Before I say anything else, let me reiterate that I don't necessarily think CV should be unbanned, and I don't really care one way or another if it is, and I would most likely never play it if it was.
But I haaaaaate this argument. It requires such a poor understanding of good magic play to make sense. I'm gonna list a few reasons why.
Just because someone COULD have a game-ender doesn't mean they DO. It rarely makes sense to dedicate major resources (like targeted removal) to a merely potential threat, especially in multiplayer where your resources are much more limited than the total resources of your opponents, let alone things they only MIGHT have. Does that mean sometimes you'll lose the game because they did have CV and you bet against it? Sure, occasionally, but you'll win a lot more because you didn't waste cards dealing with a threat that never existed.
The majority of good removal (and all counterspells ) is instant-speed. Killing the commander on sight based on theoretical threats is not just silly, it's a bad use of the card even if they DID have CV, because then they still have CV in hand and you've only delayed the problem. You wait until they cast it, and THEN you kill the commander, thus effectively countering the spell while killing their commander at the same time. Using this tactic of course means that their commander is relatively safe, provided they don't cast CV - which is exactly what you'd want, gameplay-wise.
Most decks aren't playing LD to "attack their manabase" even if they wanted to. If they are, it's probably strip/waste/DB/GQ/etc, all of which operate at instant speed, so see the previous point.
Even if the players involved are terrible at magic and play the way this argument thinks they should, the 5c player could just tell them he's not running CV and head the whole "problem" off at the pass.
So wait, do I not hold up my instant speed removal for an unknown potential threat that may never appear, or do I hold it up so that I can answer CV when it is cast?
I'm also confused because you brought this card back into discussion to state why you thought it was fine and wouldn't mind if it were legal. And yet while you continue to off-handedly mention how you see why it's banned, you in the same breath argue every single person who explains their opinions on why it is and should stay banned, including to argue how it fits into the rules philosophy. Make up your mind, should it be legal or remain banned?
Then please enlighten me. Because there is a lot more to banning or unbending a card beyond "does it add to the format". I absolutely think the very first question you should ask when evaluating a card is "does banning/unbanning this card improve the format?". But once you have answered that question, you should look to the rest of the philosophy to see if change is warranted.
Enter the Infinite also requires work to win. You can't just jam it in a blue deck, tap 12 lands and windmill slam it on the table. It is the ease at which you can win off of CV that we are not seeing eye to eye on.
Sorry I can't hear you over the sound of Stasis being legal. If your criteria is "what good does this card add to the format" I think you're going to need a much, much, much longer banned list.
Make a thread and state your case for why Stasis should be banned. If there is any argument beyond creating undesirable game states I would be surprised.
Interacts poorly - 100% it does. The card was designed such that you had to draw into or use what little ramp was available to get five land types, and draw into multiple creatures or a 5c one. In a 60 card deck this is an huge drawback because you are creating a deck building weakness. In EDH, the rules of the format take care of this nearly. You always have a 5c creature in your hand to play, and your deck is built intentionally to produce all five colors of mana without suffering the same drawbacks that you would have in 60 card magic.
Creates undesirable game states - it wins the game out of nowhere, such that you cast it, no one has an instant speed answer and the game ends regardless of everything up until that point. Yes it is telegraphed in the sense that we can assume every 5c deck runs it but beyond that there is no indication other than the player having their general and lands in play.
Problematic casual Omnipresence - every deck that can run this card should run it and will warp those games simply by being legal. There is also no need to optimize your deck to run it beyond running fetches.
CVs literal text is “you win the game”, how does it not automatically win on resolution?
Anyways besides it blatantly interacting poorly with the format, theres also the point you seem to be opting to ignore that it would create undesirable game states. How? Because everytime a 5c deck gets its five typed lands or its commander in play everyone will just be focused on stopping the CV. So sure, the odds of CV actually resolving might be low due to removal and counters, but its legality would work as a pseudo Karakas only for 5c decks.
Also, again, CV is literally the only card in all of mtg that wins solely by resolving AND is aided by edhs rules. Everything else needs something happening after the original card resolves.
His argument is that you can cast CV, i can Utter End your general, and then it resolves and does nothing. Which is technically true. But similarly I could cast Expropriate on a weak board and lose, or get Fogged for three turns in a row.
I don't see Expropriate because... I don't know why. I play in a group with 20-30 people so luck of the draw maybe. There wasn't anything attached to that tidbit, just that I don't see it much.
My point about Serra was to point out how powerful and warping it is to have a card in the Command Zone. Even ignoring the Commander damage, having a 6/6 flying lifelink in your opening hand every single game is a strong play and I would expect near 100% of white decks to run it. Along those lines, I think your comparison to other formats thought experiment is flawed because we don't care about tournament formats and there are other factors which contribute to a card being banned. The better example is how to fix a card which was designed for 1v1 Standard and redesign it for multiplayer singleton. So CV should have a "not your commander" clause attached. Limited Resources should have a "5 times the number of starting players" clause. And so on. And then we can see how bad the card would be.
Dirk, I get what you're saying and that you see why the RC wants it banned, but your argument and reason for bringing this card back up are to discuss why you think it should be unbanned. That is what I'm responding to for the most part. Retarding CV vs Teferi and similar win the game cards that create feel-bad game states, those are largely self regulating because players can recognize that their opponents are having a miserable time finishing the game. Coalition Victory (and Expropriate, Tooth and Nail, Doomsday, etc. all fall into this category as well) on the other hand, very quickly ends the game. So there is no social pressure to not run it, "hey the game.is over we can just shuffle up a new one". This mentality, combined with the relative ease of running CV, makes it attractive to put in every 5c deck. I don't worry about Expropriate, Enter the Infinite, or Omniscience, because they are cards that I see seldomly in my group. I would fully expect every true 5c deck to run CV and question them if they weren't. Because with 10 fetches and 20 duals that I can buy relatively cheaply (although the enemy fetches have climbed again) along side ETBT fetches and green ramp, 9t should be no effort at all by turn 8 to have all land types and your general in play.
One other thought since you mentioned disagreeing with "interacts poorly with the format" and Serra Ascendant. If she were legendary and always available in the Command zone would you think she should be banned?
A couple of things. First, if you say something, people are going to respond. So if it doesn't matter that cEDH doesn't matter in decision making, then don't even bring it up that they don't care about a card (more on that in a second). Second, I can't think of a time when Blatant Thievery has won a game that I've been in. So even though people here and on podcasts like Command Zone hype about Expropriate, I just don't see it beyond being a really expensive card that should have a huge impact on the game, possibly winning it. Lastly, Dirk you have a way of presenting your arguments and describing yourself and decks in a manner that gives me the impression you fancy yourself a very good player playing in higher power games. Not disputing this, but I mention it because if so, you aren't the type of player that the Rules Committee is concerned with. You can handle yourself in a game, and you probably play in a similarly powered group that can regulate itself through house bans or metagaming your decks. So using the argument of "I don't have a problem with this card and these cards are worse" is skewed towards a small group of players and isn't necessarily representative of the majority of players.
Onering summed up pretty well why the format doesn't need CV, so I'm just going to address your points.
1. Not relevant since the RC isn't managing the format with cEDH in mind (unless the two groups spill into each other).
2. I don't disagree with this, but "dies to Doom Blade" has rarely been an effective argument on its own.
3. (Continuing from #2) Most 5c generals in my experience are cards I need to deal with sooner rather than later, so if I have removal for them I'm going to use it. But your argument is that if the 5c player is "telegraphing" their play by playing 8 lands and their general then I need to hold up a strip mine or swords to plowshares. The problem is now I'm sitting on removal that should be used to deal with am actual board state, like a gaea's Cradle or big dude swinging at me, not held "just in case". And if a card forces me to want to hold a strip mine for a dual land over a utility land then that should be throwing up red flags right there.
4. I see 5c decks every week now thanks to stupid Ur-Dragon and Slivers. I don't think it takes savvy to anticipate every true 5c deck to run CV. And if you have to say "I think this might be a problem for casual players because..." then that's a red flag.
5. Those dumb legal cards you listed don't always win the game, or can be used in a way that doesn't immediately win the game barring removal. CV quite literally does that. Of the cards you listed, the only one which requires less set up is Tooth and Nail, because it only requires nine mana and dedicating two slots in your deck to your combo, if they weren't cards you were already running. Coalition Victory has no such deck building requirement because the only thing it requires is the general and lands you're already playing.
I didn't really expect many (or possibly any) just like I don't expect any of those cards would see much play if unbanned. I mean their only 2 points are to be a dick or basically instant win and there are much lower mana ways to do either. So, do you honestly think they'll be played much at all?
I wouldn't expect Sway to get played, but I fully expect that both Wildfire and CV would be played. They are efficient game ending cards which only require one slot in a deck. (Efficient in the sense that the win they get is effortless)
So, in 2 days, there are zero stories about anyone ever seeing Coalition Victory, Worldfire, or Sway of the Stars actually being played? I think that's a big blow to the usefulness of their bans. Now, here, we don't really ban stuff and there have been a couple discussions about Worldfire and Sway over the last 8 years, but they haven't actually made it into any decks for basically the reasons I've mentioned over the course of serveral threads. I actually have a feeling that the overall feelbads in the format would go down unbanning all 3 and banning some actually played card like Winter Orb or Armageddon. I don't think they need to be banned. I just don't see the point in banning stuff that will pretty much never actually see play. I'm sure Biorhythm can go on the list of wouldn't be played anyway, as well. I haven't even ever seen one in person and never heard about it other than discussions to unban it. I'm sure they were probably only banned because of casual leagues where people ran them to try and find the best win condition you couldn't write a league rule against without effectively banning a large swath of cards. That seems like something that could be accomplished with a houserule ban considering they'd probably never even be played outside of super casual leagues with a bunch of rules to try and police fun sucking. Of course, the 2 shops I've seen it tried, ended up with unweildly banned lists anyway trying to reign in the win at all costs players.
We track the ban list changes back to the beginning of 2008, and neither Sway nor CV are on it. So they've both been banned for at least a decade, if not longer. Are you surprised that there aren't many stories about them being played?
It adds a sense of cohesion and the appearance of an actual guiding philosophy to the ban list. The RC has a bunch of vague, catch-all criteria for banning that are applied with extreme bias and it makes the ban list look comical. Removing CV from the list would be another step in the right direction, like removing Kokusho, the Evening Star and Metalworker was.
Statements like this are why it is difficult to have a discussion with you because it gives the impression you are arguing from your own negative opinions on the RC rather than with objectivity. CV fails in both the interacts poorly and the creates undesirable game states categories. And no amount of self regulation can change that if the card was legal.
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So wait, do I not hold up my instant speed removal for an unknown potential threat that may never appear, or do I hold it up so that I can answer CV when it is cast?
I'm also confused because you brought this card back into discussion to state why you thought it was fine and wouldn't mind if it were legal. And yet while you continue to off-handedly mention how you see why it's banned, you in the same breath argue every single person who explains their opinions on why it is and should stay banned, including to argue how it fits into the rules philosophy. Make up your mind, should it be legal or remain banned?
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Then please enlighten me. Because there is a lot more to banning or unbending a card beyond "does it add to the format". I absolutely think the very first question you should ask when evaluating a card is "does banning/unbanning this card improve the format?". But once you have answered that question, you should look to the rest of the philosophy to see if change is warranted.
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Make a thread and state your case for why Stasis should be banned. If there is any argument beyond creating undesirable game states I would be surprised.
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Interacts poorly - 100% it does. The card was designed such that you had to draw into or use what little ramp was available to get five land types, and draw into multiple creatures or a 5c one. In a 60 card deck this is an huge drawback because you are creating a deck building weakness. In EDH, the rules of the format take care of this nearly. You always have a 5c creature in your hand to play, and your deck is built intentionally to produce all five colors of mana without suffering the same drawbacks that you would have in 60 card magic.
Creates undesirable game states - it wins the game out of nowhere, such that you cast it, no one has an instant speed answer and the game ends regardless of everything up until that point. Yes it is telegraphed in the sense that we can assume every 5c deck runs it but beyond that there is no indication other than the player having their general and lands in play.
Problematic casual Omnipresence - every deck that can run this card should run it and will warp those games simply by being legal. There is also no need to optimize your deck to run it beyond running fetches.
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Womp womp
His argument is that you can cast CV, i can Utter End your general, and then it resolves and does nothing. Which is technically true. But similarly I could cast Expropriate on a weak board and lose, or get Fogged for three turns in a row.
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My point about Serra was to point out how powerful and warping it is to have a card in the Command Zone. Even ignoring the Commander damage, having a 6/6 flying lifelink in your opening hand every single game is a strong play and I would expect near 100% of white decks to run it. Along those lines, I think your comparison to other formats thought experiment is flawed because we don't care about tournament formats and there are other factors which contribute to a card being banned. The better example is how to fix a card which was designed for 1v1 Standard and redesign it for multiplayer singleton. So CV should have a "not your commander" clause attached. Limited Resources should have a "5 times the number of starting players" clause. And so on. And then we can see how bad the card would be.
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One other thought since you mentioned disagreeing with "interacts poorly with the format" and Serra Ascendant. If she were legendary and always available in the Command zone would you think she should be banned?
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1. Not relevant since the RC isn't managing the format with cEDH in mind (unless the two groups spill into each other).
2. I don't disagree with this, but "dies to Doom Blade" has rarely been an effective argument on its own.
3. (Continuing from #2) Most 5c generals in my experience are cards I need to deal with sooner rather than later, so if I have removal for them I'm going to use it. But your argument is that if the 5c player is "telegraphing" their play by playing 8 lands and their general then I need to hold up a strip mine or swords to plowshares. The problem is now I'm sitting on removal that should be used to deal with am actual board state, like a gaea's Cradle or big dude swinging at me, not held "just in case". And if a card forces me to want to hold a strip mine for a dual land over a utility land then that should be throwing up red flags right there.
4. I see 5c decks every week now thanks to stupid Ur-Dragon and Slivers. I don't think it takes savvy to anticipate every true 5c deck to run CV. And if you have to say "I think this might be a problem for casual players because..." then that's a red flag.
5. Those dumb legal cards you listed don't always win the game, or can be used in a way that doesn't immediately win the game barring removal. CV quite literally does that. Of the cards you listed, the only one which requires less set up is Tooth and Nail, because it only requires nine mana and dedicating two slots in your deck to your combo, if they weren't cards you were already running. Coalition Victory has no such deck building requirement because the only thing it requires is the general and lands you're already playing.
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We track the ban list changes back to the beginning of 2008, and neither Sway nor CV are on it. So they've both been banned for at least a decade, if not longer. Are you surprised that there aren't many stories about them being played?
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Statements like this are why it is difficult to have a discussion with you because it gives the impression you are arguing from your own negative opinions on the RC rather than with objectivity. CV fails in both the interacts poorly and the creates undesirable game states categories. And no amount of self regulation can change that if the card was legal.
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