40 seems too high. A lot of multiplayer games I have taken part in have devolved into a mexican standoffs and a 31+ life total has usually played a part in this. I will concur that 30 life is a lot better for the format. For white and red, considered the weakest colors, it makes them more powerful. But because of the higher life totals, things normally considered good or great like a Lightning Bolt fall by the wayside due to your opponent's having double the life total than Lightning Bolt was originally designed for.
Extirpate, on the other hand, is usually a two for one against a graveyard based decks, is one of the best answers against graveyard based decks because it can't be countered, and costs all of one mana. It is one of the best cards at what it does. You want a realistic comparison, go with Headstone. If graveyard decks became problematic enough that people were running Headstone to deal with them, that would be evidence that a ban is needed to whatever was making graveyard strategies that powerful and widespread. If Karakas makes running Sowing Salt reasonable outside of the most hardcore LD based mono red deck, then Karakas needs to be banned because it is clearly skewing the format as badly as any card ever has.
We, the people on this board, can talk in hyperboles till the cows come home. But for the people like me who are actually affected by meta-warping lands it becomes an issue to have to deal with them.
Cryogen, if price is an issue for such a ubiquitous card, then how about we talk about Gaea's Cradle? That and Serra's Sanctum are also quite problematic.
Its basically the next step up in the arms race. You want to run Crucible of Worlds or other cards like Terra Eternal that prevent your lands destruction? How about I systematically exile the troublesome lands instead.
among a whole lot of other pain in the rear lands. Only recovery option for people who ran such lands would be a Pull From Eternity. I checked Qang's suggestion. That white spell is the only card that can benefit you in that situation.
In favor of unbanning it. As a good point also is if its price spikes up, not everyone has access to it. If it reaches a $100-200 that is the equivalent of picking up a Gaea's Cradle. Which means in casual play its not as likely to show up as not everyone is willing to spend $100 or more for a single card for their deck. Which also balances it out.
To start, I think it's pretty unreasonable to expect players to be able to preemptively play around Coalition Victory at all times. Any time opponents can't preemptively stop a possible Coalition Victory, they could lose the game provided they also don't have a reactive solution. Players aren't always going to have a removal spell for a five color Commander turn after turn, and players aren't always going to have something akin to Dust Bowl in play either to keep that player off certain land types.
Its obviously unreasonable for me to preemptively play around Curiosity all the time as at any time I could lose the game provided I don't have a reactive solution. I'm also not always going to having akin to Tectonic Edge to keep them off certain lands.
Quote from arrogantAxolotl »
Deliberately teching in specific hate cards like Nevermore into one's deck for the sole purpose of resisting a metagame with Coalition Victory also seems like further evidence for why Coalition Victory should stay banned. Nevermore is a really narrow card in Commander. It can answer just about any spell, but the player using Nevermore has to already have prerequisite knowledge of what the spell is they want to prevent. Aside from commanders, that isn't likely. If someone has to go to the extent of playing something so narrow just to shut out Coalition Victory, that's a pretty strong indicator that Coalition Victory would be a problem.
Oh what is this honestly? You never used Nevermore because you suspected or know what your opponent is packing? "I name curiosity." Boom. Suddenly Nevermore was teched to stop a Niv-Mizzet from having the possibility of going off. I guess that's a pretty strong indicator that curiosity is a real problem if I had to tech a card for it.
Quote from arrogantAxolotl »
I believe it's more reasonable to expect players to reactively play around Coalition Victory, but that's difficult as well. The only opportunity players have to do that is while Coalition Victory is on the stack. That leaves them with three options. Players can destroy lands in response, destroy creatures in response, or counter the spell outright. I'm going to omit countermagic as a realistic solution since only one out of five colors really only has access to it and since it's also a solution to basically everything. That leaves destroying lands and creatures. For the most part, instant speed land destruction isn't a thing. Off the top of my head, there's Volcanic Offering, but not much else. It's possible to destroy lands at instant speed with other lands like Strip Mine and Wasteland, but it's also unreasonable to expect someone to cast a Coalition Victory while there's an untapped Strip Mine on the table. That's just not going to happen. That really only leaves players with instant speed ways to get rid of creatures. I think this is the most practical way of disrupting a Coalition Victory, but there's still a lot of conditions that go into it, and spot removal only does the job if there aren't already more creatures of each color on the battlefield.
Hmm countermagic can be done by all five colors. Blue is just the strongest and has the largest toolbox. Even green could counter a CV.
Destruction is a possibility but its not the only thing. Bouncing, tucking, exiling, fighting, stealing just as a few quick examples of other options.
Its never unreasonable. In fact its entirely possible that an opponent didn't notice or has a backup plan or assumes you wouldn't.
Quote from arrogantAxolotl »
Each of these combos require wildly different levels of setup. Demonic Pact has to stay on the battlefield for several turns before it promises to kill the single player it's donated to. That's two cards, neither of which are a commander. Hive Mind and any Pact are similar. It costs two non-commander cards, but doesn't take nearly as long to setup and can slay multiple opponents at once provided they can't pay the cost. Niv-Mizzet + Curiosity is definitely the easiest of the bunch to set up. With Niv-Mizzet as someone's Commander, it only costs a single one mana spell to enable. That's even easier than Coalition Victory to assemble, but that doesn't mean Coalition Victory isn't a trivial card to set up either, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.
Wasn't one of your strikes against CV "Virtually requires no setup" and that it failed the first criteria? As that is my point. I gave you plenty of examples of cards that virtually require no setup. Even demonic pact is just durdling for three turns and then donating it during the third turn.
Quote from arrogantAxolot »
Putting lands onto the battlefield, getting to eight mana, and casting one's Commander are some of the most effortless prerequisites for assembling a one card win since all of those are things that a player is naturally going to do during the course of a game of Commander. Getting the right land cards is definitely the trickiest part, but with the plethora of fetches, duals, and other basic land tutors like Cultivate available, that still isn't anywhere remotely challenging.
"One Card Win"? Oh I wasn't aware that CV was also a 5-colored creature that counted itself as well.
Yes, there will always be answers to any problem in Magic. That doesn't mean it's reasonable to expect players to have them in a non-competitive format. If flashing in a Platinum Angel is your defensive for how "easy" it is to fizzle a Coalition Victory, I really don't know what else to say. That's about the most unrealistic way imaginable to defend oneself against Coalition Victory.
Unrealistic? Lets say Bob the Accountant shows up with his five colored deck, everyone at the table knows he runs Coalition Victory (cause its a universe where its not banned). Its unrealistic for me to tech against his deck? Are you saying its unrealistic to tech in a Bojuka Bog or Relic of Progenitus against something like a Karador, Ghost Chieftian deck that shows up regularly at a LGS? Its like knowing that the Baral, Chief of Compliance deck is going to be there and not teching in anti-counterspell cards because it would be "unrealistic".
Quote from arrogantAxolotl »
I think we might have different interpretations as to what it means for a card to have fair use. The idea I'm trying to convey is that unlike some cards, Coalition Victory has no interesting application beyond immediately winning the game. It can't be played in different decks to different degrees of effectiveness. It will just always win the game regardless of what deck it's in unless somehow stopped. A card like Tooth and Nail has different applications. While it can win the game outright if put into a certain shell, it also has the potential to not do so. It can be strong, or weak, or anywhere in between. The way a player uses Tooth and Nail is what creates the potential for fair use. With Coalition Victory, there is no way for players to use it differently.
Door To Nothingness doesn't have a fair use besides kicking a player out of the game and its not on the banlist, throw in an Amulet of Vigor and it do it on the same turn.
I'm going to borrow a part of a post that was used earlier in this thread in relation to T&N.
Quote from One_Who_Tells_Stores »
as a means to play whack-a-mole with your opponents lands (Khamal, Fist of Krosa + Goblin Sharpshooter/Crovax, Ascendant Hero/ Ascendant Evincar),
Its not a game winning combo if I do that but it also makes my opponent have a bad time because I am systematically blowing up their lands while not actually using land destruction at the same time.
Why use a T&N weakly if you have the option to use it strongly? Its a 9 mana tutor that also puts stuff onto the battlefield. As it makes sense to go for at least two creatures with some synergy between each other and not doing so can be a fairly weak tutoring turn. Even a Blazing Archon with Stormtime Leviathan have strong synergy with each other and it doesn't auto-win the game either.
Wither, or a renaming of it, would work like if were on a 2/2 zombie for 1B. Could also work as a curse that "At the beginning of the enchanted player's upkeep, put a -1/-1 counter on a creature they control."
Let me answer the question I keep getting on this [Moan of the Unhallowed] card. The card makes Zombies. Why isn't it a tribal sorcery – Zombie? The answer is because we decided not to use tribal (I'm talking about the card type here) in Innistrad. But if a set with a strong tribal subtheme doesn't use it, when would it ever get used? The answer is never. Yes, I am announcing the probable death knell of the tribal card type. (I could imagine a specific use, like the Eldrazi spells in Rise, that might pull it out of mothballs.)
So what happened? Let's flashback to Innistrad design. As I was doing a set with a tribal theme, I used the tribal card type wherever I could. Moan of the Unhallowed, for example, was a tribal sorcery – Zombie. The problem was that it's very hard to draw the line. If a set uses tribal then it wants to go on any card that has a definable flavor. As this set is top-down, that meant that a majority of the noncreature cards were using the tribal card type.
The end result was that the cards were getting wordier but it seldom mattered. Most tribal (theme) cards cared about creatures and so weren't applicable to be tribal (type) cards. The one big exception was Zombies as there are multiple ways to get Zombie cards out of the graveyard, thus I believe the reason that I keep getting asked the question on this card.
We playtested with tribal, and I kept getting the same note that it seldom seemed to matter. In the end, we made the call that it wasn't adding enough to the game play to offset its inclusion, which both made the cards wordier and caused more confusion.
Oh hey I run that in my Hazezon Tamar deck. Very excellent card with the uses it has like others above me have pointed out. One of my favorite uses is forcing the combo player to put some cards back. The delay is wonderful and even if they are able to redraw their pieces with some card draw spell in hand, I found they are usually short on mana to do so.
With Coalition Victory? You have to stop the lands. Sure, stopping lands stops many other combos as well, but with CV, you literally have to. Sure it can be countered as well, but so can the other "win" cards as well and in multiplayer, there's a good chance someone (with no counterspells) is adopting preemptive measures. When the only course of method available is land destruction against a "win condition" available in every 5-color deck, the sheer knee-jerk reaction of land destruction is likely going towards every 5C deck will be real if CV was in the format and it would definitely create an unfair bias against 5C decks in general, even if every 5C decks does indeed choose to pack CV (and they will eventually since it's pretty much the only gameplan fast enough if you managed to dodge the hate). 5C already has a reputation for goodstuff and giving it another layer of "CV combo guaranteed" doesn't seem like it would do variety any good.
We do agree that this isn't the sole reason Coalition Victory deserves to stay banned though. As I mentioned previously, I believe Coalition Victory is unique in that it is one of the only Magic cards which satisfies each of the following criteria:
You'd be hard pressed to find another unbanned card in Commander that does each of those things. Palinchron is probably one of the closest, but it does require some kind of setup. It doesn't go infinite on its own, and even if it does generate infinite mana, that isn't game ending if said player can't use the mana generated with it in a productive way. The same thing can't be said for Coalition Victory.
Difficult to interact with? Alright, I will bite. What is your creature removal like? They can have the lands, but if you deny their creatures you stop Coalition Victory in its tracks. In fact if you kill-off/bounce-out/exile-away one of their key creatures during the cast of the spell, before it resolves, the spell fizzles. If a player is pulling those shenanigans, I might be tempted to slot in things like Declaration of Naught, Nevermore, Meddling Mage and Voidstone Gargoyle. Land destruction is a viable tactic but in the politicking area of the game, that is like painting a target on your head if you are trigger happy. Sniping a Temple Garden while the spell hasn't resolved can be just as strong as countering the CV in this case as again it fizzles due to insufficient requirements. I fail to see how it is difficult to interact with. Every color can force a fizzle without even a counterspell being slung.
Wins the game once resolved? I reiterate my previous points during the "Difficult to Interact With" part and how easy it is to force a fizzle. Also absolute lies. Platinum Angel with a Vedalken Orrery, Winding Canyons, Leyline of Anticipation or Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir can become suddenly that silver bullet tech for such a deck. A second silver bullet that seems to go overlooked is Angel's Grace. The metas would change and adapt and those who refuse to adapt get left in the dust.
No potential for fair use? Lots of cards could be used fairly, but get abused instead. Its basically like pulling your punches in order to soften your blows. How about wrath effects like wrath of god? By itself nice little board resets, but what if you or your opponent had threats that survived somehow? Its suddenly unfair, right? The spell was abused to further someone's advantage and bring them closer to a victory.
Palinchron is about as fair as Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary. That is to say, both are routinely abused and with just a second card can get out of hand with little trouble.
Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh
+1: Deal 3 damage to target creature or planeswalker.
-2: Scry 3. If a planeswalker card is among the scryed, draw a card after you finished scrying.
-7: You get an emblem with "If a planeswalker you control would be sent from the battlefield to the graveyard, return them to your hand instead."
[4]
Everyone's bringing up her possible white/green from the latest story. Guess what? They wrote that story after determining that Tamiyo would be Bant. It's complete tail wagging the dog. Wizards has decided to focus on the Origin 5 and all other single-color planeswalkers are suffering because of it.
So they expanded upon the complexity of a previously unexplored character's personality. Is that a bad thing?
Depends on how you look at it. We have had three of the members of Gatewatch, Liliana/Chandra/Jace, since October 2007. Yet these three weren't "out of sight out of mind" either and were in quiet a few stories.
Personally if they had focused sooner on this angle of them teaming up together to fight multiverse threats it would work out better.
she tried to use a cosmic squid to eat an entire planet all so she could watch one dude cry about it
In court of law she could plead insanity. Considering she was unlawfully locked up in a the helavault, effectively a prison cell, for 6000 years and her only company was the demons sealed inside it as well. Plus this cell simultaneously did and didn't have walls, was of pure darkness, and she had no means to communicate to the outside world with her words or actions alone. No one to "pay her bail".
All of the planeswalkers are "monsters" but they are also "saints". We could be hear all day discussing how each of them are all morally questionable and have done at least one good action and one bad action.
there's nothing morally questionable about trying to destroy an entire plane. That's just straight evil.
Evil action =/= evil character. But its fine as let me quote an earlier post of mine:
Finally: I am just your friendly spider letting you all know in the web that all of you seem to have entangled yourselves in. Even the earliest of philosophers have tried to come up with an answer and failed many times for situations like this on the debate of Good vs Evil. The true answer is that there is no real answer as a specific corner case can be both framed in a "positive way" or in the fashion of a "negative way". Arguing the semantics of it is splitting hairs.
TL;DR: "All players cannot win the morality game and they cannot lose it either."
provided the artbook reports are correct (if they aren't that's a different discussion) then there is nothing morally questionable about Nahiri. Morality is not a point system, she summoned Emrakul to destroy Innistrad for a grudge. Nahiri is a monster.
All of the planeswalkers are "monsters" but they are also "saints". We could be hear all day discussing how each of them are all morally questionable and have done at least one good action and one bad action.
Example: Tamiyo is a monster by being a neutral pacifistic observer of Innistrad. Through her non-action she has allowed harm to come to others by not intervening. Yet because of her studies of Innistrad she ultimately helped the save the day against Emrakul. She is morally gray.
A cavern of souls is really not as different to a karakas for how it warps the meta.
We, the people on this board, can talk in hyperboles till the cows come home. But for the people like me who are actually affected by meta-warping lands it becomes an issue to have to deal with them.
- Invader Parasite
- Structural Distortion
- Amulet of Unmaking
- Sowing Salt
- Crumble to Dust
- Grip of Desolation
- Scour from Existence
Its basically the next step up in the arms race. You want to run Crucible of Worlds or other cards like Terra Eternal that prevent your lands destruction? How about I systematically exile the troublesome lands instead.Deals with:
- Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
- Maze of Ith
- Mystifying Maze
- Kor Haven
- Glacial Chasm
- Gaea's Cradle
- Serra's Sanctum
- Cabal Coffers
- The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
among a whole lot of other pain in the rear lands. Only recovery option for people who ran such lands would be a Pull From Eternity. I checked Qang's suggestion. That white spell is the only card that can benefit you in that situation.Oh what is this honestly? You never used Nevermore because you suspected or know what your opponent is packing? "I name curiosity." Boom. Suddenly Nevermore was teched to stop a Niv-Mizzet from having the possibility of going off. I guess that's a pretty strong indicator that curiosity is a real problem if I had to tech a card for it.
Hmm countermagic can be done by all five colors. Blue is just the strongest and has the largest toolbox. Even green could counter a CV.
Destruction is a possibility but its not the only thing. Bouncing, tucking, exiling, fighting, stealing just as a few quick examples of other options.
Its never unreasonable. In fact its entirely possible that an opponent didn't notice or has a backup plan or assumes you wouldn't.
Wasn't one of your strikes against CV "Virtually requires no setup" and that it failed the first criteria? As that is my point. I gave you plenty of examples of cards that virtually require no setup. Even demonic pact is just durdling for three turns and then donating it during the third turn.
"One Card Win"? Oh I wasn't aware that CV was also a 5-colored creature that counted itself as well.
Unrealistic? Lets say Bob the Accountant shows up with his five colored deck, everyone at the table knows he runs Coalition Victory (cause its a universe where its not banned). Its unrealistic for me to tech against his deck? Are you saying its unrealistic to tech in a Bojuka Bog or Relic of Progenitus against something like a Karador, Ghost Chieftian deck that shows up regularly at a LGS? Its like knowing that the Baral, Chief of Compliance deck is going to be there and not teching in anti-counterspell cards because it would be "unrealistic".
Door To Nothingness doesn't have a fair use besides kicking a player out of the game and its not on the banlist, throw in an Amulet of Vigor and it do it on the same turn.
I'm going to borrow a part of a post that was used earlier in this thread in relation to T&N.
Its not a game winning combo if I do that but it also makes my opponent have a bad time because I am systematically blowing up their lands while not actually using land destruction at the same time.
Why use a T&N weakly if you have the option to use it strongly? Its a 9 mana tutor that also puts stuff onto the battlefield. As it makes sense to go for at least two creatures with some synergy between each other and not doing so can be a fairly weak tutoring turn. Even a Blazing Archon with Stormtime Leviathan have strong synergy with each other and it doesn't auto-win the game either.
Difficult to interact with? Alright, I will bite. What is your creature removal like? They can have the lands, but if you deny their creatures you stop Coalition Victory in its tracks. In fact if you kill-off/bounce-out/exile-away one of their key creatures during the cast of the spell, before it resolves, the spell fizzles. If a player is pulling those shenanigans, I might be tempted to slot in things like Declaration of Naught, Nevermore, Meddling Mage and Voidstone Gargoyle. Land destruction is a viable tactic but in the politicking area of the game, that is like painting a target on your head if you are trigger happy. Sniping a Temple Garden while the spell hasn't resolved can be just as strong as countering the CV in this case as again it fizzles due to insufficient requirements. I fail to see how it is difficult to interact with. Every color can force a fizzle without even a counterspell being slung.
Virtually no setup? Don't give me that. Five basic subtypes, 1-5 creatures of different colors, one sorcery speed spell.
Demonic Pact + Donate, Hive Mind + Pact of the Titan, Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind + Curiosity. Takes about the same amount of effort to set those up.
Wins the game once resolved? I reiterate my previous points during the "Difficult to Interact With" part and how easy it is to force a fizzle. Also absolute lies. Platinum Angel with a Vedalken Orrery, Winding Canyons, Leyline of Anticipation or Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir can become suddenly that silver bullet tech for such a deck. A second silver bullet that seems to go overlooked is Angel's Grace. The metas would change and adapt and those who refuse to adapt get left in the dust.
No potential for fair use? Lots of cards could be used fairly, but get abused instead. Its basically like pulling your punches in order to soften your blows. How about wrath effects like wrath of god? By itself nice little board resets, but what if you or your opponent had threats that survived somehow? Its suddenly unfair, right? The spell was abused to further someone's advantage and bring them closer to a victory.
Palinchron is about as fair as Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary. That is to say, both are routinely abused and with just a second card can get out of hand with little trouble.
+1: Deal 3 damage to target creature or planeswalker.
-2: Scry 3. If a planeswalker card is among the scryed, draw a card after you finished scrying.
-7: You get an emblem with "If a planeswalker you control would be sent from the battlefield to the graveyard, return them to your hand instead."
[4]
Depends on how you look at it. We have had three of the members of Gatewatch, Liliana/Chandra/Jace, since October 2007. Yet these three weren't "out of sight out of mind" either and were in quiet a few stories.
Personally if they had focused sooner on this angle of them teaming up together to fight multiverse threats it would work out better.
In court of law she could plead insanity. Considering she was unlawfully locked up in a the helavault, effectively a prison cell, for 6000 years and her only company was the demons sealed inside it as well. Plus this cell simultaneously did and didn't have walls, was of pure darkness, and she had no means to communicate to the outside world with her words or actions alone. No one to "pay her bail".
Evil action =/= evil character. But its fine as let me quote an earlier post of mine:
All of the planeswalkers are "monsters" but they are also "saints". We could be hear all day discussing how each of them are all morally questionable and have done at least one good action and one bad action.
Example: Tamiyo is a monster by being a neutral pacifistic observer of Innistrad. Through her non-action she has allowed harm to come to others by not intervening. Yet because of her studies of Innistrad she ultimately helped the save the day against Emrakul. She is morally gray.