Banned because it wins seemingly out of nowhere. No other criteria mentioned.
While other cards also meet this criteria, it seems they leaned on the fact that it requires little deckbuilding focus to be effective.
I believe this is the first card to be banned because it wins seemingly out of nowhere since Coalition Victory. I do not know if this means other cards will start being more heavily considered for banning... but that seems like the logical conclusion.
Certainly shocked, that’s for sure. There’s precedent now for similar cards gaining traction for potential bans. Tooth and Nail being the first card I think falls into a similar category.
You know that tooth and Nail can be sued to tutor anything else that isn't combo right? Tell me what does Paradox Engine offers other then straight up combo? Untaping a couple of mana rocks to add more mana? Woow.
Tough i think they could have explained more the reason why it was banned, but now people aginst the comitee will twist their words in this and used it as more ammuntion.
I use it in two decks.
Phenax uses it to mill opponents - kinda like Intruder alarm.
Maelstrom Wanderer is competitive and can use it to combo, but main use is being able to activate Crystal Shard and Tradewind Rider multiple times per turn.
Banned because it wins seemingly out of nowhere. No other criteria mentioned.
While other cards also meet this criteria, it seems they leaned on the fact that it requires little deckbuilding focus to be effective.
I believe this is the first card to be banned because it wins seemingly out of nowhere since Coalition Victory. I do not know if this means other cards will start being more heavily considered for banning... but that seems like the logical conclusion.
By what metric do you say that PE hits the 'problematic casual omnipresence'? We have spent time trying to even come up with a way of evaluating this. Every meta is so different.
I didn't say that (though when we collect data we do so from a bunch of different sources and try to get data about the big picture). I was not making a judgement one way or the other on Paradox Engine. I was merely pointing out that there wasn't necessarily a straight line from Paradox Engine to Doomsday, and it was possible for one to be an issue and not the other.
I did not mean to imply that you made a judgement. I just want to know more about how you collect data.
And fair enough, PE is played a lot more casually than the other cards listed. I was trying to separate 'casual omnipresence', which we cannot measure, from the discussion, and to discuss PE based on other terms. I felt that it was similar to the other cards listed in the way that they are exclusively used to 'combo off', and that these other cards were not banworthy.
I can understand how any card can be considered for banning based on problematic casual omnipresence. It is just so hard to evaluate this. In this thread, we have people saying that they face PE all the time, and people saying that they rarely see PE. WE have people looking to EDHrec and combing through hundreds of decks.
It is just so impossible to evaluate because anything published online skews towards competitive play.
Thus far, the RC has not banned a card like PE that needs other pieces to work. If they banned PE, they would have to consider Food Chain, Doomsday, Protean Hulk and many other cards that require little extra effort to break, and which pretty well exclusively get played to win the game on the spot.
Consider, maybe, but only in the sense that we consider everything. If PE were to be banned (and I have no comment on that one way or another), it would be because of the effect it was having on the casual community. Food Chain and Doomsday see almost zero play there, and Hulk is working out as we expected - occasional use as a value engine that's not all that problematic.
As evidenced from the past few years "Problematic Casual Omnipresence" is the banlist criteria we lean on most heavily. Paradox Engine doesn't necessarily end up in the same space in that bucket as the other cited cards do.
By what metric do you say that PE hits the 'problematic casual omnipresence'? We have spent time trying to even come up with a way of evaluating this. Every meta is so different.
Saying the RC doesn't care about combos is fairly, well, incorrect. It's literally in two of the banlist criteria.
Problematic Casual Omnipresence. Some cards are so powerful that they become must-includes in decks that can run them and have a strongly negative impact on the games in which they appear, even when not built to optimize their effect. This does not include cards which are part of a specific two-card combination — there are too many of those available in the format to usefully preclude — but may include cards which have numerous combinations with other commonly-played cards.
* Creates Undesirable Game States. Losing is not an undesirable game state. However, a game in which one or more players, playing comparable casual decks, have minimal participation in the game is something which players should be steered away from. Warning signs include massive overall resource imbalance, early-game cards that lock players out, and cards with limited function other than to win the game out of nowhere.
The RC doesn't care to police two card combos but they do care to police things that combo with all kinds of other things. Which is the sweet spot for me that PE combos with practically every other artifact played in EDH and 20+ commanders with tap abilities many of which are very popular.
These are two good arguments.
However, for the first one - there are many cards that win out of nowhere and do nothing else. But you know this.
For the second one - the only cards I see that match this criteria are Time Vault and maybe Panoptic Mirror. I would say that Time Vault's power level is so high that PE cannot be in the same conversation. Mirror, on the other hand, is a card people have often argued for unbanning. It is banned because it combos with time walks. Two card combos should not be a concern, in my opinion. Maybe the repetitive play is also an issue - easy to keep a wrath on it.
However, I will acknowledge that this is a very real reason to consider PE for banning. Does it combo too easily and with too much? I think that is debatable. I think it is more on the Food Chain end of the spectrum. It combos with some specific generals very well, but less well than Food Chain with Prossh. It does crazy things with mana rocks, but doesn't combo out unless you have more dedicated cards to make the combo work.
Good points, and we can discuss further, but ultimately I think PE is not close enough to the 'combo with everything' condition. It is closer than Food chain, but it is a long way to Time Vault.
(1) (your argument has largely been to prove that it needs so little support that it effectively is broken by itself, which we have argued back and forth forever)
Now I think your most pressing argument for changing my mind about this is the one I bolded above. PH needs a deck with sac outlets and a combo. Doomsday needs specific support. FC needs a creature that it can make infinite mana with. PE needs dorks or rocks and cards to cast. Now, I will give you that typically, people have cards in hand and a commander to cast. It is not a way to make infinite mana, but it generates a lot of value in the same way as PoK. The difference is PoK needed lands or dorks. Everyone plays lands. It is a given. Lands are also the hardest permanents to destroy, and mass land destruction is barely played in casual settings.
PE relies on dorks or rocks to generate value. Creatures and artifacts are the two easiest permanents to destroy. So much so, that many people avoid dorks and mana rocks as they are often destroyed as collateral damage. Bolt the bird is not a think in commander. But wrath on turn 4 is something that happens very frequently.
(2) I think this pushes PE into the same realm as Protean Hulk. If people want to combo with a card, and build their decks to combo off with that card, then they can do whatever they want, the RC doesn't care.
PE is not a good card that wins the game by itself. PE is a deck archetype like Flash Hulk. PoK was not a deck archetype. It was just good in every UGx deck. Every single one of them.
Regardless of how present it is, I do not think it will be banned. It will never be played in every deck. It will always be played and always hated, but it will never become so present it needs to be banned. That is not a thing. The RC just doesn't ban cards that are not present in any meta. Every card that is heavily played should be on the RC's radar. But heavy play cannot justify a banning.
1) I will reiterate that I never said that it needs "so little support it is broken in itself" or any such thing. (I believe my statement was to the effect of - "People overstate how much support it requires.") But I do think it is:
a) strong in three fairly strong deck styles (that have some overlap) - commanders with tap abilities, mana dorks, and artifacts. Artifacts in particular have gotten so many new commanders in the last few years I think everyone owns an artifact deck just about, and it's usually right to play PE in those decks even if you aren't doing it.
It's possible in a meta with slower grindier games you don't see a ton of dorks/rocks but they are extremely strong and popular in my circles, as are a variety of tap commanders.
b) prone to create combos with a large number of other cards, often by accident
(2) I think Protean Hulk is a reasonable comparison to paradox engine, because they both have some similar characteristics - being weaker in casual decks than say, Prophet of Kruphix. However, I think the comparison is flawed in that Paradox Engine is significantly more powerful in medium and even medium-high power decks.
(edit to rephrase my thoughts on hulk) Simply put I think Hulk requires more work to set up and requires a ton of focused, specific and often bad cards depending on what colors you're in. That's just my opinion but I would be happy to unpack that.
A review of their prevalence is a pretty good start; Hulk sees a LOT less play, despite being an extremely strong CEDH option. Hulk is really trash in non-CEDH. I have seen it exactly once since it was unbanned and it did nothing (I swords'd it cos the guy dropped it without an outlet).
PH is a card that was unbanned. Sure, the deck restrictions may be less so for PE, but it operates in a similar space of being a broken card that the RC is unlikely to want to police.
That being said, if tomorrow they banned PE, I would expect them to say that it combos too easily with too many things. It is not a wrong justification. It is just not one they have used sine the format was made and I am not convinced PE meets this condition to the point of banning.
PH, T&N and PE operate in this space of being cards that win out of nowhere in a million different ways. I am not sure which of the 3 is the most banworthy, but I do think that if any of them were banned it would be due to a re-evaluation of how they want to apply the banning criteria.
So since we have no way to effectively determine how present PE is in casual metas, we have to flip the argument in a different light. Let's say that PoK was played less than PE (note that I believe most people agree it was more played).
If you are the RC, and there is this card that is becoming the focus of casual games, that is winning casual games with no extra effort, that fits into arguably the best represented type of deck (UGx with creatures)... you don't need a threshold to figure out if it is present enough. It was noticed. It was a hot topic. And they decided to ban it because it was too much value by itself and it was warping games around it.
You can say something similar about Leovold. Was it played a lot? Maybe. The issue was that everyone playing it was doing something broken, and it was not good for Commander for this reason. Even if it was 1% of decks, it didn't offer anything good. While Leovold did little by himself, being in the command zone pushed him over the line. He would be fine if Banned as a commander still existed... as a card in the 99.
PE has been on the RC's radar. It has issues with long turns, with showing up in some large indeterminate amount of games. It is hard to play PE in a fair way. It either does very little or it does way too much. That being said, it does nothing by itself, and it this distinguishing feature that will stop the RC from banning it.
It is not like Leovold, because it is not in the command zone. It is not like PoK because it doesn't do anything by itself (your argument has largely been to prove that it needs so little support that it effectively is broken by itself, which we have argued back and forth forever). Thus far, the RC has not banned a card like PE that needs other pieces to work. If they banned PE, they would have to consider Food Chain, Doomsday, Protean Hulk and many other cards that require little extra effort to break, and which pretty well exclusively get played to win the game on the spot.
I maintain that the RC will not be banning PE. Not because it is not as present as PoK was. Not because you can disrupt it more easily than PoK. Not because it is less centralizing than PoK. It will not get banned because it is just another combo card, and the RC is not interested in policing combo.
Now I think your most pressing argument for changing my mind about this is the one I bolded above. PH needs a deck with sac outlets and a combo. Doomsday needs specific support. FC needs a creature that it can make infinite mana with. PE needs dorks or rocks and cards to cast. Now, I will give you that typically, people have cards in hand and a commander to cast. It is not a way to make infinite mana, but it generates a lot of value in the same way as PoK. The difference is PoK needed lands or dorks. Everyone plays lands. It is a given. Lands are also the hardest permanents to destroy, and mass land destruction is barely played in casual settings.
PE relies on dorks or rocks to generate value. Creatures and artifacts are the two easiest permanents to destroy. So much so, that many people avoid dorks and mana rocks as they are often destroyed as collateral damage. Bolt the bird is not a think in commander. But wrath on turn 4 is something that happens very frequently.
I think this pushes PE into the same realm as Protean Hulk. If people want to combo with a card, and build their decks to combo off with that card, then they can do whatever they want, the RC doesn't care.
PE is not a good card that wins the game by itself. PE is a deck archetype like Flash Hulk. PoK was not a deck archetype. It was just good in every UGx deck. Every single one of them.
Regardless of how present it is, I do not think it will be banned. It will never be played in every deck. It will always be played and always hated, but it will never become so present it needs to be banned. That is not a thing. The RC just doesn't ban cards that are not present in any meta. Every card that is heavily played should be on the RC's radar. But heavy play cannot justify a banning.
You should be able to filter by cards, ie shove in Mana Cryp and Mox Diamond in addition to the legendary and you should get more results in line with actual cEDH.
This is a fairly useful tool. unfortunately has to start with a commander, but you can do some neat stuff with the advanced filters.
That's some really interesting stuff. Pretty strong suggestion that of the more likely to be paradox engine focused and also fairly competitive generals:
~25% of the decks are probably competitive
~25% play paradox engine but are not competitive
That's all requiring a lot of assumptions but I don't think there are that many competitive Sisay decks without crypts, no matter how strong they are, and same with Seton without Cradle. Might be strong but not CEDH.
And obviously having a mana crypt isn't the sole determiner of competitiveness, and a deck could be pretty egregiously powerful without having a crypt - but it's a pretty decent yardstick for how serious someone is about competing.
More than likely having a crypt is a reasonable proxy for competitiveness because the variance should cancel itself out -- that is, there will be decks that are competitive without crypts and then there'll also be non-competitive decks with crypts, but on the balance most decks that have crypts will be competitive wakka wakka.
This is actually very informative information. I am not sure if Gaea's Cradle is a good measure because of the cost, but I think Mana crypt is a good measure in any deck that can reasonably play it. Obviously, not perfect, but close to half the decks playing PE are playing other competitive pieces from this list.
I am going to go grab data for Thrasios and Tymna, which I have seen the most as a cEDH deck. Of decks that have PE, 70% also run Mana Crypt. But only 29% of T&T decks on EDH Rec play PE, and 61% play Mana Crypt. Meanwhile, in decks not playing Mana Crypt, 21% run PE.
Takeaway?
I don't know.
Mana crypt is in 61% of T&T decks, makes EDHRec seem very competitive.
However, Mana crypt is only in 9% of the EDHrec decks posted online.
I took a look at Selvala, Explorer returned, Teferi, Temporal Archmage... PE decks are generally playing more of the more dedicated combo cards in these decks.
All this is telling me is that there is bias depending on which general we are looking at.
I don't know what to think of this right now. The stats do not seem to support any one argument.
2) CEDH is relevant because there is an argument in play that has been regularly been made that Paradox Engine is only played in CEDH. And also because we know from past banning history that the rules committee largely does not care if a card is broken in CEDH. Ergo discussing the degree to which a card gravitates toward CEDH is relevant.
I think your phrasing for this is very confusing. I believe you are saying that PE turns 75% decks into near-cEDH decks, and pushes casual deckbuilders towards more competitive builds. I am not sure I agree, but before I get into that I want to see if I understand you.
1) no, I understand you. Playing removal to solve a problem is the same whether it's denying resources or killing the engine. If your answer to a card that potentially creates too much advantage is "play more removal" then I think there's a problem with your framing o the question. The question is not "can it be answered?" but "does it create too much of an advantage?" Dying to removal or being kept in check by removal is not a thing the banlist is really about, if it was Prophet would still be around as it is even more vulnerable to hate than paradox engine.
. PoK could be played on an empty board and fill the board by the person's next turn. PE does not do this. This is not to say that PE is fair because you can destroy its enablers. It is to say that PE is harder to abuse than PoK. This is important because your argument is that PE is the problem when we are saying that cEDH deckbuilders are going to build cEDH decks regardless of what is banned or unbanned. You can try to build casually with PE, but it will not work a lot of the time as your enablers will die from collateral damage. PoK didn't need enablers.
2) SP vs. Hulk is a very complex discussion. My opinion is that the banlist is primarily used to address how much disruption a card causes to medium to high power level games. If you'll pardon some oversimplification and rough analyis--
Hulk is say, a 9/10 in power in competitive, a 6/10 in 75% metas, and a 4-5/10 in 50% metas
Sylvan Primordial is a 0/10 in competitive, a 9/10 in 75% and an 8/10 in 50% metas
So you hit on something I've been talking about with the CEDH stuff, which is that a card's impact has to be assessed in the major realms of EDH but primarily in 50 and 75%.
And what we're arguing about here is largely what category Paradox Engine lives in.
I would rank Paradox Engine as a 7/10 in competitive, an 8/10 in 75%, and a 2/10 in 50%, maybe even as low as a 0.
Prophet I would say was a 0/10 in competitive, 9/10 in 75%, and 6/10 in 50%. Maybe higher in 50%.
Where I think Paradox Engine is a huge problem is in more tuned, but non-CEDH metas, where people have access to high power level cards but tend to have a little bit of restraint. And it continues to get worse and worse the longer it's unbanned because of its overlap with the hyper competitive metas.
Its very nature is to blur the lines and cause people to start playing Winter Orb because it's good with engine, not because they necessarily want to make a hardcore stax deck.
And boy do I hate that. I've had more casuals drop Static orb on me since paradox engine was printed than in the last 5 years of EDH.
Let's just ignore your estimates for playability in cEDH, because it is irrelevant as you are saying bannings are done based on 50-75% decks.
You are saying that PE is an 8/10 in 75% decks. I think we disagree about what 75% decks are. I think there has been power creep in your meta, because 75% decks do not play: Mana vault, mana crypt, grim monolith, mox diamond... People who are playing with these expensive/hard to obtain cards are not 75% deckbuilders in my opinion.
Also, a rating like this is misleading. PE is a 0/10 in most 75% decks. It is a 10/10 in a few.
But you know what? Eater of the Dead is a 10/10 in Phenax.
So the argument should not be that PE is situationally very powerful. It should be that PE is overly present in 50-75% metas. And this is what I disagree with. If one in 20 EDH decks runs PE, I am not calling it overtly present in the meta. I understand that those 1/20 decks are making it unfun, but that is the same to me as so many other unfun cards.
Sylvan Primordial was banned because it was unfun by itself. PoK was banned because it was unfun by itself. PE has to be unfun by itself. To be able to claim this, you have to be able to show that on average, decks can abuse PE. But this is not the case. Only a small subset of decks run enough rocks to abuse PE. Of those decks, how many actually have a reliable way to chain spells?
The problem is not PE, it is people who are building with PE. They are building combo decks that durdle and it isn't fun. It was not fun 7 years ago when I first faced Mishra eggs, and it is not fun now.
[quote from="Dunharrow »" url="/forums/the-game/commander-edh/commander-rules-discussion-forum/771098-paradox-engine?comment=257"]
If I had PE showing up as often as you do, I would be playing a lot more artifact hate. Cleansing Nova, Vandalblast, Shatterstorm, even more ETB creatures that break artifacts. If everyone has 10+ artifacts these cards will always be good.
Please review the discussion in the Prophet of Kruphix thread on why "play more removal" is not the answer to every problem.
Your statement is a variant of "git gud scrub" combined with "dies to removal." You are welcome to peruse my decks but you'll find I probably play more removal than most people (with an exception for my Gitrog deck which runs just enough and my MW deck which is in the tuning phase).
When I see a Paradox engine the odds I have a piece of removal are quite high. Unfortunately, much like Prophet of Kruphix, removal is often moot against it. You can go read the various Prophet of Kruphix threads for explanations on this if you like.
You misunderstand me. Artifact hate kills the artifacts you need to have in play to go off with Paradox Engine. A turn 4 shatterstorm means that PE is unlikely to do anything should anyone play it. You also have the added benefit of disrupting people's mana.
Oh hey, I found another doozy in there I wanted to respond to:
- PE does absolutely nothing by itself. You need to follow-up with a spell to do anything with it. Meaning, it is not a good play if you have 5 mana. You need more mana or you give your opponents a whole turn cycle to deal with it. Next, if you have no mana dorks or mana rocks, PE is not broken. As creatures and artifacts are the two easiest permanents to destroy, I do not believe that, on average, people have enough of these permanents to go off. Finally, you play PE specifically to combo off. It is like High Tide. The percentage of EDH players who want to combo off is relatively low. This is why most of us do not see PE very often.
Now see these quotes from the PoK thread and see why I think there's a lot of alignment here
This is a 5 mana card that produces no mana draws no cards doesn't tutor has no etb litteraly does nothing
Prophet by itself is not a must answer. With a board and a card advantage engine it needs to die the turn it was played. A T2 PoK from Land, Manavault, Land isn't a threat, yet. A T5 PoK with Mystic Remora or Survival out is a different story, the game will end.
Its super powerful.. but its only an enabler. It doesn't do a huge amount alone it requires something else for it to abuse.
Vehemently disagree with this poster about PoK. You always had a creature to cast. All you needed for PoK to be good was cards in hand and a commander in the command zone. The main difference is also that turn 5 PoK on an empty board is a threat that needs to be answered that same turn, and PE is a turn 5 do nothing on an empty board that you can answer any time.
Sylvan primordial was banned because by itself it was too much value. Protean Hulk was unbanned. Which card is more powerful?
If you can understand why SP was banned but PH was unbanned, you will understand why PE is not in contention for banning.
'Too good in a very specific deck' is not grounds for banning. It never has and never will be.
Your only basis for its prevalence was a quote from years ago that PoK was in the top 20 most played creatures.
Honestly, if PE was a card I saw at non-cEDH tables, I could get on board with banning it. But the fact remains that the only times I see it in non-cEDH decks is my own Phenax, god of deception. I never see the card.
T&N is so much more present in 50-75% metas.
And here is the main talking points, I think:
- PoK could go into any UGx deck and do well. If you had creatures, it let you play creatures at 4x the rate of your opponents. If you played spells, it let you play instants and flash in your commander before your next turn. It was always good, and made the rest of your deck broken. PoK almost always did something because at the least you could cast your commander and you were in the main card-draw colours. The main issue with PoK, however, was that if you didn't kill it the turn it came down, you would never get the chance. You could not wait until your turn and cast Damnation. You could not wait until your turn and tutor your spot removal spell. Once they untapped, it was nearly impossible to kill PoK. Whether or not you played combo did not matter, it was a value engine that took over the game within one turn cycle.
- PE does absolutely nothing by itself. You need to follow-up with a spell to do anything with it. Meaning, it is not a good play if you have 5 mana. You need more mana or you give your opponents a whole turn cycle to deal with it. Next, if you have no mana dorks or mana rocks, PE is not broken. As creatures and artifacts are the two easiest permanents to destroy, I do not believe that, on average, people have enough of these permanents to go off. Finally, you play PE specifically to combo off. It is like High Tide. The percentage of EDH players who want to combo off is relatively low. This is why most of us do not see PE very often.
Much of your argument has been that PE is abusable in most decks most of the time - that most decks have enough mana rocks to take advantage of PE. I just went through the 21 decks 'random deck of the week' thread. None had PE. 3-4 of them had enough mana rocks to take advantage of PE should it have been in the list.
I understand your point about it being a degenerate card. I understand that it is very present in your circle. I know it is a staple of cEDH. cEDH is not noteworthy, though, since it is an unmanageable format. PE should not be banned for cEDH any more than any other combo card.
I am just pointing out that it is not very present in Commander as a whole, and that the average commander deck, whether or not it is correct, does not have 10+ mana rocks. I think they usually have between 3 and 6 mana rocks. Mana dorks almost only exist in cEDH... understandably, since losing your mana ramp to wrath of god is frustrating.
Please keep in mind that EDHRec bases its stats on people posting decks online. People who post decks online are a minority of commander players. The people who post online are on average More competitive and more invested in magic than people who do not post online. The price of PE is thankfully another reason why it does not show up in the same numbers as PoK did.
I want you to know that I take all your arguments as valid and interesting arguments. I just do not agree with your take on what the implications are. I think our main disagreement is about what percentage of decks can actually utilize PE.
If I had PE showing up as often as you do, I would be playing a lot more artifact hate. Cleansing Nova, Vandalblast, Shatterstorm, even more ETB creatures that break artifacts. If everyone has 10+ artifacts these cards will always be good.
I think the power creep is a huge problem. Wizards just keeps making 6+ mana spells do more and more and more until you can have an entire deck full of ramp, draw and cantrips, and nonsense that does way too much for its mana in a format where you can your backup card advantage in the command zone.
Re: Paradox engine and sensationalism
The case against PE is reasonably strong compared to the casual banmania stuff:
The detailed numbers I have run suggest that PE is fairly high on the "too much mana too quickly" spectrum independently of casual appeal or whatever. So I think that alone allows a case for the card to be considered.
Has many scenarios in which it creates game ending loops that take a long time to execute
As far as prevalence goes in just 5 months it went from in 5% or so of possible decks to 6%
Take that prevalence number on edhrec and that is still one of the interesting cases for banning to me. This is a colorless card that is in 1 in 18 decks, despite its admittedly serious deckbuilding consequences -- you really cannot be on a ramp package other than dorks or rocks.
It sees play in a fairly diverse array of commanders, and takes up a huge share of the builds of many of them
~ 70% of urza, arcum decks
~ 60% of Azami, seton, rishkar, dralnu
~ 50% of new jhoira, sisay, karn, several partner pairs, mono g selvala
~ 40% of selvala, kydele, muzzio decks
Wizards seems to print a new PE general basically every set or two.
Comparing this card to banmania like Simic Ascendancy is completely unfair. There're many argments for this thing being a problem that are legitimate and should not be thrown out with the "Well it's been around for 3 years and not everyone sees it frequently" stuff.
I have surely shared my anecdotes, because ultimately that is something people think about. How does the card affect actual games of magic?
That's why Prophet got banned - its prevalence was partially the issue, but it had many things in common
1) It warped many UG decks to a be a prophet deck - check, PE strongly encourages artifact and dork decks to play it
2) It dominated the table both of playing time and of focus when it dropped - PE Checks this box although significantly less so than Prophet
3) It was a target for theft, cloning and so on - this is much less of an issue though I have seen cloned and acquired PEs win games infrequently
I think Prophet is probably the best ban comparison we can make other than possibly Metalworker - which compares very interestingly on the mana spectrum.
*Says PE should be banned for prevalence in EDH
*Also points out that maybe 1 in 18 decks plays it
Were you playing when PoK was legal? It was in 2-3 decks in every single game of magic I played, and I played a lot in those days. Of UGx decks, I would say it was in more than half of the decks, and that it warped gameplay completely. I would not tap out once the UG player had 4 mana because I didn't want to lose to PoK the next turn. By itself, it could win you the game.
PE is not the same at all. Not as prevalent by a longshot, despite being legal in 100% of decks.
I understand that it can make for long turns, but you know what - so does Top, Sylvan Library, and so many other cards.
You are comparing to PoK but I would compare to Food Chain. Food Chain is deplorable when it is played because it almost always marks the end of the game. What a bad card for EDH where you always have access to a creature to exile and a creature to cast. But you know what, Food Chain only fits in certain specific decks. Of my 17 decks, only MW and Karador could benefit from 'cloning' a food chain. None of my other decks would benefit in any way I can think of. PE is similar - if I am playing MW or a Gx deck with lots of dorks, sure, PE cloning could benefit me... but most of my other decks would prefer to clone a sol ring.
It sees play in 70% of Arcum decks? Arcum has a tap ability and does really well with Artifacts. Thousand-Year Elixir sees just as much play.
I totally agree with Kelzam's post. I am sick and tired of seeing the same points repeated over and over again. We know the RC has kept an eye on it. Clearly they have never felt the need to ban it. It isn't seeing more and more play - just maybe more play in certain new decks.
To be ubiquitous enough to be banned, it isn't about being prevalent in Arcum decks or Selvala decks. Those decks are toxic, and I have no interest in playing against them. To be ubiquitous enough to be banned, an artifact like this would have to be played in at least 25% of decks before you can even think about it.
I am willing to bet that Sylvan Primordial was played in more than half of green decks at the time of banning. PoK was probably in close to 75% of UG decks.
Next time you watch a game of Commander clash, throw in PE on turn 5 and let me know what it does to the game. People play mana rocks but they get blown up. People play dorks but they die. PE relies on having a threshold of the two easiest types of permanents to destroy in magic.
So, Pokken, I get that you hate the card (and I would too if my meta was full of it), but can we just bury this dead horse?
You guys are seriously overstating the amount of setup required to take advantage of PE.
All I really takes is a rocks making 2 or 3 mana, or dorks making 2-3 mana, for many decks. Even medium quality decks.
This is ridiculous. I am sorry.
Let's say I grab a random deck of mine. Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim.
My deck has 5 mana rocks. It has other ramp, but they do not interact with PE in any meaningful way.
I have two repeatable tap effects that could be good.
I'll take another random deck: Reyhan and Ishai
3 mana rocks
3 mana dorks
1 Rishkar, Peema Renegade
1 Hangarback Walker
1 Crystalline Crawler
My decks pack ramp, but not a lot of dorks and mana rocks that just get blown out all the time every game.
I maintain that on average, in a game, I will probably not have more than one mana rock or mana dork in play. PE will not be good.
What percentage of decks do you believe have 3+ mana rocks in play at a time?
To me, it is only decks that are ramping heavily, like Kozilek decks, or decks that are cEDH and trying to win on turn 3.
Stop saying you just need rocks making 2-3 mana. Because A), that isn't happening that often in more than half the decks I see. And B) it is not going to make for long crazy turns unless the deck is built around it.
I had a tournament winning standard deck built around PE. I know how it can durdle and make for long turns. But most EDH decks are not playing enough 1-2 CMC spells to make long turns with 2-3 mana rocks.
None of this makes any sense. It is not untapping your lands. It is not something that goes into every deck, or even half the decks. If you told me 1/4 decks could 'go off' with a PE regularly, I would be shocked, but I also would say that is not enough to ban the card. PoK was good at least 90% of the time. Unless you had no cards in hand, PoK would be good.
I think that's a pretty strong downplay of PE's ability, even in 'fair' decks. You really don't see untaping all your rocks and creatures that attacked or used abilities as very powerful? I think the level of it's brokenness may keep its use in check, not the idea it isnt good.
I would say on average, my decks will have one or two mana rocks come up in a game.
I have one green deck that has a lot of mana dorks, so maybe this one would be able to use PE... a bit... except that I would quickly run out of cards to cast. The deck is focused on untapping Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, so PE turning 60 mana into 90 mana is probably not making much of a difference.
So maybe 3 out of 17 decks?
I have a lot more cultivates than I have birds of paradise in my decks, and I think this is common enough. I would rather my ramp not be ruined by a wrath.
As for untapping my guys to use their abilities or give pseudo vigilance....
- one of my decks that uses PE is Phenax, God of Deception. Every creature in the deck can be tapped when my general is in play. PE is basically intruder alarm # 2. But my other decks... how many tap abilities do I have on creatures? My only deck with a large number of them is Maelstrom WAnderer, which plays PE because the deck has a lot of mana rocks, a lot of tap abilities, and can cast my whole deck with my general, PE, rocks making 3 coloured mana, and Crystal Shard/Tradewind Rider. None of my other decks have a lot tap effects..
- pseudo-vigilance is overrated. Obviously not a reason to play PE by itself. And chances are your Phyrexian Metamorph has something better to do than sit there give the team vigilance.
I am not saying PE is not powerful. I am just saying it takes a lot of set-up and for that reason it is not as present as PoK ever was and it never will be.
PoK was good in every deck. Do you have creatures? It's good. Do you have instants? It's good.
PE would be poor in most of my decks, and is strong in 2 of them. 2/17.
I know it can be annoying if built around, but most of my decks would benefit more from cloning a mana rock than a PE. That is why it is not as omnipresent...
I don't know, man. Like, I agree that winning the game shouldn't constitute an undesirable game state. Winning the game with a Tooth and Nail'd MikeTrike is a lot like metaphorically flipping the table though. Maybe I wasn't ready for the game to be over, you know? Sure, maybe it isn't as agonizing as something like a slow Stasis beatdown, but that doesn't necessarily mean the negative effects that game exerted were less powerful. Deciding the game should be over by just winning the game from nothing is very much like denying me the ability to play the game. In some ways, it's even more frustrating that I even sat down to interact with that player because nothing I did ended up mattering. It was all like a waste of time.
Now, I'm not saying that there's never a time where playing something like MikeTrike is acceptable. It's definitely very context specific. Not constituting that as harm and as creating an undesirable game state leads to weird places like Impossible's argument for unbanning Coalition Victory though.
This strikes me as a good example regarding how the ban list can't always solve this type of problem. No one is advocating for Living Plane or Doomwake Giant to be banned, yet they are perfectly capable of creating undesirable game states.
This goes back to my idea regarding what should be banned back in the Limited Resources thread. I believe cards should be banned based on the total amount of harm they exert upon on the format. Paradox Engine may or may not be as harmful as something like Winter Orb or Armageddon, but at least those cards are anathema to casual play, and their toxicity isn't as widely felt as a result. I can't say the same for cards like Paradox Engine. I see that thing everywhere, and it's consistently miserable every time I see it, so I certainly agree with you that Paradox Engine would only likely get the axe due to its ubiquity. It's for this same reason that we see Prophet of Kruphix, Sylvan Primordial, Primeval Titan, and Sundering Titan banned. They're all exerting too much harm upon the format (by creating undesirable game states) and their ubiquity is part of the reason why.
I have stopped getting notifications on this site, and I missed your post AA. I guess I don't quite agree on what constitutes an undesirable game state. For years, I refused to have any combos in any decks because I hated the feeling that you so well described as metaphorically flipping the table. I get that it feels bad. But you can't get rid of combo in EDH.
I see the undesirable game state as a situation where I can't do anything, but I have not lost. Cards that inherently do this are bad for the format. Ward of Bones sometimes does this, and if it were a more ubiquitous card could be something we discuss here. Thankfully, I have only seen one deck ever play it.
If the RC were to ban PE because it is too ubiquitous, it would surprise me, because I so rarely see the card outside of cEDH, but I would at least understand that justification.
If losing to a combo is an undesirable game state, then the whole format is undesirable.
Trust me, if there was a way to ban combo, I would be thrilled. But there isn't.
I guess I'm just saying that I cannot accept "creates undesirable game state" as a valid reason to ban PE.
I use it in two decks.
Phenax uses it to mill opponents - kinda like Intruder alarm.
Maelstrom Wanderer is competitive and can use it to combo, but main use is being able to activate Crystal Shard and Tradewind Rider multiple times per turn.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
Banned because it wins seemingly out of nowhere. No other criteria mentioned.
While other cards also meet this criteria, it seems they leaned on the fact that it requires little deckbuilding focus to be effective.
I believe this is the first card to be banned because it wins seemingly out of nowhere since Coalition Victory. I do not know if this means other cards will start being more heavily considered for banning... but that seems like the logical conclusion.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
I did not mean to imply that you made a judgement. I just want to know more about how you collect data.
And fair enough, PE is played a lot more casually than the other cards listed. I was trying to separate 'casual omnipresence', which we cannot measure, from the discussion, and to discuss PE based on other terms. I felt that it was similar to the other cards listed in the way that they are exclusively used to 'combo off', and that these other cards were not banworthy.
I can understand how any card can be considered for banning based on problematic casual omnipresence. It is just so hard to evaluate this. In this thread, we have people saying that they face PE all the time, and people saying that they rarely see PE. WE have people looking to EDHrec and combing through hundreds of decks.
It is just so impossible to evaluate because anything published online skews towards competitive play.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
By what metric do you say that PE hits the 'problematic casual omnipresence'? We have spent time trying to even come up with a way of evaluating this. Every meta is so different.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
These are two good arguments.
However, for the first one - there are many cards that win out of nowhere and do nothing else. But you know this.
For the second one - the only cards I see that match this criteria are Time Vault and maybe Panoptic Mirror. I would say that Time Vault's power level is so high that PE cannot be in the same conversation. Mirror, on the other hand, is a card people have often argued for unbanning. It is banned because it combos with time walks. Two card combos should not be a concern, in my opinion. Maybe the repetitive play is also an issue - easy to keep a wrath on it.
However, I will acknowledge that this is a very real reason to consider PE for banning. Does it combo too easily and with too much? I think that is debatable. I think it is more on the Food Chain end of the spectrum. It combos with some specific generals very well, but less well than Food Chain with Prossh. It does crazy things with mana rocks, but doesn't combo out unless you have more dedicated cards to make the combo work.
Good points, and we can discuss further, but ultimately I think PE is not close enough to the 'combo with everything' condition. It is closer than Food chain, but it is a long way to Time Vault.
PH is a card that was unbanned. Sure, the deck restrictions may be less so for PE, but it operates in a similar space of being a broken card that the RC is unlikely to want to police.
That being said, if tomorrow they banned PE, I would expect them to say that it combos too easily with too many things. It is not a wrong justification. It is just not one they have used sine the format was made and I am not convinced PE meets this condition to the point of banning.
PH, T&N and PE operate in this space of being cards that win out of nowhere in a million different ways. I am not sure which of the 3 is the most banworthy, but I do think that if any of them were banned it would be due to a re-evaluation of how they want to apply the banning criteria.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
If you are the RC, and there is this card that is becoming the focus of casual games, that is winning casual games with no extra effort, that fits into arguably the best represented type of deck (UGx with creatures)... you don't need a threshold to figure out if it is present enough. It was noticed. It was a hot topic. And they decided to ban it because it was too much value by itself and it was warping games around it.
You can say something similar about Leovold. Was it played a lot? Maybe. The issue was that everyone playing it was doing something broken, and it was not good for Commander for this reason. Even if it was 1% of decks, it didn't offer anything good. While Leovold did little by himself, being in the command zone pushed him over the line. He would be fine if Banned as a commander still existed... as a card in the 99.
PE has been on the RC's radar. It has issues with long turns, with showing up in some large indeterminate amount of games. It is hard to play PE in a fair way. It either does very little or it does way too much. That being said, it does nothing by itself, and it this distinguishing feature that will stop the RC from banning it.
It is not like Leovold, because it is not in the command zone. It is not like PoK because it doesn't do anything by itself (your argument has largely been to prove that it needs so little support that it effectively is broken by itself, which we have argued back and forth forever). Thus far, the RC has not banned a card like PE that needs other pieces to work. If they banned PE, they would have to consider Food Chain, Doomsday, Protean Hulk and many other cards that require little extra effort to break, and which pretty well exclusively get played to win the game on the spot.
I maintain that the RC will not be banning PE. Not because it is not as present as PoK was. Not because you can disrupt it more easily than PoK. Not because it is less centralizing than PoK. It will not get banned because it is just another combo card, and the RC is not interested in policing combo.
Now I think your most pressing argument for changing my mind about this is the one I bolded above. PH needs a deck with sac outlets and a combo. Doomsday needs specific support. FC needs a creature that it can make infinite mana with. PE needs dorks or rocks and cards to cast. Now, I will give you that typically, people have cards in hand and a commander to cast. It is not a way to make infinite mana, but it generates a lot of value in the same way as PoK. The difference is PoK needed lands or dorks. Everyone plays lands. It is a given. Lands are also the hardest permanents to destroy, and mass land destruction is barely played in casual settings.
PE relies on dorks or rocks to generate value. Creatures and artifacts are the two easiest permanents to destroy. So much so, that many people avoid dorks and mana rocks as they are often destroyed as collateral damage. Bolt the bird is not a think in commander. But wrath on turn 4 is something that happens very frequently.
I think this pushes PE into the same realm as Protean Hulk. If people want to combo with a card, and build their decks to combo off with that card, then they can do whatever they want, the RC doesn't care.
PE is not a good card that wins the game by itself. PE is a deck archetype like Flash Hulk. PoK was not a deck archetype. It was just good in every UGx deck. Every single one of them.
Regardless of how present it is, I do not think it will be banned. It will never be played in every deck. It will always be played and always hated, but it will never become so present it needs to be banned. That is not a thing. The RC just doesn't ban cards that are not present in any meta. Every card that is heavily played should be on the RC's radar. But heavy play cannot justify a banning.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
This is actually very informative information. I am not sure if Gaea's Cradle is a good measure because of the cost, but I think Mana crypt is a good measure in any deck that can reasonably play it. Obviously, not perfect, but close to half the decks playing PE are playing other competitive pieces from this list.
I am going to go grab data for Thrasios and Tymna, which I have seen the most as a cEDH deck. Of decks that have PE, 70% also run Mana Crypt. But only 29% of T&T decks on EDH Rec play PE, and 61% play Mana Crypt. Meanwhile, in decks not playing Mana Crypt, 21% run PE.
Takeaway?
I don't know.
Mana crypt is in 61% of T&T decks, makes EDHRec seem very competitive.
However, Mana crypt is only in 9% of the EDHrec decks posted online.
I took a look at Selvala, Explorer returned, Teferi, Temporal Archmage... PE decks are generally playing more of the more dedicated combo cards in these decks.
All this is telling me is that there is bias depending on which general we are looking at.
I don't know what to think of this right now. The stats do not seem to support any one argument.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
. PoK could be played on an empty board and fill the board by the person's next turn. PE does not do this. This is not to say that PE is fair because you can destroy its enablers. It is to say that PE is harder to abuse than PoK. This is important because your argument is that PE is the problem when we are saying that cEDH deckbuilders are going to build cEDH decks regardless of what is banned or unbanned. You can try to build casually with PE, but it will not work a lot of the time as your enablers will die from collateral damage. PoK didn't need enablers.
Let's just ignore your estimates for playability in cEDH, because it is irrelevant as you are saying bannings are done based on 50-75% decks.
You are saying that PE is an 8/10 in 75% decks. I think we disagree about what 75% decks are. I think there has been power creep in your meta, because 75% decks do not play: Mana vault, mana crypt, grim monolith, mox diamond... People who are playing with these expensive/hard to obtain cards are not 75% deckbuilders in my opinion.
Also, a rating like this is misleading. PE is a 0/10 in most 75% decks. It is a 10/10 in a few.
But you know what? Eater of the Dead is a 10/10 in Phenax.
So the argument should not be that PE is situationally very powerful. It should be that PE is overly present in 50-75% metas. And this is what I disagree with. If one in 20 EDH decks runs PE, I am not calling it overtly present in the meta. I understand that those 1/20 decks are making it unfun, but that is the same to me as so many other unfun cards.
Sylvan Primordial was banned because it was unfun by itself. PoK was banned because it was unfun by itself. PE has to be unfun by itself. To be able to claim this, you have to be able to show that on average, decks can abuse PE. But this is not the case. Only a small subset of decks run enough rocks to abuse PE. Of those decks, how many actually have a reliable way to chain spells?
The problem is not PE, it is people who are building with PE. They are building combo decks that durdle and it isn't fun. It was not fun 7 years ago when I first faced Mishra eggs, and it is not fun now.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
You misunderstand me. Artifact hate kills the artifacts you need to have in play to go off with Paradox Engine. A turn 4 shatterstorm means that PE is unlikely to do anything should anyone play it. You also have the added benefit of disrupting people's mana.
Vehemently disagree with this poster about PoK. You always had a creature to cast. All you needed for PoK to be good was cards in hand and a commander in the command zone. The main difference is also that turn 5 PoK on an empty board is a threat that needs to be answered that same turn, and PE is a turn 5 do nothing on an empty board that you can answer any time.
Sylvan primordial was banned because by itself it was too much value. Protean Hulk was unbanned. Which card is more powerful?
If you can understand why SP was banned but PH was unbanned, you will understand why PE is not in contention for banning.
'Too good in a very specific deck' is not grounds for banning. It never has and never will be.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
Honestly, if PE was a card I saw at non-cEDH tables, I could get on board with banning it. But the fact remains that the only times I see it in non-cEDH decks is my own Phenax, god of deception. I never see the card.
T&N is so much more present in 50-75% metas.
And here is the main talking points, I think:
- PoK could go into any UGx deck and do well. If you had creatures, it let you play creatures at 4x the rate of your opponents. If you played spells, it let you play instants and flash in your commander before your next turn. It was always good, and made the rest of your deck broken. PoK almost always did something because at the least you could cast your commander and you were in the main card-draw colours. The main issue with PoK, however, was that if you didn't kill it the turn it came down, you would never get the chance. You could not wait until your turn and cast Damnation. You could not wait until your turn and tutor your spot removal spell. Once they untapped, it was nearly impossible to kill PoK. Whether or not you played combo did not matter, it was a value engine that took over the game within one turn cycle.
- PE does absolutely nothing by itself. You need to follow-up with a spell to do anything with it. Meaning, it is not a good play if you have 5 mana. You need more mana or you give your opponents a whole turn cycle to deal with it. Next, if you have no mana dorks or mana rocks, PE is not broken. As creatures and artifacts are the two easiest permanents to destroy, I do not believe that, on average, people have enough of these permanents to go off. Finally, you play PE specifically to combo off. It is like High Tide. The percentage of EDH players who want to combo off is relatively low. This is why most of us do not see PE very often.
Much of your argument has been that PE is abusable in most decks most of the time - that most decks have enough mana rocks to take advantage of PE. I just went through the 21 decks 'random deck of the week' thread. None had PE. 3-4 of them had enough mana rocks to take advantage of PE should it have been in the list.
I understand your point about it being a degenerate card. I understand that it is very present in your circle. I know it is a staple of cEDH. cEDH is not noteworthy, though, since it is an unmanageable format. PE should not be banned for cEDH any more than any other combo card.
I am just pointing out that it is not very present in Commander as a whole, and that the average commander deck, whether or not it is correct, does not have 10+ mana rocks. I think they usually have between 3 and 6 mana rocks. Mana dorks almost only exist in cEDH... understandably, since losing your mana ramp to wrath of god is frustrating.
Please keep in mind that EDHRec bases its stats on people posting decks online. People who post decks online are a minority of commander players. The people who post online are on average More competitive and more invested in magic than people who do not post online. The price of PE is thankfully another reason why it does not show up in the same numbers as PoK did.
I want you to know that I take all your arguments as valid and interesting arguments. I just do not agree with your take on what the implications are. I think our main disagreement is about what percentage of decks can actually utilize PE.
If I had PE showing up as often as you do, I would be playing a lot more artifact hate. Cleansing Nova, Vandalblast, Shatterstorm, even more ETB creatures that break artifacts. If everyone has 10+ artifacts these cards will always be good.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
*Says PE should be banned for prevalence in EDH
*Also points out that maybe 1 in 18 decks plays it
Were you playing when PoK was legal? It was in 2-3 decks in every single game of magic I played, and I played a lot in those days. Of UGx decks, I would say it was in more than half of the decks, and that it warped gameplay completely. I would not tap out once the UG player had 4 mana because I didn't want to lose to PoK the next turn. By itself, it could win you the game.
PE is not the same at all. Not as prevalent by a longshot, despite being legal in 100% of decks.
I understand that it can make for long turns, but you know what - so does Top, Sylvan Library, and so many other cards.
You are comparing to PoK but I would compare to Food Chain. Food Chain is deplorable when it is played because it almost always marks the end of the game. What a bad card for EDH where you always have access to a creature to exile and a creature to cast. But you know what, Food Chain only fits in certain specific decks. Of my 17 decks, only MW and Karador could benefit from 'cloning' a food chain. None of my other decks would benefit in any way I can think of. PE is similar - if I am playing MW or a Gx deck with lots of dorks, sure, PE cloning could benefit me... but most of my other decks would prefer to clone a sol ring.
It sees play in 70% of Arcum decks? Arcum has a tap ability and does really well with Artifacts. Thousand-Year Elixir sees just as much play.
I totally agree with Kelzam's post. I am sick and tired of seeing the same points repeated over and over again. We know the RC has kept an eye on it. Clearly they have never felt the need to ban it. It isn't seeing more and more play - just maybe more play in certain new decks.
To be ubiquitous enough to be banned, it isn't about being prevalent in Arcum decks or Selvala decks. Those decks are toxic, and I have no interest in playing against them. To be ubiquitous enough to be banned, an artifact like this would have to be played in at least 25% of decks before you can even think about it.
I am willing to bet that Sylvan Primordial was played in more than half of green decks at the time of banning. PoK was probably in close to 75% of UG decks.
Next time you watch a game of Commander clash, throw in PE on turn 5 and let me know what it does to the game. People play mana rocks but they get blown up. People play dorks but they die. PE relies on having a threshold of the two easiest types of permanents to destroy in magic.
So, Pokken, I get that you hate the card (and I would too if my meta was full of it), but can we just bury this dead horse?
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
This is ridiculous. I am sorry.
Let's say I grab a random deck of mine. Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim.
My deck has 5 mana rocks. It has other ramp, but they do not interact with PE in any meaningful way.
I have two repeatable tap effects that could be good.
I'll take another random deck: Reyhan and Ishai
3 mana rocks
3 mana dorks
1 Rishkar, Peema Renegade
1 Hangarback Walker
1 Crystalline Crawler
My decks pack ramp, but not a lot of dorks and mana rocks that just get blown out all the time every game.
I maintain that on average, in a game, I will probably not have more than one mana rock or mana dork in play. PE will not be good.
What percentage of decks do you believe have 3+ mana rocks in play at a time?
To me, it is only decks that are ramping heavily, like Kozilek decks, or decks that are cEDH and trying to win on turn 3.
Stop saying you just need rocks making 2-3 mana. Because A), that isn't happening that often in more than half the decks I see. And B) it is not going to make for long crazy turns unless the deck is built around it.
I had a tournament winning standard deck built around PE. I know how it can durdle and make for long turns. But most EDH decks are not playing enough 1-2 CMC spells to make long turns with 2-3 mana rocks.
None of this makes any sense. It is not untapping your lands. It is not something that goes into every deck, or even half the decks. If you told me 1/4 decks could 'go off' with a PE regularly, I would be shocked, but I also would say that is not enough to ban the card. PoK was good at least 90% of the time. Unless you had no cards in hand, PoK would be good.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
I would say on average, my decks will have one or two mana rocks come up in a game.
I have one green deck that has a lot of mana dorks, so maybe this one would be able to use PE... a bit... except that I would quickly run out of cards to cast. The deck is focused on untapping Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, so PE turning 60 mana into 90 mana is probably not making much of a difference.
So maybe 3 out of 17 decks?
I have a lot more cultivates than I have birds of paradise in my decks, and I think this is common enough. I would rather my ramp not be ruined by a wrath.
As for untapping my guys to use their abilities or give pseudo vigilance....
- one of my decks that uses PE is Phenax, God of Deception. Every creature in the deck can be tapped when my general is in play. PE is basically intruder alarm # 2. But my other decks... how many tap abilities do I have on creatures? My only deck with a large number of them is Maelstrom WAnderer, which plays PE because the deck has a lot of mana rocks, a lot of tap abilities, and can cast my whole deck with my general, PE, rocks making 3 coloured mana, and Crystal Shard/Tradewind Rider. None of my other decks have a lot tap effects..
- pseudo-vigilance is overrated. Obviously not a reason to play PE by itself. And chances are your Phyrexian Metamorph has something better to do than sit there give the team vigilance.
I am not saying PE is not powerful. I am just saying it takes a lot of set-up and for that reason it is not as present as PoK ever was and it never will be.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
PoK was good in every deck. Do you have creatures? It's good. Do you have instants? It's good.
PE would be poor in most of my decks, and is strong in 2 of them. 2/17.
I know it can be annoying if built around, but most of my decks would benefit more from cloning a mana rock than a PE. That is why it is not as omnipresent...
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
I have stopped getting notifications on this site, and I missed your post AA. I guess I don't quite agree on what constitutes an undesirable game state. For years, I refused to have any combos in any decks because I hated the feeling that you so well described as metaphorically flipping the table. I get that it feels bad. But you can't get rid of combo in EDH.
I see the undesirable game state as a situation where I can't do anything, but I have not lost. Cards that inherently do this are bad for the format. Ward of Bones sometimes does this, and if it were a more ubiquitous card could be something we discuss here. Thankfully, I have only seen one deck ever play it.
If the RC were to ban PE because it is too ubiquitous, it would surprise me, because I so rarely see the card outside of cEDH, but I would at least understand that justification.
If losing to a combo is an undesirable game state, then the whole format is undesirable.
Trust me, if there was a way to ban combo, I would be thrilled. But there isn't.
I guess I'm just saying that I cannot accept "creates undesirable game state" as a valid reason to ban PE.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers