I disagree with these, for varying reasons. These should all stay banned for sure as far as I'm concerned.
Biorhythm typically kills two or more players immediately after a wrath. Spells that say "lose the game" aren't much fun in a casual format.
Coalition Victory is way too easy to get active when you have a five color general and dual lands. It's not that hard to find Boseiju to force it through, or just keep casting it until you win. At least Sovereign and Test of Endurance give everyone a turn to deal with them.
Emrakul isn't overpowered, but it is boring. This one I'll admit is just personal preference.
Recurring Nightmare is way, way OP. You NEVER get to destroy it if the person is playing it right. It can only be dealt with via countermagic on the way down since the "return to hand" is part of the cost. DEFINITELY needs to stay banned.
Sway of the Stars/Worldpurge/co should all be banned. They're not like Obliterate in that they end the game, they exclusively serve to extend the game.
Upheaval is like Obliterate, but easier to abuse, and less expensive. Just upheaval, drop a land and run out some mana rocks. It's hard to lose when you start 3-4 turns ahead of everyone.
WGD is just there for combo potential and for randomly drawing the game, though I think that if we let Hermit Druid run loose, WGD is just a worse version of Hermit Druid.
I'm not saying that it's right that it's banned. I'm pretty sure it's one of the inconsistencies on the banned list that bothers me most, right next to Kokusho. There are a ton of cards I'd rather see banned than LED.
You asked why it was banned. That's probably why it's banned.
@Squish: I'd consider Dawn of the Dead; I ran it for awhile and it was pretty good.
regarding Leyline; it's a problem along the same lines as Blood Moon. Most people aren't playing it, and odds are you'll get blown out by it once. If you know it's coming, you can use your tutors to play around it. If you suspect it's coming, just don't do anything stupid. like cast a Loam or sacrifice key lands while it's in play. Dig for a tutor, find your Harmonic/Necrotic Sliver/other answer, and deal with it.
It's not worth shoehorning answers to narrow cards that just neuter the deck when you could just play around them instead.
Auriok Salvagers
a number of Doomsday piles
Hermit Druid + Second Sunrise tricks
It's a pretty significant boost to storm combo for anyone who plans on running it.
Besides, do you REALLY want to see someone go turn 1 Sol Ring, LED, Skittles, go?
Power is definitely, definitely unfair, no matter how readily available it is.
Consider the situation where people are playing decks with distinct gaps in the power/cohesiveness/synergy. Even if both sets of decks have power, the more powerful deck breaks the symmetry.
Ignoring that, consider a situation where decks are evenly powered, but one is playing more colors and gets more moxen. It's still unbalanced.
I suppose that one could argue that the prevalence of moxen would shift the metagame in such a way that artifact destruction becomes infinitely more common, but even then, Sol Ring sees tons of play despite artifact destruction.
Honestly, to me, Kokusho is the one clear anomaly on the list. If there's any one card that could really, really be unbanned without ruining the format, it's that guy. The only other card that I'd like unbanned that's even remotely conceivable is Karakas, and that's not going to happen any time soon.
Regarding Library, there are very, very few decks that wouldn't be better with a library in them. I'd argue that turn 1 Library, go would be the new turn 1 Sol Ring go, in that it's a very, very strong predictive factor of who's going to win the game. Library is just another card that unnecessarily prices people out of winning games in their local metagame.
This is, after all, a casual format. It's not a "look how much I spent on my deck" contest.
In general, there are two issues that need to be considered when you're talking about whether or not a card is banworthy:
1. How broken is it under the most extreme circumstances you can think of?
2. How broken is it in generic context?
If either one of these is overwhelming, then a card needs to be banned.
For example, Staff of Domination "accidentally" goes infinite with a ton of cards in a multitude of different decks and just wins the game on the spot by making infinite mana and drawing infinite cards. Is it significantly more broken if you built around it? Not really, but the fact that there are so many creatures that create enough mana to go infinite means it should probably be banned.
For another example, Worldgorger Dragon. Under the most extreme circumstances I can imagine, this thing is broken in half. All it's used for is comboing out, and it can end a game in a draw for no reason. In most decks? It's kind of cool as a "blink all your stuff" effect, and I've definitely used it "fairly." But most of the time, it's just going to do something stupid with Animate Dead. Because this thing is just stupid if you build around it, and incredibly narrow if you don't, it also deserves to be banned.
You can go through a process like this for just about every card on the list that isn't Power, and I'm pretty sure we all know why Power is banned.
so,in my saturday edh meta we have this fella that comes all the way from slc to ogden (almost an hour drive) and he plays something called big boy edh,no cards are banned and if you want you can have as many relentless rats as you want.now to me having fun is the challenge of the game,the mental thought process behind building a deck and piloting that deck the way its designed to run.ie combo off if its a combo deck,bear hug if its a bear hug deck etc etc.now you would think that with this unbanning of cards that you would hear alot of moaning and groaning. "**** ***** kevin comboed off with time vault again that ****** *** ***** *******" but thats not the case,for our play group edh is like a nerdy version of a poker night,we talk about the girls we dont have,the junk we put up with at our jobs,the amazing party last weekend or whatever.we have left it down to a completely local ban list of only abusive generals.(like rhys the redeemed,and my arcum deck if i played it again :-/)
this decission has made our meta alot more competitive and fun.true you spend alot of time shuffling up,but the next week people show up with ways to deal with the problem,like more counterspells,more utility cards,or cool ways to use cards (like putting sunforger in a deck and running all the white and red counterspells like absorb)
in closing,
edh is a causual game,and the ban list should only apply to online play,mostly beacause its a referance point for complete strangers.we have to remember that not everyone that plays magic goes to THIS online forum,or any others.but if your not cool with the kevins out there in the world then dont play big boy edh with them.
Wait. Time Vault combo is fair, but Rhys the Redeemed is broken? I guess it shows that everyone's metagame is pretty radically different.
Secondly, just to nitpick, regardless of who you're playing with, under the "official" rules, you're allowed to play any number of Relentless Rats.
Why's protean hulk banned? protean hulk is just a good card that only becomes a 1-card win in a deck with certain specific cards only available to generals that encompass certain colors. And if you want kiki jiki + something, doesn't tooth and nail seem easier?
You can combo off with Hulk with very little effort, all while running staples in whatever color combination you happen to be running. For example, in G/W:
1) hulk dies, fetch Karmic Guide and Caregiver.
2) Karmic Guide reanimates Hulk, sac hulk to Caregiver
3) Fetch Saffi Eriksdotter and Mirror Entity
4) Saffi the Karmic Guide, sac Karmic Guide to Caregiver
5) Karmic Guide comes back, reanimates Hulk
6) Sac Hulk, fetch Reveillark and a Soul Warden
From here, you can use the standard reveillark combo to win with a random EtB creature in your graveyard, or the Soul Warden as follows:
With Reveillark in play, Karmic Guide and EtB creature in play or in graveyard:
1) Stack infinite Mirror Entity activations, X=0
2) Allow one activation to resolve, Reveillark triggers when it dies
3) Reveillark reanimates random EtB creature and Karmic Guide
4) Karmic Guide reanimates Reveillark
5) Repeat from 2.
The only non-staple creature required here is caregiver, and the combo just requires you to invest WWW once Hulk dies. And that's just in G/W.
The thing is, those cards aren't important in a permanent-based attrition deck. Permanents are. I'd rather have more ways to cheat more lands into play, and more cards that do something relevant.
Thought Reflection is really, really far from being a blue staple, and i don't think those kinds of effects are near staple-status here either. They could be really good in a build that wants the game to go long, where you can grind out card advantage with things like that.
The question is: couldn't you be doing something better? I mean, drawing lots of card is great and all, I think there are more efficient things to be doing, like getting more lands on the board and winning the game.
Look at the 43land deck in legacy. That's more or less what my build is modeled after. There's no space for cute draw engines; there are tutors, some card drawing, recursion, and powerful utility cards. The tutors and recursion are your engine, and you don't need to draw infinite cards, you just need one or two tutors to find the pieces you're missing.
Like I said, there are a lot of different ways to build this style of deck. Are there some that want null Profusion? Probably. Mine probably doesn't.
I don't know what kind of new information you're looking for. Until WotC prints more good lands and/or land-based cards, there's not really a ton that can change with the deck.
There are a ton of different kinds of builds of permanent-based attrition decks in this vein, some that are enchantment- or artifact-based as opposed to or in addition to being land-based.
Even within this particular land-based sub-type there are a number of different kinds of builds. Some people focus on manlands, some people focus on prison elements, some people just want to play 5 color control with a billion lands to make their engine uncounterable.
Personally, I'm running a prison build that uses planeswalkers as the primary win condition. I'm going to be testing Psychic Vortex for a while to see how that goes, since it's one of my favorite cards ever!
I'm honestly not sure how I feel about Null Profusion/Recycle. Based on my experience, by the time I'm casting 6cc permanents, I'm looking to lock up the game, not draw more cards, but it's more than likely that's just a difference between the builds.
What kind of information are you looking for? There are at least a dozen variations on the key theme of permanent-based attrition, and within the one that focuses on lands in particular, there are four or five different kinds of permutations, and within those there are 12ish flex slots that really have a pretty significant impact on the way the deck plays.
I've got a prison build that focuses primarily on planeswalkers as a kill mechanism that I can post. There are a few enchantment-based or artifact-based builds of the land deck. You can do just about anything you want with the generic shell of good lands plus Child plus recursion.
Ranger of Eos fetches a Warden and a Serra Ascendant, and so that seems like it's worth including. Additionally, Weathered Wayfarer is really, really awesome if you can get it early in the game often enough.
Speaking of Emeria, I'd cut some of your dual lands or forests, add more things like Kodama's Reach and Explosive Vegetation, and find a way to shoehorn Emeria into your deck. It's one of the most resilient late game engines in the format, and will definitely win you a number of games.
I wouldn't say that I"m hating on Spellbomb, since I've played a lot with the card, and it's definitely a solid roleplayer. It just seems like there should be something better It's definitely better than Armillary Sphere most of the time, and it's definitely fine when you expect the game to go on forever.
It seems to me like just drawing cards would be better most of the time, even though you can't guarantee that you'll hit exactly the color that you want. Thinking about it, though, Treefolk costs almost as much, finds two lands, but costs another 2-4 if you want to draw cards, so I guess I'm just being unfair, right?
Could you add an arbitrary infinite combo to this deck? It seems like there are a number of things you could do with Lifespark Spellbomb to just win the game, and you have enough "tutors" in transmute effects to find the various pieces. Something like...
Lifespark Spellbomb, Dawn's Reflection, Freed from the Real? Or Trace of Abundance/Fertile Ground if you can put it on a 5color land.
EDIT: Spore Burst might be good for making chump blockers, or swarming the board later in the game to speed up your clock.
I disagree with these, for varying reasons. These should all stay banned for sure as far as I'm concerned.
Biorhythm typically kills two or more players immediately after a wrath. Spells that say "lose the game" aren't much fun in a casual format.
Coalition Victory is way too easy to get active when you have a five color general and dual lands. It's not that hard to find Boseiju to force it through, or just keep casting it until you win. At least Sovereign and Test of Endurance give everyone a turn to deal with them.
Emrakul isn't overpowered, but it is boring. This one I'll admit is just personal preference.
Recurring Nightmare is way, way OP. You NEVER get to destroy it if the person is playing it right. It can only be dealt with via countermagic on the way down since the "return to hand" is part of the cost. DEFINITELY needs to stay banned.
Sway of the Stars/Worldpurge/co should all be banned. They're not like Obliterate in that they end the game, they exclusively serve to extend the game.
Upheaval is like Obliterate, but easier to abuse, and less expensive. Just upheaval, drop a land and run out some mana rocks. It's hard to lose when you start 3-4 turns ahead of everyone.
WGD is just there for combo potential and for randomly drawing the game, though I think that if we let Hermit Druid run loose, WGD is just a worse version of Hermit Druid.
You're missing the fact that the banlist is really just a random conglomeration of non-green cards that have beaten Sheldon in the last few years.
You asked why it was banned. That's probably why it's banned.
regarding Leyline; it's a problem along the same lines as Blood Moon. Most people aren't playing it, and odds are you'll get blown out by it once. If you know it's coming, you can use your tutors to play around it. If you suspect it's coming, just don't do anything stupid. like cast a Loam or sacrifice key lands while it's in play. Dig for a tutor, find your Harmonic/Necrotic Sliver/other answer, and deal with it.
It's not worth shoehorning answers to narrow cards that just neuter the deck when you could just play around them instead.
Auriok Salvagers
a number of Doomsday piles
Hermit Druid + Second Sunrise tricks
It's a pretty significant boost to storm combo for anyone who plans on running it.
Besides, do you REALLY want to see someone go turn 1 Sol Ring, LED, Skittles, go?
Consider the situation where people are playing decks with distinct gaps in the power/cohesiveness/synergy. Even if both sets of decks have power, the more powerful deck breaks the symmetry.
Ignoring that, consider a situation where decks are evenly powered, but one is playing more colors and gets more moxen. It's still unbalanced.
I suppose that one could argue that the prevalence of moxen would shift the metagame in such a way that artifact destruction becomes infinitely more common, but even then, Sol Ring sees tons of play despite artifact destruction.
Regarding Library, there are very, very few decks that wouldn't be better with a library in them. I'd argue that turn 1 Library, go would be the new turn 1 Sol Ring go, in that it's a very, very strong predictive factor of who's going to win the game. Library is just another card that unnecessarily prices people out of winning games in their local metagame.
This is, after all, a casual format. It's not a "look how much I spent on my deck" contest.
In general, there are two issues that need to be considered when you're talking about whether or not a card is banworthy:
1. How broken is it under the most extreme circumstances you can think of?
2. How broken is it in generic context?
If either one of these is overwhelming, then a card needs to be banned.
For example, Staff of Domination "accidentally" goes infinite with a ton of cards in a multitude of different decks and just wins the game on the spot by making infinite mana and drawing infinite cards. Is it significantly more broken if you built around it? Not really, but the fact that there are so many creatures that create enough mana to go infinite means it should probably be banned.
For another example, Worldgorger Dragon. Under the most extreme circumstances I can imagine, this thing is broken in half. All it's used for is comboing out, and it can end a game in a draw for no reason. In most decks? It's kind of cool as a "blink all your stuff" effect, and I've definitely used it "fairly." But most of the time, it's just going to do something stupid with Animate Dead. Because this thing is just stupid if you build around it, and incredibly narrow if you don't, it also deserves to be banned.
You can go through a process like this for just about every card on the list that isn't Power, and I'm pretty sure we all know why Power is banned.
Wait. Time Vault combo is fair, but Rhys the Redeemed is broken? I guess it shows that everyone's metagame is pretty radically different.
Secondly, just to nitpick, regardless of who you're playing with, under the "official" rules, you're allowed to play any number of Relentless Rats.
You can combo off with Hulk with very little effort, all while running staples in whatever color combination you happen to be running. For example, in G/W:
1) hulk dies, fetch Karmic Guide and Caregiver.
2) Karmic Guide reanimates Hulk, sac hulk to Caregiver
3) Fetch Saffi Eriksdotter and Mirror Entity
4) Saffi the Karmic Guide, sac Karmic Guide to Caregiver
5) Karmic Guide comes back, reanimates Hulk
6) Sac Hulk, fetch Reveillark and a Soul Warden
From here, you can use the standard reveillark combo to win with a random EtB creature in your graveyard, or the Soul Warden as follows:
With Reveillark in play, Karmic Guide and EtB creature in play or in graveyard:
1) Stack infinite Mirror Entity activations, X=0
2) Allow one activation to resolve, Reveillark triggers when it dies
3) Reveillark reanimates random EtB creature and Karmic Guide
4) Karmic Guide reanimates Reveillark
5) Repeat from 2.
The only non-staple creature required here is caregiver, and the combo just requires you to invest WWW once Hulk dies. And that's just in G/W.
I'd rather have Sun Titan/Emeria/Genesis than Yore-Tiller, and Worm Harvest to Dunebrood
Thought Reflection is really, really far from being a blue staple, and i don't think those kinds of effects are near staple-status here either. They could be really good in a build that wants the game to go long, where you can grind out card advantage with things like that.
The question is: couldn't you be doing something better? I mean, drawing lots of card is great and all, I think there are more efficient things to be doing, like getting more lands on the board and winning the game.
Look at the 43land deck in legacy. That's more or less what my build is modeled after. There's no space for cute draw engines; there are tutors, some card drawing, recursion, and powerful utility cards. The tutors and recursion are your engine, and you don't need to draw infinite cards, you just need one or two tutors to find the pieces you're missing.
Like I said, there are a lot of different ways to build this style of deck. Are there some that want null Profusion? Probably. Mine probably doesn't.
There are a ton of different kinds of builds of permanent-based attrition decks in this vein, some that are enchantment- or artifact-based as opposed to or in addition to being land-based.
Even within this particular land-based sub-type there are a number of different kinds of builds. Some people focus on manlands, some people focus on prison elements, some people just want to play 5 color control with a billion lands to make their engine uncounterable.
Personally, I'm running a prison build that uses planeswalkers as the primary win condition. I'm going to be testing Psychic Vortex for a while to see how that goes, since it's one of my favorite cards ever!
I'm honestly not sure how I feel about Null Profusion/Recycle. Based on my experience, by the time I'm casting 6cc permanents, I'm looking to lock up the game, not draw more cards, but it's more than likely that's just a difference between the builds.
I've got a prison build that focuses primarily on planeswalkers as a kill mechanism that I can post. There are a few enchantment-based or artifact-based builds of the land deck. You can do just about anything you want with the generic shell of good lands plus Child plus recursion.
Martyr of Sands is something that frequently gets underrated, but can gain you upwards of 100 life in a given game with stuff like Nim Deathmantle, Genesis, and Emeria, the Sky Ruin.
Speaking of Emeria, I'd cut some of your dual lands or forests, add more things like Kodama's Reach and Explosive Vegetation, and find a way to shoehorn Emeria into your deck. It's one of the most resilient late game engines in the format, and will definitely win you a number of games.
It seems to me like just drawing cards would be better most of the time, even though you can't guarantee that you'll hit exactly the color that you want. Thinking about it, though, Treefolk costs almost as much, finds two lands, but costs another 2-4 if you want to draw cards, so I guess I'm just being unfair, right?
Could you add an arbitrary infinite combo to this deck? It seems like there are a number of things you could do with Lifespark Spellbomb to just win the game, and you have enough "tutors" in transmute effects to find the various pieces. Something like...
Lifespark Spellbomb, Dawn's Reflection, Freed from the Real? Or Trace of Abundance/Fertile Ground if you can put it on a 5color land.
EDIT: Spore Burst might be good for making chump blockers, or swarming the board later in the game to speed up your clock.