MTG Salvation

Quote from yujipooji »

Well, zurgo is actually one of the worst examples to demonstrate force of will's power level. It's one of the few times it's not as good, especially if it was used on zurgo himself.

Not to mention on a mulligan to 5...

Hadn't considered the control-heavy metagame aspect, but good point.

Duel commander is still the dominant commander format on Cockatrice, but MTGO-style games aren't hard to come by.

Besides the fact that Treachery is not remotely comparable in power to cards that warrant a ban, I take objection to their description too:

Aside from strong card selection, Treachery is one of the few cards played in nearly every blue deck, largely from its sheer power. When drawn, it’s a card that provides a tempo swing that’s often impossible to recover from, and when looking for ways to weaken this style of deck it’s a clear enough outlier in strength to warrant a ban.

From MTGtop8, we can see it's only the 19th most popular blue card, behind way more powerful cards like Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Snapcaster Mage, and Force of Will.

I will add... I thought this format would mean the death of Duel Commander, in very short order. Wizards sanctioning adds a huge credibility to a format, and allows players to easily speak a common language without knowledge of specific web forums or facebook groups or bookmarks to banlists. But the idiotic bumbling around the banlist for Wizards format is going to significantly hinder this process, making for a miserable transition between Duel Commander and their format. I honestly cannot believe how badly this is being botched.

Quote from KriggY »

None of matchups I played in this format (30 or 20 life) were decided on me having/not having force of will.

*Matchups* aren't decided with it, in a 99 card singleton format, but *games* most certainly are. If one has a goal of generally weakening blue decks, I think banning FoW would be pretty effective at that. And to your point, it wouldn't disproportionately harm any individual matchup or deck archtype.

Oh cool, Vial and Tasigur are back and get Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time. Seems fair.

In hindsight, it was super annoying to face off against a turn-1 mox. Good for them for making that call.

Yisan shouldn't be nearly as painful in a 20-life format with all of the burn being packed these days.

Riley, Cockatrice seems the same as it always was, though local communities seem to be shifting a bit with some reporting less players and some reporting more.

How much fun is it to play a couple of silver bullets in a 99 card deck and hope you draw them?

At that point you're basically playing regular commander and hoping you get Sol Ring in your opening hand and your opponent doesn't.

Quote from 3drinks »

Any potential ground you were trying to break was instantly nullified the moment you classified an archetype as "mindless". Saying an aggressive deck is brainless is no different, equally as absurd, as me calling a heavy permission deck "brainlesscounters.dek". It's OK to hate certain strategies, whether playing against them or otherwise, but the moment you reiterate this foolish line of thought is the moment you have lost any and all credibility.

Out of curiosity, I looked at the most recent 10 decklists in *** tournaments on mtgtop8 for the major archtypes (had to sub in a couple of ** lists for Titania I think, to fill out the 10). First I looked at cards that appeared in all 10 lists:

Breya: 6
Zurgo: 13
Geist: 12
Titania: 21
Vial/Kraum: 19

This really surprised me. And I think part of the reason is that with access to 2, 3, or 4 colors, you have a bunch more obvious staples than in just one color. Titania is the exception here, where the mana elves and the few utility green spells in MTG history are always included (i.e. Beast Within).

If you look at cards that appeared on at least 6 or more decklists from each commander, you get:

Breya: 27
Zurgo: 47
Geist: 48
Titania: 49
Vial/Kraum: 49

So really, Breya is the only decklist that doesn't have a very established set of cards that belong in it. I think this is partly because it's new and people are still figuring out how to play it, but also because it has 4 colors available to it.

Anyways the point here is that in the net-deck era, almost all major decks are brainless, at least from a deckbuilding perspective

Local preferences will change over time but I haven't noticed any change in # of Cockatrice games happening in this format. I think that's a better reflection of the format as a whole since it's global and will show changes in interest across all communities.

It is unfortunate that two changes that would turn the format upside-down (C16 and 20 life) happened at the same time.

Do we all agree to just play Wizards 30 life and bear through the hopefully temporary banlist? It seems like what the community needs for unification. Personally I'm looking forward to seeing if Iname has any chance in the broken Oloro x Vial x Tasigur world

I hadn't even noticed, but a format where Shahrazad is legal should be threated like a vacation trip to Chernobyl.

Same, I just don't want to play with or against Oloro + Vampiric Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise. I really enjoy playing Queen Marchesa, Karlov and Bruse/Reyhan, and those decks don't even exist in 30lp with such an UB pushed banlist.

WotC had the chance....and they punted @ first and goal................

I really don't like sideboard on commander, sideboard powers up even further decks that have more resilient ways to find it (Black/Blue/Green), and powers down the already less used colors (Red/White) since they have a harder time to find what they want. Also sideboard makes goodstuff/multicolored decks that already are very strong on the format, even stronger since you will have an extremely hard time Sideboarding against Marath, Geist, Jenara or Anafenza/Doran, but against the already Tier 2 decks like Zurgo(Tier 2 on 30HP), Thalia, Reanimator(Kaalia/Mimeoplasm), Daretti, Ezuri and many others, it is easy to put some hate that crushes their deck, which people WILL have, GY hate or monocolored hate on SB is mandatory on almost any format, but Graveyard/monocolored decks/decks that sinergizes with their cards(Storm, Doomsday, Artifacts, counters) on 1v1 Commander have always been Tier 2 decks, at maximum tier 1.5, but will have an extremely hard time fighting against hate, different from most of the tier 1 decks.

Sideboard also takes time, I don't think it is necessary on Commander, it would unbalance too much in favor of the already dominant goodstuff decks that don't run more specific strategies, and that aren't tied to a single color.

Quote from Daliren »

Ended 2nd in the last tournament in Barcelona with Vial/Thrasios.

Here you have a round of the tournament vs a good friend

There's a misplay as the Golem token shouldn't have attacked the turn off the Delay. Splicer would have haste...not the Golem though.

What Asimov said is 100% truth. Vial is definitely getting the axe, there is no doubt in my mind. Breya is also incredibly strong in the meta at the moment and needs to be looked at. She literally is the new Marath: THE Swiss army-knife of generals, in 4 colors.

I would give the same advice to newer players: if you're building some of these new Partner and 4 color generals, be prepared they might get banned..

Quote from KeMT »

Quote from DC Website »

http://www.duelcommander.com/2013/08/whats-in-a-banlist/
A couple of cards are especially strong in Duel Commander because of the structure of the format. Karakas is repeatable removal for the commander. While it’s tempting to errata the card so that it can’t target commanders, we prefer having cards play as close as possible to their actual wording, for one simple reason: if a player finds a card, that should be all the information they need. No extra knowledge such as “doesn’t work on commanders” should be necessary. That’s why we chose to simply ban it.
Humility is another such card. Because every Duel Commander deck plays at least a creature (their commander) and most decks rely on being able to cast it and use it, Humility puts a big stress on the format, even though it has not been played that much.
(...)
To summarize, here are the main principles we’re using for the banlist:

1 No regular turn 4 kills
2 Power level
3 Spirit of format
4 Suitability for casual play groups
5 Deck balancing

From What I understand, the reasoning is that both Karakas and Humility break the spirit of the format, whether it's 30 or 20 life, it affects the game the same way

This seems silly to me because humility isn't even banned in multiplayer which I would think "spirit of the format" would hold more weight.

@Stillen: What is the real problem with Tabernacle exept the price tag? In a 20 life format (We also play it in cube) there is a huge cost attached to playing a land that does not even produce mana. In a 30 life I meta Tabernacle is much stronger but with that change I don't see it being to powerful and a fringe card for some decks.

If you wanted to play a competitive 3 color deck, you also needed to play duals in 30 life. Just like you need to play duals in legacy or fetches in modern. If you don't have the budget, play a mono color deck.
I get that it will be harder for casual players or budget players, but this is nto the point of this banlist. And if you want to play competitive and don't own the duals it's very easy (I mean very easy, at least where I leave) to borrow the duals you need, be it for FNM or bigger tournaments.

I agree that control is still very relevant. I don't think combo is hit that much: look at the german highlander meta: storm and high tide are a thing. If anything, 20hp makes storm's life easier, as you can tendrills kill with a storm count of 10 (9 if your opponent fetches a bunch of times). THe format is also a lot slower than most people imagine, definitely not as fast as modern (though definitely faster than before). I'm pretty sure high tide will still be a thing with Jace or Teferi. The difference? THose decks will need to be a lot more all-in than they are right now