Leovold was a 'combo' with Windfall. Leovold was banned because all the decks were windfall decks.
I think it makes more sense to ban Prossh than food chain... and let people have their silly 'splinter twin' combo with Eternal Scourge.
Does anyone play Prossh without going all-in combo?
I do, as a Kobold Tribal commander. I've also seen him head up dragon tribal just because he's the outright strongest jund dragon. It doesn't take many cuts, primarily food chain, to take away the combo potential. And unlike Leovold, those builds don't push you towards the cards that make him problematic (going jund sacrifice does). The only deck I saw use Leovold that wouldnt lead to a problematic build was tribal elves. Because Leovold otherwise pushes so strongly toward a soft lock control style, anything you build of that nature is going to push straight toward the sort of decks that got him banned as you refine it. Prossh, otoh, has builds that don't naturally push to including his combos, so you adding food chain to kobolds would be adding a combo that doesn't compliment the deck (so it's just a random plan b you might draw), while adding windfall et Al in Leovold control does. It's easier to cut the former than the latter, because you can still refine the main purpose of the deck without having to justify not running the combo piece, while with the latter the combo pieces are cards that would refine the main focus of your deck.
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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 haven't really played much paper Magic at all since 2014, which happened to be shortly after Prossh came out. A few "oops, I'm infinite" moments still stand out in my head from another player slotting in just that single card to a precon.
The RC seems very clear about banning cards that seem innocuous but accidentally create a bad time. If you see someone else playing Food Chain in Prossh, you're going to want to give it a try, and then suddenly it seems bad to not run Food Chain. Is this no different from discovering Recurring Nightmare (also banned) combos with Palinchron? The outside use cases seem fringe.
The difference here is that nightmare is always going to be good, even when you are just looping value creatures, and you can accidentally run into a combo. Food Chain is often just sort of ok. If you don't have a way to combo with it, it's often ramp that exacts a high price. I mean, casting acidic slime then next turn exiling it to casting Ulamog seems pretty fair to me, from a battle cruiser perspective, in the sort of way that entwining T&N to fetch a couple of eldrazi instead of a combo is fair. It's just a very, very spikey card that turns off a lot of players (why would I sac a creature to just get one more Mana than I paid for it?) who don't realize that it is as it's baseline a powerful ramp card, albeit a narrow one that opens you up to two for ones. So it's got a fair use (I'd argue that getting even more Mana by saccing a card that produces tokens plus the tokens is also fair), it's just that it's rarely used for that because it turns off a lot of players due to it's spikey nature and it's reputation from prossh. It accidentally combos with a few cards, but those combos are pretty good and for the most part well known and applied in cEDH. cEDH is the only place it caused "problems", though since cEDH is not a balanced format and more about just playing the most powerful things as tightly as possible it's difficult for me to see how problematic it is there, though of course it can be annoying seeing it over and over.
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!
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I do, as a Kobold Tribal commander. I've also seen him head up dragon tribal just because he's the outright strongest jund dragon. It doesn't take many cuts, primarily food chain, to take away the combo potential. And unlike Leovold, those builds don't push you towards the cards that make him problematic (going jund sacrifice does). The only deck I saw use Leovold that wouldnt lead to a problematic build was tribal elves. Because Leovold otherwise pushes so strongly toward a soft lock control style, anything you build of that nature is going to push straight toward the sort of decks that got him banned as you refine it. Prossh, otoh, has builds that don't naturally push to including his combos, so you adding food chain to kobolds would be adding a combo that doesn't compliment the deck (so it's just a random plan b you might draw), while adding windfall et Al in Leovold control does. It's easier to cut the former than the latter, because you can still refine the main purpose of the deck without having to justify not running the combo piece, while with the latter the combo pieces are cards that would refine the main focus of your deck.
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 difference here is that nightmare is always going to be good, even when you are just looping value creatures, and you can accidentally run into a combo. Food Chain is often just sort of ok. If you don't have a way to combo with it, it's often ramp that exacts a high price. I mean, casting acidic slime then next turn exiling it to casting Ulamog seems pretty fair to me, from a battle cruiser perspective, in the sort of way that entwining T&N to fetch a couple of eldrazi instead of a combo is fair. It's just a very, very spikey card that turns off a lot of players (why would I sac a creature to just get one more Mana than I paid for it?) who don't realize that it is as it's baseline a powerful ramp card, albeit a narrow one that opens you up to two for ones. So it's got a fair use (I'd argue that getting even more Mana by saccing a card that produces tokens plus the tokens is also fair), it's just that it's rarely used for that because it turns off a lot of players due to it's spikey nature and it's reputation from prossh. It accidentally combos with a few cards, but those combos are pretty good and for the most part well known and applied in cEDH. cEDH is the only place it caused "problems", though since cEDH is not a balanced format and more about just playing the most powerful things as tightly as possible it's difficult for me to see how problematic it is there, though of course it can be annoying seeing it over and over.
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!