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.
i disagree. especially not in EDH and with the rules of color identity
yeah but in EDH/commander where this matters since we are talking about EDH/commander
GC >>>>>> TA by ALOT
so back to my original question why is one banned but not the other?
A bunch of opinion backed up by nothing. Creatures get wiped all the time, what would color identity have to do with either? If anything artifacts are better because they are colorless and lots of them make more than one mana.
TA is banned because it is much faster earlier and is less susceptible to common board wipes.
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.
Relevant parts bolded. If you have to actually ramp into something else (Prosh or AoZ) to make Gaea's Cradle useful, won't that make Gaea's Cradle a "ramp more" card, so to speak? Of course, if you didn't have to ramp into it, it is, by definition, not so much of a "fast mana" card that the RC intends to ban, isn't it? You did mention that you often get this ridiculous board position by Turn 4 -- decks running Tolarian Academy (while it was legal) can get this ridiculous board position fairly consistently (with TA in hand) around Turn 2.
Cradle dropping early has caused more scoops / rage quits in my group than any other card
Of the list, I would argue that only Avenger of Zendikar produces significant amount of creatures for Gaea's Cradle, most of the time. "Comboing" (or rather, "synergising") Gaea's Cradle with Ant Queen and Rampaging Baloth isn't much of a fast mana that the RC is looking forward to ban.
A bunch of opinion backed up by nothing. Creatures get wiped all the time, what would color identity have to do with either? If anything artifacts are better because they are colorless and lots of them make more than one mana.
TA is banned because it is much faster earlier and is less susceptible to common board wipes.
While I am actually on the same side of the argument, to be fair, I thought I'd mention that your original post was not really backed up either
A bunch of opinion backed up by nothing. Creatures get wiped all the time, what would color identity have to do with either? If anything artifacts are better because they are colorless and lots of them make more than one mana.
TA is banned because it is much faster earlier and is less susceptible to common board wipes.
of course its my opinion thats all this forum is lol just like your last statement there. I asked a question and the first wave of answers didnt provide an answer of why TA is banned over GC.
if no one can make sense of why TA is banned when GC is not, than people reading this might be more likely to agree and perhaps one day make a difference in the ban list.
But you did attempt to answer the question of why TA is banned over GC .Thanks, but it just still doesnt make sense to me. there both terribly powerful cards and i know TA is on there only because the initial ban list went off of vintage but does it not warrant a closer look since the cards are very close in power level even if TA might be better or w/e. idk
But you did attempt to answer the question of why TA is banned over GC .Thanks, but it just still doesnt make sense to me. there both terribly powerful cards and i know TA is on there only because the initial ban list went off of vintage but does it not warrant a closer look since the cards are very close in power level even if TA might be better or w/e. idk
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.
Producing lots of mana in long games is perfectly fine with the RC (and to many players, I suspect). It is the anti-climatic (or rather, aclimatic(?)) production of lots of mana during the early games that made Tolarian Academy banned.
same argument can be made for cradle lol
My argument was actually in response to Raining Frogs who explicitly conceded that "Artifacts may be faster and more explosive than creatures but dudes will win the long game" (citation below).
Artifacts may be faster and more explosive than creatures but dudes will win the long game because they are individually far more valuable.
But for the sake of argument, how are you getting fast mana with Gaea's Cradle (say, within Turn 2ish)?
With Tolarian Academy, we were seeing explosive starts to the extent of a fairly consistent: -
Turn 1: Land, Sol Ring and maybe a Sensei's Divining Top to check the top 3 (Note that this can be a little worse if this was say, Mind Stone instead of Sensei's Divining Top and the first land drop was a Seat of the Synod)
Turn 2: Tolarian Academy for 2UUU, probably sufficient for an early Bribery or Tezzeret (or whatever board-impacting spell which you can quite readily find at 5 drops) or the player could sit on that mana for an end of turn Fact or Fiction (or counterspell, if needs be).
Note that the above scenario is not even the Magical Christmasland version of it -- that is actually the watered down version of the more broken plays. I suspect that the Magic Christmasland version would likely have the first land as a Seat of the Synod and include a Mana Crypt somewhere for a cool 10 mana by turn 2 (Turn 1: Seat of Synod, Sol Ring, Mind Stone; Turn 2: Mana Crypt, Tolarian Academy for U++++UUUU=5UUUUU for, oh-I-don't-know, maybe an Omniscience?
Contrast this with Gaea's Cradle. Just theorycrafting, what would your most likely play (up to turn 2) assuming that you already have a Gaea's Cradle in hand?
You are likely going to consistently get a similarly high amount of mana after, say, Turn 4 at the earliest. Mind you, Green getting lots of mana can be pretty daunting too but this is nothing close to the explosive start we mentioned earlier and honestly, green ramping to lots of mana by turn 4 isn't exactly the most exciting news. Heck, with Green, a theoretical: -
Turn 1: Forest, Green Sun's Zenith for Dryad Arbor
Turn 2: Forest, Azusa, Forest, Forest, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
Turn 3: GGGGGGGGGGwithout even playing a land on turn 3 sans Gaea's Cradle
Could they unban Primeval Titan if there was a basic lands only clause put in place? I am wondering because people always say its because he grabs any two lands.
TA is just way more bonkers than GC because of the early game explosive starts. You just can't do that kind of stuff with GC.
However.
With stuff like Gaze of Granite seeing print, I dunno. I'd like to see TA come off the banlist for a little bit. I'd certainly sleeve up Bane of Progress.
It would be interesting to see if we could blow out the artifact player.
Could they unban Primeval Titan if there was a basic lands only clause put in place? I am wondering because people always say its because he grabs any two lands.
They would never errata a card specifically for EDH, but I don't think it would have been as popular or banned if the card read 2 basic lands. Still SUPER good, but at that point I dont think its as good as Sun Titan.
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.
Could they unban Primeval Titan if there was a basic lands only clause put in place? I am wondering because people always say its because he grabs any two lands.
No. Because:
1) They wouldn't put in place format specific errata just to unban him.
2) He would still be pretty gnarly value even if he could only grabbed basics. Not near as busted or format warping (potentially), but he'd still ramp better than just about anything else available.
At this point I am sorry I ever was happy about the Primeval Titan ban. I would glady swap him with Sylvan Primordial. Getting broken lands and the fights for reanimate was annoying. But at least I had some land to cast a spell still after it happened.
My argument was actually in response to Raining Frogs who explicitly conceded that "Artifacts may be faster and more explosive than creatures but dudes will win the long game" (citation below).
But for the sake of argument, how are you getting fast mana with Gaea's Cradle (say, within Turn 2ish)?
With Tolarian Academy, we were seeing explosive starts to the extent of a fairly consistent: -
Turn 1: Land, Sol Ring and maybe a Sensei's Divining Top to check the top 3 (Note that this can be a little worse if this was say, Mind Stone instead of Sensei's Divining Top and the first land drop was a Seat of the Synod)
Turn 2: Tolarian Academy for 2UUU, probably sufficient for an early Bribery or Tezzeret (or whatever board-impacting spell which you can quite readily find at 5 drops) or the player could sit on that mana for an end of turn Fact or Fiction (or counterspell, if needs be).
Note that the above scenario is not even the Magical Christmasland version of it -- that is actually the watered down version of the more broken plays. I suspect that the Magic Christmasland version would likely have the first land as a Seat of the Synod and include a Mana Crypt somewhere for a cool 10 mana by turn 2 (Turn 1: Seat of Synod, Sol Ring, Mind Stone; Turn 2: Mana Crypt, Tolarian Academy for U++++UUUU=5UUUUU for, oh-I-don't-know, maybe an Omniscience?
Contrast this with Gaea's Cradle. Just theorycrafting, what would your most likely play (up to turn 2) assuming that you already have a Gaea's Cradle in hand?
You are likely going to consistently get a similarly high amount of mana after, say, Turn 4 at the earliest. Mind you, Green getting lots of mana can be pretty daunting too but this is nothing close to the explosive start we mentioned earlier and honestly, green ramping to lots of mana by turn 4 isn't exactly the most exciting news. Heck, with Green, a theoretical: -
Turn 1: Forest, Green Sun's Zenith for Dryad Arbor
Turn 2: Forest, Azusa, Forest, Forest, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
Turn 3: GGGGGGGGGGwithout even playing a land on turn 3 sans Gaea's Cradle
Yep, agreed with this. Cradle is awesome turn 4+, but on the very early turns, turns when a lot of mana can be a big problem, TA is definitely more explosive.
That said, your argument could just as easily say that sol ring and mana crypt should be banned. Really, with both of those banned TA starts to look a lot more acceptable since there aren't many 0 drop artifacts that are popular in EDH, and 1 drops that don't produce mana don't really let TA ramp up much faster than cradle.
I'm just saying, if you take sol ring and mana crypt out of the equation (and let's say mana vault too), it's a lot harder to come up with a realistic situation that results in getting way above the curve earlier than turn 3-4 or so.
1) It's easier to generate multiple artifacts on the first to second turn of the game, because there are more artifacts with CMC of 0-1 worth running than creatures
2) Said artifacts often tap for mana. Some creatures do, but creatures generally tap for less mana for their cost (Llanowar Elves vs Sol Ring), and have summoning sickness so they cannot do it right away
That said, your argument could just as easily say that sol ring and mana crypt should be banned. Really, with both of those banned TA starts to look a lot more acceptable since there aren't many 0 drop artifacts that are popular in EDH, and 1 drops that don't produce mana don't really let TA ramp up much faster than cradle.
I'm just saying, if you take sol ring and mana crypt out of the equation (and let's say mana vault too), it's a lot harder to come up with a realistic situation that results in getting way above the curve earlier than turn 3-4 or so.
Banning multiple cards to unban a single card doesn't seem like a move any ban committee would want to make; regardless of the format. As for the argument that other low cost artifacts aren't being used, people do play Trinket Mage packages fairly often, of which some fairly powerful ramp options would still exist, such as Mox Opal, Mox Diamond, & Chrome Mox; all of which would still allow for Fzian's Sensei's Divining Top route (assuming an artifact land for Opal).
Relevant parts bolded. If you have to actually ramp into something else (Prosh or AoZ) to make Gaea's Cradle useful, won't that make Gaea's Cradle a "ramp more" card, so to speak? Of course, if you didn't have to ramp into it, it is, by definition, not so much of a "fast mana" card that the RC intends to ban, isn't it? You did mention that you often get this ridiculous board position by Turn 4 -- decks running Tolarian Academy (while it was legal) can get this ridiculous board position fairly consistently (with TA in hand) around Turn 2.
With Tolarian Academy, we were seeing explosive starts to the extent of a fairly consistent: -
Turn 1: Land, Sol Ring and maybe a Sensei's Divining Top to check the top 3 (Note that this can be a little worse if this was say, Mind Stone instead of Sensei's Divining Top and the first land drop was a Seat of the Synod)
Turn 2: Tolarian Academy for 2UUU, probably sufficient for an early Bribery or Tezzeret (or whatever board-impacting spell which you can quite readily find at 5 drops) or the player could sit on that mana for an end of turn Fact or Fiction (or counterspell, if needs be).
sounds like magical christmas land to me, getting your two best one drop artifacts in your deck in your hand.
The problem with TA in EDH specifically is you need to load your deck with random crap in order to get it to function properly, it is at best a one-hit wonder, you get it one game and stomp because you got the nuts draw, or you get flooded with nothing but mana rocks and useless low drop artifacts and die horrifically.
With GC on the other hand you have a card that benefits from playing the best/most abusable resource in the game, creatures and you don't need some theoretical god hand to crap out large boardstates by turn 4.
T1: Land, Birds of Paradise
T2: Land, Elvish Visionary, draw a card
T3: Cradle, tap birds + other lands for Wood Elves, grab an untapped forest, tap untapped forest + cradle for 4, play Oracle of Mul Daya, drop another land
T4: Land (5 + cradle now), tap non-cradle lands + birds for Prosh, Skyraider of Kher, get 6 tokens, tap cradle for 12 and now you could:
The problem with TA in EDH specifically is you need to load your deck with random crap in order to get it to function properly, it is at best a one-hit wonder.
.
?? Why would anybody fill their deck with random crap to make one card work? It's just not how it works. In the right deck you can spam as much artifacts as you can spam creatures. It's not that hard to produce an insane amount of artifact tokens. Even more so, dropping mana stones and get free extra mana because of TA is insane on itself. It makes T2-T4 wins even easier. Where GC is not even close to being as strong early game. In no way.
Late game it may even out a bit, and after a while GC may even generate more mana then TA, but then we're late game. So the chance of someone drawing into land destruction before it generates too much is a lot bigger. Also, there are way more mass creature remocal spells being played then mass artifact removal, so TA is much more consistent in generating a lot of mana over a longer period of time.
I really see no way how GC is a better card then TA. I play GC myself, and it becomes very strong mid to late game, but it always, always catches removal before it gets to scary or a boardwhipe makes sure it produces 'no mana'. Again, I think these two are in no way comparable in powerlevel.
Mishra's Workshop and TA both legal in commander, yuk. I'm having nightmares already
T1: Land, Birds of Paradise
T2: Land, Elvish Visionary, draw a card
T3: Cradle, tap birds + other lands for Wood Elves, grab an untapped forest, tap untapped forest + cradle for 4, play Oracle of Mul Daya, drop another land
T4: Land (5 + cradle now), tap non-cradle lands + birds for Prosh, Skyraider of Kher, get 6 tokens, tap cradle for 12 and now you could:
?? Why would anybody fill their deck with random crap to make one card work? It's just not how it works. In the right deck you can spam as much artifacts as you can spam creatures. It's not that hard to produce an insane amount of artifact tokens. Even more so, dropping mana stones and get free extra mana because of TA is insane on itself. It makes T2-T4 wins even easier. Where GC is not even close to being as strong early game. In no way.
Late game it may even out a bit, and after a while GC may even generate more mana then TA, but then we're late game. So the chance of someone drawing into land destruction before it generates too much is a lot bigger. Also, there are way more mass creature remocal spells being played then mass artifact removal, so TA is much more consistent in generating a lot of mana over a longer period of time.
I really see no way how GC is a better card then TA. I play GC myself, and it becomes very strong mid to late game, but it always, always catches removal before it gets to scary or a boardwhipe makes sure it produces 'no mana'. Again, I think these two are in no way comparable in powerlevel.
Mishra's Workshop and TA both legal in commander, yuk. I'm having nightmares already
anyway you're missing the point so let's do the math:
First off, blue decks have ONE singular way to assure TA goes to their hand, Expedition Map. If you don't start with TA in hand you basically need to rip it off the top. Cradle I have not only expedition map but Crop Rotation, Sylvan Scrying, Tempt with Discovery, Reap and Sow, and if you get into multicolor Knight of the Reliquary.
Second, you start with seven cards in your hand, plus one off the top turn 1 and one off the top turn 2, and if you don't get enough artifacts, academy is useless. If you DO get enough artifacts, how many of them are actually going to do something besides produce more mana?
The only time academy is worth it is with an insane god hand like Turn 1 Academy, Mana Crypt, Mox Opal, Sol Ring (which is probably the most card efficient method since Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond both cost two cards for one mana and Lotus Petal sacs itself) so basically you're looking at 7 mana for 4 cards with 4 remaining.
The thing is you're a lot more likely to get turn 1, random one drop dude, turn 2 dude turn 3 dude cradle than turn 1 7 mana off an academy play.
Cradle has reliability in spades. Academy is no different than ripping three rocks in your hand that drop turn one, you have an insane mana advantage and win the game, it happens.
You're probably thinking of decks that play 15 artifacts max? I'm thinking about artifact decks that play way more artifacts than that. You suggested that you should stuff a deck with useless artifacts. That shows to me that you maybe never played against a good tuned artifact deck to see how insanely broken and unfair TA would be in those kind of decks (correct me if I'm wrong). It would be the thing they will tutor for always, as soon as possible with the options giving above this post. And as soon as they drop it, the game is probably over in an instant unless the artifact.deck player didn't notice someone's Wasteland. I don't think it would be good for the format at all.
Cradle has way more downsides. Ones I gave in my last post. It is slower if you don't look at god hands or near god hands, and it is easier to disrupt the amount of mana it makes. It needs token engines or the ability to spam creatures. TA works just fine on itself. Just play your mana stones and gain free mana in the process.
A bunch of opinion backed up by nothing. Creatures get wiped all the time, what would color identity have to do with either? If anything artifacts are better because they are colorless and lots of them make more than one mana.
TA is banned because it is much faster earlier and is less susceptible to common board wipes.
Relevant parts bolded. If you have to actually ramp into something else (Prosh or AoZ) to make Gaea's Cradle useful, won't that make Gaea's Cradle a "ramp more" card, so to speak? Of course, if you didn't have to ramp into it, it is, by definition, not so much of a "fast mana" card that the RC intends to ban, isn't it? You did mention that you often get this ridiculous board position by Turn 4 -- decks running Tolarian Academy (while it was legal) can get this ridiculous board position fairly consistently (with TA in hand) around Turn 2.
Of the list, I would argue that only Avenger of Zendikar produces significant amount of creatures for Gaea's Cradle, most of the time. "Comboing" (or rather, "synergising") Gaea's Cradle with Ant Queen and Rampaging Baloth isn't much of a fast mana that the RC is looking forward to ban.
EDIT: -
While I am actually on the same side of the argument, to be fair, I thought I'd mention that your original post was not really backed up either
of course its my opinion thats all this forum is lol just like your last statement there. I asked a question and the first wave of answers didnt provide an answer of why TA is banned over GC.
if no one can make sense of why TA is banned when GC is not, than people reading this might be more likely to agree and perhaps one day make a difference in the ban list.
But you did attempt to answer the question of why TA is banned over GC .Thanks, but it just still doesnt make sense to me. there both terribly powerful cards and i know TA is on there only because the initial ban list went off of vintage but does it not warrant a closer look since the cards are very close in power level even if TA might be better or w/e. idk
http://mtgcommander.net/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4124&p=50701&hilit=tolarian#p50701
I am not questioning GC's power, but it is less powerful very early, and its power is much more likely to be reduced with common usage. You have not backed up your position very well.
My argument was actually in response to Raining Frogs who explicitly conceded that "Artifacts may be faster and more explosive than creatures but dudes will win the long game" (citation below).
But for the sake of argument, how are you getting fast mana with Gaea's Cradle (say, within Turn 2ish)?
With Tolarian Academy, we were seeing explosive starts to the extent of a fairly consistent: -
Turn 1: Land, Sol Ring and maybe a Sensei's Divining Top to check the top 3 (Note that this can be a little worse if this was say, Mind Stone instead of Sensei's Divining Top and the first land drop was a Seat of the Synod)
Turn 2: Tolarian Academy for 2UUU, probably sufficient for an early Bribery or Tezzeret (or whatever board-impacting spell which you can quite readily find at 5 drops) or the player could sit on that mana for an end of turn Fact or Fiction (or counterspell, if needs be).
Note that the above scenario is not even the Magical Christmasland version of it -- that is actually the watered down version of the more broken plays. I suspect that the Magic Christmasland version would likely have the first land as a Seat of the Synod and include a Mana Crypt somewhere for a cool 10 mana by turn 2 (Turn 1: Seat of Synod, Sol Ring, Mind Stone; Turn 2: Mana Crypt, Tolarian Academy for U++++UUUU=5UUUUU for, oh-I-don't-know, maybe an Omniscience?
Contrast this with Gaea's Cradle. Just theorycrafting, what would your most likely play (up to turn 2) assuming that you already have a Gaea's Cradle in hand?
You are likely going to consistently get a similarly high amount of mana after, say, Turn 4 at the earliest. Mind you, Green getting lots of mana can be pretty daunting too but this is nothing close to the explosive start we mentioned earlier and honestly, green ramping to lots of mana by turn 4 isn't exactly the most exciting news. Heck, with Green, a theoretical: -
Turn 1: Forest, Green Sun's Zenith for Dryad Arbor
Turn 2: Forest, Azusa, Forest, Forest, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
Turn 3: GGGGGGGGGGwithout even playing a land on turn 3 sans Gaea's Cradle
Note that, while these lands are superficially similar, it is also worth noting that Gaea's Cradle is easier to disrupt; statistically, creature removals / sweepers are more likely to be played than artifact removals / sweepers.
However.
With stuff like Gaze of Granite seeing print, I dunno. I'd like to see TA come off the banlist for a little bit. I'd certainly sleeve up Bane of Progress.
It would be interesting to see if we could blow out the artifact player.
They would never errata a card specifically for EDH, but I don't think it would have been as popular or banned if the card read 2 basic lands. Still SUPER good, but at that point I dont think its as good as Sun Titan.
No. Because:
1) They wouldn't put in place format specific errata just to unban him.
2) He would still be pretty gnarly value even if he could only grabbed basics. Not near as busted or format warping (potentially), but he'd still ramp better than just about anything else available.
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Yep, agreed with this. Cradle is awesome turn 4+, but on the very early turns, turns when a lot of mana can be a big problem, TA is definitely more explosive.
That said, your argument could just as easily say that sol ring and mana crypt should be banned. Really, with both of those banned TA starts to look a lot more acceptable since there aren't many 0 drop artifacts that are popular in EDH, and 1 drops that don't produce mana don't really let TA ramp up much faster than cradle.
I'm just saying, if you take sol ring and mana crypt out of the equation (and let's say mana vault too), it's a lot harder to come up with a realistic situation that results in getting way above the curve earlier than turn 3-4 or so.
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Staff1) It's easier to generate multiple artifacts on the first to second turn of the game, because there are more artifacts with CMC of 0-1 worth running than creatures
2) Said artifacts often tap for mana. Some creatures do, but creatures generally tap for less mana for their cost (Llanowar Elves vs Sol Ring), and have summoning sickness so they cannot do it right away
It's fairly easy to imagine some good (but not god) hands with Academy that get outrageously out of hand turn one or two. Examples:
Mana Crypt, Mox Opal, any Signet, Tolarian Academy, tap for Gilded Lotus. Turn two, Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
Seat of the Synod, Chrome Mox, Grim Monolith, Voltaic Key. Turn two, Academy, Ulamog
Yeah, these hands have a pretty darn good level of artifact acceleration already, but Academy compounds that and makes a huge difference.
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Banning multiple cards to unban a single card doesn't seem like a move any ban committee would want to make; regardless of the format. As for the argument that other low cost artifacts aren't being used, people do play Trinket Mage packages fairly often, of which some fairly powerful ramp options would still exist, such as Mox Opal, Mox Diamond, & Chrome Mox; all of which would still allow for Fzian's Sensei's Divining Top route (assuming an artifact land for Opal).
Also, everything that Wildfire just said.
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sounds like magical christmas land to me, getting your two best one drop artifacts in your deck in your hand.
The problem with TA in EDH specifically is you need to load your deck with random crap in order to get it to function properly, it is at best a one-hit wonder, you get it one game and stomp because you got the nuts draw, or you get flooded with nothing but mana rocks and useless low drop artifacts and die horrifically.
With GC on the other hand you have a card that benefits from playing the best/most abusable resource in the game, creatures and you don't need some theoretical god hand to crap out large boardstates by turn 4.
T1: Land, Birds of Paradise
T2: Land, Elvish Visionary, draw a card
T3: Cradle, tap birds + other lands for Wood Elves, grab an untapped forest, tap untapped forest + cradle for 4, play Oracle of Mul Daya, drop another land
T4: Land (5 + cradle now), tap non-cradle lands + birds for Prosh, Skyraider of Kher, get 6 tokens, tap cradle for 12 and now you could:
Skullclamp, kill tokens, draw two cards per
Collective Unconscious for 12 cards
Momentous Fall Prosh
Natural Order for a Sylvan Derpmordial / Whoriniclex / Avenger / Tbagstodon
Tooth & Nail Entwine it and basically win the game
Genesis Wave for 9
Primal Surge if that's your thing
etc. etc. etc.
Gaea's cradle doesn't rely on god hands or one-trick pony deckbuilding habits, it is reliably just obscenely freaking good.
?? Why would anybody fill their deck with random crap to make one card work? It's just not how it works. In the right deck you can spam as much artifacts as you can spam creatures. It's not that hard to produce an insane amount of artifact tokens. Even more so, dropping mana stones and get free extra mana because of TA is insane on itself. It makes T2-T4 wins even easier. Where GC is not even close to being as strong early game. In no way.
Late game it may even out a bit, and after a while GC may even generate more mana then TA, but then we're late game. So the chance of someone drawing into land destruction before it generates too much is a lot bigger. Also, there are way more mass creature remocal spells being played then mass artifact removal, so TA is much more consistent in generating a lot of mana over a longer period of time.
I really see no way how GC is a better card then TA. I play GC myself, and it becomes very strong mid to late game, but it always, always catches removal before it gets to scary or a boardwhipe makes sure it produces 'no mana'. Again, I think these two are in no way comparable in powerlevel.
Mishra's Workshop and TA both legal in commander, yuk. I'm having nightmares already
Also seems like magical Christmas land to me.
my magical christmasland looks a lot more like
T1: Land, Concordant Crossroads
T2: Elf dork, Elf dork, Elf dork, elf dork, cradle, Wirewood Channeler
T3: Genesis wave for a crap ton.
anyway you're missing the point so let's do the math:
First off, blue decks have ONE singular way to assure TA goes to their hand, Expedition Map. If you don't start with TA in hand you basically need to rip it off the top. Cradle I have not only expedition map but Crop Rotation, Sylvan Scrying, Tempt with Discovery, Reap and Sow, and if you get into multicolor Knight of the Reliquary.
Second, you start with seven cards in your hand, plus one off the top turn 1 and one off the top turn 2, and if you don't get enough artifacts, academy is useless. If you DO get enough artifacts, how many of them are actually going to do something besides produce more mana?
The only time academy is worth it is with an insane god hand like Turn 1 Academy, Mana Crypt, Mox Opal, Sol Ring (which is probably the most card efficient method since Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond both cost two cards for one mana and Lotus Petal sacs itself) so basically you're looking at 7 mana for 4 cards with 4 remaining.
The thing is you're a lot more likely to get turn 1, random one drop dude, turn 2 dude turn 3 dude cradle than turn 1 7 mana off an academy play.
Cradle has reliability in spades. Academy is no different than ripping three rocks in your hand that drop turn one, you have an insane mana advantage and win the game, it happens.
You are absolutely correct that Fabricate fetches Tolarian Academy.
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StaffAnd anything that tutors for expedition map (Trinket Mage, Fabricate, Artificer's Intuition, Tezzeret the Seeker, etc).
And Tolaria West.
And Long-Term Plans.
And other, even narrower stuff (like tutoring for one of the above)
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They could even play black o.O
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StaffOr white, or green.
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
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Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
What the two posters above me said +
You're probably thinking of decks that play 15 artifacts max? I'm thinking about artifact decks that play way more artifacts than that. You suggested that you should stuff a deck with useless artifacts. That shows to me that you maybe never played against a good tuned artifact deck to see how insanely broken and unfair TA would be in those kind of decks (correct me if I'm wrong). It would be the thing they will tutor for always, as soon as possible with the options giving above this post. And as soon as they drop it, the game is probably over in an instant unless the artifact.deck player didn't notice someone's Wasteland. I don't think it would be good for the format at all.
Cradle has way more downsides. Ones I gave in my last post. It is slower if you don't look at god hands or near god hands, and it is easier to disrupt the amount of mana it makes. It needs token engines or the ability to spam creatures. TA works just fine on itself. Just play your mana stones and gain free mana in the process.
Sure but if I'm green why would I play cards like Sol Ring over Cultivate? I just don't see how I could get so many artifacts in my deck.