PE doesn't combo with everything. It combos with a critical mass of a certain type of thing plus a steady stream of cards. It requires, at the moment, a fairly steep deckbuilding requirement to be useful, but easily becomes broken when those conditions are met.
The issue is that as time goes on, more and more cards are printed that don't combo with but synergize with PE, and more commanders are printed for which PE is an auto include. It is the increasing number of worthwhile synergies that most concerns me, since as these cards get added to decks they increase the value of adding PE, which in turn increases PEs metagame presence. It is when decks start including PE because it is going to be a great value engine whenever they play it, even if they only cast a couple spells, that it becomes dangerous, both because it starts behaving more like Prophet and Primetime in being a source of low efforts overwhelming value, and because it will lead to more accidental combos where there will be decks that can't reliably combo with it but can do so when they get lucky (a deck with 5 rocks will not reliably hit enough to include PE for a combo, but if it's adding PE as a value engine it will have access to it when it does actually hit enough to do so). But let's not discount that more and more commanders are being printed that can combo with it. Food Chain gets a pass because it only combos with a couple commanders and is generally a cEDH card that doesn't see much casual play, but PE, while not strictly being a 2 card combo, effectively becomes "play a normal game then win when you play PE and your commander" like Urza and that new Robot Scout.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Just want to point out the cEDH is always relevant to discussions involving problematic casual omnipresence, because if the card is wildly popular in cEDH then things like EDHRec numbers are less reliable for judging it's casual omnipresence. EDHRec trends more competitive than the overall meta game, so if a card that doesn't see much competitive play is in the top 20, that's a good sign that it really is pretty omnipresent, buy if a card sees a ton of competitive play then the amount of casual play it sees is likely less than it's ranking would indicate at first blush. If the 20th most played artifact turns out to only have 25% of the lists it's included in be non cEDH, then it's not omnipresent and is mostly a cEDH card, and thus it's "score" on problematic casual omnipresence goes down. It might be really popular, but not at the tables that matter for banning. It is precisely because cEDH is irrelevant for banning purposes that it is relevant to discussing casual omnipresence, because it is necessary to ascertain how much of a cards prevelance is made up of cEDH so that you can disregard it and focus only on its prevelance in casual decks. It's about sifting out the noise.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Yeah, so I think the issue with PE is fundamentally is that it's not so good that casuals don't play it and ruin games with accidental combos. That plus it being a really strong and fairly accessible combo enabler in a lot of decks means you see it in a lot of 75% decks. And then it's also playable in CEDH.
Being both competitive and casual makes it even worse than POK for me, when you combine in how much more annoying it is to remove at instant speed in comparison (and how much less punishing it is when you do so in most cases).
And for a little more exegesis on my favorite quote from the Prophet thread:
If we look at a statistical breakdown of the commander metagame we can see that PoK is in the top 20 creatures of all commander beating out many monocolor bombs that are considered staples, such as Deadeye Navigator, Craterhoof Behemoth, Terastadon, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, and Woodfall Primus. You are more likely to see a PoK in a random opponents deck then any of the cards listed.
I did some more prevalence research by the way. At the time PoK was running rampant, it was in the vicinity of the 20th most played creature in EDH and it was the only multicolored creature to be there.
It is in 13% of decks it can go in and a total of 5600 decks out of 44878 decks.
The closest comparison to it (the next most common UG creature) is Prime Speaker Zegana) in 6561 of 53567 decks (at 23rd).
So for all of you "prophet was in every UG decK!!!" people it is extremely likely that Prophet was in around 7000-10000 of 54000 decks.
It was probably in fewer decks than Paradox Engine is in now, though its prevalence rate is higher because it's UG specific vs. being able to be played in any deck.
So the next time you feel the urge to say "Prophet was played way more than Paradox Engine!" This is almost certainly incorrect.
Thats far from enough data to make the sort of closing statement you just did.
First of all, though somewhat unrelated to my other points, more people are playing edh today than when prophet was legal, so comparing raw numbers without adjusting for this inflation would be disingenuous. More people could theoretically be playing PE while it still being played in a lower percentage of total decks.
But relevant to the point that the data you provide doesn't back up your assertion: you make a lot of guesses based on other cards being similarly ranked but with no data showing that this is a valid correlation. There may, for instance, be more spread between places today while the places could have been more clustered when prophet was legal. To be more clear, the difference between tenth place and twentieth today could be (and this is pulled from my ass as I'm not actually looking it up) 4,000 decks, while in Prophets day it may have been 1000. The 20th most played creature today could be ran in a significantly lower percentage of decks than the 20th most played creature 8 years ago. In order to compare Prophet to cards that have similar rankings today and have it be relevant, you'd have to show that the deck percentages are about the same for each ranked place as they were in Prophets day.
More glaringly, you haven't actually shown what percentage of decks run PE, so you only provide half the answer (and based on flawed data at that). I did do the homework on this though, and I'm seeing it as being in 6 percent of listed decks.
Further, there is a severe problem with the way EDHrec ranks creatures. Xenagod, ranked 20th in the past 2 years, appears in fewer decks than Zegana, ranked 23rd. Despite this he makes up a larger share of decks that could run him, because there are fewer RGx decks than UGx decks. Zegana is also more narrow that Prophet (she wants decently sized creatures so she can draw lots of cards, whereas Prophet wants things that can be cast at instant speed, which includes any creature due to its ability, and/or activated abilities that require taps or mana. It's good everywhere, and it's a massive bomb.
It's a shame I can't find data from back then, I'd really like to see the numbers. I'd also like to see the top commanders list. For PE it's a who's who of broken artifact commanders and cEDH perennials, with it's more casual guys being legendary eldrazi, Seton, and Memnarch. Prophet, otoh, was showing up under more casual commanders. That's an important difference, problematic casual omnipresence doesn't look at cEDH numbers.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Quit being a crybaby and kill it. Yes it's strong but it's really no different than Deadeye Navigator, another highly complained about card. Just kill it. If you can't then you need to consider your deckbuilding strategy. (With mod note for flaming)
Whenever I play Prophet, nothing really changes much. Sure, I get extra mana and my stuff untaps, but my opponents are usually more solitaire-like with their decks, so it mostly acts as just "And untap" each turn.
Prophet isn't particularly durable. In fact, there's no color that can't take care of it.
PoK in EDH reminds me a little of Tarmogoyf in that removal dies to it. It's a card that forces your opponents to react instead of playing pro-actively, which is phenomenal against decks that have low levels of interaction. Also, forcing out removal for a 2/3 is great when you are sitting on a wincon in your hand that you're afraid will get blown up
At this point I have accepted that it rarely survives the turn and is more removal bait than useful card. Having said this the one time it lands and sticks you're on to a winner.
because i run a full suite of spot removal and play magic both proactively and reactively. I realize that I'm not playing solitaire and need to interact with my opponent's deck.
If a table cant band together to kill a measley 2/3 with no built in protection, then they were destined to lose anyways. If your deck doesnt have answers to a measley 2/3 with no built in protection, then it was destined to lose anyways. There are MUCH scarier threats that can hit the battlefield than a Prophet of Kruphix. You need to build your decks accordingly or risk being blown out by them.
Power level aside, I find the play pattern it creates to be very annoying. You can't just say "I'm done. You're turn." You say that and then you and the players who has the next turn have to look at the player with PoK and be like "Well, Can I go now or do you have stuff?" and this happens at the end of every turn as long as the card is out. It's tedious and annoying on a Chaos Moon level and it's in ever single Simic/x deck, at least nobody plays Chaos Moon.
I despise this card. Sometimes it will be answered immediately - but when its not, it capitalizes the majority of the time available for everyone in the game.
PoK is a card that completely centralizes the game because it is either "steal/clone it" or "kill it before I get buried in advantage" for every player.
Its super powerful.. but its only an enabler. It doesn't do a huge amount alone it requires something else for it to abuse.
Maybe the solution is to unban other tempting Bribery targets? The recurring theme of Commander seems to be that green gets a card that all the blue players want to steal, and the green card gets banned so they can't. Ban bribery so that once PoK is banned, we don't have threads on how all the metas have warped into three blue players racing to bribery the green player's Courser of Kruphix or something.
To me its most impressive power has been its ability to avoid the banlist. Like what's up with that?
There are so many broken things in this format. This has a fragile body, requires two colors to be played, and doesn't actually win the game.
I hate Dead-Eye much more. It is monocolor, wins the game and is quite hard to remove once it's soulbonded.
As has been said multiple times, Prophet is the enabler, not the killer. It was the Momir Vig that got out of hand. It was the cards drawn from Zegana that swung the game in that player's favor.
I'm a bit sick of hearing people complain about this card, TBH. (Editorial comment: I died at this one, deja vu much?)
Find a group that wants to play the same kind of games you do, and understand that if you play with someone new, you have to be prepared for anything.
(this is me) I'm kinda 60/40 in favor of banning Prophet at this point but not because of power primarily, more the undesirable board state that it tends to create. It's really not fun to play with or against.
(And someone telling me I'm a whiner for not liking the board states): The phrase "unfun board state" is going to be the death of the format. House rules are one of the supposed cores of the format, and house rules should weed out house problems. (Editorial comment: Dead enough for ya yet chief?)
Prophet, in my meta, is strong, sure, but certainly nothing like the other two [Sylvan Primordial and primeval titan]. Prophet requires me to have a hand to be useful. The others did not.
I commonly cast PoK and fail to win - even if it doesn't immediately eat removal.
At least until people decide Seedborn Muse needs to be banned, too, because people are never going to stop being douchebags with cards, and for some reason, a large number of the casual Magic base derives fun at the lack of fun they can force others to have, thus causing the vocal minority to be even louder. Turn 2-4 Iona when you're playing monocolor is so much more unfun, IMO.
If we look at a statistical breakdown of the commander metagame we can see that PoK is in the top 20 creatures of all commander beating out many monocolor bombs that are considered staples, such as Deadeye Navigator, Craterhoof Behemoth, Terastadon, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, and Woodfall Primus. You are more likely to see a PoK in a random opponents deck then any of the cards listed. (Editorial comment: I really found this one interesting because it shows that my prevalence estimates are fairly close to correct - PoK was only in the top 20 creatures, and the few creatures referenced such as Hoofdaddy and Deadeye are both hovering around 10% today; so it's unlikely PoK was much higher than 10%)
if prophet resolves and the person playing it is even remotely competent at magic, the game is over. Prophet is hands down the most broken card in the format, it is essentially the equivalent of taking four turns to each other player's single turn, the card should not have been printed (editorial: Mmmm, hyperbole)
I'm guessing people on the committee play the card, that's why it's never been touched. Probably tooth and nail too. (Editorial comment: Wow, the more things change
Oh man...mods can we please get this thread either locked or merged with the ban list thread. This isn't even a conversation anymore.
This is a 5 mana card that produces no mana draws no cards doesn't tutor has no etb litteraly does nothing before being open to any instant removal for god sakes it dies to a lightning bolt.. If you don't have the counter to stop a prophet be glad your not aginst a real broken card like doomsday doomsday + any cmc 1 cabtrip kills the table for the same mana cost as this slow creature based enabler.
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. PoK is one among many 'must answer' cards. I don't feel like it sits that high on the list. Hermit Druid, Ad Nauseam, Necro, Doomsday, Tooth and Nail, and C Sphinx are all higher up in my book
I play at more than just my own table. FNM, etc., gives me legitimate cause for concern regarding a card's legality.
The prophet isn't the most broken card in the format however, I believe it is the most commonly broken card in the format. What I mean by that is, it is the card that is ruining the largest number of games. It seems like everybody and their grandmother has a copy of PoK and a large number of them think it's a good idea to put it into their decks.
Mods - apologies if this summary of the previous thread is too much C&P for this topic, but I think it's really salient stuff. Prophet is a stellar example of a card where people were very divided (even me, with my very balanced commentary if I do say so myself).
People made literally the exact same arguments against it and for it in a lot of cases.
The biggest difference is that we don't see the same level of cloning/bribing as we saw with prophet, and of course the reason for that is that PE is a somewhat narrower card. But not narrow enough in my opinion:) Its power level ceiling is much higher but it's not quite busted enough to join dramatic scepter in CEDH only town.
The other major parallel I see with PE and Prophet is the kind of line of thinking of:
~"it's just a broken enabler that enables what you choose to do with it"
How that plays out is quite a bit different. PE is far more likely to straight up combo out, and far less likely to durdle out during other people's turns. But that is a major parallel; there's kind of a venn diagram happening where PE and Prophet both overlap with ruining the game and comboing like this:
Too many circles to also add "And a fun time was had by someone other than just the guy playing it" but suffice it to say it's a small sad circle for both
EDIT:
For some prevalence numbers, I went through the comparison of EDhrec numbers similar to this quote from the previous thread on Prophet
If we look at a statistical breakdown of the commander metagame we can see that PoK is in the top 20 creatures of all commander beating out many monocolor bombs that are considered staples, such as Deadeye Navigator, Craterhoof Behemoth, Terastadon, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, and Woodfall Primus. You are more likely to see a PoK in a random opponents deck then any of the cards listed.
On the list of artifacts in the last 2 years, Paradox Engine is 59th on the top 100. That is insaaaane. Prophet broke top 20 on creatures, but let's remember that creatures are way worse in EDH than spells and artifacts almost invariably. The threshold for a creature to be played is pretty huge, and at that time most of the creature decks were UGx - these days most decks will be playing a ton of artifacts with or without paradox engine.
The artifacts list is rather skewed as well because things like Fist of the Suns sit at 18th or so on the back of being in 18% of 5-color decks (derp) and Sunforger being in 12% of WRx decks. If you correct for purely actually mono colored artifacts, PE comes in:
sol ring
lightning greaves
swiftfoot boots
commander's sphere
solemn simulacrum
skullclamp
chromatic lantern
mind stone
darksteel ingot
gilded lotus
fellwar stone
thought vessel
sensei's divining top
thran dynamo
ashnod's altar
burnished hart
worn powerstone
hedron archive
mana crypt
caged sun
mana vault
whispersilk cloak
expedition map
everflowing chalice
sword of the animist
nevinyrral's disk
panharmonicon
wayfarer's bauble
steel hellkite
paradox engine
A fairly respectable 30th.
Thats a pretty fair selection of excerpts. Your right that the difference is that it is both a bit narrower and has significantly less of a centralizing effect on the format (as it isn't prompting people to run steal/reanimate effects more often like Prophet did). That lowers its rating for me (compared to Prophet) on problematic casual omnipresence (especially since the decks that do use it skew more competitive while things like Prophet, Prime Time, and Sylvan got jammed in casual decks at a higher rate). Needing to have a critical mass of mana rocks to work effectively puts significant downward pressure on stealing it, its one thing that it requires you to build around it more for your own deck but its even more significant in that its unlikely your opponents can take advantage of it without a similar deck. Prophet at least was Seedborn Muse in its fail state (getting stolen by a straight up creatureless deck) and Seedborn Muse is a great card.
My issue is that as more and more cards that synergize with PE get printed, the number of decks it should be an auto include in increases, and the greater likelihood it will find its way to more and more casual tables and start ruining games. It seems like this is inevitable at some point, but I'm not sure what the tipping point is, and I'd rather wait until its reached than preemptively ban it.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
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.
Mox Diamond and Grim Monolith are on the Reserve List, so that probably has something to do with it, especially grim mono.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
From what I've seen, it's use has begun creeping up. I'm don't think it's at omnipresence levels yet, but it may be heading in that direction. The "revolution" in 2 drop rocks Pokken described is real, making PE fit in more decks. It's still often not a problem just because you run 10-15 rocks, as you need a reliable source of draw to prevent just spilling your hand into topdeck mode, but the barriers that have stood in the way of OE achieving problematic casual omnipresence are getting weaker. In addition, cards continue to be printed that make it easier to abuse, from 5 new talismans helping up the number of 2 drop rocks certain decks can run to cards like Urza, Modern Horizons has moved the needle on this card significantly. Whether that ends up being enough remains to be seen. It's still too early to tell what the impact of the set will be, so me saying that I haven't seen PE being ran much more than previously doesn't say much. Perhaps I haven't played enough games, perhaps the not enough people have gotten the cards yet, perhaps it won't be enough to drive PE into problematic omnipresence, or perhaps it will but it will take time for enough people to change their decks and then decide that PE should be added.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Regardless of what kind of Commander you play (generally and most games believe it or not I am not playing cEDH even though I can put together a deck that would fit those criteria even though I never know exactly what they refer too) the impulse to want to play better to improve your deck generally always exists and in a game like magic what that typically means is that over time the deck becomes faster, now if that fast is Diabolic Tutor -> Demonic Tutor (for the most 1to1 example) typically depends on the person and the budget and desire to put stuff into the deck. The desire and want to do this does not nessisarily mean you want to play cEDH that is what people generally mean when people tend to fall into a binary on this format that people only exist in either the most cutthroat or the most casual.
Also maybe I am assuming to much but to me the power dynamics and the whether telling someone what you think about the format changes quite a bit when it is people who shape the format (a fact I don't think would be a secret from all involved in this game).
You also shouldn't do what you accuse me of and and assume the types of games I play and the people I play with. I play with everywhere from people opening the box to people playing thousands of dollar land sultai land decks, the games we have therefore can and have ended in 2-4 turns or gone on for hours depending on the people in the game and make up of hands and decks (yes even the more competitive games have gone that long). Part of making something that much faster also makes it that much more vulnerable to the right piece of disruption at the right time (that Stifle in the paragraph is a good example (also generally not a card I would think tends to make more casual lists especially when cards like Disallow exist if I am being honest)). We mix up players and pods and talk all the while about the game and whatever else and we also don't require anyone to play into any sort of standard as long as the decks fit in the rules of magic and commander. Now obviously typically the people who only have access to more higher powered things tend to play against each other because it makes the games more satisfying that is generally a given when you have a bunch of people in a room that want to play magic, the people who know each other better or who play on the same power levels tend to stick together.
I have a lot less problems seeing the whole thing as I said but it still rubs a bit wrong and I can't shake that but again it isn't really important to how I play Commander at all these days.
Now that you have actually described your experience, I'm even more confused, because what you just described is what I was describing about my experience online, which you fot some reason labeled as a fantasy I was constructing.
I really dont see what you're complaining about here. I didn't read your statements until after your edit, so I've been replying to you're walked back version, not your initial, and you've been complaining about the RC for doing in their own playgroup what you just said makes playgroups work well. I can see where your coming from when you say that them being the RC carries more weight and is more likely to influence the player, but my response to that is twofold, first that it is their playgroup and they have the same right to set norms for the playgroup as any other playgroup, and secondly that they specifically told the new player that the style of deck building he was moving toward was valid and something they wanted to keep available for people to play, even of they didn't want it in their playgroup and don't think it should be tempted baseline for the format.
I think you have trouble with that whole baseline of the format thing, because it is a bit confusing. It's not a statement about how everyone should play, but a statement of what new players should expect to experience when jumping in. To better illustrate, let's compare 60 card anything goes casual and Legacy casual. 60 card anything goes is by definition a more powerful format than legacy as it includes no bans, so anything you can do in legacy you can do better in anything goes. Legacy's baseline, however, is of a much higher power level, as it is primarily a competitive format. Thus, while everyone who plays 60 card casual tries to improve their decks, they do so casually, that is they don't just turn it into an existing legacy or vintage deck without restrictions. The RC fundamentally sees Commander as a casual format, not a tournament format. As such, they are perfectly fine with cEDH existing because there are people who want that ezperience, but they don't want it to become the baseline as doing so shuts out other styles of play. Their own playgroup seems to be a higher power casual playgroup, as evidenced by infinite combo being accepted and narrow answers like stifle seeing play, but I know they do run a wide varience of power levels to test the format. As they use their playgroup to play test casual, keeping it from veering into fast combo is even more important, as that would skew their playgroup into a playstyle that doesn't cover the majority of player experiences.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
That is some hot bull***** right there and it probably isn't the thread for but trying to influence people away from how they want to build a deck seems really messed up to me.
I don't mean to sound rude here, but do you realize how ironic this sounds? The gentleman's agreement is virtually baked into the format.
That isn't being rude but it is also a discussion I have had on here about this a bunch, the format has changed and moved on from what it was in large part thanks to Wizards larger involvement in promoting it, it retains some aspects of what it was before but trying to use any of that to influence how people want to play Commander 2018 that isn't one the rules or two The banlist is if I am being honest is still hot bull*****.
Also making a deck want to do its thing 'faster' isn't breaking any gentlemen's agreements or anything it is enforcing a narrow version of this format on all around you and is horse*****.
EDIT: Reading the actual statement is better but still feels insidious to me, just making something faster isn't a guarantee of anything in this format and often going all in to that degree leaves the person more often more open to bad draws or if their plan is disrupted they have little footing to work with.
My problem with that full statement is it has a weird binary way of looking at things and assumes that games only run at two speeds, and also that it is impossible for the two kinds of decks to play agreeably in a game together.
Like the idea that a statement like "I want this to run faster and better" is the kind of thing that takes someone from a RC approved form of Commander and a "cutthroat" deck is also patently ridiculous.
Bro, you're reading it wrong. The PE player, after losing, immediately reflected that he had to figure out how to win with it faster (meaning how to get the combo online at an earlier turn), and the RC let him know that isn't what the format is designed for. They also said that some people like that and should be able to play that way, but they shouldn't expect to walk into just any group and expect it to fly. They showed the guy their ideal of the format, and explained it will different from group to group, and that their ideal works as a baseline for strangers but isn't hard and fast and can be changed with communication.
Look, I play a lot online, where budget restrictions are much less of an issue and a much higher percentage of players can afford to run tuned decks. Random pick up matches tend to land where the RC aims the format. Sometimes you get a guy running a tuned deck, rarely you get the whole table that way in a random match. The lone tuned deck usually just wins or gets stopped and quits by turn 6 if they haven't won. Sometimes someone runs a more prison type deck or a combo that isn't the focus of the deck (not trying to search it up to win asap). It's usually fine, but sometimes people get butthurt. In real life, you can avoid that by discussing things before hand.
Remember, this is a social game, nobody is required to cater to your tastes. The RC tries to promote a baseline experience that is broadly enjoyed and then encourages you and your playgroup to fine tune it to your needs. You should really have a deck or a few that is your ideal, a deck or two that is RCs baseline for strangers in case your tastes don't fly elsewhere.
This fantasy you are constructing is not true anywhere I have played Commander. Also as I said in the post you are quoting with the EDIT being the bit after I read the full passage.
It is still insidious to manage someones desire to make their deck faster and better regardless of how you try and couch it later. Also again Commander isn't some binary that only exists within Turn 3 and Turn 13 (and even trying to break it down into turns is the most foolish thing in the universe).
You don't know what insidious means. It seems like they were very upfront about what they were doing, which is explaining what they want for their playgroup and how fast combo isn't it. They also explained that in other playgroups, fast combo may be fine, but its something that should be discussed first. This boils down to the old argument between what matter more, the desires of the playgroup or that of the individual. I've seen it go toxic both ways, with a playgroup house banning everything that upsets anybody and making everyone salty on one hand, to players deciding that what they want to do is all that matters, ignoring the opinions in their playgroup, and ultimately getting kicked out because nobody wants to play with them. I usually advocate playing around what that toxic player is doing, such as by packing answers that either directly hose his or her strategy or manage it, but trying to tune your combo deck to go off turn 3 consistently will always either start an arms race where everyone is forced to either play a specific flavor of commander because just one guy wants to or lose, or everyone targets that player every game to ensure they can't play. Neither is a good solution. When you play with other people, you can't just expect to have your way all the time. The proper solution is to have a conversation, like the RC had, explaining the group's norms, because that's mature. It leads to a group meta that the group members actually enjoy. Not everyone wants to play cEDH or fast combo, and on the flip side not everyone wants to play battle cruiser.
Its absurd that you seem to think the turn 3 vs turn 13 thing is setting up a binary. He's saying that making your deck to get out your combo win on the earliest possible turn as consistently as possible is a very different thing than including a combo in your deck and drawing into it, or tutoring for a piece late. Turn 3 is used because its early, and when cEDH decks are trying to combo off consistently. Turn 13 is an arbitrarily late turn, meant to show getting a combo together over the course of a game is ok in their playgroup. Its sort of approximates the mean time to happen for a deck with a 2 card combo, some draw, and maybe a tutor or two to get that combo, sometimes you'll naturally get it earlier, sometimes it won't show. With this logic, drawing a god hand and laying down PE combo turn 3 ftw win is ok, its an extremely rare event that gets a high five and a reshuffle for game 2, but building your deck to consistently drop a PE win on turns 3-5 isn't, because it gets stale fast and isn't the sort of game that everyone else at the table wants to play.
And thanks for telling me that what I've experience is a fantasy I'm constructing. I'll accept that you may have had different experiences, but I can assure you that not every game of commander is cEDH, and the playgroups I've seen work are the ones where people talk and compromise rather.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
That is some hot bull***** right there and it probably isn't the thread for but trying to influence people away from how they want to build a deck seems really messed up to me.
I don't mean to sound rude here, but do you realize how ironic this sounds? The gentleman's agreement is virtually baked into the format.
That isn't being rude but it is also a discussion I have had on here about this a bunch, the format has changed and moved on from what it was in large part thanks to Wizards larger involvement in promoting it, it retains some aspects of what it was before but trying to use any of that to influence how people want to play Commander 2018 that isn't one the rules or two The banlist is if I am being honest is still hot bull*****.
Also making a deck want to do its thing 'faster' isn't breaking any gentlemen's agreements or anything it is enforcing a narrow version of this format on all around you and is horse*****.
EDIT: Reading the actual statement is better but still feels insidious to me, just making something faster isn't a guarantee of anything in this format and often going all in to that degree leaves the person more often more open to bad draws or if their plan is disrupted they have little footing to work with.
My problem with that full statement is it has a weird binary way of looking at things and assumes that games only run at two speeds, and also that it is impossible for the two kinds of decks to play agreeably in a game together.
Like the idea that a statement like "I want this to run faster and better" is the kind of thing that takes someone from a RC approved form of Commander and a "cutthroat" deck is also patently ridiculous.
Bro, you're reading it wrong. The PE player, after losing, immediately reflected that he had to figure out how to win with it faster (meaning how to get the combo online at an earlier turn), and the RC let him know that isn't what the format is designed for. They also said that some people like that and should be able to play that way, but they shouldn't expect to walk into just any group and expect it to fly. They showed the guy their ideal of the format, and explained it will different from group to group, and that their ideal works as a baseline for strangers but isn't hard and fast and can be changed with communication.
Look, I play a lot online, where budget restrictions are much less of an issue and a much higher percentage of players can afford to run tuned decks. Random pick up matches tend to land where the RC aims the format. Sometimes you get a guy running a tuned deck, rarely you get the whole table that way in a random match. The lone tuned deck usually just wins or gets stopped and quits by turn 6 if they haven't won. Sometimes someone runs a more prison type deck or a combo that isn't the focus of the deck (not trying to search it up to win asap). It's usually fine, but sometimes people get butthurt. In real life, you can avoid that by discussing things before hand.
Remember, this is a social game, nobody is required to cater to your tastes. The RC tries to promote a baseline experience that is broadly enjoyed and then encourages you and your playgroup to fine tune it to your needs. You should really have a deck or a few that is your ideal, a deck or two that is RCs baseline for strangers in case your tastes don't fly elsewhere.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
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.
Your interpretation is correct. From the RC
"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."
There's no debate, losing is not an undesirable game state. The other bolded parts are relevant however. Generally speaking, the RC defines undesirable game states as causing players to have minimal participation in the game (though centralization plays into it as well). PE isn't centralizing, so we look to the other 3 criteria that establish minimal participation. All combos rub up against this, but what keeps them from hitting it is that most leave plenty of chances for interaction, not just to disrupt the combo but to stop it from being relevant before they get it (this is one reason why 1 card instant win combos (a card that combos with a commander or, yes, things like T&N) seem to get the most attention out of combo pieces). So for PE, its not an early game lock, and its not a card with limited function other than to win the game out of nowhere. Winning the game when you cast it is of course the best use, but it has other legitimate functions (as opposed to something like CV whose only purpose is indeed to win the game out of nowhere), and even when you are using it as a win on this turn combo piece it requires significant setup to be effective, enough mana rocks or dorks and a reliable source of card flow to go off, and this can be disrupted ahead of time if you think PE is in the cards without preventing the PE player from playing at all. If I see a guy with 3+ mana rocks and I have a way to take his mana production down a notch, I'm probably going to fire it off (exceptions revolve around there being a bigger threat at the table that I either need his help to take down or need the answers I'd otherwise use against his rocks to deal with).
This leaves the generation of an intense amount of resources, which is always sort of iffy. Usually when a card has been banned for this, its typically had some other criteria it was hitting pretty hard as well (centralizing for Prime Time and Prophet, too much mana too fast for Fastbond) or was just incredibly dumb in how many cards it got you with zero help (Grislebrand, Yawg Bargain). PE needs things working around it. It generates a ton of mana, but it doesn't do so early without you already being way ahead on mana, and it doesn't do it by itself. Of course, it can also generate an insane amount of CA and repeated effects, but again this requires a bunch of other things being out. Outside of competitive metas, I can see this sometimes being a problem in 75% metas where answers are often less common but there are still means to abuse it. Many of the precons are already set up in such a way that PE would be a good addition even if nothing else were added, so its not that hard to make PE generate ungodly value. I personally don't think that its enough for a ban, but I do think its enough for the RC to keep an eye on it.
Also, there's the hour long turn thing you mentioned. Simply dominating real life time is a way to minimize interaction that the RC doesn't explicitly list, but it is something to consider. Probably only as a tie breaker for when a card is really on the edge and you need to resort to T charts to make your decision.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
The threat of an out of nowhere victory with limited telegraphing and a narrow range of answers that must be deployed in an extremely short window makes the best strategy simply not letting the 5 color deck play with their commander. The ever present threat and the line of play it necessitates is the undesirable game state.
I don't particularly want to derail this thread, but this is just nonsense. There are dozens of cards that can win the game with no warning as long as you are in the correct colors. Do you also think the correct answer to a G/x player is to kill them before they can generate 9 mana for a Tooth and Nail?
I refer you back to the many times your contention was answered in the relevant thread, because I don't feel like repeating the same points to you over and over. My explanation was clear enough, both here and in that thread, for you to understand, as were the explanations from several other users. Based on the CV thread, it has become a total waste of time to debate this with you, so I will not continue to do so.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Now, I'm not saying that there's never a time where playing something like Mike Trike 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.
The undesirable game state caused by CV isn't that it just wins the game. The undesirable game state is that, since it just wins the game with 5 basic land types and the commander of any deck that can run it, the answer becomes to prevent any 5 color deck that runs a good mana base from ever untapping with their commander in any situation, because you never know if they have the CV. The threat of an out of nowhere victory with limited telegraphing and a narrow range of answers that must be deployed in an extremely short window makes the best strategy simply not letting the 5 color deck play with their commander. The ever present threat and the line of play it necessitates is the undesirable game state. Basically, the presence of CV in the format would cause a line of play against 5 color that is similar to the way Karakas plays out in general.
Compare that to PE. PE is a card that basically requires the same response, don't let it land. However, its one card in the 99, rather than the commander, so that makes a big difference. Basically, you don't counter it by stopping the PE player from ever using their commander, which is the undesirable game state. PE simply winning the game isn't an undesirable game state, and unlike CV neither are the measures to stop it.
As Dunharrow points out, however, grinding with PE for near hour long turns without a certain path to victory IS an undesirable game state, just like Shahrazad is basically an undesirable game state printed on a card. I don't think this comes up often enough to warrant a ban. Most of the time, PE will just win the game because the deck is built to make PE win the game, or it will generate value every turn without taking forever.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I've had mixed results with it, as in it can feel broken at times, sometimes its just very good, and sometimes it doesn't do much of anything. You need to have your rocks and dorks out, and you need a way to continue to fuel your hand, in order for it to get to broken solitaire levels consistently. with just the rocks, its damn decent mana acceleration/extra tap abilities, but it isn't broken. Granted, this helps make it useful more often so it can slot into decks not built to abuse it into a never ending spell chain fueled by draw. This results in a deck using it for extra taps/mana acceleration, strong but not anywhere close to broken, to randomly hit a long draw/spell chain if they have some decent draw in their deck. While this won't go infinite and let them basically draw out their deck as it would if built for that, it will take a long time, and since the player won't be able to rely on the constant stream of card draw (nor will they know when the draw will end) each decision matters more and they will take longer to make it.
More so than power level, or even casual omnipresence (since its not an auto include unless you have the right deck for it), is that it leads to bad game states. Its the magic solitaire that it tends to create when it really gets going that might be a problem, though to be fair many other cards do the same thing *cough* extra turns *cough*. Actually trying to play half your deck in a turn WILL take a long time and WILL annoy the table, especially since there is usually no guarantee that your attempt will succeed or win.
Still not in favor of banning it, because I don't see it getting to Prophet levels yet, but it should be watched.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
The issue is that as time goes on, more and more cards are printed that don't combo with but synergize with PE, and more commanders are printed for which PE is an auto include. It is the increasing number of worthwhile synergies that most concerns me, since as these cards get added to decks they increase the value of adding PE, which in turn increases PEs metagame presence. It is when decks start including PE because it is going to be a great value engine whenever they play it, even if they only cast a couple spells, that it becomes dangerous, both because it starts behaving more like Prophet and Primetime in being a source of low efforts overwhelming value, and because it will lead to more accidental combos where there will be decks that can't reliably combo with it but can do so when they get lucky (a deck with 5 rocks will not reliably hit enough to include PE for a combo, but if it's adding PE as a value engine it will have access to it when it does actually hit enough to do so). But let's not discount that more and more commanders are being printed that can combo with it. Food Chain gets a pass because it only combos with a couple commanders and is generally a cEDH card that doesn't see much casual play, but PE, while not strictly being a 2 card combo, effectively becomes "play a normal game then win when you play PE and your commander" like Urza and that new Robot Scout.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Thats far from enough data to make the sort of closing statement you just did.
First of all, though somewhat unrelated to my other points, more people are playing edh today than when prophet was legal, so comparing raw numbers without adjusting for this inflation would be disingenuous. More people could theoretically be playing PE while it still being played in a lower percentage of total decks.
But relevant to the point that the data you provide doesn't back up your assertion: you make a lot of guesses based on other cards being similarly ranked but with no data showing that this is a valid correlation. There may, for instance, be more spread between places today while the places could have been more clustered when prophet was legal. To be more clear, the difference between tenth place and twentieth today could be (and this is pulled from my ass as I'm not actually looking it up) 4,000 decks, while in Prophets day it may have been 1000. The 20th most played creature today could be ran in a significantly lower percentage of decks than the 20th most played creature 8 years ago. In order to compare Prophet to cards that have similar rankings today and have it be relevant, you'd have to show that the deck percentages are about the same for each ranked place as they were in Prophets day.
More glaringly, you haven't actually shown what percentage of decks run PE, so you only provide half the answer (and based on flawed data at that). I did do the homework on this though, and I'm seeing it as being in 6 percent of listed decks.
Further, there is a severe problem with the way EDHrec ranks creatures. Xenagod, ranked 20th in the past 2 years, appears in fewer decks than Zegana, ranked 23rd. Despite this he makes up a larger share of decks that could run him, because there are fewer RGx decks than UGx decks. Zegana is also more narrow that Prophet (she wants decently sized creatures so she can draw lots of cards, whereas Prophet wants things that can be cast at instant speed, which includes any creature due to its ability, and/or activated abilities that require taps or mana. It's good everywhere, and it's a massive bomb.
It's a shame I can't find data from back then, I'd really like to see the numbers. I'd also like to see the top commanders list. For PE it's a who's who of broken artifact commanders and cEDH perennials, with it's more casual guys being legendary eldrazi, Seton, and Memnarch. Prophet, otoh, was showing up under more casual commanders. That's an important difference, problematic casual omnipresence doesn't look at cEDH numbers.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Thats a pretty fair selection of excerpts. Your right that the difference is that it is both a bit narrower and has significantly less of a centralizing effect on the format (as it isn't prompting people to run steal/reanimate effects more often like Prophet did). That lowers its rating for me (compared to Prophet) on problematic casual omnipresence (especially since the decks that do use it skew more competitive while things like Prophet, Prime Time, and Sylvan got jammed in casual decks at a higher rate). Needing to have a critical mass of mana rocks to work effectively puts significant downward pressure on stealing it, its one thing that it requires you to build around it more for your own deck but its even more significant in that its unlikely your opponents can take advantage of it without a similar deck. Prophet at least was Seedborn Muse in its fail state (getting stolen by a straight up creatureless deck) and Seedborn Muse is a great card.
My issue is that as more and more cards that synergize with PE get printed, the number of decks it should be an auto include in increases, and the greater likelihood it will find its way to more and more casual tables and start ruining games. It seems like this is inevitable at some point, but I'm not sure what the tipping point is, and I'd rather wait until its reached than preemptively ban it.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Mox Diamond and Grim Monolith are on the Reserve List, so that probably has something to do with it, especially grim mono.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Now that you have actually described your experience, I'm even more confused, because what you just described is what I was describing about my experience online, which you fot some reason labeled as a fantasy I was constructing.
I really dont see what you're complaining about here. I didn't read your statements until after your edit, so I've been replying to you're walked back version, not your initial, and you've been complaining about the RC for doing in their own playgroup what you just said makes playgroups work well. I can see where your coming from when you say that them being the RC carries more weight and is more likely to influence the player, but my response to that is twofold, first that it is their playgroup and they have the same right to set norms for the playgroup as any other playgroup, and secondly that they specifically told the new player that the style of deck building he was moving toward was valid and something they wanted to keep available for people to play, even of they didn't want it in their playgroup and don't think it should be tempted baseline for the format.
I think you have trouble with that whole baseline of the format thing, because it is a bit confusing. It's not a statement about how everyone should play, but a statement of what new players should expect to experience when jumping in. To better illustrate, let's compare 60 card anything goes casual and Legacy casual. 60 card anything goes is by definition a more powerful format than legacy as it includes no bans, so anything you can do in legacy you can do better in anything goes. Legacy's baseline, however, is of a much higher power level, as it is primarily a competitive format. Thus, while everyone who plays 60 card casual tries to improve their decks, they do so casually, that is they don't just turn it into an existing legacy or vintage deck without restrictions. The RC fundamentally sees Commander as a casual format, not a tournament format. As such, they are perfectly fine with cEDH existing because there are people who want that ezperience, but they don't want it to become the baseline as doing so shuts out other styles of play. Their own playgroup seems to be a higher power casual playgroup, as evidenced by infinite combo being accepted and narrow answers like stifle seeing play, but I know they do run a wide varience of power levels to test the format. As they use their playgroup to play test casual, keeping it from veering into fast combo is even more important, as that would skew their playgroup into a playstyle that doesn't cover the majority of player experiences.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
You don't know what insidious means. It seems like they were very upfront about what they were doing, which is explaining what they want for their playgroup and how fast combo isn't it. They also explained that in other playgroups, fast combo may be fine, but its something that should be discussed first. This boils down to the old argument between what matter more, the desires of the playgroup or that of the individual. I've seen it go toxic both ways, with a playgroup house banning everything that upsets anybody and making everyone salty on one hand, to players deciding that what they want to do is all that matters, ignoring the opinions in their playgroup, and ultimately getting kicked out because nobody wants to play with them. I usually advocate playing around what that toxic player is doing, such as by packing answers that either directly hose his or her strategy or manage it, but trying to tune your combo deck to go off turn 3 consistently will always either start an arms race where everyone is forced to either play a specific flavor of commander because just one guy wants to or lose, or everyone targets that player every game to ensure they can't play. Neither is a good solution. When you play with other people, you can't just expect to have your way all the time. The proper solution is to have a conversation, like the RC had, explaining the group's norms, because that's mature. It leads to a group meta that the group members actually enjoy. Not everyone wants to play cEDH or fast combo, and on the flip side not everyone wants to play battle cruiser.
Its absurd that you seem to think the turn 3 vs turn 13 thing is setting up a binary. He's saying that making your deck to get out your combo win on the earliest possible turn as consistently as possible is a very different thing than including a combo in your deck and drawing into it, or tutoring for a piece late. Turn 3 is used because its early, and when cEDH decks are trying to combo off consistently. Turn 13 is an arbitrarily late turn, meant to show getting a combo together over the course of a game is ok in their playgroup. Its sort of approximates the mean time to happen for a deck with a 2 card combo, some draw, and maybe a tutor or two to get that combo, sometimes you'll naturally get it earlier, sometimes it won't show. With this logic, drawing a god hand and laying down PE combo turn 3 ftw win is ok, its an extremely rare event that gets a high five and a reshuffle for game 2, but building your deck to consistently drop a PE win on turns 3-5 isn't, because it gets stale fast and isn't the sort of game that everyone else at the table wants to play.
And thanks for telling me that what I've experience is a fantasy I'm constructing. I'll accept that you may have had different experiences, but I can assure you that not every game of commander is cEDH, and the playgroups I've seen work are the ones where people talk and compromise rather.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Bro, you're reading it wrong. The PE player, after losing, immediately reflected that he had to figure out how to win with it faster (meaning how to get the combo online at an earlier turn), and the RC let him know that isn't what the format is designed for. They also said that some people like that and should be able to play that way, but they shouldn't expect to walk into just any group and expect it to fly. They showed the guy their ideal of the format, and explained it will different from group to group, and that their ideal works as a baseline for strangers but isn't hard and fast and can be changed with communication.
Look, I play a lot online, where budget restrictions are much less of an issue and a much higher percentage of players can afford to run tuned decks. Random pick up matches tend to land where the RC aims the format. Sometimes you get a guy running a tuned deck, rarely you get the whole table that way in a random match. The lone tuned deck usually just wins or gets stopped and quits by turn 6 if they haven't won. Sometimes someone runs a more prison type deck or a combo that isn't the focus of the deck (not trying to search it up to win asap). It's usually fine, but sometimes people get butthurt. In real life, you can avoid that by discussing things before hand.
Remember, this is a social game, nobody is required to cater to your tastes. The RC tries to promote a baseline experience that is broadly enjoyed and then encourages you and your playgroup to fine tune it to your needs. You should really have a deck or a few that is your ideal, a deck or two that is RCs baseline for strangers in case your tastes don't fly elsewhere.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Your interpretation is correct. From the RC
"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."
There's no debate, losing is not an undesirable game state. The other bolded parts are relevant however. Generally speaking, the RC defines undesirable game states as causing players to have minimal participation in the game (though centralization plays into it as well). PE isn't centralizing, so we look to the other 3 criteria that establish minimal participation. All combos rub up against this, but what keeps them from hitting it is that most leave plenty of chances for interaction, not just to disrupt the combo but to stop it from being relevant before they get it (this is one reason why 1 card instant win combos (a card that combos with a commander or, yes, things like T&N) seem to get the most attention out of combo pieces). So for PE, its not an early game lock, and its not a card with limited function other than to win the game out of nowhere. Winning the game when you cast it is of course the best use, but it has other legitimate functions (as opposed to something like CV whose only purpose is indeed to win the game out of nowhere), and even when you are using it as a win on this turn combo piece it requires significant setup to be effective, enough mana rocks or dorks and a reliable source of card flow to go off, and this can be disrupted ahead of time if you think PE is in the cards without preventing the PE player from playing at all. If I see a guy with 3+ mana rocks and I have a way to take his mana production down a notch, I'm probably going to fire it off (exceptions revolve around there being a bigger threat at the table that I either need his help to take down or need the answers I'd otherwise use against his rocks to deal with).
This leaves the generation of an intense amount of resources, which is always sort of iffy. Usually when a card has been banned for this, its typically had some other criteria it was hitting pretty hard as well (centralizing for Prime Time and Prophet, too much mana too fast for Fastbond) or was just incredibly dumb in how many cards it got you with zero help (Grislebrand, Yawg Bargain). PE needs things working around it. It generates a ton of mana, but it doesn't do so early without you already being way ahead on mana, and it doesn't do it by itself. Of course, it can also generate an insane amount of CA and repeated effects, but again this requires a bunch of other things being out. Outside of competitive metas, I can see this sometimes being a problem in 75% metas where answers are often less common but there are still means to abuse it. Many of the precons are already set up in such a way that PE would be a good addition even if nothing else were added, so its not that hard to make PE generate ungodly value. I personally don't think that its enough for a ban, but I do think its enough for the RC to keep an eye on it.
Also, there's the hour long turn thing you mentioned. Simply dominating real life time is a way to minimize interaction that the RC doesn't explicitly list, but it is something to consider. Probably only as a tie breaker for when a card is really on the edge and you need to resort to T charts to make your decision.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I refer you back to the many times your contention was answered in the relevant thread, because I don't feel like repeating the same points to you over and over. My explanation was clear enough, both here and in that thread, for you to understand, as were the explanations from several other users. Based on the CV thread, it has become a total waste of time to debate this with you, so I will not continue to do so.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
The undesirable game state caused by CV isn't that it just wins the game. The undesirable game state is that, since it just wins the game with 5 basic land types and the commander of any deck that can run it, the answer becomes to prevent any 5 color deck that runs a good mana base from ever untapping with their commander in any situation, because you never know if they have the CV. The threat of an out of nowhere victory with limited telegraphing and a narrow range of answers that must be deployed in an extremely short window makes the best strategy simply not letting the 5 color deck play with their commander. The ever present threat and the line of play it necessitates is the undesirable game state. Basically, the presence of CV in the format would cause a line of play against 5 color that is similar to the way Karakas plays out in general.
Compare that to PE. PE is a card that basically requires the same response, don't let it land. However, its one card in the 99, rather than the commander, so that makes a big difference. Basically, you don't counter it by stopping the PE player from ever using their commander, which is the undesirable game state. PE simply winning the game isn't an undesirable game state, and unlike CV neither are the measures to stop it.
As Dunharrow points out, however, grinding with PE for near hour long turns without a certain path to victory IS an undesirable game state, just like Shahrazad is basically an undesirable game state printed on a card. I don't think this comes up often enough to warrant a ban. Most of the time, PE will just win the game because the deck is built to make PE win the game, or it will generate value every turn without taking forever.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
More so than power level, or even casual omnipresence (since its not an auto include unless you have the right deck for it), is that it leads to bad game states. Its the magic solitaire that it tends to create when it really gets going that might be a problem, though to be fair many other cards do the same thing *cough* extra turns *cough*. Actually trying to play half your deck in a turn WILL take a long time and WILL annoy the table, especially since there is usually no guarantee that your attempt will succeed or win.
Still not in favor of banning it, because I don't see it getting to Prophet levels yet, but it should be watched.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!