally agreed with most of your points. I also think you're right, that "competitive" is a really loaded word, and it can mean everything from "this guy is stronger than other decks in our meta" to "this is one of the strongest decks you can play" to "this isn't even a deck or player, but specifically is referring to a sanctioned tournament." And I think it raises an interesting question about the place of winning in EDH. I mentioned this a while ago, but I think what people view as "competitive" tends to be defined by how much of three different categories a player/deck has: how much you're trying to win, how tuned your deck is, and how much raw power it packs. But neither of these are anathema to EDH, not even intent to win. Like, intent to win has to be present in every deck and payer, just like raw power and some amount of tuning. No tuning means mana flood or mana screw every game, or being unable to cast any spells or being two steps behind everyone else. No raw power means no interesting, flashy plays, and just ends up being boring. No one ever got into EDH to watch vanilla 1/1s and 2/2s trade with each other for an hour.
And the same goes for intent to win. I played less "competitively" and more "casually," as much as you can cleanly define those words, for a really long time, and even the whackiest, most outlandish game can drag if it goes on too long. At some point the game does have to end, or it just becomes a chore to keep playing after the second hour has passed.
Wanting to play the game with the highest possible amount of intention to win doesn't conflict with what makes commander commander, even according to the Rules Committee, because a more competitive-minded player will want to play with other more competitive-minded players. On an even battlefield, this will often mean a long, drawn out game, with all the back-and-forth, power-swinging, unusual interactions that define commander. This keeping in mind that a game that's over by turn 5 doesn't mean the game only lasted 15 minutes. If people are on the same level of power, packed into each of those turns is plenty of interaction, spellslinging and fist-throwing from every player, and 5-6 turns can take as long as an hour, maybe more, in my experience. And even a shorter game will still involve tight, explosive, back-and-forth exchanges, and it definitely doesn't mean anyone is left out.
The main point I want to make is that "variable, interactive, and epic multiplayer games" are built into the format, mechanically. Even if you go into a game of EDH with a higher intent to win, the reason a player does so in EDH is because they specifically love this format, not vintage or tiny leaders or modern, but EDH, and its inherent variability and versatile. One of the big parts of this is that gaps in power level between decks become much smaller in actual games, and its easier for different decks to sit down together. Just look at the decks that could be considered viable in competitive-level games. Alesha, Rasputin, Tasigur, Brago, Karona, Zur, Animar, Maelstrom Wanderer, Jarad, Omnath, Meren, Derevi, Teferi, Sharuum, Ghave, Gitrog, Edric, Seton, Sidisi, Prossh, Selvala, Grenzo, I can list maybe a drop in an enormous ocean. The format is inherently unsolvable and insanely wide-reaching. Even decks that go all in with tutors won't play the same games multiple times in a row, since not only do they have to deal with a singleton format, but they also have to deal with three players-worth of interaction in a format that encourages interaction, especially at higher levels of competitiveness.
I think intent to win, even an extremely high intent to win, still has a place in EDH, because it's not the same as playing for the sake of winning. If you're playing with a high intent to win you're still playing for the sake of a fun game that results from people with high competitiveness all being in the same EDH pod.
That's also one of the reasons I'm a huge Sol Ring/Mana Crypt proponent. Powerful decks running Ring or Crypt will still be powerful, but they give jankier and more unconventional decks an extra leg to stand on, and they get much more of a boost than the already-strong decks do. It increases the diversity of the format and in games. Like, one player having an explosive opening may be daunting, but power swings are a part of the format, and it certainly doesn't mean you've won the game already. Literally the last game I played opened with T1 Sol Ring, T2 show and Tell into Omniscience, and the game still took about 45 minutes to get through, the Omniscience player not even managing to take the win. I think the inherent target a player too far ahead paints on themselves in a format that encourages lots of interaction, removal, and counterspells is enough of a balancer for Ring and Crypt.
Forgive my absence from the thread, but here are my not-so-brief thoughts on this week’s earlier brouhaha:
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the RC’s comments on Commander, and Sheldon specifically for making his thoughts known here, and on SCG. I think overall that does the format good. However, sometimes I wonder how much commentary is based on the actual point of improving player experience in Commander, and how much is based simply on the rhetorical exercise of defending this list. I can’t take this pivot from excluding “competitive” players to “tournament” players instead as anything but that.
To recap, the context was that Sheldon quoted another poster, who’d said that the RC would prefer if Spikier players never entered the format, originally in response to a comment that said the ban list did not suit very well all of the players coming into Commander. Then came Sheldon’s “100% agreement with that, no apologies” line. Then further on down the line with a different poster, in a totally unrelated line of discussion, Sheldon responded to the direct question of tournament pods, saying that he would do away with them if they weren’t such good revenue for SCG and the game. Then one day later, Sheldon backtracked that he should have been referring to “tournament” players rather than “competitive” players, because we all want to compete on some level, since “after all, this is a game”.
But no big deal, we all say things we don’t mean, right?
Except, this sidestep makes no sense in the first place. Nobody was ever actually discussing tournaments. We know that tournaments will not be the cardinal venue for Commander. And to my recollection, no one is in here arguing that “Sol Ring or such and such got 100% representation in all of the top decks at this season’s cEDH tournament, plz ban.” Nobody is saying, “OMG, Jeleva Storm is getting a super sick win rates at tournaments, aren’t you guys going to do something about that deck?” No one concerned with tournament play cares much about the quality of the card pool, or ever did. I don’t want to put words in the mouths of the actual tournament holding crowd, so I’m happy that a few cEDH players have posted affirming what their limited interest in the ban list is. They want an equal playing field, a universal list, and they don’t care all that much after that point what cards are off/on the list. The game could allow (and does) all the Vintage fast mana and busted enablers, and it’s fine for them as long as everyone has equal access and the rules are public. That makes sense to me. After all, people play rock-paper-scissors in tournaments, and complaining that scissors is unfun to play against as paper makes you, in the words of Sirlin, a “scrub”. The actual quality of the card pool is of zero relevance to this segment, because by their own statements, they will be there competing no matter their fun level.
Now, let me explain the group that’s actually being affected by the quality of this card pool. It’s the very appreciable segment of the player base that does not want improvement as a player to come at the expense of fun or their sociability in their group. This player segment has concerns in each bolded area. In fact if you think about it, the only parties who have ever been concerned about game balance, fun and sociability for tournaments in any format of Magic have been branches of WOTC (competitions committee, DCI, design). They’re interested in holding out the tournament scene as a valid point of aspiration for the player base at large, since it relates to the game’s level of engagement, supplementing the factor of fun, and they sell more product. They know that most players don’t participate in tournaments where cash is on the line, never will, and that players themselves have varying degrees of acceptance of that reality. But to nearly all players, the existence of a tournament scene that is perceived as fair and skill-rewarding does give some continuity to lifelong experience with a game. This segment explains the vast following of Twitch, the consumption of games through passive observation, and so on. Players feel that if they get really good, they might try a tournament one day. In the meantime though, they continue to venerate levels of higher competition, improve their play wherever improvement can be achieved, and arrive at the end of the day at a table of friends and have a fun time playing. The game developers understand that this segment will continue to play as long as the game is fun, but they nevertheless define their continuing experience with the game in terms of their improvement.
Following that, it’s astute for us to have agreed now that the competitive-casual distinction is a spectrum, not a binary. To add clarity to that, the fact is evident to me that nearly all players find themselves in the demographic above, with virtually no one on either pole of the spectrum. One the one end, you have to actively disavow any improvement in this game, in most cases forgetting what you know about certain cards and what they do, so as to safeguard your fun. And on the other end, you have to hold the idea of fun as completely arbitrary, basically ascribing to the play to win philosophy, where you’re not even asking yourself whether you’re having fun. And not only do nearly all players find themselves between those two poles, the extreme stance in either direction means that you don’t care at all about the ban list. Those on one extreme self-regulate to achieve the most fun, and those on the other continue to compete no matter how lacking in fun the competition is. So, the implementation of a ban list and other rules has never been to service the needs of either of these borderline fictitious groups. It’s to serve the actual players who are playing the game for all of the reasons people play games, not just one.
TL;DR Version – Scarcity guarantees competition, not the ban list. Game design guarantees fun, not the ban list. What ban lists have always and ought to always do is ensure that one of these things never comes at the expense of the other.
That’s why people were so up in arms at Sheldon’s comment. Everyone knows and intuitively grasps the above idea of what a ban list does, but saying that one of the above ingredients is going to be neglected is basically saying that the ban list will never achieve its implicit purpose, at all. That instead, it's going to serve as a pitfall to ensure that the competition ingredient can never predominate. Not to mention that it alienated anyone who is actively engaged in any process of improving their play of this game, which is to say nearly everybody.
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 still really, really don't see Hulk getting reanimated much with the insane fat played in groups I've been in. Unless you're going to combo with it, there's much better value. It's not as good as praetors, primordials, titans, fof sphinx, demonic demon, or any number of other targets.
Oh, as far as turn 1 Sol Ring, I saw it into turn 2 Urza's Incubator naming Giants in Kalemne yesterday. They both stuck the whole game and it lasted 1.5 hours. Kalemne did eventually win the game, though, so I guess it's technically another point in the column for turn 1 Sol Ring player won the game. It wasn't really the ramp that did it, though. Kalemne eventually got huge and gained lifelink, trample, shroud, haste, and unblockable.
If the game lasted 1.5 hours, then turn 1 Sol Ring was definitely not a problem.
That's a typical turn 1 Sol Ring where I play. I've even seen the actual turn 2 Explosive Vegetation play multiple times and it hasn't really changed the outcome of the game. Typical commander decks aren't built to hit the gas super fast. They're designed to durdle along for hours. Of course, I've had a Mana Crypt for as long as I've played Commander and never even bothered to put it in a deck. I am liking Black Lotus, though. Ancestral Recall is also pretty fun and Library is about as sucky as I figured it would be. Recall in Khao, Minamo Historian even lets it do an Arcanis impression for a turn. I can report that so far, super pretty proxies haven't hurt my meta at all, although it has led to a lot more copies of high dollar, irreplacable cards. That isn't any different than my 9 copies of Worldspine Wurm, though. There just aren't any good green creatures anywhere near that size. If you looked at only my decks, you'd assume it, Army of the Damned, Crush of Wurms, Conflux, Colossus of Akros, Spelltwine, and a few other cards were mega staples. There just isn't really anything you can replace them with that's similar. It's not like Wrath of God, Counterspell, Vindicate, or something where you can play a card with a different perk you might like better in the deck. It probably shouldn't be a standard rule, though, because more competitive people would abuse it just like free mulligans or Rampant Growths for mana screwed players.
I actually had a play like one of the Sol Ring mentions last night. I played that UB Windfall and used Black Lotus to cast Living Lore exiling Scour from Existance to try and stop a gigantic Animar in the game with the Kalemne deck that got turn 1 Sol Ring. Otherwise, Animar probably would have won the game instead.
I'm honestly more concerned about the number of new Winter Orbs entering the format, but ymmv.
It has been printed 3 times after Unlimited and costs 3 bucks. If people wanted to play it, they do.
Maybe in a meta where people go online and buy singles for their decks. Nobody has opened a Winter Orb since the 90s. I guarantee you casual players opening Winter Orb and jamming it into their decks will cause way more grief than randomly sticking a Mana Crypt into their deck.
BTW Eternal Masters Mana Crypt is sitting at $130 currently. I don't think you need to worry about an epidemic.
EDH/Commander is a social format, right? So why don't people use their social skills to discuss what they like and don't like, instead of adopting a list with 60+ banned cards?
That's a typical turn 1 Sol Ring where I play. I've even seen the actual turn 2 Explosive Vegetation play multiple times and it hasn't really changed the outcome of the game. Typical commander decks aren't built to hit the gas super fast. They're designed to durdle along for hours.
I think that is a point in favor of what Sheldon said in his article today. If one of their metrics for what entails a "good" game is lasting many turns, then when even a turn 1 Sol Ring making that 7cmc spell on turn 3 (like has been touted) still has the end result of a long game, then Sol Ring isn't causing a problem.
Maybe in a meta where people go online and buy singles for their decks. Nobody has opened a Winter Orb since the 90s. I guarantee you casual players opening Winter Orb and jamming it into their decks will cause way more grief than randomly sticking a Mana Crypt into their deck.
BTW Eternal Masters Mana Crypt is sitting at $130 currently. I don't think you need to worry about an epidemic.
Are casual players who don't online shop going to spend $10+ on a pack of cards at the same LGS in the hopes of getting a $3 card (which is probably on sale as a single at that same LGS)? Winter Orb is a card that you know full well what you intend to do when you use it. Casual players like you describe are the ones who would look at Winter Orb and wonder who would play a card with such a horrible downside, but freak out with excitement at a Mana Crypt.
I'd be happy to see that. We know so much about Sheldon and so little about the rest of you.
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Protean Hulk has to die to start finding stuff. So your first step is wrong. What are you using to get it to die on an empty board? If you already have a Sac Outlet, you don't need to find Viscera Seer.
I personally am fine with it staying banned, but I just wanted to make sure that everyone understands the way Protean Hulk finds the combo pieces. It is not an Enter the Battlefield trigger or a Cast trigger.
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You can currently get the same effect with Boonweaver Giant as long as Pattern of Rebirth is somewhere in your deck. Although in both cases, you do need a way to kill the creature that first time.
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Oh, as far as turn 1 Sol Ring, I saw it into turn 2 Urza's Incubator naming Giants in Kalemne yesterday. They both stuck the whole game and it lasted 1.5 hours. Kalemne did eventually win the game, though, so I guess it's technically another point in the column for turn 1 Sol Ring player won the game. It wasn't really the ramp that did it, though. Kalemne eventually got huge and gained lifelink, trample, shroud, haste, and unblockable.
If the game lasted 1.5 hours, then turn 1 Sol Ring was definitely not a problem.
But the player won the game and had a turn one Sol Ring. THEY'RE LINKED!!!!
In seriousness though, is Mana Crypt at all linked to the fate of Sol Ring, or is there a (realistic) non-zero chance of it being your sacrificial "overkill mana rocks are bad" card on the list? With it getting a slight boost in numbers soon, the format is very likely going to see more decks containing both.
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I'd venture a guess that in the kind of games the RC wants to encourage, Mana Crypt is pretty much just a fun, coin-flippy mana rock that has just as much of a chance to kill you as it does to help you win. I had one in my Beast tribal deck for a while and it I lost to it on several occasions. Fun times.
Disagree. There is some very convincing argument that regardless of deck tiers a turn one Sol ring is a huge power swing (and there has been plenty of math to back up the likelihood of at least one player getting one in their opening hand). Up until now Mana Crypt has been much pricier and difficult to obtain. Sure it's going to be a mythic and the supply won't drastically increase nor the price drastically decrease, but it will happen to a degree.
The Rules Committee has said that Sol Ring is the type of card the format likes, but do they want TWO of them constantly showing up? If I read his article correctly, Sheldon even implied that Sol Ring is sort of borderline and tolerated (sorry not trying to put words in your mouth).
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I'm not panicking yet either, but I would wager that of the ones that don't sit i n trade binders, more will end up in Commander decks than Vintage ones.
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There's not nearly enough information given to make this call. Players change their behavior based on the situation, and somebody could have been forced by this line of play to sit on their hands waiting to counter a scary 6 mana giant instead of establishing a board presence.
Or they could have spent an hour in the middle of the game flipping coins for a Frenetic Efreet for fun and it was only actually a 6 turn game.
You've gotta think of all the possibilities.
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The vintage playerbase is measured in dozens.
I'd say 99% of newly printed mana crypts are going into commander decks.
First thing, Sheldon, I really liked your Star City Games post the other day, totally agreed with most of your points. I also think you're right, that "competitive" is a really loaded word, and it can mean everything from "this guy is stronger than other decks in our meta" to "this is one of the strongest decks you can play" to "this isn't even a deck or player, but specifically is referring to a sanctioned tournament." And I think it raises an interesting question about the place of winning in EDH. I mentioned this a while ago, but I think what people view as "competitive" tends to be defined by how much of three different categories a player/deck has: how much you're trying to win, how tuned your deck is, and how much raw power it packs. But neither of these are anathema to EDH, not even intent to win. Like, intent to win has to be present in every deck and payer, just like raw power and some amount of tuning. No tuning means mana flood or mana screw every game, or being unable to cast any spells or being two steps behind everyone else. No raw power means no interesting, flashy plays, and just ends up being boring. No one ever got into EDH to watch vanilla 1/1s and 2/2s trade with each other for an hour.
And the same goes for intent to win. I played less "competitively" and more "casually," as much as you can cleanly define those words, for a really long time, and even the whackiest, most outlandish game can drag if it goes on too long. At some point the game does have to end, or it just becomes a chore to keep playing after the second hour has passed.
Wanting to play the game with the highest possible amount of intention to win doesn't conflict with what makes commander commander, even according to the Rules Committee, because a more competitive-minded player will want to play with other more competitive-minded players. On an even battlefield, this will often mean a long, drawn out game, with all the back-and-forth, power-swinging, unusual interactions that define commander. This keeping in mind that a game that's over by turn 5 doesn't mean the game only lasted 15 minutes. If people are on the same level of power, packed into each of those turns is plenty of interaction, spellslinging and fist-throwing from every player, and 5-6 turns can take as long as an hour, maybe more, in my experience. And even a shorter game will still involve tight, explosive, back-and-forth exchanges, and it definitely doesn't mean anyone is left out.
The main point I want to make is that "variable, interactive, and epic multiplayer games" are built into the format, mechanically. Even if you go into a game of EDH with a higher intent to win, the reason a player does so in EDH is because they specifically love this format, not vintage or tiny leaders or modern, but EDH, and its inherent variability and versatile. One of the big parts of this is that gaps in power level between decks become much smaller in actual games, and its easier for different decks to sit down together. Just look at the decks that could be considered viable in competitive-level games. Alesha, Rasputin, Tasigur, Brago, Karona, Zur, Animar, Maelstrom Wanderer, Jarad, Omnath, Meren, Derevi, Teferi, Sharuum, Ghave, Gitrog, Edric, Seton, Sidisi, Prossh, Selvala, Grenzo, I can list maybe a drop in an enormous ocean. The format is inherently unsolvable and insanely wide-reaching. Even decks that go all in with tutors won't play the same games multiple times in a row, since not only do they have to deal with a singleton format, but they also have to deal with three players-worth of interaction in a format that encourages interaction, especially at higher levels of competitiveness.
I think intent to win, even an extremely high intent to win, still has a place in EDH, because it's not the same as playing for the sake of winning. If you're playing with a high intent to win you're still playing for the sake of a fun game that results from people with high competitiveness all being in the same EDH pod.
That's also one of the reasons I'm a huge Sol Ring/Mana Crypt proponent. Powerful decks running Ring or Crypt will still be powerful, but they give jankier and more unconventional decks an extra leg to stand on, and they get much more of a boost than the already-strong decks do. It increases the diversity of the format and in games. Like, one player having an explosive opening may be daunting, but power swings are a part of the format, and it certainly doesn't mean you've won the game already. Literally the last game I played opened with T1 Sol Ring, T2 show and Tell into Omniscience, and the game still took about 45 minutes to get through, the Omniscience player not even managing to take the win. I think the inherent target a player too far ahead paints on themselves in a format that encourages lots of interaction, removal, and counterspells is enough of a balancer for Ring and Crypt.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the RC’s comments on Commander, and Sheldon specifically for making his thoughts known here, and on SCG. I think overall that does the format good. However, sometimes I wonder how much commentary is based on the actual point of improving player experience in Commander, and how much is based simply on the rhetorical exercise of defending this list. I can’t take this pivot from excluding “competitive” players to “tournament” players instead as anything but that.
To recap, the context was that Sheldon quoted another poster, who’d said that the RC would prefer if Spikier players never entered the format, originally in response to a comment that said the ban list did not suit very well all of the players coming into Commander. Then came Sheldon’s “100% agreement with that, no apologies” line. Then further on down the line with a different poster, in a totally unrelated line of discussion, Sheldon responded to the direct question of tournament pods, saying that he would do away with them if they weren’t such good revenue for SCG and the game. Then one day later, Sheldon backtracked that he should have been referring to “tournament” players rather than “competitive” players, because we all want to compete on some level, since “after all, this is a game”.
But no big deal, we all say things we don’t mean, right?
Except, this sidestep makes no sense in the first place. Nobody was ever actually discussing tournaments. We know that tournaments will not be the cardinal venue for Commander. And to my recollection, no one is in here arguing that “Sol Ring or such and such got 100% representation in all of the top decks at this season’s cEDH tournament, plz ban.” Nobody is saying, “OMG, Jeleva Storm is getting a super sick win rates at tournaments, aren’t you guys going to do something about that deck?” No one concerned with tournament play cares much about the quality of the card pool, or ever did. I don’t want to put words in the mouths of the actual tournament holding crowd, so I’m happy that a few cEDH players have posted affirming what their limited interest in the ban list is. They want an equal playing field, a universal list, and they don’t care all that much after that point what cards are off/on the list. The game could allow (and does) all the Vintage fast mana and busted enablers, and it’s fine for them as long as everyone has equal access and the rules are public. That makes sense to me. After all, people play rock-paper-scissors in tournaments, and complaining that scissors is unfun to play against as paper makes you, in the words of Sirlin, a “scrub”. The actual quality of the card pool is of zero relevance to this segment, because by their own statements, they will be there competing no matter their fun level.
Now, let me explain the group that’s actually being affected by the quality of this card pool. It’s the very appreciable segment of the player base that does not want improvement as a player to come at the expense of fun or their sociability in their group. This player segment has concerns in each bolded area. In fact if you think about it, the only parties who have ever been concerned about game balance, fun and sociability for tournaments in any format of Magic have been branches of WOTC (competitions committee, DCI, design). They’re interested in holding out the tournament scene as a valid point of aspiration for the player base at large, since it relates to the game’s level of engagement, supplementing the factor of fun, and they sell more product. They know that most players don’t participate in tournaments where cash is on the line, never will, and that players themselves have varying degrees of acceptance of that reality. But to nearly all players, the existence of a tournament scene that is perceived as fair and skill-rewarding does give some continuity to lifelong experience with a game. This segment explains the vast following of Twitch, the consumption of games through passive observation, and so on. Players feel that if they get really good, they might try a tournament one day. In the meantime though, they continue to venerate levels of higher competition, improve their play wherever improvement can be achieved, and arrive at the end of the day at a table of friends and have a fun time playing. The game developers understand that this segment will continue to play as long as the game is fun, but they nevertheless define their continuing experience with the game in terms of their improvement.
Following that, it’s astute for us to have agreed now that the competitive-casual distinction is a spectrum, not a binary. To add clarity to that, the fact is evident to me that nearly all players find themselves in the demographic above, with virtually no one on either pole of the spectrum. One the one end, you have to actively disavow any improvement in this game, in most cases forgetting what you know about certain cards and what they do, so as to safeguard your fun. And on the other end, you have to hold the idea of fun as completely arbitrary, basically ascribing to the play to win philosophy, where you’re not even asking yourself whether you’re having fun. And not only do nearly all players find themselves between those two poles, the extreme stance in either direction means that you don’t care at all about the ban list. Those on one extreme self-regulate to achieve the most fun, and those on the other continue to compete no matter how lacking in fun the competition is. So, the implementation of a ban list and other rules has never been to service the needs of either of these borderline fictitious groups. It’s to serve the actual players who are playing the game for all of the reasons people play games, not just one.
TL;DR Version – Scarcity guarantees competition, not the ban list. Game design guarantees fun, not the ban list. What ban lists have always and ought to always do is ensure that one of these things never comes at the expense of the other.
That’s why people were so up in arms at Sheldon’s comment. Everyone knows and intuitively grasps the above idea of what a ban list does, but saying that one of the above ingredients is going to be neglected is basically saying that the ban list will never achieve its implicit purpose, at all. That instead, it's going to serve as a pitfall to ensure that the competition ingredient can never predominate. Not to mention that it alienated anyone who is actively engaged in any process of improving their play of this game, which is to say nearly everybody.
I actually had a play like one of the Sol Ring mentions last night. I played that UB Windfall and used Black Lotus to cast Living Lore exiling Scour from Existance to try and stop a gigantic Animar in the game with the Kalemne deck that got turn 1 Sol Ring. Otherwise, Animar probably would have won the game instead.
Maybe in a meta where people go online and buy singles for their decks. Nobody has opened a Winter Orb since the 90s. I guarantee you casual players opening Winter Orb and jamming it into their decks will cause way more grief than randomly sticking a Mana Crypt into their deck.
BTW Eternal Masters Mana Crypt is sitting at $130 currently. I don't think you need to worry about an epidemic.
I think that is a point in favor of what Sheldon said in his article today. If one of their metrics for what entails a "good" game is lasting many turns, then when even a turn 1 Sol Ring making that 7cmc spell on turn 3 (like has been touted) still has the end result of a long game, then Sol Ring isn't causing a problem.
Are casual players who don't online shop going to spend $10+ on a pack of cards at the same LGS in the hopes of getting a $3 card (which is probably on sale as a single at that same LGS)? Winter Orb is a card that you know full well what you intend to do when you use it. Casual players like you describe are the ones who would look at Winter Orb and wonder who would play a card with such a horrible downside, but freak out with excitement at a Mana Crypt.
Misc. EDH Stuff: Commander Cube | Zombies (Horde)
Resources:Commander Rulings FAQ | Commander Deckbuilding Guide
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