You know, you’re right. I looked up the rules for tokens just before posting, where it said the token’s creator is its owner, but I didn’t look up the wording on a card that gave tokens to others, and those cards have the opponents create their tokens. Not sure what I was thinking.
The rules for ownership of a token changed recently from the controller of the token to the controller of the source of the token, so I was looking into cards like Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor, that give your opponents tokens - usually en masse.
If someone in WotC legal decided that commander jargon in the rules text bypasses the reserve list, that’s big. Vintage moxen commanderized? Any vintage staple you can think of with a variation of “your commander” in the rules text? Now we’re playing with power.
One of the biggest problems with making any sort of power scale is the concept of a decks "budget-ness" being considered.
Budget decks can be extremely powerful. A mildly degenerate commander piloting a deck full of less-than-$1 can be built optimally and can still stand against most non-budget casual decks. Also a non-budget $20k decks can be vanity casual projects.
It's a shame that this game has such an exploitable financial market associated with it. Many problems would vanish if some cards like mana crypt/mana drain/ancient tomb/etc were reprinted to death and cost nothing.
I'll vouch for budget =/= power. Back in 2014/2015 I had what amounted to a mono-black expensive deck. I don't know that it had a theme outside of a belief that expensive cards were better cards. The Abyss, Chains of Mephistopheles, etc - it covered all the bragging rights bases - as a generally staxy control deck, it barely won a game, ever. Truly, the deck was less than the sum of its parts.
A 1-10 scale inhabiting the 6-9 space of most people's current scales would be a good start. 10s are irrelevant - you don't need a number to validate your thoroughly validated cEDH top deck, and that's what 10s are in every list. You also don't need 5 tiers of not as good as a bad precon draft-chaff trash. The lowest tier should be the deck anyone can own for whatever a precon goes for these days. Willfully being worse than a canned 20-30 investment isn't worth anyone's time analyzing. So, there's a useful spread of power where most decks inhabit - the 6-9 range, and breaking that up so that everyone's not a 7 would be a good start.
We have such, and the results are an exercise in the practical differences in balancing for competition and balancing for fun. Your banned list would strive to set an equal playing field. Their banned list strives to baby-proof the house where baby Timmies are growing up. Keeping the tide pods on a high shelf won't stop an adult from having a bad day if one so chooses, but it'll stop a kid from thinking its candy. That's how the current banlist works - or my impression of it. They'll never make commander unbreakable, so they don't try. Think of the children.
The "combo players should play somewhere else" stance is definitely foolish coming from anyone against counterspells. You can't be both an advocate for interactivity, and of the position that if you cast a spell, you are 100% entitled to its effect/ETB. Imagine the confidence of looking at your hand and never having to worry about when to cast it, because you know that doing anything about it is wrong.
Not to derail further, but I like that both cEDH and Commander exist - oil and water - and the interplay between the two in the power levels where they can reasonably intermingle are some of the most interesting to me. Taking the ideas generated in cEDH and attempting to casualize it is a lot of fun to me - taking objectively uncompetitive strategies and commanders and attempting to dial them up to 11 with a cEDH mindset. Casual ideas built competitively. I don't know that I'd enjoy as much, the echo chamber that would develop without controversial outside viewpoints.
Every logical bone in my body agrees with your premise that casual Commander should be just fine with a social contract and house rules, and that the banned list need only pluck a handful of utterly format-breaking cards. That said, sometimes life isn't logical, and I think things are better the way they are now than they would be if I were running the show and deregulated the format into a wild west 100 card vintage with additional deck construction rules, with the caveat that players would have my permission to agree with their friends on other changes if they're playing Commander in their homes.
[quote from="BaronCappuccino »" url="/forums/the-game/commander-edh/818857-rules-committee-narrow-minded?comment=42"]Meanwhile the poor neglected cEDH crowd literally had to beg the RC to fix their own mistake and ban Flash after unleashing Protean Hulk into the meta for no discernible reason.
No more neglected than the poor casual Legacy or Modern player as WotC won't do anything about netdecking and forcing creativity at their events (absurd, of course and I'm not vouching for this because it's dumb). The player in your post was of course, entirely out of line, but we know, as evidenced by all the other formats, what happens when casual isn't heavily defended. Poor neglected cEDH swore that banning Flash would solve their problems with homogeneity, but rumor has it, now they're grumbling about partners. Homogeneity is as much an inevitability as the sun going red giant and swallowing everything through Mars. There's almost no room for compromise. The middle ground of 2010 between a casual deck and a tryhard deck and the middle ground of today are so far apart that you could likely fit the entire spectrum of 2010 in between the middle ground and each extreme. Without drawing a line in the sand, the results are inevitable.
One of the reasons Commander is successful, is because an influential force pushes back against the natural trend towards cEDH, and that force is the RC. Commander is unique because competition naturally breeds improvement, which trends towards a singular endpoint, and the RC have accumulated the gravitas to tell people willing to listen, "not here". I don't know that cEDH wouldn't be the norm if not for a relentless PR effort to the contrary. Casuals are a large voice in MtG, but they're a quiet voice. I feel like the RC is their megaphone. By "staying in 2010", the RC prevents the so called Overton Window from constantly redefining what casual is, as what competitive is consistently pushes ever forward.
I've stayed pretty loyal to Ultra Pro's Satin Tower. They hold all the cards I need, and, though I don't double-sleeve, I do try and supply the tokens for cards that donate such to my opponents, as well as my own, and they hold about 42 mini dice. It's really everything I need.
I love the salt coming from r/MTGfinance for example
"I think PE should be banned, that being said, I don't think Sheldon should be the final say on bans anymore but I also think the ban list should be binding and not a suggestion.
I don't know what the right answer is but it def feels bad having a singular PLAYER be able to cut or add millions of dollars from/to magic collections world wide with a tweet."
As far as I know, that's not even how it works. I'm under the impression the RC is more democratic. I'm sure Sheldon's opinion carries a whole lot more, maybe the most, gravitas behind it, but that only goes so far. The idea of King Menery and his Court of Merry Men dictating bans from a single mind doesn't really add up to the impressions the RC gives at each B/R update.
I'll vouch for budget =/= power. Back in 2014/2015 I had what amounted to a mono-black expensive deck. I don't know that it had a theme outside of a belief that expensive cards were better cards. The Abyss, Chains of Mephistopheles, etc - it covered all the bragging rights bases - as a generally staxy control deck, it barely won a game, ever. Truly, the deck was less than the sum of its parts.
No more neglected than the poor casual Legacy or Modern player as WotC won't do anything about netdecking and forcing creativity at their events (absurd, of course and I'm not vouching for this because it's dumb). The player in your post was of course, entirely out of line, but we know, as evidenced by all the other formats, what happens when casual isn't heavily defended. Poor neglected cEDH swore that banning Flash would solve their problems with homogeneity, but rumor has it, now they're grumbling about partners. Homogeneity is as much an inevitability as the sun going red giant and swallowing everything through Mars. There's almost no room for compromise. The middle ground of 2010 between a casual deck and a tryhard deck and the middle ground of today are so far apart that you could likely fit the entire spectrum of 2010 in between the middle ground and each extreme. Without drawing a line in the sand, the results are inevitable.
As far as I know, that's not even how it works. I'm under the impression the RC is more democratic. I'm sure Sheldon's opinion carries a whole lot more, maybe the most, gravitas behind it, but that only goes so far. The idea of King Menery and his Court of Merry Men dictating bans from a single mind doesn't really add up to the impressions the RC gives at each B/R update.