It was like that long before Faeries. Standards that don't fall into this description are rarer than Standards that do for all of Magic history. The main difference now is that with the number of players playing and the number of tournaments to refine things, Standard gets "solved" much faster now.
Perhaps I'm a bit spoiled then. I got into playing magic seriously around the time that Ravager and friends all got the banhammer, and Standard was incredibly diverse and fun all the way up until the printing of Morningtide. Even then, it wasn't that bad until Jund became "the deck" in Shards/Conflux and started getting worse and worse. Currently it's just delver, offshoots of delver, a couple silly decks that beat delver but lose to everything else, and RDW. I know things were bad briefly when Darksteel came out, and back in Urza block, but I'd gotten the impression that it was fairly diverse apart from those occasional blips.
Old Extended, though, that was my format. TEPS is one of the most fun decks I've played in anything besides EDH.
Just look at Modern, where they went on a crazy banning spree and lost a huge chunk of potential players as a result.
You do realise that this years GP Yokohama (Modern) was the biggest grand prix ever held in Japan? I think you are completely wrong about the banned list. You even indirectly contradict yourself by criticizing standard with this post:
Quote from AzureShadow »
Standard is bad because Wizards keeps printing dumb cards like Bitterblossom, Bloodbraid Elf, Jace, Batterskull, and Delver that turn the format into "Best Deck", "Deck that counters Best Deck", and "Dumb Red Deck" as 95% of everything that is played. It's been like that since Faeries, got even worse with Jund, and hasn't really changed since then. It's a stale, boring format that has very little going for it and hasn't been diverse in years.
The fact that many powerful cards are banned in modern has increased the diversity of the meta and made it more popular than ever, including Bitterblossom and Jace. In Modern there is no "Best Deck".
This is all completely irrelevant for EDH though, as it is a casual format in which people have different expectations.
If you view the format as "haters gonna hate" and consign yourself to the fact that the guy who's going to win on turn 4 with Hermit Druid combo would do it with Ad Nauseam or something else if HD was not available, then Hermit Druid is PROBABLY okay. Self-regulation and all that.
I really want to see the deck that wins this fast consistently without
A) Hermit druid
B) Oath
C) Adnausem
D) Power artifact.
Go ahead I am waiting because all I see is people who have no understanding of combo saying "You just can't stop it" because either they don't understand it or they don't care because they don't play it. So I challenge you who say "Haters gonna hate" make a deck that combos consistently by turn 4 without any of the above 4 cards. Go for it.
I'm sorry to say this, but your outlook on how the format should handle banning is not going to be good for its health at all. Restrictive banlists tend to chase off new players and stifle a format's potential. Just look at Modern, where they went on a crazy banning spree and lost a huge chunk of potential players as a result.
Modern thrives. Banning degenerate cards fixes the format.
I really want to see the deck that wins this fast consistently without
A) Hermit druid
B) Oath
C) Adnausem
D) Power artifact.
Go ahead I am waiting because all I see is people who have no understanding of combo saying "You just can't stop it" because either they don't understand it or they don't care because they don't play it. So I challenge you who say "Haters gonna hate" make a deck that combos consistently by turn 4 without any of the above 4 cards. Go for it.
You don't seem to understand that "stopping combo" is not a good thing to do, nor is it the goal of this or any format. Combo is one of three major deck archtypes, it NEEDS to exist for a format to be balanced. Trying to eliminate combo is not only wrong, but foolish.
Modern thrives. Banning degenerate cards fixes the format.
But half the cards on modern's banlist aren't anywhere close to degenerate. They're situational cards that happened to be in decks that won in some format in the past few years. I'm fairly sure you don't actually know what the word degenerate means, I haven't seen you use it correctly once.
Modern's numbers are only slightly higher than Legacy's. That's horrible, especially considering it was supposed to effectively replace Legacy as an easy to get into semi-eternal format that was halfway between it and standard. It isn't doing that.
I really want to see the deck that wins this fast consistently without
A) Hermit druid
B) Oath
C) Adnausem
D) Power artifact.
Go ahead I am waiting because all I see is people who have no understanding of combo saying "You just can't stop it" because either they don't understand it or they don't care because they don't play it. So I challenge you who say "Haters gonna hate" make a deck that combos consistently by turn 4 without any of the above 4 cards. Go for it.
I don't think the 'haters gonna hate' mentality is specifically stating that no matter what gets banned, Spikey McSpikerson will build a consistent T4 deck. I think it's more like 'No matter what gets banned, Spikey McSpikerson will build (and/or netdeck) the most consistent and fastest deck in order to win the most'. The only way that this can get tamed is if the RC banned every card which gave a systematic edge over the majority of players who build tuned yet still social decks. In order to do that, the list would have to incorporate a lot of cards that the majority of players do not abuse.
I really want to see the deck that wins this fast consistently without
A) Hermit druid
B) Oath
C) Adnausem
D) Power artifact.
Go ahead I am waiting because all I see is people who have no understanding of combo saying "You just can't stop it" because either they don't understand it or they don't care because they don't play it. So I challenge you who say "Haters gonna hate" make a deck that combos consistently by turn 4 without any of the above 4 cards. Go for it.
Modern thrives. Banning degenerate cards fixes the format.
I really want to see the deck that wins this fast consistently without
A) Hermit druid
B) Oath
C) Adnausem
D) Power artifact.
Go ahead I am waiting because all I see is people who have no understanding of combo saying "You just can't stop it" because either they don't understand it or they don't care because they don't play it. So I challenge you who say "Haters gonna hate" make a deck that combos consistently by turn 4 without any of the above 4 cards. Go for it.
Modern thrives. Banning degenerate cards fixes the format.
How about Grixis Re-Annimator? Worldgorger Dragon Combo. I've ended games on turn 2 with and turn 3 pretty regular. If somebody wants to combo, there's enough out there to do it with.
5. He has to intentionally be used. A player doesn't tap him and go, "whoops, I accidentally put half my deck in my graveyard".
I'm going to have to disagree with this. My friend has a nice Kresh deck that plays pretty heavily with the graveyard. Obviously Hermit Druid sounded like a fun inclusion. Even before Hermit Druid, he only ran four, maybe five basics. Games started to always degrade into get Hermit Druid, oops, the majority of my deck is now in my graveyard to use, win (or get graveyard removed, lose).
My friend rightfully realized that Hermit Druid was too overpowered and was sucking fun out of games instead of adding to it, so he took it out of his deck. This probably adds more to the self regulation of hermit druid, but sometimes I wonder how many other people are as self regulating as we are. I sympathize with Kemev. Whenever we end up playing with people who combo off instantly, my friend starts forgetting the reason he took Hermit Druid out in the first place.
I'm pretty sure Sharuum combo goes off by turn 4. So does Arcum Dagsson.
I don't have a problem with the RC philosophy of not banning narrow combo cards. The problem I have with that philosophy is that they ban narrow combo cards. In the almost 5 years I've played EDH, I haven't once been able to look at the banned list and say that one hand of the RC knows what the other is doing with that list. There's always been huge, glaring contradictions in what the banned list is intended to accomplish.
If you try to make any attempt to connect the dots between why one card is banned and a CLEARLY more powerful card is not, all you'll get from the community is, "They can't ban everything! People will just move on to the next combo/power card you dumby!" Besides COMPLETELY ignoring things like speed, consistency, and resilience (which would be enough to defeat those arguments for a sensible person), the great hypocrisy of these arguments is the assumption that there's no stopping point once those bannings start. Yet they've already started those bannings when they banned narrow combo cards like Staff of Domination, Painter's Servant, and (the now unbanned) Worldgorger and Lion's Eye Diamond.
Put simply, you're not stopping a flood of calls for banning by making your stand against Hermit Druid. If your goal is to prevent the avalanche of calls for bannings, you'd need to decrease the size of the banned list first. Otherwise there will always be the glaringly obvious examples of lesser cards that have already had action taken against them and those counterpoints will just be made by the advocates of banning more stuff. And those are legitimate counterpoints that you simply can't effectively rebuke.
Regarding standard, the lack of diversity was never, EVER a problem in my experience. I played that format from the time U/G Madness took off all the way through Bloodbraid Jund's dominance at states after Lorwyn rotated. There was ALWAYS something you could play besides the best deck and the deck that beats the best deck during those time periods. Yes, I'm including Ravager in it's hay day. There were always other decks despite people's insistence that there weren't. In other words, what I'm telling you is that this, "standard is boring because there's not enough options," is not a new complaint, and is one that historically has always been incorrect.
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This format is the only reason I still own Magic cards.
I'm going to have to disagree with this. My friend has a nice Kresh deck that plays pretty heavily with the graveyard. Obviously Hermit Druid sounded like a fun inclusion. Even before Hermit Druid, he only ran four, maybe five basics. Games started to always degrade into get Hermit Druid, oops, the majority of my deck is now in my graveyard to use, win (or get graveyard removed, lose).
My friend rightfully realized that Hermit Druid was too overpowered and was sucking fun out of games instead of adding to it, so he took it out of his deck. This probably adds more to the self regulation of hermit druid, but sometimes I wonder how many other people are as self regulating as we are. I sympathize with Kemev. Whenever we end up playing with people who combo off instantly, my friend starts forgetting the reason he took Hermit Druid out in the first place.
I can respect that. I mean, your friend's decision certainly falls into a grey area, because after all, his intentions were always to mill himself with a graveyard strategy. And only running a handful of basic lands to begin with, he could probably guess what each activation would entail. But the idea of his games increasingly revolving around Druid is an indicator that he didn't expect such strong results initially.
I'm a little confused by your situation. It sounds like you have a set of people who like to play ludicrously broken decks and a set of people who like to play 'funner' stuff. Why aren't they just playing the other people with the same bent? It doesn't sound like this is a tournament or anything, so I'm not sure what it is that is forcing you to be playing this particular format with these particular people.
The problem is that there aren't enough players to go around. If there are 4 people at my table, and 2 want to play a combo-Spike deck and 2 want to chill and play a fun deck, there's no way to make everyone happy. Similarly, if I play a 3-man, pick-up game at a local store with a guy I know and a guy I don't know who turns out to be playing combo, what's my option? I can try to talk the new guy into playing a more "fair" deck, but there's no guarantee that I'll play with him again -- next week might be a new combo guy.
This is where I share trevor's frustration. Without clear guidance from the community leaders on what constitutes a fair card, it's very difficult to get people on the same deck design track. It's also why I would like to see the shift to "We have a significant ban list; local groups can unban as they like," instead of "We have a modest ban list; local groups can ban as necessary." It would create a more even baseline to start conversations from.
The fact that Hermit Druid doesn't have functional reprints is irrelevant, though. The players playing it aren't playing it because it's the way they want to win, they're playing it because it's the most efficient way to win. The functional reprint for Hermit Druid is Ad Nauseum. The functional reprint for that is something else that will still be totally unpleasant to play against. That's the slippery slope.
I agree that it should be irrelevant, but there are consistently arguments that to ban one effect requires banning all similar effects. For example, ObsidianDice's point about land destruction; mass LD may be unfun, but if you ban Annihilate, then you have to ban Decree, then Jokulhaups, then Obliterate, and so on. There is no other card that does what Hermit Druid does.
To your point though, that Hermit Druid's next replacement is Ad Nauseum, I'm not convinced that the slope is that steep.
Say the rules committee announced: "We want EDH to be no faster than turn 5, and we will ban any combo piece that consistently lets a deck win before turn 5. So resolving a Tooth and Nail with counterspell backup is an acceptable win, but we will ban N number of faster combo pieces until we achieve this goal."
How many cards is N? A dozen? 20?
How large could N be before the number of players driven off exceeded the number of new players encouraged to join?
^
This is exactly right and is the point people skip over completely when it comes to the overused "banning combo cards is a slippery slope" argument. Before a certain point (probably turn 5) combo is generally considered "too fast" and requires you to a) build your deck to stop it b) ostracize the person into not playing it or c) start excluding that person. None of those things are a good thing, despite whatever rhetoric the internet has to say about "social contract". But if you're going first and I STILL have enough mana to cast Dismiss to stop your combo on 5, that's combat-able by even casual standards.
In other words, it wouldn't be a slippery slope of bannings if an actual standard (probably a certain turn) was set as to what the RC is trying to prevent by banning this combo card but not that one. And since they'll never do that, people will continually bring up the "Why is this low power card banned but not this high power card?" argument, and it will continue to go unanswered. Thus, people will continue to be frustrated by this inconsistency.
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This format is the only reason I still own Magic cards.
That's the thing, sol ring and crypt (far better than ring) should be banned to foster a more normal format, and the inconsistency with the list is aggravating.
Except the Moxes aren't banned in Commander for being too good. They're banned for being ubiquitous and outrageously expensive, raising the barrier to entry for new players.
Is Sol Ring ubiquitous? Yes. But Sol Ring is $6. Moxes are hundreds. It's about perception. If people think you need Moxes to play, they just won't play.
Mana Crypt is a little pricey, but it is also not as ubiquitous as Sol Ring and tends to hurt a lot of decks more than it helps. You pretty much have to be playing for a fast win or have some way to take advantage of its drawback in order for it to be good. It also has a decent budget replacement for people that don't want to shell out for it (Sol Ring). It is also really, really satisfying watching an opponent get lightning bolted by it.
Same thing with Vamp Tutor and Imperial Seal. Seal is $600, but it has a cheap enough replacement (which is actually the better card in this case) so it isn't a problem.
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?
In other words, it wouldn't be a slippery slope of bannings if an actual standard (probably a certain turn) was set as to what the RC is trying to prevent by banning this combo card but not that one. And since they'll never do that, people will continually bring up the "Why is this low power card banned but not this high power card?" argument, and it will continue to go unanswered. Thus, people will continue to be frustrated by this inconsistency.
But that is not inconsistent. People need to realise that casting cost as a part of power is one of the defining 'bannable' stats. If Hermit Druid cost 6 and was a 4/4 no one would care.
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.
The problem is that there aren't enough players to go around. If there are 4 people at my table, and 2 want to play a combo-Spike deck and 2 want to chill and play a fun deck, there's no way to make everyone happy. Similarly, if I play a 3-man, pick-up game at a local store with a guy I know and a guy I don't know who turns out to be playing combo, what's my option? I can try to talk the new guy into playing a more "fair" deck, but there's no guarantee that I'll play with him again -- next week might be a new combo guy.
This sounds like a frustration you're going to experience regardless of format, though. If, randomly, you all decided to start playing Standard next week, your Vampire Tribal deck is going to be crushed by whatever Delver variant the competitive folks play. No reasonable amount of Standard bannings is likely to give the Vampire Tribal deck a fair shot.
The difference between Standard and Commander is that Standard is explicitly about winning, and people who are looking for a puzzle to "solve" should be looking over at Standard and the other formats. Commander is about finding a group in which your Vampire Tribal deck has fun games with the other people. A banlist isn't going to do that.
Say the rules committee announced: "We want EDH to be no fast than turn 5, and we will ban any combo piece that consistently lets a deck win before turn 5. So resolving a Tooth and Nail with counterspell backup is an acceptable win, but we will ban N number of faster combo pieces until we achieve this goal."
Resolving Tooth and Nail with counter backup and immediately getting a game-ending combo is the sort of thing that should be regarded as lame on pretty much any turn. Is that interesting on turn 10?
Defining fundamental turns and other metrics like that is the province of competitive formats. I think the French 1v1 list thinks about things like that; the primary Commander banlist isn't interested.
Plus, we'd have to start banning all the iconic fun cards - DTutor, Sol Ring - that are major drivers to the format in the first place. The whole point of the format is to let you play big, splashy, classic cards. Those cards are horribly broken if you don't use them in the spirit in which they are intended, so there's a fundamental disconnect between the goals of the format and what it would take to make it balanced.
^
In other words, it wouldn't be a slippery slope of bannings if an actual standard (probably a certain turn) was set as to what the RC is trying to prevent by banning this combo card but not that one. And since they'll never do that, people will continually bring up the "Why is this low power card banned but not this high power card?" argument, and it will continue to go unanswered. Thus, people will continue to be frustrated by this inconsistency.
It's highly inconsistent if you evaluate it in the context of a competitive format, and yes, you're correct, competitive players looking for a list that sets parameters for what they have to work with to try to break things will always be frustrated. Plus, looking for a single black/white binary reason why each card is banned will not get you far. There isn't a single rule, and the Moxen are banned for different reasons than Biorhythm, which is banned for different reasons than Sundering Titan. If you're looking for a general guide, "can unexpectedly wreck social games being played in the appropriate spirit" is a good start, and that doesn't necessarily mean combo. Of course, there are 6 people on the RC and while we're all pulling in the same direction, there will be fuzziness around the edges in how each of us thinks the best way is to accomplish that. There are cards I don't think should be banned that are, and ones that aren't that I would, given the choice. But I recognize that it's a casual format and there will always be minor variations, and I don't worry about it as long as the general message is clear.
All the usual acceleration Entomb Buried Alive
vamp/demonic/imperial seal/etc etc.
Trust me, you need to ban a LOT of cards if you want to stop combo...
Not sure how this is anywhere close to as fast considering it takes more mana and cards (With the same tutor suite). Its less consistent vulnerable to all the same disruption + spot removal (druid is not). This is also not as fast due to requiring two cards. If you actually believe this build a list and prove it, I am sure you are wrong. Additionally this is only infinite mana not an actual kill and requires the lands to be able to produce all 5 colors.
You don't seem to understand that "stopping combo" is not a good thing to do
I am a combo player in every format (its why I don't play standard). There is a difference between stopping combo and bringing it inline. Turn 3-4 combos over 50% of the time are too good for this format.
Is Sol Ring ubiquitous? Yes. But Sol Ring is $6. Moxes are hundreds. It's about perception. If people think you need Moxes to play, they just won't play.
Mana Crypt is a little pricey, but it is also not as ubiquitous as Sol Ring and tends to hurt a lot of decks more than it helps. You pretty much have to be playing for a fast win or have some way to take advantage of its drawback in order for it to be good. It also has a decent budget replacement for people that don't want to shell out for it (Sol Ring). It is also really, really satisfying watching an opponent get lightning bolted by it.
Ring is no where close to crypt its like comparing Pyretic Ritual to Dark ritual or Dark ritual to lotus. With 40 life even if you lost your fair share of rolls its only 9-15 life which isn't much in this format.
But that is not inconsistent. People need to realise that casting cost as a part of power is one of the defining 'bannable' stats. If Hermit Druid cost 6 and was a 4/4 no one would care.
If I had a dime for every time this has been ignored this thread I would have a free set of power.
Plus, we'd have to start banning all the iconic fun cards - DTutor, Sol Ring - that are major drivers to the format in the first place. The whole point of the format is to let you play big, splashy, classic cards.
Since when is a -TUTOR- BIG AND SPLASHY!
Resolving Tooth and Nail with counter backup and immediately getting a game-ending combo is the sort of thing that should be regarded as lame on pretty much any turn. Is that interesting on turn 10?
Yes resolving it on turn 10 is more interesting than it resolving on turn 4-5, by a wide margin. There are 51+ cards and 3 generals that could have been used to interact with the tooth and nail player there is nothing wrong with it at that stage.
Resolving your win condition on T2 (Where you may be the only one at 2 lands) and forcing the table to answer you with a total of 27 cards halves the number of answers you can use in addition to not being enough time to tutor, play hate bears/rocks, establish counter magic.
Yes, turn 10 combo is fundumentally different and more enjoyable because if you go off the entire table has had a truly sufficient chance to answer you, going off on T3-4 is just too fast in the same way T1 is just too fast for legacy if it was over 50%. The game is just not fun unless you get a chance to interact, once you have had that chance win or lose it would be cooler even if the win was hermit druid.
This sounds like a frustration you're going to experience regardless of format, though. If, randomly, you all decided to start playing Standard next week, your Vampire Tribal deck is going to be crushed by whatever Delver variant the competitive folks play. No reasonable amount of Standard bannings is likely to give the Vampire Tribal deck a fair shot.
I feel like you're making an incorrect assumption about me here. I DO play standard. I play FNMs most weeks, and I usually make it to a competitive event about once every 6 weeks or so. I would like to have Commander remain a casual format where I can play something fun. This is why I'm frustrated; too many local players Commander don't view it as a "casual", but something different to win at.
I agree that people who are interested in competitive formats should play those formats. But there's a gap between what should happen and what does happen.
Resolving Tooth and Nail with counter backup and immediately getting a game-ending combo is the sort of thing that should be regarded as lame on pretty much any turn. Is that interesting on turn 10?
I feel like you're playing a different game than I am. Yes, this is a lame play! But TnN or similar effects (like Gen Wave) are a routinely used game enders, and are generally considered "fair" compared to other available combo cards. Within this thread, there are lengthy arguments that because TnN costs 9 with the entwine, this makes it legit to combo kill players with.
...I recognize that it's a casual format and there will always be minor variations, and I don't worry about it as long as the general message is clear.
But the message isn't clear.
Leaving Hermit Druid unbanned sends the message, "This is an acceptable card. Do what you want with it." That seems like the opposite of the message you want.
I feel like you're making an incorrect assumption about me here. I DO play standard. I play FNMs most weeks, and I usually make it to a competitive event about once every 6 weeks or so. I would like to have Commander remain a casual format where I can play something fun. This is why I'm frustrated; too many local players Commander don't view it as a "casual", but something different to win at.
I agree that people who are interested in competitive formats should play those formats. But there's a gap between what should happen and what does happen.
And the point I'm making is that there is no amount of banlist that can make those players view it as casual. Competitive banlists set parameters within which the goal is to do the most busted thing possible. No matter how long the list is, that's still going to be a "best deck" that is more busted than a casual deck. The mentality is more important than the actual cards.
Plus, where's the line? Let's say we ban the 200 cards necessary to make the format casual in your eyes. Then Kemev2 comes along and complains that his Alligator tribal deck isn't able to keep up with the competitive decks. Do we ban another 200 cards to accommodate him? It still won't fix the mindset.
I feel like you're playing a different game than I am. Yes, this is a lame play! But TnN or similar effects (like Gen Wave) are a routinely used game enders, and are generally considered "fair" compared to other available combo cards. Within this thread, there are lengthy arguments that because TnN costs 9 with the entwine, this makes it legit to combo kill players with.
Fair is different from lame. Social play isn't focused on fair, it's focused on not-lame. If I lose to some spectacularly cool sequence of plays - say a Warp World that brings in my weenie horde and a Massacre Wurm for someone else - that's a cool game and I'll remember it, even though I lost. If I lose to T&N because the other guy thinks he's being cool and creative getting Kikimite... wow, that was a waste of time. It doesn't matter what turn they're on. It doesn't make the kill more "legit" because it didn't happen before some fundamental turn - that's an attitude held by players who want a framework for competitive play.
Leaving Hermit Druid unbanned sends the message, "This is an acceptable card. Do what you want with it." That seems like the opposite of the message you want.
Which is why we don't have a context-free banlist, and people who ignore the context and just look at the banlist will never get the format right. (And making sure the context surrounds the banlist is most of the real work for September).
Banning Hermit Druid sends the message "We're serious about competitive play. Have at it!" That's not a message we're going to send.
Banning Hermit Druid sends the message "We're serious about competitive play. Have at it!" That's not a message we're going to send.[/QUOTE]
Why did you ban Griselbrand then? Sorry, that sent the same message. Only the competitive players sought to break him. He's no different than Hermit Druid. Both can be degenerate if you want them to.
Every one of those cards sends the message "we are serious about competitive play." the existence of a banned list states "We are serious about competitive play." The banning of cards that you have to go out of your way to break (hulk, fastbond) while not banning other cards (Druid, TnN) is why people give you so much grief and you will continue to get it because people dislike hypocrisy/inconsistency. Not that this is a problem for you as its easy to ignore but just ignoring them will probably exacerbate the problem as you will be FORCED to do this for new combo cards (like grisslebanned) because they will be available to the majority.
Plus, where's the line? Let's say we ban the 200 cards necessary to make the format casual in your eyes. Then Kemev2 comes along and complains that his Alligator tribal deck isn't able to keep up with the competitive decks. Do we ban another 200 cards to accommodate him? It still won't fix the mindset.
That was my question from a few posts ago. Fundamentally, how much of a banned list does it take to make a fun format? In case I was unclear, I'm not talking about banning on-the-bubble, hotly debated cards like Prime Time or Consecrated Sphinx; I'm looking at a handful of cards like Hermit Druid, Ad Nauseum, and maybe 2-3 other cards (Mind over Matter?) that simply are not played by players looking for something creative or fun to do. These are cards whose fun-value (if any) simply isn't worth the headache of keeping them around.
Because so far with the Hermit Druid voting, I'm not seeing a huge out cry of "But if you ban Hermit Druid, my Seton druid deck won't work!" If I'm wrong, and there are fun times being had with Hermit Druid, shoot me some decklists and I'll clam up.
Similarly with Ad Nauseum: is there anyone seriously arguing that this is a fun card that should be played? Is someone out there playing an Oros Haze of Rage/Astral Steel deck I missed?
Now we're just splitting hairs over wording. I feel like we more or less agree on what a game of EDH should look like, but we have differing ideas on how to get there.
The Rules Committee has a unique megaphone for shouting "This is not fun! Play something else!" As trevor, taker, Undone, and others have all pointed out, this is what the banned list is. Is it truly that painful to add to it?
The Rules Committee has a unique megaphone for shouting "This is not fun! Play something else!" As trevor, taker, Undone, and others have all pointed out, this is what the banned list is. Is it truly that painful to add to it?
I think you are missing his point. It is not painful, it can be useless. If you ban Druid and Ad Nauseum the people who want to break EDH will do so with the next set of lame combos. The fix is to play with people who want the same type of game you want.
Every one of those cards sends the message "we are serious about competitive play." the existence of a banned list states "We are serious about competitive play." The banning of cards that you have to go out of your way to break (hulk, fastbond) while not banning other cards (Druid, TnN) is why people give you so much grief and you will continue to get it because people dislike hypocrisy/inconsistency. Not that this is a problem for you as its easy to ignore but just ignoring them will probably exacerbate the problem as you will be FORCED to do this for new combo cards (like grisslebanned) because they will be available to the majority.
I tend to agree that Hulk and T/N do the same thing, but some people have an issue with Hulk recurring easily, so whatever. That other stuff is to keep the game from going to fast in the early game, but I think you know that you just want to complain. They are specifically NOT ignoring you, they are here discussing their philosophy and taking input from you. They know what weight their decisions hold, but they also know who they are trying to gear around.
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.
That's not even all of the cards you could have listed from the banned list Undone. There is a HUGE portion of the banned list that is nothing but competitive deck regulation, despite what the RC seems to insist. YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE NOT SENT THE MESSAGE THAT YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT COMPETITIVE PLAY WITH YOUR CURRENT BANNED LIST PAPA FUNK. If you don't want to read the rest of what I wrote below then, hopefully, you at least you read the last sentence.
Furthermore, I've heard this same straw man argument from the opposition so many times it's lost it's meaning. Every time someone brings up a pure combo card in the interest of banning it, the other side says either, "That won't stop a combo player because he'll just move on to the next thing," and/or "We'd have to ban [insert ridiculously exaggerated number here] in order to do what you're saying." Your counterpoint doesn't fit what they're asking for, and is deliberately exaggerated to try to make it seem like they want more than they really do. I'm going to address both those arguments.
1) A person asking you to ban "x" card is not asking you to stop the combo player entirely. In this case, all he's asking you to do is slow down the RATE AT WHICH COMBO PLAYERS CAN COMBO OUT. That way casual players have a chance of stopping them without warping their entire deck to do so. My personal opinion is that if his opponents would have access to Dismiss or Mystic Snake mana prior to him trying to combo out, that's slow enough to remain casual. If you have to start playing Mana Leak in EDH just to keep up, you're on the wrong track.
In other words, it doesn't matter if the combo player's deck is "more busted" than the casual players around him nor does some "framework for competitive play" apply here. As long as the players around the combo player can actually respond to him, the game can remain casual with combo still existing in the format. But before a certain turn, that's not realistic. You seem to want to disregard this point, but it's much more important than you let on. The ability to respond matters.
2) Would you REALLY have to ban that many cards? I always hear some huge number come out, but no one's actually taken the time to state what combos are too fast and what ones aren't. For example:
My old Sliver Queen deck played Mana Echoes. It was generally not complained about. Why? Because Sliver Queen cost 5 and Mana Echos cost another 4, AND it involved the attack step with creatures that don't have haste. Everyone got to respond to it before it won the game. Pretty slow. The only way to speed it up was to add more cards to the combo, which decreases consistency.
Now look at Earthcraft/Squirrel Nest. It cost 2 Mana for the first and 3 for the second, but it requires an untapped basic land to go off. That makes this (typically) a turn 4 "go off" with a turn 5 win. Faster, but still gives the board a chance to respond before it goes off and lends everyone the chance to answer it (and 4 land drops to cast Wrath of God) before it wins. Not too bad.
Then there's Hermit Druid. It's a turn 3, one card victory, with 100% chance of going off if he turns sideways. How many other combo decks can even do that? I would say it's probably less than a dozen. So no, it's not 200 cards. It's a small handful. I think that, if you addressed this point empirically, you'd find there's a lot less cards that would have to be banned for being "too good of a combo deck" than is portrayed. But the masses just seems content to think "why bother" because it's some number approaching infinite. It's not.
To wrap up the above, if the best combo deck cards were banned, Mr. combo player can go ahead and move on to the next best thing. I'm perfectly ok with him trying to turn 5 me. I, and the rest of the table, will reasonably be able to respond, and then come after him the rest of the game. Maybe if combo players had to actually "earn it", then they wouldn't be so inclined to play nothing but combo.
That was my question from a few posts ago. Fundamentally, how much of a banned list does it take to make a fun format? In case I was unclear, I'm not talking about banning on-the-bubble, hotly debated cards like Prime Time or Consecrated Sphinx; I'm looking at a handful of cards like Hermit Druid, Ad Nauseum, and maybe 2-3 other cards (Mind over Matter?) that simply are not played by players looking for something creative or fun to do. These are cards whose fun-value (if any) simply isn't worth the headache of keeping them around.
There are tons. Knowledge Pool. Mind over Matter, LED, Worldgorger, Power Artifact. Almost everything in Stax decks. Heck, by this definition, Ophidian Eye belongs on the banlist. Last time someone tried to do this a couple years ago, they stopped at around 80.
You're backing the wrong card in Hermit Druid. Unlike several of the others, it does have a place in many decks as a guy who gets you basic lands while putting some stuff in your graveyard. Plenty of people run him.
Now we're just splitting hairs over wording. I feel like we more or less agree on what a game of EDH should look like, but we have differing ideas on how to get there.
Actually, I think that this isn't a hair-split - it's an important distinction. T&N on turn 9 is "fair" - there's lots of ways in which it might be interacted with. But if nobody happens to have a counter or that spot removal, plunking a game-winning combo into play is lame - it basically wrecks any potential for the game to have been interesting in favor of something everyone has seen before. In some ways that's a better metaphor - playgroups are much better at defining what counts as lame than anything global possibly could be.
The format is unfair. It involves Vintage-legal cards, many of which are banned in legacy. The power level is off the charts, and there's enough tutors to make it consistent. Either you descend to that level to combat it, or you wash your hands of the whole thing and worry about pleasing the people you created the format for in the first place.
The Rules Committee has a unique megaphone for shouting "This is not fun! Play something else!" As trevor, taker, Undone, and others have all pointed out, this is what the banned list is. Is it truly that painful to add to it?
If I thought it would make any difference at all, I'd strongly consider it. But it really won't. I'd much rather spend banlist complexity points on social-griefy cards than worry about keeping the most broken deck in check.
In other words, it doesn't matter if the combo player's deck is "more busted" than the casual players around him nor does some "framework for competitive play" apply here. As long as the players around the combo player can actually respond to him, the game can remain casual with combo still existing in the format. But before a certain turn, that's not realistic. You seem to want to disregard this point, but it's much more important than you let on. The ability to respond matters.
This is, in a nutshell, the competitive player view of social gaming. "It's fair, you can run answers".
And, honestly, I think anyone who puts Mana Echoes in Sliver Queen is being fantastically uncreative. Your need to win is so strong that you'll stick in such an anticlimactic card? (On the bright side, at least this one gives the table a turn to answer)
What's something that you consider a social-griefy card as opposed to merely a broken one?
I ask because I think we're drifting a little bit on "fair" cards versus "fun" cards. I'm biased Hermit Druid's funness, since I had forgotten about him until I saw him in the flip-my-library combo deck, so if he's being used for fun stuff in someone else's group, I might reconsider.
Perhaps I'm a bit spoiled then. I got into playing magic seriously around the time that Ravager and friends all got the banhammer, and Standard was incredibly diverse and fun all the way up until the printing of Morningtide. Even then, it wasn't that bad until Jund became "the deck" in Shards/Conflux and started getting worse and worse. Currently it's just delver, offshoots of delver, a couple silly decks that beat delver but lose to everything else, and RDW. I know things were bad briefly when Darksteel came out, and back in Urza block, but I'd gotten the impression that it was fairly diverse apart from those occasional blips.
Old Extended, though, that was my format. TEPS is one of the most fun decks I've played in anything besides EDH.
You do realise that this years GP Yokohama (Modern) was the biggest grand prix ever held in Japan? I think you are completely wrong about the banned list. You even indirectly contradict yourself by criticizing standard with this post:
The fact that many powerful cards are banned in modern has increased the diversity of the meta and made it more popular than ever, including Bitterblossom and Jace. In Modern there is no "Best Deck".
This is all completely irrelevant for EDH though, as it is a casual format in which people have different expectations.
I really want to see the deck that wins this fast consistently without
A) Hermit druid
B) Oath
C) Adnausem
D) Power artifact.
Go ahead I am waiting because all I see is people who have no understanding of combo saying "You just can't stop it" because either they don't understand it or they don't care because they don't play it. So I challenge you who say "Haters gonna hate" make a deck that combos consistently by turn 4 without any of the above 4 cards. Go for it.
Modern thrives. Banning degenerate cards fixes the format.
Wizards in relation to modern.
"The bannings will continue until attendance improves."
Not sure if trolling or just very stupid.:fry:
You don't seem to understand that "stopping combo" is not a good thing to do, nor is it the goal of this or any format. Combo is one of three major deck archtypes, it NEEDS to exist for a format to be balanced. Trying to eliminate combo is not only wrong, but foolish.
But half the cards on modern's banlist aren't anywhere close to degenerate. They're situational cards that happened to be in decks that won in some format in the past few years. I'm fairly sure you don't actually know what the word degenerate means, I haven't seen you use it correctly once.
Modern's numbers are only slightly higher than Legacy's. That's horrible, especially considering it was supposed to effectively replace Legacy as an easy to get into semi-eternal format that was halfway between it and standard. It isn't doing that.
I don't think the 'haters gonna hate' mentality is specifically stating that no matter what gets banned, Spikey McSpikerson will build a consistent T4 deck. I think it's more like 'No matter what gets banned, Spikey McSpikerson will build (and/or netdeck) the most consistent and fastest deck in order to win the most'. The only way that this can get tamed is if the RC banned every card which gave a systematic edge over the majority of players who build tuned yet still social decks. In order to do that, the list would have to incorporate a lot of cards that the majority of players do not abuse.
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Worldgorger Dragon Scion of the Ur-Dragon deck.
All the usual acceleration
Entomb
Buried Alive
vamp/demonic/imperial seal/etc etc.
Trust me, you need to ban a LOT of cards if you want to stop combo...
How about Grixis Re-Annimator? Worldgorger Dragon Combo. I've ended games on turn 2 with and turn 3 pretty regular. If somebody wants to combo, there's enough out there to do it with.
I'm going to have to disagree with this. My friend has a nice Kresh deck that plays pretty heavily with the graveyard. Obviously Hermit Druid sounded like a fun inclusion. Even before Hermit Druid, he only ran four, maybe five basics. Games started to always degrade into get Hermit Druid, oops, the majority of my deck is now in my graveyard to use, win (or get graveyard removed, lose).
My friend rightfully realized that Hermit Druid was too overpowered and was sucking fun out of games instead of adding to it, so he took it out of his deck. This probably adds more to the self regulation of hermit druid, but sometimes I wonder how many other people are as self regulating as we are. I sympathize with Kemev. Whenever we end up playing with people who combo off instantly, my friend starts forgetting the reason he took Hermit Druid out in the first place.
I don't have a problem with the RC philosophy of not banning narrow combo cards. The problem I have with that philosophy is that they ban narrow combo cards. In the almost 5 years I've played EDH, I haven't once been able to look at the banned list and say that one hand of the RC knows what the other is doing with that list. There's always been huge, glaring contradictions in what the banned list is intended to accomplish.
If you try to make any attempt to connect the dots between why one card is banned and a CLEARLY more powerful card is not, all you'll get from the community is, "They can't ban everything! People will just move on to the next combo/power card you dumby!" Besides COMPLETELY ignoring things like speed, consistency, and resilience (which would be enough to defeat those arguments for a sensible person), the great hypocrisy of these arguments is the assumption that there's no stopping point once those bannings start. Yet they've already started those bannings when they banned narrow combo cards like Staff of Domination, Painter's Servant, and (the now unbanned) Worldgorger and Lion's Eye Diamond.
Put simply, you're not stopping a flood of calls for banning by making your stand against Hermit Druid. If your goal is to prevent the avalanche of calls for bannings, you'd need to decrease the size of the banned list first. Otherwise there will always be the glaringly obvious examples of lesser cards that have already had action taken against them and those counterpoints will just be made by the advocates of banning more stuff. And those are legitimate counterpoints that you simply can't effectively rebuke.
Regarding standard, the lack of diversity was never, EVER a problem in my experience. I played that format from the time U/G Madness took off all the way through Bloodbraid Jund's dominance at states after Lorwyn rotated. There was ALWAYS something you could play besides the best deck and the deck that beats the best deck during those time periods. Yes, I'm including Ravager in it's hay day. There were always other decks despite people's insistence that there weren't. In other words, what I'm telling you is that this, "standard is boring because there's not enough options," is not a new complaint, and is one that historically has always been incorrect.
I can respect that. I mean, your friend's decision certainly falls into a grey area, because after all, his intentions were always to mill himself with a graveyard strategy. And only running a handful of basic lands to begin with, he could probably guess what each activation would entail. But the idea of his games increasingly revolving around Druid is an indicator that he didn't expect such strong results initially.
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The problem is that there aren't enough players to go around. If there are 4 people at my table, and 2 want to play a combo-Spike deck and 2 want to chill and play a fun deck, there's no way to make everyone happy. Similarly, if I play a 3-man, pick-up game at a local store with a guy I know and a guy I don't know who turns out to be playing combo, what's my option? I can try to talk the new guy into playing a more "fair" deck, but there's no guarantee that I'll play with him again -- next week might be a new combo guy.
This is where I share trevor's frustration. Without clear guidance from the community leaders on what constitutes a fair card, it's very difficult to get people on the same deck design track. It's also why I would like to see the shift to "We have a significant ban list; local groups can unban as they like," instead of "We have a modest ban list; local groups can ban as necessary." It would create a more even baseline to start conversations from.
I agree that it should be irrelevant, but there are consistently arguments that to ban one effect requires banning all similar effects. For example, ObsidianDice's point about land destruction; mass LD may be unfun, but if you ban Annihilate, then you have to ban Decree, then Jokulhaups, then Obliterate, and so on. There is no other card that does what Hermit Druid does.
To your point though, that Hermit Druid's next replacement is Ad Nauseum, I'm not convinced that the slope is that steep.
Say the rules committee announced: "We want EDH to be no faster than turn 5, and we will ban any combo piece that consistently lets a deck win before turn 5. So resolving a Tooth and Nail with counterspell backup is an acceptable win, but we will ban N number of faster combo pieces until we achieve this goal."
How many cards is N? A dozen? 20?
How large could N be before the number of players driven off exceeded the number of new players encouraged to join?
This is exactly right and is the point people skip over completely when it comes to the overused "banning combo cards is a slippery slope" argument. Before a certain point (probably turn 5) combo is generally considered "too fast" and requires you to a) build your deck to stop it b) ostracize the person into not playing it or c) start excluding that person. None of those things are a good thing, despite whatever rhetoric the internet has to say about "social contract". But if you're going first and I STILL have enough mana to cast Dismiss to stop your combo on 5, that's combat-able by even casual standards.
In other words, it wouldn't be a slippery slope of bannings if an actual standard (probably a certain turn) was set as to what the RC is trying to prevent by banning this combo card but not that one. And since they'll never do that, people will continually bring up the "Why is this low power card banned but not this high power card?" argument, and it will continue to go unanswered. Thus, people will continue to be frustrated by this inconsistency.
Except the Moxes aren't banned in Commander for being too good. They're banned for being ubiquitous and outrageously expensive, raising the barrier to entry for new players.
Is Sol Ring ubiquitous? Yes. But Sol Ring is $6. Moxes are hundreds. It's about perception. If people think you need Moxes to play, they just won't play.
Mana Crypt is a little pricey, but it is also not as ubiquitous as Sol Ring and tends to hurt a lot of decks more than it helps. You pretty much have to be playing for a fast win or have some way to take advantage of its drawback in order for it to be good. It also has a decent budget replacement for people that don't want to shell out for it (Sol Ring). It is also really, really satisfying watching an opponent get lightning bolted by it.
Same thing with Vamp Tutor and Imperial Seal. Seal is $600, but it has a cheap enough replacement (which is actually the better card in this case) so it isn't a problem.
This sounds like a frustration you're going to experience regardless of format, though. If, randomly, you all decided to start playing Standard next week, your Vampire Tribal deck is going to be crushed by whatever Delver variant the competitive folks play. No reasonable amount of Standard bannings is likely to give the Vampire Tribal deck a fair shot.
The difference between Standard and Commander is that Standard is explicitly about winning, and people who are looking for a puzzle to "solve" should be looking over at Standard and the other formats. Commander is about finding a group in which your Vampire Tribal deck has fun games with the other people. A banlist isn't going to do that.
Resolving Tooth and Nail with counter backup and immediately getting a game-ending combo is the sort of thing that should be regarded as lame on pretty much any turn. Is that interesting on turn 10?
Defining fundamental turns and other metrics like that is the province of competitive formats. I think the French 1v1 list thinks about things like that; the primary Commander banlist isn't interested.
Plus, we'd have to start banning all the iconic fun cards - DTutor, Sol Ring - that are major drivers to the format in the first place. The whole point of the format is to let you play big, splashy, classic cards. Those cards are horribly broken if you don't use them in the spirit in which they are intended, so there's a fundamental disconnect between the goals of the format and what it would take to make it balanced.
It's highly inconsistent if you evaluate it in the context of a competitive format, and yes, you're correct, competitive players looking for a list that sets parameters for what they have to work with to try to break things will always be frustrated. Plus, looking for a single black/white binary reason why each card is banned will not get you far. There isn't a single rule, and the Moxen are banned for different reasons than Biorhythm, which is banned for different reasons than Sundering Titan. If you're looking for a general guide, "can unexpectedly wreck social games being played in the appropriate spirit" is a good start, and that doesn't necessarily mean combo. Of course, there are 6 people on the RC and while we're all pulling in the same direction, there will be fuzziness around the edges in how each of us thinks the best way is to accomplish that. There are cards I don't think should be banned that are, and ones that aren't that I would, given the choice. But I recognize that it's a casual format and there will always be minor variations, and I don't worry about it as long as the general message is clear.
Not sure how this is anywhere close to as fast considering it takes more mana and cards (With the same tutor suite). Its less consistent vulnerable to all the same disruption + spot removal (druid is not). This is also not as fast due to requiring two cards. If you actually believe this build a list and prove it, I am sure you are wrong. Additionally this is only infinite mana not an actual kill and requires the lands to be able to produce all 5 colors.
I am a combo player in every format (its why I don't play standard). There is a difference between stopping combo and bringing it inline. Turn 3-4 combos over 50% of the time are too good for this format.
Ring is no where close to crypt its like comparing Pyretic Ritual to Dark ritual or Dark ritual to lotus. With 40 life even if you lost your fair share of rolls its only 9-15 life which isn't much in this format.
If I had a dime for every time this has been ignored this thread I would have a free set of power.
Since when is a -TUTOR- BIG AND SPLASHY!
Yes resolving it on turn 10 is more interesting than it resolving on turn 4-5, by a wide margin. There are 51+ cards and 3 generals that could have been used to interact with the tooth and nail player there is nothing wrong with it at that stage.
Resolving your win condition on T2 (Where you may be the only one at 2 lands) and forcing the table to answer you with a total of 27 cards halves the number of answers you can use in addition to not being enough time to tutor, play hate bears/rocks, establish counter magic.
Yes, turn 10 combo is fundumentally different and more enjoyable because if you go off the entire table has had a truly sufficient chance to answer you, going off on T3-4 is just too fast in the same way T1 is just too fast for legacy if it was over 50%. The game is just not fun unless you get a chance to interact, once you have had that chance win or lose it would be cooler even if the win was hermit druid.
Wizards in relation to modern.
"The bannings will continue until attendance improves."
Not sure if trolling or just very stupid.:fry:
I feel like you're making an incorrect assumption about me here. I DO play standard. I play FNMs most weeks, and I usually make it to a competitive event about once every 6 weeks or so. I would like to have Commander remain a casual format where I can play something fun. This is why I'm frustrated; too many local players Commander don't view it as a "casual", but something different to win at.
I agree that people who are interested in competitive formats should play those formats. But there's a gap between what should happen and what does happen.
I feel like you're playing a different game than I am. Yes, this is a lame play! But TnN or similar effects (like Gen Wave) are a routinely used game enders, and are generally considered "fair" compared to other available combo cards. Within this thread, there are lengthy arguments that because TnN costs 9 with the entwine, this makes it legit to combo kill players with.
But the message isn't clear.
Leaving Hermit Druid unbanned sends the message, "This is an acceptable card. Do what you want with it." That seems like the opposite of the message you want.
And the point I'm making is that there is no amount of banlist that can make those players view it as casual. Competitive banlists set parameters within which the goal is to do the most busted thing possible. No matter how long the list is, that's still going to be a "best deck" that is more busted than a casual deck. The mentality is more important than the actual cards.
Plus, where's the line? Let's say we ban the 200 cards necessary to make the format casual in your eyes. Then Kemev2 comes along and complains that his Alligator tribal deck isn't able to keep up with the competitive decks. Do we ban another 200 cards to accommodate him? It still won't fix the mindset.
Fair is different from lame. Social play isn't focused on fair, it's focused on not-lame. If I lose to some spectacularly cool sequence of plays - say a Warp World that brings in my weenie horde and a Massacre Wurm for someone else - that's a cool game and I'll remember it, even though I lost. If I lose to T&N because the other guy thinks he's being cool and creative getting Kikimite... wow, that was a waste of time. It doesn't matter what turn they're on. It doesn't make the kill more "legit" because it didn't happen before some fundamental turn - that's an attitude held by players who want a framework for competitive play.
Which is why we don't have a context-free banlist, and people who ignore the context and just look at the banlist will never get the format right. (And making sure the context surrounds the banlist is most of the real work for September).
Banning Hermit Druid sends the message "We're serious about competitive play. Have at it!" That's not a message we're going to send.
Why did you ban Griselbrand then? Sorry, that sent the same message. Only the competitive players sought to break him. He's no different than Hermit Druid. Both can be degenerate if you want them to.
Every one of those cards sends the message "we are serious about competitive play." the existence of a banned list states "We are serious about competitive play." The banning of cards that you have to go out of your way to break (hulk, fastbond) while not banning other cards (Druid, TnN) is why people give you so much grief and you will continue to get it because people dislike hypocrisy/inconsistency. Not that this is a problem for you as its easy to ignore but just ignoring them will probably exacerbate the problem as you will be FORCED to do this for new combo cards (like grisslebanned) because they will be available to the majority.
Wizards in relation to modern.
"The bannings will continue until attendance improves."
Not sure if trolling or just very stupid.:fry:
That was my question from a few posts ago. Fundamentally, how much of a banned list does it take to make a fun format? In case I was unclear, I'm not talking about banning on-the-bubble, hotly debated cards like Prime Time or Consecrated Sphinx; I'm looking at a handful of cards like Hermit Druid, Ad Nauseum, and maybe 2-3 other cards (Mind over Matter?) that simply are not played by players looking for something creative or fun to do. These are cards whose fun-value (if any) simply isn't worth the headache of keeping them around.
Because so far with the Hermit Druid voting, I'm not seeing a huge out cry of "But if you ban Hermit Druid, my Seton druid deck won't work!" If I'm wrong, and there are fun times being had with Hermit Druid, shoot me some decklists and I'll clam up.
Similarly with Ad Nauseum: is there anyone seriously arguing that this is a fun card that should be played? Is someone out there playing an Oros Haze of Rage/Astral Steel deck I missed?
Now we're just splitting hairs over wording. I feel like we more or less agree on what a game of EDH should look like, but we have differing ideas on how to get there.
The Rules Committee has a unique megaphone for shouting "This is not fun! Play something else!" As trevor, taker, Undone, and others have all pointed out, this is what the banned list is. Is it truly that painful to add to it?
I tend to agree that Hulk and T/N do the same thing, but some people have an issue with Hulk recurring easily, so whatever. That other stuff is to keep the game from going to fast in the early game, but I think you know that you just want to complain. They are specifically NOT ignoring you, they are here discussing their philosophy and taking input from you. They know what weight their decisions hold, but they also know who they are trying to gear around.
Furthermore, I've heard this same straw man argument from the opposition so many times it's lost it's meaning. Every time someone brings up a pure combo card in the interest of banning it, the other side says either, "That won't stop a combo player because he'll just move on to the next thing," and/or "We'd have to ban [insert ridiculously exaggerated number here] in order to do what you're saying." Your counterpoint doesn't fit what they're asking for, and is deliberately exaggerated to try to make it seem like they want more than they really do. I'm going to address both those arguments.
1) A person asking you to ban "x" card is not asking you to stop the combo player entirely. In this case, all he's asking you to do is slow down the RATE AT WHICH COMBO PLAYERS CAN COMBO OUT. That way casual players have a chance of stopping them without warping their entire deck to do so. My personal opinion is that if his opponents would have access to Dismiss or Mystic Snake mana prior to him trying to combo out, that's slow enough to remain casual. If you have to start playing Mana Leak in EDH just to keep up, you're on the wrong track.
In other words, it doesn't matter if the combo player's deck is "more busted" than the casual players around him nor does some "framework for competitive play" apply here. As long as the players around the combo player can actually respond to him, the game can remain casual with combo still existing in the format. But before a certain turn, that's not realistic. You seem to want to disregard this point, but it's much more important than you let on. The ability to respond matters.
2) Would you REALLY have to ban that many cards? I always hear some huge number come out, but no one's actually taken the time to state what combos are too fast and what ones aren't. For example:
My old Sliver Queen deck played Mana Echoes. It was generally not complained about. Why? Because Sliver Queen cost 5 and Mana Echos cost another 4, AND it involved the attack step with creatures that don't have haste. Everyone got to respond to it before it won the game. Pretty slow. The only way to speed it up was to add more cards to the combo, which decreases consistency.
Now look at Earthcraft/Squirrel Nest. It cost 2 Mana for the first and 3 for the second, but it requires an untapped basic land to go off. That makes this (typically) a turn 4 "go off" with a turn 5 win. Faster, but still gives the board a chance to respond before it goes off and lends everyone the chance to answer it (and 4 land drops to cast Wrath of God) before it wins. Not too bad.
Then there's Hermit Druid. It's a turn 3, one card victory, with 100% chance of going off if he turns sideways. How many other combo decks can even do that? I would say it's probably less than a dozen. So no, it's not 200 cards. It's a small handful. I think that, if you addressed this point empirically, you'd find there's a lot less cards that would have to be banned for being "too good of a combo deck" than is portrayed. But the masses just seems content to think "why bother" because it's some number approaching infinite. It's not.
To wrap up the above, if the best combo deck cards were banned, Mr. combo player can go ahead and move on to the next best thing. I'm perfectly ok with him trying to turn 5 me. I, and the rest of the table, will reasonably be able to respond, and then come after him the rest of the game. Maybe if combo players had to actually "earn it", then they wouldn't be so inclined to play nothing but combo.
There are tons. Knowledge Pool. Mind over Matter, LED, Worldgorger, Power Artifact. Almost everything in Stax decks. Heck, by this definition, Ophidian Eye belongs on the banlist. Last time someone tried to do this a couple years ago, they stopped at around 80.
You're backing the wrong card in Hermit Druid. Unlike several of the others, it does have a place in many decks as a guy who gets you basic lands while putting some stuff in your graveyard. Plenty of people run him.
Actually, I think that this isn't a hair-split - it's an important distinction. T&N on turn 9 is "fair" - there's lots of ways in which it might be interacted with. But if nobody happens to have a counter or that spot removal, plunking a game-winning combo into play is lame - it basically wrecks any potential for the game to have been interesting in favor of something everyone has seen before. In some ways that's a better metaphor - playgroups are much better at defining what counts as lame than anything global possibly could be.
The format is unfair. It involves Vintage-legal cards, many of which are banned in legacy. The power level is off the charts, and there's enough tutors to make it consistent. Either you descend to that level to combat it, or you wash your hands of the whole thing and worry about pleasing the people you created the format for in the first place.
If I thought it would make any difference at all, I'd strongly consider it. But it really won't. I'd much rather spend banlist complexity points on social-griefy cards than worry about keeping the most broken deck in check.
This is, in a nutshell, the competitive player view of social gaming. "It's fair, you can run answers".
And, honestly, I think anyone who puts Mana Echoes in Sliver Queen is being fantastically uncreative. Your need to win is so strong that you'll stick in such an anticlimactic card? (On the bright side, at least this one gives the table a turn to answer)
I ask because I think we're drifting a little bit on "fair" cards versus "fun" cards. I'm biased Hermit Druid's funness, since I had forgotten about him until I saw him in the flip-my-library combo deck, so if he's being used for fun stuff in someone else's group, I might reconsider.