Something I totally forgot was that staff of domination was banned for a couple years there.
That's probably the most comparable card to PE except it's *far* more widely played than PE and significantly easier to go off with, and does very similar stuff. So there is at least some precedent for a contemporary combo enabler being banned just for being an annoying combo enabler that sees lots of play (though it did subsequently get unbanned).
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.
That bold part one of the largest issues I would disagree with. Yes you need other things on board, but that critical mass is low, and cards that a lot of people generally play anyway. The rest of your post I agree with 100%, and hope it does not devolve into that.
We've been round and round on this point but I'll try to succinctly restate my case, since I think it's important:
PE Has steep deckbuilding constraints but these constraints are largely obviated by these factors:
(1) A large variety of commanders support, and some demand, these same constraints (playing a large variety of tap effects, be they mana dorks or artifacts), and many of these are very popular commanders
(2) Both of the key strategies that would leverage Paradox Engine are common and powerful independent of the card
My guess is that this might be a spot where the CAG is fairly helpful. They experience a much wider variety of playgroups and talk to a lot more people. Might have more insight into that than EDHREC and dudes yellin on the internet.
When I say "combos with everything" i hope that is contextually clear that is a metaphor. It combos with a large variety of board states and often non-determistically, as well as being a two card combo with more generals things than even food chain.
PE is by far the most casually present card on that list. Not even a close argument. It's far closer to Prophet of Kruphix in terms of casual use than it is to any of those cards.
If you add up the number of decks with Doomsday, hulk, and Foodchain it's not even 2/3rds of Paradox Engine, and the combined total prevalence in their colors is about the same (6%).
ANECDOTE ALERT ANECDOTE ALERT
I have personally seen more Paradox Engine in the last few years than all of those cards combined and I played a food chain deck for a while and played it in legacy and I am including the non-casual games of legacy (maybe 5 tournaments? I won with deathrite, griffin and ballista beats more than I won with foodchain)
I did think a lot about the banlist and which cards might 'combo with everything' even if they also have other criteria (e.g. too much mana too quickly, problematic omnipresence for other reasons, interacts poorly with the format, perceived barrier to entry, resource imbalance, etc.)
Admittedly a lot of that is using a fairly broad definition of combo and many times the "combos with everything" might be low on the list of reasons something *could* be banned.
Category-wise:
* RN creates a ton of infinite combos in addition to being degenerate. Infinite time warps, infinite mana with various ETB creatures that make mana, etc. etc.
* Gris and Bargain let you draw your deck fairly easily and are primarily used as combo engines
* Academy and Lotus both create infinite mana in a bunch of ways though academy is a bit narrower
* Time walk enables a crapload of infinite turn combos
* Leovold combos with all kinds of wheel effects - it's not infinite but it's functionally no different
* Tinker allows comboing extremely early in a bunch of ways but also starts combos itself (by sacc'ing things with LTB or ETG effects into things that combo with them)
(Upheaval could go on the list too if you wanted to loosen the combo terms even more, and Upheaval is quite interesting since it does a lot of the same bull***** Paradox Engine does by turning "play a bunch of mana rocks' Into a strategy)
Now, most of those cards I don't think are on there because of comboing, but I am sure it's a factor.
Time Walk is mostly perceived barrier to entry, but if it was a 15 dollar card not on the reserve list it would still be broken beyond belief because of how cheap it makes infinite turn combos (of about 50 different types).
(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).
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.
I'm glad to see you're seeing exactly what I'm seeing at least.
I'm seeing a few patterns that I think are worth thinking about--
* The more competitive the general the more competitive the decks tend to be (this seems obvious, but it's useful for thinking about EDHrec data -- it certainly does not skew competitive across the board).
* A high percentage of the decks that play paradox engine are stronger generals, or mono brown (karn, kozilek)
(Of the top 18 generals that play Paradox engine, I would say that at least 8 of those are heavily used In CEDH - several pairs of partners, Urza, Arcum, Sisay, jhoira, and Azami)
* Paradox Engine appears to be used most heavily in decks that are fairly competitive; I could not find very many really poor decks that had it, outside of Urza. Mostly 75% and up.
* Paradox engine does have a large footprint overall in non-competitive decks; at least half of the decks that play it are non-competitive from the survey I did.
Few more thoughts--
A kind of a summary thought there, I think it is very probable that for generals that are likely to play paradox engine, its prevalence will be exaggerated. For example if you look at say, Azami, an say "55% of azami decks play paradox engine." That's a huge number, but....it's very possible that Azami decks are just going to be competitive because she's pretty darned strong.
So from a "problematic casual omnipresence" deck we probably care more about the non-competitive Azami decks, and say you pull the 25% that run Crypt, and it doesn't really look quite so bad -- maybe more like 25% of non-competitive Azami decks are running Paradox engine, and given its obvious synergy with her that's not quite so bad.
Anyway my ultimate takeaway form the EDHRec data is that it's pretty darned interesting and probably more representative for some generals than others. But also that we probably have to be careful from drawing too many deep conclusions. Unfortunately it's our only real dataset other than anecdotes.
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.
There is another level to that though isn't there.
A commander whose whole job is to make other creatures into mana dorks has more investment than most to play the Engine.
Regardless of what or how powerful the outcomes with it are.
I bet the Reservoir likewise is good in all kinds of decks that gain life because unlike the traditional lifegain wincons you don't have to wait a turn around with it.
There's tons of levels in everything here. It's why just looking at individual commanders is probably fruitless for making actual statements sadly. Every commander has confounding variables that would skew its results - Urza plays more paradox engine because it's a straight combo with him, Rishkar is less competitive because he's weak, blah blah etc etc. It adds up to EDHrec not really providing quite enough information I don't think, without lots of deeper analysis of the data.
That said, if we knew the answer to this question:
What percentage of decks that play X are competitive decks?
It would really facilitate discussion on any card that's only real reason to be discussed for banning is problematic casual omnipresence, since it would give a good data point for "casual omnipresence" part of problematic casual omnipresence.
From the EDHRec data set, the easiest way to do that would be to use Cost as a shorthand for competitiveness - which it probably is at least for the most part. So say, what percentage of Decks that play paradox Engine are >2000, for example, might be a useful data point. in my survey of Urza for example, 2k was about the break point where decks started having too much jank to be competitive.
Unfortunately, I am not sure how we would get at that data from EDhrec. Anyone know anything about that?
Apparently EDHRec did some kinda saltiness poll and Paradox Engine is in the top 20, above such cards as Humility, Sunder, and Hokori, Dust Drinker
Edit, followup: EDHRec apparently does not have an API we can browse, so the data they expose is the data they show in the UI. maybe I will contact them.
I decided to look at a cheaper general that doesn't synergize quite as much with Paradox engine, but still plays it as a high rate. Rishkar, Peema Renegade has 200 decks on EDHREC and 64% of them run Paradox Engine.
Of the 204 decks, not a single one is CEDH or even close. the most expensive deck is 1400 bucks and does not even close to CEDH. Most decks are budget, even the cheap ones run PE at a high rate.
This is reasonably strong but packs almost no interaction and is basically trying to just do its thing. It'll do its thing fast but not particularly consistently since it has no real way to find its various pieces except by Glimpsing off or casting a big draw spell.
My concern with this is that it doesn't really prove anything except that Rishkar is usually built as a medium powered or lower deck because he sucks.
My overall thinking however is this:
EDHREC probably does not skew competitive overall because it seems to follow the pattern that very powerful generals skew competitive and weaker generals seem to skew casual/budget. Many generals that are rather strong but also happen to be good budget commanders seem to skew budget.
EDHrec also has a way higher percentage of budget decks than I see on a regular basis. I basically never see decks that are under 500 bucks these days. But EDHRec is littered with 30 dollar decks.
Edit:
There is another possible thesis I see in there after noodling on it, and it's this:
Paradox engine is primarily played by competitive decks, and very little in casual decks, so the 6% figure is probably inflated; if you corrected for competitive decks (which we have established don't matter) with Paradox Engine the prevalence would be much lower.
I think this could be proved by analyzing a group of comparable cards and the types of decks that play them:
These are all powerful cards played about the same amount, but Panharmonicon *probably* skews casual, and the others probably lean competitive. It would probably take a lot of doing but it's likely you could determine if Paradox Engine and also Aetherflux Reservoir are "safe" because they have a very low prevalence rate outside of competitive decks.
I'm not sure what the best methodology would be to approach that, but I think it could be done - though EDHRec does not appear to expose the data you would need (e.g. list of decks that play Panharmonicon is not a thing you can find, at least I can't).
The supposition that EDHREC trends more competitive than overall EDH requires a lot more substantiation I think. it is *riddled* with budget decks. Like half the decks on there are <$500 that I see.
Here's a selection of decks I picked out of a hat from EDHREC. My methodology was to pick the most expensive deck on the first page of decklists that has a paradox engine.
This deck doesn't have a mana cyrpt or a grim monolith or even a chrome mox, no mox diamond. It has nonsense tapped land jank, bad cards, etc. But it still has a paradox engine and only a few mana rocks but lots of tap effects. It appears set up to use PE to combo with Isochron Scepter or something.
This is the most tuned deck we've seen so far, but it still runs all kinds of jank like Brudiclad and Vedalken Archmage and comet storm and Jaya's Immolating Inferno, and Elixir of Immortality, and Storm the Vault.
This deck is going to win on turn 3 a lot, it's very powerful, but it's not near CEDH Jhoira. It's got way too many lands and is way too light on interaction and has a lot of cute stuff. It's the tuned side of 75% at best.
I can't tell enough about this to tell if it's competitive or not. It feels fairly tuned I guess, but it's missing a lot of stuff I would expect to see in a competitive build. Stuff like instill energy and hall of the bandit lord.
It plays a few pieces of jank but it's relatively tuned.
If anyone has any requests, pick your favorite commander on the Paradox Engine top commanders page and I will look at all their decklists and analyze the ones that have PE.
Of these decks the majority are under $1000, (134/246 decks) and 53/246 are budget decks at <500.
It looks to me like most of the first 100 decks or so are fairly tuned, just from looking at a number of them. There's varying degrees of stax and such though,
And there's a lot of random jank in there even in the $2500 decks
Now, Urza is a pretty bad example because he's both 1) a combo with PE, and 2) likely to be skewed competitive, and 3) not a very large sample size at 250 decks.
High level stats
* of 246 decks, probably ~80-100 are what I would consider competitive or close enough to CEDH to not be playable in casual circles.
* Of 246 decks, 50 are seriously budget (and often still have PEs)
TL;DR on the budget issue: If Urza were the only general I would look at I would consider the thesis that EDHrec skews competitive to be probably correct. I'll look at another general or two later and see.
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.
Thanks. This explains my point well. Understanding where PE sees play is critical to understanding whether it is a problem or not. I honestly am not sure but the engine decks I have played against and reviewed skew to the "going hard" side of 75% but are overwhelmingly not cedh decks.
I think it's worth everyone's time to review some of the edhrec decks that actually have engines. I'll try to pull a few samples if I have time tomorrow.
The ultimate disposition of PE really depends on problematic casual omnipresence more than anything. We know it is strong enough to be banned--there are weaker cards on the list. But we don't really know how much it's seeing play, how bad it makes games, and what metas it's played in most.
Edit: this is also closely tied with the connection to very competitively weak banned cards like prophet and sylvan primordial.
I think we probably have a definition problem about what a 75% deck is. I think you can play all kinds of crazy stuff and still have your deck be a 75% deck. You're going hard, you're playing powerful cards. You're constrained by gameplan not by budget.
Playing expensive mana rocks does not intrinsically make a deck competitive, nor does playing expensive cards like Survival of the fittest.
The fundamental things about competitive decks for me are
1) Trying their hardest to maximize their win rate
2) constructed with the appropriate critical turn in mind (this is probably 2 or 3 in CEDH - if you are not interacting or winning by turn 3 you're doing something wrong, right?)
3) Strong gameplan
4) No budget constraints
You can make a deck that is non-competitive but that is not constrained by budget. Both my Ephara and my Gitrog&& decks are excellent examples; I have tons of dumb cards, but I'm usually doing a few things differently than CEDH:
* Not curving as aggressively as needed for CEDH
* Not playing a CEDH ready gameplan
Fundamentally I like playing a really firm foundation of mana from which to build my tower of nonsense so I invest heavily in manabases and efficient enablers.
In the end I think if we don't agree on what a mid-powered deck is that's probably the heart of our disagreement. At my shop people play all kinds of crazy cards, but also weaker cards, weaker gameplans, and weaker generals. I saw a dude with a Mana Crypt in his Windgrace Tokens deck the other day. Doubling season so he could double his worm havrest tokens.
I lost to a guy who was playing Paradox Engine in his Urza Voltron deck with some CEDH powerhouse cards as Grappling Hook.
&& I'll cede that the Gitrog deck is going a little harder than typical (85%, say) but it doesn't combo and the gameplan of "cast a bunch of eldrazi" is fairly slow.
And back to the point at hand. I see all kinds of bad decks playing paradox engine in a way that accidentally wins sometimes. But sometimes these bad decks have mana crypt and mox diamond. But maybe their general sucks and they don't play any tutors. Or maybe their endgame is to flood the board with creatures with crazy PE mana and pass the turn.
I think PE is the natural focal point for too many deck styles.
It still sees a bit of play in tap commanders like selvalas, kydele, yisan, arcum, etc.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Something I totally forgot was that staff of domination was banned for a couple years there.
That's probably the most comparable card to PE except it's *far* more widely played than PE and significantly easier to go off with, and does very similar stuff. So there is at least some precedent for a contemporary combo enabler being banned just for being an annoying combo enabler that sees lots of play (though it did subsequently get unbanned).
Food for thought anyway.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
We've been round and round on this point but I'll try to succinctly restate my case, since I think it's important:
PE Has steep deckbuilding constraints but these constraints are largely obviated by these factors:
(1) A large variety of commanders support, and some demand, these same constraints (playing a large variety of tap effects, be they mana dorks or artifacts), and many of these are very popular commanders
(2) Both of the key strategies that would leverage Paradox Engine are common and powerful independent of the card
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
re: Doomsday, Protean Hulk, Food Chain and Paradox Engine
PE is by far the most casually present card on that list. Not even a close argument. It's far closer to Prophet of Kruphix in terms of casual use than it is to any of those cards.
If you add up the number of decks with Doomsday, hulk, and Foodchain it's not even 2/3rds of Paradox Engine, and the combined total prevalence in their colors is about the same (6%).
ANECDOTE ALERT ANECDOTE ALERT
I have personally seen more Paradox Engine in the last few years than all of those cards combined and I played a food chain deck for a while and played it in legacy and I am including the non-casual games of legacy (maybe 5 tournaments? I won with deathrite, griffin and ballista beats more than I won with foodchain)
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I did think a lot about the banlist and which cards might 'combo with everything' even if they also have other criteria (e.g. too much mana too quickly, problematic omnipresence for other reasons, interacts poorly with the format, perceived barrier to entry, resource imbalance, etc.)
Here was my list of "combos with everything"
Recurring Nightmare, Panoptic Mirror, Time Walk, Time Vault, Tinker, Tolarian Academy, Yawgmoth's Bargain, Leovold, Emissary of Trest, Griselbrand, Black Lotus
Admittedly a lot of that is using a fairly broad definition of combo and many times the "combos with everything" might be low on the list of reasons something *could* be banned.
Category-wise:
* RN creates a ton of infinite combos in addition to being degenerate. Infinite time warps, infinite mana with various ETB creatures that make mana, etc. etc.
* Gris and Bargain let you draw your deck fairly easily and are primarily used as combo engines
* Academy and Lotus both create infinite mana in a bunch of ways though academy is a bit narrower
* Time walk enables a crapload of infinite turn combos
* Leovold combos with all kinds of wheel effects - it's not infinite but it's functionally no different
* Tinker allows comboing extremely early in a bunch of ways but also starts combos itself (by sacc'ing things with LTB or ETG effects into things that combo with them)
(Upheaval could go on the list too if you wanted to loosen the combo terms even more, and Upheaval is quite interesting since it does a lot of the same bull***** Paradox Engine does by turning "play a bunch of mana rocks' Into a strategy)
Now, most of those cards I don't think are on there because of comboing, but I am sure it's a factor.
Time Walk is mostly perceived barrier to entry, but if it was a 15 dollar card not on the reserve list it would still be broken beyond belief because of how cheap it makes infinite turn combos (of about 50 different types).
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
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).
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
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.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I'm seeing a few patterns that I think are worth thinking about--
* The more competitive the general the more competitive the decks tend to be (this seems obvious, but it's useful for thinking about EDHrec data -- it certainly does not skew competitive across the board).
* A high percentage of the decks that play paradox engine are stronger generals, or mono brown (karn, kozilek)
(Of the top 18 generals that play Paradox engine, I would say that at least 8 of those are heavily used In CEDH - several pairs of partners, Urza, Arcum, Sisay, jhoira, and Azami)
* Paradox Engine appears to be used most heavily in decks that are fairly competitive; I could not find very many really poor decks that had it, outside of Urza. Mostly 75% and up.
* Paradox engine does have a large footprint overall in non-competitive decks; at least half of the decks that play it are non-competitive from the survey I did.
Few more thoughts--
A kind of a summary thought there, I think it is very probable that for generals that are likely to play paradox engine, its prevalence will be exaggerated. For example if you look at say, Azami, an say "55% of azami decks play paradox engine." That's a huge number, but....it's very possible that Azami decks are just going to be competitive because she's pretty darned strong.
So from a "problematic casual omnipresence" deck we probably care more about the non-competitive Azami decks, and say you pull the 25% that run Crypt, and it doesn't really look quite so bad -- maybe more like 25% of non-competitive Azami decks are running Paradox engine, and given its obvious synergy with her that's not quite so bad.
Anyway my ultimate takeaway form the EDHRec data is that it's pretty darned interesting and probably more representative for some generals than others. But also that we probably have to be careful from drawing too many deep conclusions. Unfortunately it's our only real dataset other than anecdotes.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
This is a fairly useful tool. unfortunately has to start with a commander, but you can do some neat stuff with the advanced filters.
For example:
Seton, Krosan Protector - 25% of Seton decks have both Gaea's Cradle and paradox Engine while 64% of Seton decks have Paradox Engine.
Azami, Lady of Scrolls - 23% have both mana crypt and paradox engine, 55% have Paradox engine
Captain Sisay - 23% have mana crypt + engine, 53% have Paradox Engine
Urza, lord high artificer - 35% mana crypt + paradox engine, 70% Paradox engine
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.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
There's tons of levels in everything here. It's why just looking at individual commanders is probably fruitless for making actual statements sadly. Every commander has confounding variables that would skew its results - Urza plays more paradox engine because it's a straight combo with him, Rishkar is less competitive because he's weak, blah blah etc etc. It adds up to EDHrec not really providing quite enough information I don't think, without lots of deeper analysis of the data.
That said, if we knew the answer to this question:
What percentage of decks that play X are competitive decks?
It would really facilitate discussion on any card that's only real reason to be discussed for banning is problematic casual omnipresence, since it would give a good data point for "casual omnipresence" part of problematic casual omnipresence.
From the EDHRec data set, the easiest way to do that would be to use Cost as a shorthand for competitiveness - which it probably is at least for the most part. So say, what percentage of Decks that play paradox Engine are >2000, for example, might be a useful data point. in my survey of Urza for example, 2k was about the break point where decks started having too much jank to be competitive.
Unfortunately, I am not sure how we would get at that data from EDhrec. Anyone know anything about that?
I did find this that kinda cracked me up though:
https://edhrec.com/top/salt
Apparently EDHRec did some kinda saltiness poll and Paradox Engine is in the top 20, above such cards as Humility, Sunder, and Hokori, Dust Drinker
Edit, followup: EDHRec apparently does not have an API we can browse, so the data they expose is the data they show in the UI. maybe I will contact them.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I decided to look at a cheaper general that doesn't synergize quite as much with Paradox engine, but still plays it as a high rate. Rishkar, Peema Renegade has 200 decks on EDHREC and 64% of them run Paradox Engine.
https://edhrec.com/listofdecks/rishkar-peema-renegade
Of the 204 decks, not a single one is CEDH or even close. the most expensive deck is 1400 bucks and does not even close to CEDH. Most decks are budget, even the cheap ones run PE at a high rate.
This is the best deck I found:
https://edhrec.com/deckpreview/0d25a27ac40d2e44b7b24e7c58bafbfb
This is reasonably strong but packs almost no interaction and is basically trying to just do its thing. It'll do its thing fast but not particularly consistently since it has no real way to find its various pieces except by Glimpsing off or casting a big draw spell.
My concern with this is that it doesn't really prove anything except that Rishkar is usually built as a medium powered or lower deck because he sucks.
My overall thinking however is this:
EDHREC probably does not skew competitive overall because it seems to follow the pattern that very powerful generals skew competitive and weaker generals seem to skew casual/budget. Many generals that are rather strong but also happen to be good budget commanders seem to skew budget.
EDHrec also has a way higher percentage of budget decks than I see on a regular basis. I basically never see decks that are under 500 bucks these days. But EDHRec is littered with 30 dollar decks.
Edit:
There is another possible thesis I see in there after noodling on it, and it's this:
Paradox engine is primarily played by competitive decks, and very little in casual decks, so the 6% figure is probably inflated; if you corrected for competitive decks (which we have established don't matter) with Paradox Engine the prevalence would be much lower.
I think this could be proved by analyzing a group of comparable cards and the types of decks that play them:
These are all powerful cards played about the same amount, but Panharmonicon *probably* skews casual, and the others probably lean competitive. It would probably take a lot of doing but it's likely you could determine if Paradox Engine and also Aetherflux Reservoir are "safe" because they have a very low prevalence rate outside of competitive decks.
I'm not sure what the best methodology would be to approach that, but I think it could be done - though EDHRec does not appear to expose the data you would need (e.g. list of decks that play Panharmonicon is not a thing you can find, at least I can't).
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Here's a selection of decks I picked out of a hat from EDHREC. My methodology was to pick the most expensive deck on the first page of decklists that has a paradox engine.
Arcum Dagsson, supposedly uber competitive
https://edhrec.com/deckpreview/7864250e38ba00c12ffeefc7888f3dfc
This deck doesn't have a mana cyrpt or a grim monolith or even a chrome mox, no mox diamond. It has nonsense tapped land jank, bad cards, etc. But it still has a paradox engine and only a few mana rocks but lots of tap effects. It appears set up to use PE to combo with Isochron Scepter or something.
Dralnu, Lich Lord
https://edhrec.com/deckpreview/299bb16ed53aadae466bd6d98a1a0db1
Here we have a pretty reasonably strong Dralnu deck that is absolutely not CEDH ready. It's full of jank like Wretched Confluence and Final Parting and Commander Sphere and Phyrexian Arena and Will Kenrith. Not to mention an awful manabase consisting of some luminaries as Dismal Backwater[/car] and dimir aquaduct.
Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain
https://edhrec.com/deckpreview/ac13b11fb72841f8f2e966e7cc579290
This is the most tuned deck we've seen so far, but it still runs all kinds of jank like Brudiclad and Vedalken Archmage and comet storm and Jaya's Immolating Inferno, and Elixir of Immortality, and Storm the Vault.
And Swiftwater Cliffs for the love of all that's holy. Not even an Ancient tomb which is absurd with Jhoira.
This deck is going to win on turn 3 a lot, it's very powerful, but it's not near CEDH Jhoira. It's got way too many lands and is way too light on interaction and has a lot of cute stuff. It's the tuned side of 75% at best.
Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
https://edhrec.com/deckpreview/9cc74d73d5da9ac0ebe6830814dbd77d
I can't tell enough about this to tell if it's competitive or not. It feels fairly tuned I guess, but it's missing a lot of stuff I would expect to see in a competitive build. Stuff like instill energy and hall of the bandit lord.
It plays a few pieces of jank but it's relatively tuned.
If anyone has any requests, pick your favorite commander on the Paradox Engine top commanders page and I will look at all their decklists and analyze the ones that have PE.
https://edhrec.com/cards/paradox-engine
The one I looked at myself is Urza, Lord High artificer, since he has PE in 70% of the decks that use him, because he straight up combos with it.
https://edhrec.com/listofdecks/urza-lord-high-artificer
Of these decks the majority are under $1000, (134/246 decks) and 53/246 are budget decks at <500.
It looks to me like most of the first 100 decks or so are fairly tuned, just from looking at a number of them. There's varying degrees of stax and such though,
And there's a lot of random jank in there even in the $2500 decks
Now, Urza is a pretty bad example because he's both 1) a combo with PE, and 2) likely to be skewed competitive, and 3) not a very large sample size at 250 decks.
High level stats
* of 246 decks, probably ~80-100 are what I would consider competitive or close enough to CEDH to not be playable in casual circles.
* Of 246 decks, 50 are seriously budget (and often still have PEs)
TL;DR on the budget issue: If Urza were the only general I would look at I would consider the thesis that EDHrec skews competitive to be probably correct. I'll look at another general or two later and see.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Thanks. This explains my point well. Understanding where PE sees play is critical to understanding whether it is a problem or not. I honestly am not sure but the engine decks I have played against and reviewed skew to the "going hard" side of 75% but are overwhelmingly not cedh decks.
I think it's worth everyone's time to review some of the edhrec decks that actually have engines. I'll try to pull a few samples if I have time tomorrow.
The ultimate disposition of PE really depends on problematic casual omnipresence more than anything. We know it is strong enough to be banned--there are weaker cards on the list. But we don't really know how much it's seeing play, how bad it makes games, and what metas it's played in most.
Edit: this is also closely tied with the connection to very competitively weak banned cards like prophet and sylvan primordial.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I think we probably have a definition problem about what a 75% deck is. I think you can play all kinds of crazy stuff and still have your deck be a 75% deck. You're going hard, you're playing powerful cards. You're constrained by gameplan not by budget.
Playing expensive mana rocks does not intrinsically make a deck competitive, nor does playing expensive cards like Survival of the fittest.
The fundamental things about competitive decks for me are
1) Trying their hardest to maximize their win rate
2) constructed with the appropriate critical turn in mind (this is probably 2 or 3 in CEDH - if you are not interacting or winning by turn 3 you're doing something wrong, right?)
3) Strong gameplan
4) No budget constraints
You can make a deck that is non-competitive but that is not constrained by budget. Both my Ephara and my Gitrog&& decks are excellent examples; I have tons of dumb cards, but I'm usually doing a few things differently than CEDH:
* Not curving as aggressively as needed for CEDH
* Not playing a CEDH ready gameplan
Fundamentally I like playing a really firm foundation of mana from which to build my tower of nonsense so I invest heavily in manabases and efficient enablers.
In the end I think if we don't agree on what a mid-powered deck is that's probably the heart of our disagreement. At my shop people play all kinds of crazy cards, but also weaker cards, weaker gameplans, and weaker generals. I saw a dude with a Mana Crypt in his Windgrace Tokens deck the other day. Doubling season so he could double his worm havrest tokens.
I lost to a guy who was playing Paradox Engine in his Urza Voltron deck with some CEDH powerhouse cards as Grappling Hook.
&& I'll cede that the Gitrog deck is going a little harder than typical (85%, say) but it doesn't combo and the gameplan of "cast a bunch of eldrazi" is fairly slow.
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And back to the point at hand. I see all kinds of bad decks playing paradox engine in a way that accidentally wins sometimes. But sometimes these bad decks have mana crypt and mox diamond. But maybe their general sucks and they don't play any tutors. Or maybe their endgame is to flood the board with creatures with crazy PE mana and pass the turn.
I think PE is the natural focal point for too many deck styles.
I'm glad it's not the case for your meta
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall