There’s an argument to be made that Library of Alexandria interacts badly with the rules of the format, specifically that every player including the player to play first also draws a card. So every time Library is in the opener, the player can lay it down, draw immediately, then discard to hand size. Turn 2, they can lay a land, then draw, so on. And even after the first spell played, the player just alternates to activating the draw ability before they play the land or cast anything. So basically a Phyrexian Arena effect from Turn 1 for a static upkeep of 1.
In duel by contrast, the player to play first can only activate the Library Turn 2 and on, and then it deactivates after the first spell played.
The multiplayer draw rules only affect the first player, but this does make Library roughly twice as good in Multi as in Duel.
That and PBtE is real when you are talking about a card that costs $1000+, makes literally 100% of all decks, and doubles early draw quality when it’s in the opener. Just not something that the format needs.
This is a tremendously disingenuous and misleading representation of Modern at its inception. For whatever it is today the format was created to avoid the mistakes of Extended. Quashing ultra-fast decks didn't cripple diversity; it allowed more decks to exist and be created. Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle was the easy target because it only exists in the format to suddenly combo. Bitterblossom was NOT on the initial ban list because “its historical popularity is not very high”. If you read the rest of that explanation you'll see the mention of Faeries being a dominating force in Extended for nearly 4 years at that point and Wizards didn't want it to immediately assert itself in Modern. Extended died for many reasons and one of its pallbearers at the end was Faeries.
If you read the explanation on Valakut, you'll see that it wasn't feared as a Turn 3 or earlier deck itself, but that it was seen in Legacy as "thriving in a field of them". Yes, it's only point is to combo off, but what conclusion do you draw then from the DCI banning a card that is used for "non-interactive combo kills" but otherwise doesn't violate any of the format's goals? To me, the conclusion would not be disingenuous at all that a field of decks that combo off is something that they'd prefer to avoid.
For Faeries and its relation to Extended, I'm not reading that it was feared Modern would become a reincarnation of prior, poorly-attended Extended formats, only that decks that historically dominated Extended at some point were the most likely candidates to form the field of Modern. If you look at their rationale on Stoneforge Mystic, performance in Legacy was also looked at, where SFM based decks were seen to be competing in the format. There was no such data on Faeries, only that it was a dominating Extended deck, and that everyone was tired of playing against it for reasons entirely unrelated to diversity. Besides, just being a strong deck in a prior Extended formats would mean that you were competing against other strong decks based on prior Extended formats, there being arguably enough diversity just among those to support a format. So in my mind, they didn't want Faeries in the format early on because it was consciously felt that players didn't want to play against it.
Second Sunrise was banned not for being unfun, but it got the Shahrazad treatment of booting a card that was routinely causing rounds to go past time. Sensei's Divining Top was banned because it was causing some games to reliably go past time while also being a part of the then most dominant deck in the format. It didn't have anything to do with "fun" versus "unfun". It was about keeping matches moving in a tournament setting.
Well, what do you call the player experience of clock management and routinely going past time? Some would call it "unfun".
On the other hand if clock management were seen as a critical skill of the game, then clocks would be implemented in a similar way to games like Chess. It's likely that there would also be tournaments with different time constraints, blitz, so on. The competitive scene would look entirely different, with ongoing ratings, showcase matches, etc, being features of the game. But to the contrary, DCI determined that Magic is (and ought to be) a game where a match can occur in a set time frame, without any impact to the critical skills of the game, and that Swiss style tournaments offering their rewards in isolation of one another is appropriate.
The point is, there is a non-diversity related goal there. Players and organizers have an idea of what the game is and what it's not. If a game veers off and becomes something different, than bans will be made to bring it back in line with these non-diversity related expectations. That goes for matches going past time, decks ignoring the board and combo'ing off, individual cards that render critical skills of the game unnecessary, so on. I don't see agree with this view that all the DCI cares about is diversity.
I like your SCG content, Sheldon, but let me take the chance to address something you’ve said in many forms before, repeated here – “In competitive Magic, the function of a banned list is to create a balanced tournament environment… There really is no other goal for a competitive format's banned list. Those tournament formats don't care which decks actually win or how they accomplish the goal (although one-sided, long playing combo decks like Eggs aren't all that great as a spectator sport), just that there are many to viably choose from.”
I’m not sure if you have any inside track to the inner-workings of the DCI, but I see that conclusion as impossible from the public statements they have issued regarding bans. Look no further than the latest experiment – Modern.
First of all, it debuted with the explicit premise that they wanted to keep decks that win on Turn 3 or earlier out of the format. Notwithstanding whether there was diversity among those decks, or whether other decks had the tools to compete with them, they have had that as a goal because of the type of gameplay they want to foster. Maybe that’s a bit of a given, but take that for what it’s worth. The Magic players and designers want it to be a game about the board, not fishing through your deck for the fastest combo.
On top of that explicit, non-diversity related goal, Modern also initially debuted with fewer options (not more) in a couple cases, just because the DCI thought people didn’t want to play against those decks. Bitterblossom and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle were banned, not because they were thought of as hindering competitive diversity, but simply because they were foreseeably going to be used in a strong deck, and it was a deck that they didn’t want seeing played. Not diversity related at all, and in fact, were specifically intended to reduce diversity by precisely two decks. (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/welcome-modern-world-2011-08-12 )
Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle – “…Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle doesn't do very many cool things on its own, and usually results in non-interactive combination kills any time it shows up.”
Bitterblossom – On the initial Modern banned list because “its historical popularity is not very high”.
Take further DCI statements also. Granted that the meat of the message is format diversity, but bans are also colored with statements about how fun/unfun it is to play against a certain deck. No coincidence that Jund was let to go on to the tune of 60% representation for so long – it’s not a combo deck, it always wins through combat, and it allows your spells to resolve. There was action taken in the end, but it would be disingenuous to say that it would have taken the DCI equal amounts of time to ban a combo or a prison deck.
Other examples, which you also hint at in the article. Like you mentioned above, Second Sunrise was banned because nobody liked playing with or against Eggs. Same thing with Sensei’s Divining Top in Legacy, although to a lesser degree. The bans both reduced the diversity of the format by exactly one deck (Eggs, Miracles), purely because people simply didn’t like playing the game as much when those decks were getting sleeved up.
In fact, I would say that most bans in Magic that were aimed at diversity absent the element of whether the deck(s) it supported were fun, most of those ultimately turned out to be unwarranted. Aside from the Bitterblossom scare, the DCI also tried a ban of Wild Nacatal to see if it would increase diversity of “attacking decks”, and it turns out that it just irritated people interested in Zoo and the others didn’t care. The one reason, they didn’t mind as much losing on board to a Nacatal. Likewise with Legacy, tons of things got unbanned as the card pool deepened, but stuff like Necropotence, Tinker, Survival, they stay good and banned.
…
The reason I wanted to raise this is to remind you that no player exists who is the fun-ruining boogeyman that the tournament-going players are labeled. There’s not really anyone whose voice should be ignored, on the basis that they just aren’t the kind of player we want. If they’re playing Commander, I say that they have as good of a reason as you or I do.
There are enough purely competitive games out there that those people really don’t show up in Magic anymore, if they ever did. Most players would rather play a deck they like, even to a Grand Prix. In fact, the premise of format diversity being good for the game and for organizers is that there must be some people on the fence whether to participate, but that they will do so if there is a deck in the metagame that they enjoy.
So players wanting bans, is it possible that their motivations are other than wanting to make the format more like a tournament one? In my eye, I see a large portion of the community who just wants to be able to play against a wider variety of people. I think you’re right on that the role of the ban list is to give the format “shape”, and wider playability. If bans make certain decks a little harder to make, but lead to more people being able to sit across from one another, then I say that’s a good ban. That goes not only for the purpose of a ban list itself, but the cards on it too.
Also, five color failed as a format because it was hot garbage. No other reason, really. They had to ban things because of that, not the other way around.
I've seen people who ran banned cards because they weren't aware of what was on the banlist whatsoever. I've seen people who thought cards were banned because they're quite sensibly banned in other formats. I've seen people who ran banned cards because they stubbornly disagreed with the RC's banning of the card. I've seen people who thought commander tax was for each time a card left the battlefield. I've seen people who ran banned cards because they missed an update. I've seen people who...
Not to separate this from the main point, but yeah, I have seen people misunderstand the ban list for a variety of reasons. I think it’s useful to separate them into two categories – mistakes because people didn’t read it, mistakes because the ban list itself is confusing.
And of all the mistakes I’ve seen made due to the ban list itself, about 70%-80% of them have been players who thought cards were banned that actually are not. As in, the first time each new player sees Demonic Tutor played in an EDH game. And, I still continue to see people who thought that Necropotence, Survival of the Fittest, and Intuition are banned, when of course they are not.
If the community valued “grokability” anywhere near the same as it does just being allowed to play whatever card they want, then the ban list would start at a point that is familiar with people who have played the game of Magic before. For the format where games are intended to be enjoyable, having cards that no one wants to play against ever again is the greatest dissonance there is. The rest is just details peripheral to that.
If, however, I were to declare a war, it would be against the STAX and related resource denial because it's just miserable to play against. I hate the idea of games in which everyone just sits around watching one person play. If it happens as some sort of unusual side effect or combination of cards from multiple decks, then stuff happens, but dedicating a strategy to not allowing anyone into the game is contrary to the social principle.
As one of those who've long suspected that this was the feeling with the RC, I really appreciate you putting your name on it.
Maybe a similar article in the future addressing the issues with Combo also?
I don’t know what it is about the law that everyone believes that unqualified speculation counts for something.
The key fact that has changed between pre-Commander EDH years and now is that WOTC is now deriving commercial benefit from goods sold under a registered Trademark. So even with no competing claims on the IP directly, there are all sorts of grounds for a possible injunction against someone co-opting that property – tortious interference, trademark tarnishment, various conversion theories, etc.
Broadly speaking, the law is not favorable toward a third party deriving commercial benefit (direct or indirect) by telling everyone that the seller of the IP is doing it wrong, particularly when it’s to the detriment of the IP owner. Those are not very common grounds for suit, but it shouldn’t really be that hard of a call from gut-feeling standpoint. WOTC is highly interested in the safekeeping of the Commander format.
Is anyone suggesting that they're not?
Just saying that from the years of EDH to now, the thing that's changed is that WOTC is now financially interested in Commander. Which is to rebut Onering's statement above that if the RC and WOTC were ever to part ways, things would go back to the way they were, specifically EDH being an unsupported home brew outside WOTC radar, and Commander as separate from EDH going forward under WOTC ownership. I'm saying not so, WOTC has grounds to keep the whole format under their own safekeeping from now on.
I don’t know what it is about the law that everyone believes that unqualified speculation counts for something.
The key fact that has changed between pre-Commander EDH years and now is that WOTC is now deriving commercial benefit from goods sold under a registered Trademark. So even with no competing claims on the IP directly, there are all sorts of grounds for a possible injunction against someone co-opting that property – tortious interference, trademark tarnishment, various conversion theories, etc.
Broadly speaking, the law is not favorable toward a third party deriving commercial benefit (direct or indirect) by telling everyone that the seller of the IP is doing it wrong, particularly when it’s to the detriment of the IP owner. Those are not very common grounds for suit, but it shouldn’t really be that hard of a call from gut-feeling standpoint. WOTC is highly interested in the safekeeping of the Commander format.
Out of curiosity Sheldon, hypothetically speaking if there was a falling out between the RC and Wizards, which parent would get control of the format?
WOTC
Per USPTO:
Word Mark MAGIC THE GATHERING COMMANDER
Goods and Services IC 028. US 022 023 038 050. G & S: Card games, trading card games. FIRST USE: 20110601. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20110601
Standard Characters Claimed
Mark Drawing Code (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK
Serial Number 85155389
Filing Date October 18, 2010
Current Basis 1A
Original Filing Basis 1B
Published for Opposition March 22, 2011
Registration Number 4347124
Registration Date June 4, 2013
Owner (REGISTRANT) WIZARDS OF THE COAST LLC LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY DELAWARE 1027 Newport Avenue Pawtucket RHODE ISLAND 02862
Prior Registrations 1919923;2834808;3190575;AND OTHERS
Type of Mark TRADEMARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE
The only live trademark for "EDH" is "Exclusive Door Handles", and nothing for Elder Dragon Highlander.
Every ban list is arbitrary, is the thing. Modern will ban Green Sun’s Zenith because it is in too many decks, but then everything runs DRS, Snappy, so on. They had Bitterblossom banned for no other reason than Faeries was a dominant deck in its Standard, but then Bloodbraid Elf is fine even though it ran Standard in its day. Until everyone that was sick of one thing is now sick of the other, and they switch places. There is no consistency.
For people to be pleased with a ban list, the rules body just has to nail two things: 1) clarity of purpose, 2) cojones to implement that purpose.
The Commander ban list struggles with the former more than most. For other forms of Magic, the rules bodies can just default to mathematical data on representations at tournaments. They don’t have to allege that enjoyment is the goal (even though it clearly is), if they can default to tournament data. Does everyone like playing against Legacy Storm one in every 3-4 games? Doesn’t matter because there are other decks that show up at Legacy events. If it’s diverse, it must be fun.
Thing is, I think that the RC has done a phenomenal job at clarity of purpose, without the benefit of data. So many people who have no contact with one another are still close in their understanding of do’s and dont’s in the format.
Where I think most people are frustrated with the RC is their willingness to implement that vision. We don’t like combo’s, ok. Except, do we do anything about it? Nope. Too hard. Would be too unpopular. So, we have to say that we don’t mind that some groups might be ok playing combo in the format. The actual card pool is just so far from the stated vision of the format, that there’s scarcely any real purpose for it. The purpose becomes expectation setting, in the most circular of ways. The Commander we all know doesn’t have painter’s servant, so commander players haven’t had to invest in the card, become aware of the interactions of the card, so on, and it’s our expectation that we’ll continue not having to do so. The RC won’t even ban cards that most people have stopped playing for power level reasons (e.g. Necropotence), for such fear of upsetting the long-standing status quo. So even when it’s stated that the purpose is a certain type of game, failure to take any action to implement that raises suspicion that the purpose is ultimately something else, and the house of cards collapses.
I don’t like the word “healthy” either, for lots of reasons. Its connotation is mostly within the tournament context, which is a subset even of the “competitive” context. It’s defined in the negative rather than the affirmative, e.g. format is 60% Caw Blade, not healthy. On top of that, it’s always relative. Last year’s Modern/Standard/Legacy tournaments had more attendees, etc, not healthy.
Obviously, none of those measuring sticks will apply to EDH. There are games being played, and people having fun. If that is the touchstone for “healthy”, then EDH is going to be healthy all of the time, as a rule, unless Magic itself somehow becomes unpopular.
I find it a lot better to measure net effects, i.e., whether the format is better with such and such change. If games are unambiguously better without Sol Ring, for example, let’s ban it. The “healthy” word is highly euphemistic of the status quo.
An apologist js someone who offers an argument in defense of something misunderstood or controversial. It's not someone who apologizes, or whatever people find objectionable about the term. It's not negative at all.
That's true, but it's pretty common for the term to have a negative bias towards it since more often than not the description is used to dismiss someone or fault them.
Care to provide support for that? I know plenty of people and organizations who voluntarily identify as apologists, etc.
Regardless, take the term as you may. Someone arguing in support of the “only broken if you break it” rationale, that’s what they’ll say. If a legal card causes problems, it’s the player. If an illegal card causes problems, it’s the ban list. No True Scotsman.
An apologist js someone who offers an argument in defense of something misunderstood or controversial. It's not someone who apologizes, or whatever people find objectionable about the term. It's not negative at all.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
In duel by contrast, the player to play first can only activate the Library Turn 2 and on, and then it deactivates after the first spell played.
The multiplayer draw rules only affect the first player, but this does make Library roughly twice as good in Multi as in Duel.
That and PBtE is real when you are talking about a card that costs $1000+, makes literally 100% of all decks, and doubles early draw quality when it’s in the opener. Just not something that the format needs.
So, your position is that Shahrazad, Top, Eggs, are banned so that we can see a wider diversity of decks?
....?
If you read the explanation on Valakut, you'll see that it wasn't feared as a Turn 3 or earlier deck itself, but that it was seen in Legacy as "thriving in a field of them". Yes, it's only point is to combo off, but what conclusion do you draw then from the DCI banning a card that is used for "non-interactive combo kills" but otherwise doesn't violate any of the format's goals? To me, the conclusion would not be disingenuous at all that a field of decks that combo off is something that they'd prefer to avoid.
For Faeries and its relation to Extended, I'm not reading that it was feared Modern would become a reincarnation of prior, poorly-attended Extended formats, only that decks that historically dominated Extended at some point were the most likely candidates to form the field of Modern. If you look at their rationale on Stoneforge Mystic, performance in Legacy was also looked at, where SFM based decks were seen to be competing in the format. There was no such data on Faeries, only that it was a dominating Extended deck, and that everyone was tired of playing against it for reasons entirely unrelated to diversity. Besides, just being a strong deck in a prior Extended formats would mean that you were competing against other strong decks based on prior Extended formats, there being arguably enough diversity just among those to support a format. So in my mind, they didn't want Faeries in the format early on because it was consciously felt that players didn't want to play against it.
Well, what do you call the player experience of clock management and routinely going past time? Some would call it "unfun".
On the other hand if clock management were seen as a critical skill of the game, then clocks would be implemented in a similar way to games like Chess. It's likely that there would also be tournaments with different time constraints, blitz, so on. The competitive scene would look entirely different, with ongoing ratings, showcase matches, etc, being features of the game. But to the contrary, DCI determined that Magic is (and ought to be) a game where a match can occur in a set time frame, without any impact to the critical skills of the game, and that Swiss style tournaments offering their rewards in isolation of one another is appropriate.
The point is, there is a non-diversity related goal there. Players and organizers have an idea of what the game is and what it's not. If a game veers off and becomes something different, than bans will be made to bring it back in line with these non-diversity related expectations. That goes for matches going past time, decks ignoring the board and combo'ing off, individual cards that render critical skills of the game unnecessary, so on. I don't see agree with this view that all the DCI cares about is diversity.
I’m not sure if you have any inside track to the inner-workings of the DCI, but I see that conclusion as impossible from the public statements they have issued regarding bans. Look no further than the latest experiment – Modern.
First of all, it debuted with the explicit premise that they wanted to keep decks that win on Turn 3 or earlier out of the format. Notwithstanding whether there was diversity among those decks, or whether other decks had the tools to compete with them, they have had that as a goal because of the type of gameplay they want to foster. Maybe that’s a bit of a given, but take that for what it’s worth. The Magic players and designers want it to be a game about the board, not fishing through your deck for the fastest combo.
On top of that explicit, non-diversity related goal, Modern also initially debuted with fewer options (not more) in a couple cases, just because the DCI thought people didn’t want to play against those decks. Bitterblossom and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle were banned, not because they were thought of as hindering competitive diversity, but simply because they were foreseeably going to be used in a strong deck, and it was a deck that they didn’t want seeing played. Not diversity related at all, and in fact, were specifically intended to reduce diversity by precisely two decks. (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/welcome-modern-world-2011-08-12 )
Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle – “…Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle doesn't do very many cool things on its own, and usually results in non-interactive combination kills any time it shows up.”
Bitterblossom – On the initial Modern banned list because “its historical popularity is not very high”.
Take further DCI statements also. Granted that the meat of the message is format diversity, but bans are also colored with statements about how fun/unfun it is to play against a certain deck. No coincidence that Jund was let to go on to the tune of 60% representation for so long – it’s not a combo deck, it always wins through combat, and it allows your spells to resolve. There was action taken in the end, but it would be disingenuous to say that it would have taken the DCI equal amounts of time to ban a combo or a prison deck.
Other examples, which you also hint at in the article. Like you mentioned above, Second Sunrise was banned because nobody liked playing with or against Eggs. Same thing with Sensei’s Divining Top in Legacy, although to a lesser degree. The bans both reduced the diversity of the format by exactly one deck (Eggs, Miracles), purely because people simply didn’t like playing the game as much when those decks were getting sleeved up.
In fact, I would say that most bans in Magic that were aimed at diversity absent the element of whether the deck(s) it supported were fun, most of those ultimately turned out to be unwarranted. Aside from the Bitterblossom scare, the DCI also tried a ban of Wild Nacatal to see if it would increase diversity of “attacking decks”, and it turns out that it just irritated people interested in Zoo and the others didn’t care. The one reason, they didn’t mind as much losing on board to a Nacatal. Likewise with Legacy, tons of things got unbanned as the card pool deepened, but stuff like Necropotence, Tinker, Survival, they stay good and banned.
…
The reason I wanted to raise this is to remind you that no player exists who is the fun-ruining boogeyman that the tournament-going players are labeled. There’s not really anyone whose voice should be ignored, on the basis that they just aren’t the kind of player we want. If they’re playing Commander, I say that they have as good of a reason as you or I do.
There are enough purely competitive games out there that those people really don’t show up in Magic anymore, if they ever did. Most players would rather play a deck they like, even to a Grand Prix. In fact, the premise of format diversity being good for the game and for organizers is that there must be some people on the fence whether to participate, but that they will do so if there is a deck in the metagame that they enjoy.
So players wanting bans, is it possible that their motivations are other than wanting to make the format more like a tournament one? In my eye, I see a large portion of the community who just wants to be able to play against a wider variety of people. I think you’re right on that the role of the ban list is to give the format “shape”, and wider playability. If bans make certain decks a little harder to make, but lead to more people being able to sit across from one another, then I say that’s a good ban. That goes not only for the purpose of a ban list itself, but the cards on it too.
Also, five color failed as a format because it was hot garbage. No other reason, really. They had to ban things because of that, not the other way around.
Not to separate this from the main point, but yeah, I have seen people misunderstand the ban list for a variety of reasons. I think it’s useful to separate them into two categories – mistakes because people didn’t read it, mistakes because the ban list itself is confusing.
And of all the mistakes I’ve seen made due to the ban list itself, about 70%-80% of them have been players who thought cards were banned that actually are not. As in, the first time each new player sees Demonic Tutor played in an EDH game. And, I still continue to see people who thought that Necropotence, Survival of the Fittest, and Intuition are banned, when of course they are not.
If the community valued “grokability” anywhere near the same as it does just being allowed to play whatever card they want, then the ban list would start at a point that is familiar with people who have played the game of Magic before. For the format where games are intended to be enjoyable, having cards that no one wants to play against ever again is the greatest dissonance there is. The rest is just details peripheral to that.
As one of those who've long suspected that this was the feeling with the RC, I really appreciate you putting your name on it.
Maybe a similar article in the future addressing the issues with Combo also?
Just saying that from the years of EDH to now, the thing that's changed is that WOTC is now financially interested in Commander. Which is to rebut Onering's statement above that if the RC and WOTC were ever to part ways, things would go back to the way they were, specifically EDH being an unsupported home brew outside WOTC radar, and Commander as separate from EDH going forward under WOTC ownership. I'm saying not so, WOTC has grounds to keep the whole format under their own safekeeping from now on.
The key fact that has changed between pre-Commander EDH years and now is that WOTC is now deriving commercial benefit from goods sold under a registered Trademark. So even with no competing claims on the IP directly, there are all sorts of grounds for a possible injunction against someone co-opting that property – tortious interference, trademark tarnishment, various conversion theories, etc.
Broadly speaking, the law is not favorable toward a third party deriving commercial benefit (direct or indirect) by telling everyone that the seller of the IP is doing it wrong, particularly when it’s to the detriment of the IP owner. Those are not very common grounds for suit, but it shouldn’t really be that hard of a call from gut-feeling standpoint. WOTC is highly interested in the safekeeping of the Commander format.
WOTC
Per USPTO:
The only live trademark for "EDH" is "Exclusive Door Handles", and nothing for Elder Dragon Highlander.
For people to be pleased with a ban list, the rules body just has to nail two things: 1) clarity of purpose, 2) cojones to implement that purpose.
The Commander ban list struggles with the former more than most. For other forms of Magic, the rules bodies can just default to mathematical data on representations at tournaments. They don’t have to allege that enjoyment is the goal (even though it clearly is), if they can default to tournament data. Does everyone like playing against Legacy Storm one in every 3-4 games? Doesn’t matter because there are other decks that show up at Legacy events. If it’s diverse, it must be fun.
Thing is, I think that the RC has done a phenomenal job at clarity of purpose, without the benefit of data. So many people who have no contact with one another are still close in their understanding of do’s and dont’s in the format.
Where I think most people are frustrated with the RC is their willingness to implement that vision. We don’t like combo’s, ok. Except, do we do anything about it? Nope. Too hard. Would be too unpopular. So, we have to say that we don’t mind that some groups might be ok playing combo in the format. The actual card pool is just so far from the stated vision of the format, that there’s scarcely any real purpose for it. The purpose becomes expectation setting, in the most circular of ways. The Commander we all know doesn’t have painter’s servant, so commander players haven’t had to invest in the card, become aware of the interactions of the card, so on, and it’s our expectation that we’ll continue not having to do so. The RC won’t even ban cards that most people have stopped playing for power level reasons (e.g. Necropotence), for such fear of upsetting the long-standing status quo. So even when it’s stated that the purpose is a certain type of game, failure to take any action to implement that raises suspicion that the purpose is ultimately something else, and the house of cards collapses.
Obviously, none of those measuring sticks will apply to EDH. There are games being played, and people having fun. If that is the touchstone for “healthy”, then EDH is going to be healthy all of the time, as a rule, unless Magic itself somehow becomes unpopular.
I find it a lot better to measure net effects, i.e., whether the format is better with such and such change. If games are unambiguously better without Sol Ring, for example, let’s ban it. The “healthy” word is highly euphemistic of the status quo.
Care to provide support for that? I know plenty of people and organizations who voluntarily identify as apologists, etc.
Regardless, take the term as you may. Someone arguing in support of the “only broken if you break it” rationale, that’s what they’ll say. If a legal card causes problems, it’s the player. If an illegal card causes problems, it’s the ban list. No True Scotsman.