Iona is rather fragile without some other effect giving it hexproof/shroud/indestructibility/etc. It also doesn't have any immediate impact on the board. I wouldn't be surprised if a good number of decks consider Akroma, either color, to be more problematic than Iona. After all, there's nothing to even guarantee that Iona's effect will even have an impact since it's entirely possible for none of the other players to be holding a card of the chosen color. I'll admit that mono color decks are more heavily impacted, but even then colorless removal exists. I don't see any reason why mono color decks shouldn't shore up their weaknesses by taking advantage of colorless options that are out there.
Just think about the various archetypes out there, does control care about Iona? Stax? Combo? Goodstuff? Group hug? Aggro? Iona simply represents a speed bump that probably sits around for a few turns until someone needs to cast a card of the chosen color and casts some removal of a different color.
Iona is easy to get rid of but if your sitting at a table with an Omnath, locus of mana deck and a Ezuri, Renegade leader deck and someone plays Iona you are pretty much wrecked unless someone draws a beast within. Prime time doesn't do much for either in any situation just adds some more ramp. Saying that a card should be banned because it was in all decks with green is like saying you should ban sol ring because every deck ever(pretty much) plays it. There are many examples of cards that certain color decks always run and this is not a good reason(this is to reply of an above post).
Iona is easy to get rid of but if your sitting at a table with an Omnath, locus of mana deck and a Ezuri, Renegade leader deck and someone plays Iona you are pretty much wrecked unless someone draws a beast within. Prime time doesn't do much for either in any situation just adds some more ramp. Saying that a card should be banned because it was in all decks with green is like saying you should ban sol ring because every deck ever(pretty much) plays it. There are many examples of cards that certain color decks always run and this is not a good reason(this is to reply of an above post).
How would drawing Beast help? It's green...
They would need a Duplicant or All is Dust or Disc or...one of a half dozen other colorless answers they should probably be running.
Don't forget to add Balance to the unban list. (R.I.P. Phil)
I really don't see SP as that big of a problem; I get damn tired of seeing it played and the same goes for a lot of what most people play, but being bored of it does not make it a problem.
Iona is easy to get rid of but if your sitting at a table with an Omnath, locus of mana deck and a Ezuri, Renegade leader deck and someone plays Iona you are pretty much wrecked unless someone draws a beast within. Prime time doesn't do much for either in any situation just adds some more ramp. Saying that a card should be banned because it was in all decks with green is like saying you should ban sol ring because every deck ever(pretty much) plays it. There are many examples of cards that certain color decks always run and this is not a good reason(this is to reply of an above post).
Sure Iona is great if your opponents all happen to be playing mono color and the same color. But that's a fairly uncommon. It's much more likely to sit down a table and see a Damia deck, a Prosh deck, and a Reaper King deck. Yeah, I'm sure those guys are so worried about an Iona.
They would need a Duplicant or All is Dust or Disc or...one of a half dozen other colorless answers they should probably be running.
Exactly, there are plenty of options and card choices that people can and do run because they are versatile and can get them out of situations. Any player that builds a deck should be aware of the weaknesses and include the proper card choices to compensate.
Yes, in the correct deck, SP is more devastating than PT - but depends on the deck, PT doesn't suffer any consequence because he searches for any land - which means every deck on the table can abuse him.
SP is only deadly if everyone on the table is playing G in their decks - along with another color that enables reanimation, cloning and/or Bribery.
PT didn't care about the type of the deck - even an opposing player piloting a mono U deck has plenty of ways to abuse it.
Any multiplayer game with PT = Land Rush Chaos
Chaos in Multiplayer games with SP in it only increases proportionately with the number of players playing both G and clone/reanimate/bribery effects.
They would need a Duplicant or All is Dust or Disc or...one of a half dozen other colorless answers they should probably be running.
Ahh darn was typing to fast and never even thought which enforces my pint even more. And reallly why would any green deck run all is dust or disc? Most green decks rely on their boards remaining and maturing over the period of the game to do well and requiring a player to put cards into a deck just to combat a single card is another reason for banning anyway. I wouldn't need to put any colorless removal into my deck for any reason besides her. And to people saying that it is more unlikely for mono colored decks I can personally say that from my experience 30% of decks are mono colored 40% are dual and %30 are tri. Therefore this card shuts down 30% of decks majorly messes up %40 of decks and is mediocre but strong against the last %30. Back to my original point though, Primeval Titan is banned when Iona is not. PT does not cause anyone to ahve to play certain cards to stop it, he doesn't shut people out of games, has trample instead of flying, doesn't have haste whiche would be nuts, and is played in decks 80% of the time that can't counter your targeted removal. So tell me, how is his banning justified when a card like Iona is not?
Agree with Hermit but not Ad Nauseum. I also think PT should be off the list. The rest? Maybe Library but that's it. The rest can be extremely oppressive in the right deck. The Duel RC recently unbanned PH thinking the current meta could better deal with it. It was promptly banned again in the next cycle after Karador ran roughshod through the intervening tournaments. It allows for a nearly unstoppable insta win combo way too early and cheaply. Bear in mind this is a meta where Zur is dominating through the liberal use of Helm/RIP, a two card combo where one card isn't even counterable with Zur out, and the PH combo was still considered to powerful.
Ahh darn was typing to fast and never even thought which enforces my pint even more. And reallly why would any green deck run all is dust or disc? Most green decks rely on their boards remaining and maturing over the period of the game to do well and requiring a player to put cards into a deck just to combat a single card is another reason for banning anyway. I wouldn't need to put any colorless removal into my deck for any reason besides her. And to people saying that it is more unlikely for mono colored decks I can personally say that from my experience 30% of decks are mono colored 40% are dual and %30 are tri. Therefore this card shuts down 30% of decks majorly messes up %40 of decks and is mediocre but strong against the last %30. Back to my original point though, Primeval Titan is banned when Iona is not. PT does not cause anyone to ahve to play certain cards to stop it, he doesn't shut people out of games, has trample instead of flying, doesn't have haste whiche would be nuts, and is played in decks 80% of the time that can't counter your targeted removal. So tell me, how is his banning justified when a card like Iona is not?
Every mono colored deck should run at least a couple colorless removal options. It's just good planning.
I didn't start playing EDH until after PrimeTime was banned so I honestly don't know how he warps the format (if at all).
However, I do see a lot of both Iona and Sylvan. Iona is rarely an issue. Unless it's down to the final two players Iona rarely lasts more then one, maybe two turn cycles in my meta. Every color but red has commonly run cards that can deal with her and in a four-five person game those cards come out quickly. The only time she lasts is if blue is named and the black and white players don't want her removed. Even then the blue players in my meta often have white and deal with her on their own pretty quickly.
Sylvan is also rarely game warping in my meta. Most players that run it don't abuse it with Deadeye or clone/bounce effects. The only problem is when a blue player gets mad at someone else for playing Sylvan and starts stealing it and doing degenerate things. We have one player that plays a (surprisingly) enjoyable blue kingmaker deck. Throughout a game he will shift his allegiances and help various players so he can see interesting things happen. But if you play Sylvan with him at the table he will make you, and everyone else at the table pay for it.
Ahh darn was typing to fast and never even thought which enforces my pint even more. And reallly why would any green deck run all is dust or disc? Most green decks rely on their boards remaining and maturing over the period of the game to do well and requiring a player to put cards into a deck just to combat a single card is another reason for banning anyway. I wouldn't need to put any colorless removal into my deck for any reason besides her. And to people saying that it is more unlikely for mono colored decks I can personally say that from my experience 30% of decks are mono colored 40% are dual and %30 are tri. Therefore this card shuts down 30% of decks majorly messes up %40 of decks and is mediocre but strong against the last %30. Back to my original point though, Primeval Titan is banned when Iona is not. PT does not cause anyone to ahve to play certain cards to stop it, he doesn't shut people out of games, has trample instead of flying, doesn't have haste whiche would be nuts, and is played in decks 80% of the time that can't counter your targeted removal. So tell me, how is his banning justified when a card like Iona is not?
Just think about your position for a moment. You're asking for a card that's not played in nearly every deck of it's color and good against less than 1/3 of the decks in your particular field to be banned. If you are playing a mono color deck, there is plenty of reason to include colorless and artifact answers besides Iona. What happens when someone drops a Sphinx of the Steel Wind and you're mono green or red? Do you just scoop on the spot? I'm not a fan of the old "run more answers" argument, but I do think that it's appropriate if you have to run some answers instead of being able to completely ignore the card pool and consequences of running a deck with certain colors.
Also, I have no idea why you keep comparing Iona to PT, the only similarity between them is that they're both creatures. The raw power level of PT is astronomical when compared to Iona. PT is a 3 for 1 at a minimum when it hits the battlefield.
To address your points more specifically, PT does in fact cause people to run certain cards in order to stop it. In fact, the cards that do stop it are for more specialized and fewer in number than the cards that a deck can use to stop Iona. Outside of Torpor Orb and Humility, how exactly do you propose a deck stop PT without running certain cards?
It also shuts players out of the game more insidiously than Iona. Unlike Iona which is overt and direct in its effect, PT appears more innocent; however the result of its existence is anything but innocent. PT isn't a card that hits battlefield, eats removal, and then the game moves on. No, PT is a card that will be Bribery'd, Cloned, Reanimated, Kiki-Jiki'd, Tooth and Nail'd (usually along with its best buddy Avenger of Zendikar), Blinked, etc. Anyone that doesn't have those effects on hand will fall extremely far behind. More often than not, those players have no chance at getting back into the game. Being 2-4 turns behind everyone else is not a good place to be.
Having Trample instead of Flying is largely irrelevant. Connecting with PT is far less important than simply being able to attack with it in the first place to trigger its ability.
Finally, "dies to removal" is not exactly a compelling or novel argument. It's a creature, the most easily abused card type in magic. The thing about PT is that you don't have to protect it to gain value. You simply have to let it hit the battlefield. Getting to attack with it is just a nice bonus. Killing it is rarely effective as recursion is so prevalent. Exile is the ideal solution but hard to achieve against certain decks that are built to handle it. Sacrifice outlets makes exiling from the battlefield pretty much impossible and graveyard exile are generally one shot effects or on board tricks which aren't difficult to play around.
Agree with Hermit but not Ad Nauseum. I also think PT should be off the list. The rest? Maybe Library but that's it. The rest can be extremely oppressive in the right deck. The Duel RC recently unbanned PH thinking the current meta could better deal with it. It was promptly banned again in the next cycle after Karador ran roughshod through the intervening tournaments. It allows for a nearly unstoppable insta win combo way too early and cheaply. Bear in mind this is a meta where Zur is dominating through the liberal use of Helm/RIP, a two card combo where one card isn't even counterable with Zur out, and the PH combo was still considered to powerful.
What Hermit Druid and Ad Nauseam both do is open access to resources in an unbalanced manner for one player, very early in games. In addition, Ad Nauseam takes forever and a half to resolve. When a player hits their win condition the others thankfully scoop. Most of the arguments against the banning of these cards are always along the lines of you have to build a deck specifically to abuse these cards. But the same can be said of Protean Hulk. And it requires a sac outlet in play/hand to do anything. I'm a little surprised to hear control decks, particularly Zur, can't deal with Hulk. RIP, Aven Mindcensor, loads of counters can all stop the Hulk in its tracks. Sundering Titan is the weaker cousin of Sylvan Primordial. Metalworker is slow and artifact-centric. Rofellos is probably more of a threat than Metalworker.
Colorless answers are by default less efficient than colored answers. The threat presented by Iona's mere existence in the format, regardless of how often you see her, requires mono color decks to run these inefficient solutions. Why the hell would I run Duplicant or god forbid Spine of Ish Sah in a mono-red deck, which has no way to copy (Kiki is a glaring exception) or recur it? Before you say Ulamog, I would counter that red's abundance of threaten effects, combined with lots of sac outlets are a much better answer to giant scary beatsticks. That's playing to red's strengths. No such solution exists for Iona -- you have to run clunky colorless removal instead.
And hope that you can actually draw it without using tutors or non-colorless card draw.
And hope you didn't already use it on another threat.
Mono colored decklists that want to compete are already pretty rigid, because you don't get the same cardpool depth as multicolor decks. Add a suite of "run this or die to Iona" cards and I'd say you've seriously stifled deck diversity. Couple all this with the fact that mono colored decks are inherently underpowered compared to multicolor decks. In fact, the strongest mono color, blue, is best equipped to deal with Iona because they can interact with her on the stack (I don't mean to Dash Hopes but Withering Boon and Mana Tithe are too narrow).
So what does she contribute to the format? What useful role does she fill?
As far as I'm concerned, unban Painter and ban Iona. Ban grindstone if you must. Painter is just a much more interesting card, which actually allows for creative interactions. Iona is just a boring card which hurts the weakest decks.
EDIT:
What Hermit Druid and Ad Nauseam both do is open access to resources in an unbalanced manner for one player, very early in games. In addition, Ad Nauseam takes forever and a half to resolve. When a player hits their win condition the others thankfully scoop. Most of the arguments against the banning of these cards are always along the lines of you have to build a deck specifically to abuse these cards. But the same can be said of Protean Hulk. And it requires a sac outlet in play/hand to do anything. I'm a little surprised to hear control decks, particularly Zur, can't deal with Hulk. RIP, Aven Mindcensor, loads of counters can all stop the Hulk in its tracks. Sundering Titan is the weaker cousin of Sylvan Primordial. Metalworker is slow and artifact-centric. Rofellos is probably more of a threat than Metalworker.
I basically agree with this assessment. Hulk is no stronger than HD or AD, so either it should be unbanned or the latter two should be banned. I lean towards banning all three. As long as panoptic mirror is on the banlist and hermit druid isn't, I will question the RC's definition of "degenerate combo." Re: Sundering Titan, I look back on the RC's reasoning...
Sundering Titan has long been a card on the edge. The decision to get rid of it came from the combination of two points. One it simply created undesirable game states. It was too easily both intentionally abused and unintentionally game warping especially since its ability triggers on both entering and leaving the battlefield. Two there has been a fair amount of community distaste for the card and we agreed that the card overwhelmingly creates a negative experience for players.
... and can't help but wonder how Sylvan Primordial has made it this far. I don't really want primordial banned, but if he doesn't get the axe at the end of the month and ST stays on the banlist, I think it would be a little hypocritical. Same for rofellos/metalworker. I don't actually care which way the pendulum swings as long as it's consistent.
So what does she contribute to the format? What useful role does she fill?
I agree with you in that Servant should come off the list. However, I despise this argument to ban cards or keep cards on the list. Lots if cards serve no purpose in this format; it does not follow that these cards should be consequently banned or unbanned.
Regardless, Iona serves the same purpose as a host of other resource-denying bombs: to end the game if players cannot answer it. The only decent argument for banning her is from a fun/social aspect, as with Trade Secrets and to some extent Emrakul. Iona is in far easier to deal with and generally less impactful in the long term than either of those, so I don't think it would be the end of the world to unban Servant and let them both be legal.
Auto-win combos off of Tooth and Nail are already a thing, and no action is being taken against those. Less than an hour ago, one guy at my shop attempted TaN for Kiki+Pestermite and was disrupted. He passed the turn and the next guy wins with TaN for Mike+Trike. Servant+Iona would not make a difference; I take this as (admittedly anecdotal) evidence that the ban on Servant is unnecessary.
Tangentially related, I also don't buy the "accidentally broken" logic the RC uses to justify some bans (including Servant and Hulk). I have given it time and a fair amount of thought but I simply don't agree. If you add Servant to your deck, you know full well what you are doing. If you do discover an unforeseen and unwelcome interaction, you remove the card from your deck. That's all! And if you like what you see, then there is no problem. The RC banned Staff of Domination for this reason, and later removed it from the ban list because it wasn't a big deal after all. I think the "accidentally broken" line of thought doesn't sit well with some of the RC members as well, though publicly they have to be in agreement.
If like to see some stuff come off the list, in case you can't tell. :/
Auto-win combos off of Tooth and Nail are already a thing, and no action is being taken against those. Less than an hour ago, one guy at my shop attempted TaN for Kiki+Pestermite and was disrupted. He passed the turn and the next guy wins with TaN for Mike+Trike. Servant+Iona would not make a difference; I take this as (admittedly anecdotal) evidence that the ban on Servant is unnecessary.
Well, one issue here is that you CAN'T disrupt Servant + Iona, barring a few very specific corner-case cards that are rarely run (things like Mouth of Ronom, Ghost-Lit Raider, Resounding Thunder, or Resounding Wave). With Kiki-Anything, removal works, and with Mike+Trike, graveyard removal does the trick as well.
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Well, one issue here is that you CAN'T disrupt Servant + Iona, barring a few very specific corner-case cards that are rarely run (things like Mouth of Ronom, Ghost-Lit Raider, Resounding Thunder, or Resounding Wave). With Kiki-Anything, removal works, and with Mike+Trike, graveyard removal does the trick as well.
Sure you can. You see one you kill it before the other resolves
He's referring specifically to the Tooth+Nail into them, where there is no chance to respond before both are in play.
A resolved Tooth and Nail is usually game-ending in any kind of semi-competitive deck. Having a discussion on how to disrupt one AFTER it has resolved is pretty pointless...
Since when dies the rc care how hard it is to respond to a specific combo ??? is that a banlist criteria? The one or the other must be banned argument is horrible it always has been. As far as the original guys PT ions comparisons they are laughable. Pt was a good ban for the RCs non competitive target audience As it was a monster and an auto include. Ions is a fringe white bomb used alongside many other unfair "khalia cards" like master if cruelties which just kills a player instantly. Not be able to respond to "beat" a t+No combo is not an issue especially since it does not instant win is not ironclad and requires no on board threats to your life to work. It's also irrelevant as the rc doesn't care about intentionally broken plays see hermit Druid. Cards could come off cards could go on who knows.
Colorless answers are by default less efficient than colored answers. The threat presented by Iona's mere existence in the format, regardless of how often you see her, requires mono color decks to run these inefficient solutions. Why the hell would I run Duplicant or god forbid Spine of Ish Sah in a mono-red deck, which has no way to copy (Kiki is a glaring exception) or recur it? Before you say Ulamog, I would counter that red's abundance of threaten effects, combined with lots of sac outlets are a much better answer to giant scary beatsticks. That's playing to red's strengths. No such solution exists for Iona -- you have to run clunky colorless removal instead.
And hope that you can actually draw it without using tutors or non-colorless card draw.
And hope you didn't already use it on another threat.
Mono colored decklists that want to compete are already pretty rigid, because you don't get the same cardpool depth as multicolor decks. Add a suite of "run this or die to Iona" cards and I'd say you've seriously stifled deck diversity. Couple all this with the fact that mono colored decks are inherently underpowered compared to multicolor decks. In fact, the strongest mono color, blue, is best equipped to deal with Iona because they can interact with her on the stack (I don't mean to Dash Hopes but Withering Boon and Mana Tithe are too narrow).
So what does she contribute to the format? What useful role does she fill?
As far as I'm concerned, unban Painter and ban Iona. Ban grindstone if you must. Painter is just a much more interesting card, which actually allows for creative interactions. Iona is just a boring card which hurts the weakest decks.
There's nothing forcing you to run any colorless removal. If you don't want to include any of the available answers in your deck then don't. But doing so in mono color decks means that you accept the fact that sometimes you'll run into Iona and you won't be able to deal with her. Iona isn't even the only problematic card out there. What happens when you run into a Sphinx of the Steel Wind as mono red, concede?
... and can't help but wonder how Sylvan Primordial has made it this far. I don't really want primordial banned, but if he doesn't get the axe at the end of the month and ST stays on the banlist, I think it would be a little hypocritical. Same for rofellos/metalworker. I don't actually care which way the pendulum swings as long as it's consistent.
It seems pretty clear you did not read what you quoted. ST does not have to hit land, nor does it hit land coming and going. People choose to be tools with it.
Rofellos and Metalwoker aren't even the same, again except they are creatures. Hands are not routinely wiped out, the battlefield is, and for Rofellos to get real value you have to CAST stuff, not let it sit in your hand. I don't think MW should be banned, but terrible arguments like this wont get him off.
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.
And reallly why would any green deck run all is dust or disc?
Wat?
When I was building Azusa, pretty much every decklist I looked at to pull ideas from ran All is Dust, Oblivion Stone or Nevinyrral's Disk, Steel Hellkite, AND Karn Liberated. Spine of Ish Sah + Buried Ruin were common inclusions, as well, for recurable colorless removal. That's like half-a-dozen sources of removal for Iona in mono-color, which seems reasonable given that you don't have a way to tutor for them in green (outside of Hellkite). Black can afford to play most of these, as well.
Well, one issue here is that you CAN'T disrupt Servant + Iona, barring a few very specific corner-case cards that are rarely run (things like Mouth of Ronom, Ghost-Lit Raider, Resounding Thunder, or Resounding Wave). With Kiki-Anything, removal works, and with Mike+Trike, graveyard removal does the trick as well.
Sure you can! Both Servant and Iona have ETB triggers you can respond to with removal. Just so we're clear.
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?
Sure you can! Both Servant and Iona have ETB triggers you can respond to with removal. Just so we're clear.
Yeah... no. "As this enters the battlefield" is a replacement effect that modifies how something enters the battlefield, doesn't use the stack, and is in effect by the time the creature is on the battlefield.
A resolved Tooth and Nail is usually game-ending in any kind of semi-competitive deck. Having a discussion on how to disrupt one AFTER it has resolved is pretty pointless...
But that's the point. A resolved Tooth and Nail is NOT game ending at a semi-competitive table, because a well-placed piece of spot removal breaks the whole thing apart. Tap Kiki-jiki, targeting Conscripts, in response Swords to Plowshares, now try something else. Remove the last counter from Triskelion targeting itself, in response Swords to Plowshares, try something else. Triskelion Undying trigger, in response Stonecloaker, try something else. Palinchron + Phantasmal Image, in response to the bounce activation, Swords to Plowshares, try something else.
But if your opponent brings in Painter's + Iona, it's done. Unless you can kill them with what you have on board (through a 7/7), or you're running one of half a dozen narrow, expensive, and clunky answers, you've lost.
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Sure you can! Both Servant and Iona have ETB triggers you can respond to with removal. Just so we're clear.
From the official rulings on Iona:
10/1/2009: Once the color is chosen, it's too late for opponents to respond by casting spells of that color. Iona is not yet in the battlefield at the time the color is chosen, so, for example, there's no way for an opponent to destroy it by casting Doom Blade if the chosen color is black.
But here is the question...you can't remove Iona after the color is named because she actually isn't on the battlefield. Could you remove a Painter's already on board by stacking a removal spell on top of the ETB trigger?
10/1/2009: Once the color is chosen, it's too late for opponents to respond by casting spells of that color. Iona is not yet in the battlefield at the time the color is chosen, so, for example, there's no way for an opponent to destroy it by casting Doom Blade if the chosen color is black.
But here is the question...you can't remove Iona after the color is named because she actually isn't on the battlefield. Could you remove a Painter's already on board by stacking a removal spell on top of the ETB trigger?
There isn't even an ETB trigger to respond to. Neither of those cards have an ETB trigger.
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?
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Iona is easy to get rid of but if your sitting at a table with an Omnath, locus of mana deck and a Ezuri, Renegade leader deck and someone plays Iona you are pretty much wrecked unless someone draws a beast within. Prime time doesn't do much for either in any situation just adds some more ramp. Saying that a card should be banned because it was in all decks with green is like saying you should ban sol ring because every deck ever(pretty much) plays it. There are many examples of cards that certain color decks always run and this is not a good reason(this is to reply of an above post).
How would drawing Beast help? It's green...
They would need a Duplicant or All is Dust or Disc or...one of a half dozen other colorless answers they should probably be running.
EDH Decks:
WUBOloro, Combo ControlWUB
UBOona Reanimator ComboUB
BRGProssh, Eater of the Blue MageBRG
UBRGrixis StormUBR
Rebuilding Jenara (stealyourstuff.dec)
Pauper Deck:
UBInspired SirenUB
I really don't see SP as that big of a problem; I get damn tired of seeing it played and the same goes for a lot of what most people play, but being bored of it does not make it a problem.
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Sure Iona is great if your opponents all happen to be playing mono color and the same color. But that's a fairly uncommon. It's much more likely to sit down a table and see a Damia deck, a Prosh deck, and a Reaper King deck. Yeah, I'm sure those guys are so worried about an Iona.
Exactly, there are plenty of options and card choices that people can and do run because they are versatile and can get them out of situations. Any player that builds a deck should be aware of the weaknesses and include the proper card choices to compensate.
SP is only deadly if everyone on the table is playing G in their decks - along with another color that enables reanimation, cloning and/or Bribery.
PT didn't care about the type of the deck - even an opposing player piloting a mono U deck has plenty of ways to abuse it.
Any multiplayer game with PT = Land Rush Chaos
Chaos in Multiplayer games with SP in it only increases proportionately with the number of players playing both G and clone/reanimate/bribery effects.
Ahh darn was typing to fast and never even thought which enforces my pint even more. And reallly why would any green deck run all is dust or disc? Most green decks rely on their boards remaining and maturing over the period of the game to do well and requiring a player to put cards into a deck just to combat a single card is another reason for banning anyway. I wouldn't need to put any colorless removal into my deck for any reason besides her. And to people saying that it is more unlikely for mono colored decks I can personally say that from my experience 30% of decks are mono colored 40% are dual and %30 are tri. Therefore this card shuts down 30% of decks majorly messes up %40 of decks and is mediocre but strong against the last %30. Back to my original point though, Primeval Titan is banned when Iona is not. PT does not cause anyone to ahve to play certain cards to stop it, he doesn't shut people out of games, has trample instead of flying, doesn't have haste whiche would be nuts, and is played in decks 80% of the time that can't counter your targeted removal. So tell me, how is his banning justified when a card like Iona is not?
Agree with Hermit but not Ad Nauseum. I also think PT should be off the list. The rest? Maybe Library but that's it. The rest can be extremely oppressive in the right deck. The Duel RC recently unbanned PH thinking the current meta could better deal with it. It was promptly banned again in the next cycle after Karador ran roughshod through the intervening tournaments. It allows for a nearly unstoppable insta win combo way too early and cheaply. Bear in mind this is a meta where Zur is dominating through the liberal use of Helm/RIP, a two card combo where one card isn't even counterable with Zur out, and the PH combo was still considered to powerful.
Every mono colored deck should run at least a couple colorless removal options. It's just good planning.
I didn't start playing EDH until after PrimeTime was banned so I honestly don't know how he warps the format (if at all).
However, I do see a lot of both Iona and Sylvan. Iona is rarely an issue. Unless it's down to the final two players Iona rarely lasts more then one, maybe two turn cycles in my meta. Every color but red has commonly run cards that can deal with her and in a four-five person game those cards come out quickly. The only time she lasts is if blue is named and the black and white players don't want her removed. Even then the blue players in my meta often have white and deal with her on their own pretty quickly.
Sylvan is also rarely game warping in my meta. Most players that run it don't abuse it with Deadeye or clone/bounce effects. The only problem is when a blue player gets mad at someone else for playing Sylvan and starts stealing it and doing degenerate things. We have one player that plays a (surprisingly) enjoyable blue kingmaker deck. Throughout a game he will shift his allegiances and help various players so he can see interesting things happen. But if you play Sylvan with him at the table he will make you, and everyone else at the table pay for it.
EDH Decks:
WUBOloro, Combo ControlWUB
UBOona Reanimator ComboUB
BRGProssh, Eater of the Blue MageBRG
UBRGrixis StormUBR
Rebuilding Jenara (stealyourstuff.dec)
Pauper Deck:
UBInspired SirenUB
Just think about your position for a moment. You're asking for a card that's not played in nearly every deck of it's color and good against less than 1/3 of the decks in your particular field to be banned. If you are playing a mono color deck, there is plenty of reason to include colorless and artifact answers besides Iona. What happens when someone drops a Sphinx of the Steel Wind and you're mono green or red? Do you just scoop on the spot? I'm not a fan of the old "run more answers" argument, but I do think that it's appropriate if you have to run some answers instead of being able to completely ignore the card pool and consequences of running a deck with certain colors.
Also, I have no idea why you keep comparing Iona to PT, the only similarity between them is that they're both creatures. The raw power level of PT is astronomical when compared to Iona. PT is a 3 for 1 at a minimum when it hits the battlefield.
To address your points more specifically, PT does in fact cause people to run certain cards in order to stop it. In fact, the cards that do stop it are for more specialized and fewer in number than the cards that a deck can use to stop Iona. Outside of Torpor Orb and Humility, how exactly do you propose a deck stop PT without running certain cards?
It also shuts players out of the game more insidiously than Iona. Unlike Iona which is overt and direct in its effect, PT appears more innocent; however the result of its existence is anything but innocent. PT isn't a card that hits battlefield, eats removal, and then the game moves on. No, PT is a card that will be Bribery'd, Cloned, Reanimated, Kiki-Jiki'd, Tooth and Nail'd (usually along with its best buddy Avenger of Zendikar), Blinked, etc. Anyone that doesn't have those effects on hand will fall extremely far behind. More often than not, those players have no chance at getting back into the game. Being 2-4 turns behind everyone else is not a good place to be.
Having Trample instead of Flying is largely irrelevant. Connecting with PT is far less important than simply being able to attack with it in the first place to trigger its ability.
Yes, it doesn't have haste, except when it does.
Finally, "dies to removal" is not exactly a compelling or novel argument. It's a creature, the most easily abused card type in magic. The thing about PT is that you don't have to protect it to gain value. You simply have to let it hit the battlefield. Getting to attack with it is just a nice bonus. Killing it is rarely effective as recursion is so prevalent. Exile is the ideal solution but hard to achieve against certain decks that are built to handle it. Sacrifice outlets makes exiling from the battlefield pretty much impossible and graveyard exile are generally one shot effects or on board tricks which aren't difficult to play around.
What Hermit Druid and Ad Nauseam both do is open access to resources in an unbalanced manner for one player, very early in games. In addition, Ad Nauseam takes forever and a half to resolve. When a player hits their win condition the others thankfully scoop. Most of the arguments against the banning of these cards are always along the lines of you have to build a deck specifically to abuse these cards. But the same can be said of Protean Hulk. And it requires a sac outlet in play/hand to do anything. I'm a little surprised to hear control decks, particularly Zur, can't deal with Hulk. RIP, Aven Mindcensor, loads of counters can all stop the Hulk in its tracks. Sundering Titan is the weaker cousin of Sylvan Primordial. Metalworker is slow and artifact-centric. Rofellos is probably more of a threat than Metalworker.
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And hope that you can actually draw it without using tutors or non-colorless card draw.
And hope you didn't already use it on another threat.
Mono colored decklists that want to compete are already pretty rigid, because you don't get the same cardpool depth as multicolor decks. Add a suite of "run this or die to Iona" cards and I'd say you've seriously stifled deck diversity. Couple all this with the fact that mono colored decks are inherently underpowered compared to multicolor decks. In fact, the strongest mono color, blue, is best equipped to deal with Iona because they can interact with her on the stack (I don't mean to Dash Hopes but Withering Boon and Mana Tithe are too narrow).
So what does she contribute to the format? What useful role does she fill?
As far as I'm concerned, unban Painter and ban Iona. Ban grindstone if you must. Painter is just a much more interesting card, which actually allows for creative interactions. Iona is just a boring card which hurts the weakest decks.
EDIT:
I basically agree with this assessment. Hulk is no stronger than HD or AD, so either it should be unbanned or the latter two should be banned. I lean towards banning all three. As long as panoptic mirror is on the banlist and hermit druid isn't, I will question the RC's definition of "degenerate combo." Re: Sundering Titan, I look back on the RC's reasoning...
... and can't help but wonder how Sylvan Primordial has made it this far. I don't really want primordial banned, but if he doesn't get the axe at the end of the month and ST stays on the banlist, I think it would be a little hypocritical. Same for rofellos/metalworker. I don't actually care which way the pendulum swings as long as it's consistent.
I agree with you in that Servant should come off the list. However, I despise this argument to ban cards or keep cards on the list. Lots if cards serve no purpose in this format; it does not follow that these cards should be consequently banned or unbanned.
Regardless, Iona serves the same purpose as a host of other resource-denying bombs: to end the game if players cannot answer it. The only decent argument for banning her is from a fun/social aspect, as with Trade Secrets and to some extent Emrakul. Iona is in far easier to deal with and generally less impactful in the long term than either of those, so I don't think it would be the end of the world to unban Servant and let them both be legal.
Auto-win combos off of Tooth and Nail are already a thing, and no action is being taken against those. Less than an hour ago, one guy at my shop attempted TaN for Kiki+Pestermite and was disrupted. He passed the turn and the next guy wins with TaN for Mike+Trike. Servant+Iona would not make a difference; I take this as (admittedly anecdotal) evidence that the ban on Servant is unnecessary.
Tangentially related, I also don't buy the "accidentally broken" logic the RC uses to justify some bans (including Servant and Hulk). I have given it time and a fair amount of thought but I simply don't agree. If you add Servant to your deck, you know full well what you are doing. If you do discover an unforeseen and unwelcome interaction, you remove the card from your deck. That's all! And if you like what you see, then there is no problem. The RC banned Staff of Domination for this reason, and later removed it from the ban list because it wasn't a big deal after all. I think the "accidentally broken" line of thought doesn't sit well with some of the RC members as well, though publicly they have to be in agreement.
If like to see some stuff come off the list, in case you can't tell. :/
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StaffWell, one issue here is that you CAN'T disrupt Servant + Iona, barring a few very specific corner-case cards that are rarely run (things like Mouth of Ronom, Ghost-Lit Raider, Resounding Thunder, or Resounding Wave). With Kiki-Anything, removal works, and with Mike+Trike, graveyard removal does the trick as well.
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Sure you can. You see one you kill it before the other resolves
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He's referring specifically to the Tooth+Nail into them, where there is no chance to respond before both are in play.
A resolved Tooth and Nail is usually game-ending in any kind of semi-competitive deck. Having a discussion on how to disrupt one AFTER it has resolved is pretty pointless...
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There's nothing forcing you to run any colorless removal. If you don't want to include any of the available answers in your deck then don't. But doing so in mono color decks means that you accept the fact that sometimes you'll run into Iona and you won't be able to deal with her. Iona isn't even the only problematic card out there. What happens when you run into a Sphinx of the Steel Wind as mono red, concede?
Rofellos and Metalwoker aren't even the same, again except they are creatures. Hands are not routinely wiped out, the battlefield is, and for Rofellos to get real value you have to CAST stuff, not let it sit in your hand. I don't think MW should be banned, but terrible arguments like this wont get him off.
Wat?
When I was building Azusa, pretty much every decklist I looked at to pull ideas from ran All is Dust, Oblivion Stone or Nevinyrral's Disk, Steel Hellkite, AND Karn Liberated. Spine of Ish Sah + Buried Ruin were common inclusions, as well, for recurable colorless removal. That's like half-a-dozen sources of removal for Iona in mono-color, which seems reasonable given that you don't have a way to tutor for them in green (outside of Hellkite). Black can afford to play most of these, as well.
R.I.P. Sundering Titan (6/20/12) and Braids, Cabal Minion (9/12/14)
Sure you can! Both Servant and Iona have ETB triggers you can respond to with removal. Just so we're clear.
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No, they don't. You choose your color as they enter the battlefield, not when.
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StaffYeah... no. "As this enters the battlefield" is a replacement effect that modifies how something enters the battlefield, doesn't use the stack, and is in effect by the time the creature is on the battlefield.
But that's the point. A resolved Tooth and Nail is NOT game ending at a semi-competitive table, because a well-placed piece of spot removal breaks the whole thing apart. Tap Kiki-jiki, targeting Conscripts, in response Swords to Plowshares, now try something else. Remove the last counter from Triskelion targeting itself, in response Swords to Plowshares, try something else. Triskelion Undying trigger, in response Stonecloaker, try something else. Palinchron + Phantasmal Image, in response to the bounce activation, Swords to Plowshares, try something else.
But if your opponent brings in Painter's + Iona, it's done. Unless you can kill them with what you have on board (through a 7/7), or you're running one of half a dozen narrow, expensive, and clunky answers, you've lost.
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From the official rulings on Iona:
10/1/2009: Once the color is chosen, it's too late for opponents to respond by casting spells of that color. Iona is not yet in the battlefield at the time the color is chosen, so, for example, there's no way for an opponent to destroy it by casting Doom Blade if the chosen color is black.
But here is the question...you can't remove Iona after the color is named because she actually isn't on the battlefield. Could you remove a Painter's already on board by stacking a removal spell on top of the ETB trigger?
EDH Decks:
WUBOloro, Combo ControlWUB
UBOona Reanimator ComboUB
BRGProssh, Eater of the Blue MageBRG
UBRGrixis StormUBR
Rebuilding Jenara (stealyourstuff.dec)
Pauper Deck:
UBInspired SirenUB
There isn't even an ETB trigger to respond to. Neither of those cards have an ETB trigger.