If Survival gets banned I will be so pissed. I just traded for one, dammit lol.
I know that feel.
I'm always kind of nervous trading for / buying anything on the 'borderline banned' list (pretty much every card that's been mentioned in this thread qualifies). Personally, I don't think I'd alter the current list much if at all.
--Celestial Dawn / Contamination / Hall of Gemstone--
Frankly the rule that you can only generate mana of your commander's colours is extraneous and makes cards like these function far above their intended power level. I really don't understand why this rule exists in EDH given that you can already only include cards in your own colours. Its like telling a blind man not to peek.
--Black Lotus--
Yes, I'm serious. The decks that want to abuse Lotus already do so with Sun Titan + Lotus Bloom, and it is mostly outclassed by Gilded Lotus in multiplayer anyway. How many decks even run Dark Ritual? I'd much rather have Black Lotus legal and Sol Ring banned.
I agree with both of these claims. Ive had a Zedruu player give me a Celestial Dawn and if it wasnt for him being my buddy, I wouldve knocked the living **** out of him.
I seriously dont get why the moxen and lotus are banned. I mean stronger claims could be made about lotus being uber free mana but the mox seem fine to me.
A little surprised someone decided to take this on and face the inevitable bashing that will eventually happen.
I only have a strong opinion on a few:
I would agree with Hermit Druid and maybe Cradle and Tooth/Nail. I'd also agree with unbanning Koko.
I have to argue my best against banning Coffers though. It doesn't win the game outright or by itself, it comes with the serious drawback of not only being horrible early game, but not guaranteed to even be good later, and every single deck has access to multiple answers. I used to run it in all my decks, but it sucked bad enough that I took it out of everything but mono-black where yes, sometimes it's amazing, but I rarely win because of it. Someone always kills it immediately. And on top of that, you have to run minimal utility lands just to make sure it's good. No way does it need to be banned.
--Goblin Welder--
Almost every trick that applies to Tinker also applies to this, Blightsteel being the exception. Except Welder it is repeatable, it also doubles as ghetto removal, and can be copied (Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker) or reanimated (Mimic Vat). Card is too good.
A 1/1 creature with a tap ability and no protection that requires worthwhile targets in the GY and an artifact on the field (or vice-versa, if you're using it offensively). Tinker tutors out the best card in any given situation. Welder is fragile, situational, fairly slow recursion. There's not much of a comparison there. Welder is a powerful card, but it's nowhere near ban-worthy.
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[Pr]Jaya | Estrid | A rotating cast of decks built out of my box.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. If cards like Staff of Domination are banned because nobody uses them honestly and only uses them to degenerately combo off, then there are a few other cards that fit in that criteria;
To the people mentioning Karakas should be unbanned, that is fricken stupid. Not to mention this makes Mangara of Corondor like a Tier 1 or higher deck.
To come off, as others have echoed for months(years?) now...
Kokusho, the Evening Star- Seriously guys, if you're losing to him, it means you actually need to play some graveyard hate, or at least some exile-based removal. White has a plethora of it(Morningtide comes to mind). Black has at the very least Ashes to Ashes and Withered Wretch. Blue can Time Stop him at the very least. Green can Ground Seal to prevent you from reanimating him. Red has Leyline of Punishment and Sulfuric Vortex. This is a common strategy. Everybody uses the graveyard as a 2nd hand. If people are so concerned about him, just leave him banned as a general, but usable in the deck as a singleton. And honestly I feel like there are much better generals you can use over him(Maga, Traitor to Mortals comes to mind if you want this kind of deck).
Everything else on the list should be there rightfully so.
--Library of Alexandria--
Anyone who thinks that this card poses any kind of a problem in 99 card singleton multiplayer has never played with it. A prime example of malicious banning out of financial jealousy. Hilarious that they forgot about Bazaar of Baghdad when putting this on.
Library is more broken than Bazaar. You can tap it for mana or draw a card for free? That's just like Karakas giving a free unsummon of any general.
Unbanning Black Lotus. I guess that makes my Sharuum deck that much more powerful in always having 3 free colored mana to use every time I cast my general.
[QUOTE=Riley;/comments/4624484] Survival of the Fittest is pretty ridiculous. Not to mention Hermit Druid. Wizards has a knack for making meta-warping 2cmc green cards, eh?[quote]
Survival is not meta warping at all in commander. It's easily disrupted and anybody who's played the game for more then 5 minutes knows what you're up to and will act accordingly.
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The EDH stax primer When you absolutely, positively got to kill every permanent in the room, accept no substitutes.
--Celestial Dawn / Contamination / Hall of Gemstone--
Frankly the rule that you can only generate mana of your commander's colours is extraneous and makes cards like these function far above their intended power level. I really don't understand why this rule exists in EDH given that you can already only include cards in your own colours. Its like telling a blind man not to peek.
The rule is not redundant; it's there to cover corner cases. For example, how about I steal your firebreathing dragon in my WU deck; but I've got Rupture Spire/City of Brass/Exotic Orchard/Forbidden Orchard/Lotus Vale/Meteor Crater/Reflecting Pool, so I (a white-blue mage) still get to funnel red mana into my creature.
Both of these rules (only including correctly-colored cards, and only producing correctly-colored mana) individually would generally produce the same game, but if you've got one without the other, you can have corner cases that are, honestly, a different game. Hybrid mana, Phyrexian mana, and control-change effects being the primary instigators.
--Felidar Sovereign--
If Coalition Victory remains banned then this much easier wincon should follow. I think this is the only life-based card that bothers me in the 40 life format.
Coalition Victory is generally easier in this format than Felidar Sovereign. CV just needs your 5c general, some shocklands & ABU duals or Prismatic Omen, and you win as soon as the spell resolves. Felidar Sovereign doesn't let you win until your next upkeep, which gives all of your opponents a chance to either deal with FS, or deal with you. Of course, you could flash FS into play at the end of the turn prior to yours, but then you're dealing with a two-card combo (or more), and there's dozens of other combos that can similarly win the game.
--Sol Ring / Mana Crypt--
Again, either unban the Moxen or ban these. The only reason I can think that these were not knee-jerk banned is that they are not worth hundreds of dollars. Fiscal value should not be a consideration for a casual banned list! Sol Ring will not be banned because WotC put them into the commander precons but that does not mean that it shouldn't be banned.
When comparing these to Moxen, also realize that the Moxen produce colored mana, which in some decks is infinitely more valuable than colorless (generally, these are 5c decks). Calling for a ban on Sol Ring/Mana Crypt is all well and good, but unbanning the Moxen is a bad idea; then your 5c deck could add all of those to their mana acceleration, at the expense of the mono-red deck that can only add the Ruby.
I agree that Kokusho would be a good card to unban. That subject has been discussed to death elsewhere, so I won't waste much text here.
I can see the argument for unbanning Painter's Servant and banning Iona. I'm not strongly attached to this, but it seems like a fine switch many people approve of.
I don't think Metalworker is a very interesting addition to the format, but it could probably be unbanned just in the interest of keeping the list small.
Vote strongly against the other unbannings. Sway of the stars is an absolutely miserable card - don't suggest to unban it unless you've ever seen it resolve. Karakas can make everyone's generals largely irrelevant with a single drawbackless land drop.
Don't like the "cost issue" bans. None of them are cards that make the format inaccessible, which is the reason behind the original decision to ban the P9.
I wouldn't terribly mind seeing Palinchron, Hermit Druid, Mana Crypt or Imperial Seal banned, but I don't think any of them need to be, either. (Power level in optimized competitive lists is not the primary measuring stick.)
I would terribly mind missing Cabal Coffers, Gaea's Cradle, or Tooth and Nail. Splashy, big mana effects in the late game are part of what define this format.
I don't think anything good will come of this thread. You're going to end up with the 5 color ban list. The RC has some issues with their ban list, but if you think a group of random people on the internet will come up with a better list, you are kidding yourself. At a bare minimum, 80% of the people here have nothing useful to contribute. And if you think I'm not talking about you, then there's a 4 in 5 chance you're wrong.
The real issue is quality control. Suppose you want to write to write a book. What do you think will come out better? The work of one amateur author, or whatever everyone posts on an internet forum? The amateur's book can certainly be better of course, but it will be far better than random forum posters.
When doing a collaborative creative process, you need someone in charge with the authority to say, "no, that idea sucks." You have a horrible signal to noise ratio which stifles the genuinely good ideas.
When you take the time to just have the talented authors work with each other, it's much more likely that people will change their minds. I've come around on Sol Ring, for the record, and believe it's best left OFF the ban list. This came as a direct result of listening to someone making a compelling argument. But if the discussion involved an entire internet forum that argument would easily been drowned out by the constant stream of needing to say, "No, your idea sucks, and here's why." "Your idea also sucks for a totally different reason, and here's why." "Here's why you didn't understand why your idea sucks..."
I hate to break it to you, but most of your ideas suck-- they're either obvious or bad.
You can't get a project like this to work without a leader to manage the project. That leader is the person who decides who has enough game design talent to effectively contribute to the ban list, and they pick 3 to 5 other people. That's your quality control. These people work privately to build a ban list, then present it along with written rationale for the cards on the list.
Note that this system isn't so different from how the RC works, or how Wizards handles its ban list. Looking through the posters on this thread, the only person I'm reasonably confident would do a good job heading up such a team would be Devon, and that's because he mostly survived an aggressive vetting process by Wizards (though ban lists are a bit more development than design). And myself of course. But everyone thinks they are personally talented enough so that's no surprise.
The problem with defining [EDH] by what is "fun" is that everyone seems to define fun as what they don't lose to. If you keep losing to easily answered cards, that means you should improve your deck. If you don't want to improve your deck, then you should come to peace with the idea that you are going to lose because you chose to not interact with better strategies.
I don't think anything good will come of this thread. You're going to end up with the 5 color ban list. The RC has some issues with their ban list, but if you think a group of random people on the internet will come up with a better list, you are kidding yourself. At a bare minimum, 80% of the people here have nothing useful to contribute. And if you think I'm not talking about you, then there's a 4 in 5 chance you're wrong.
The real issue is quality control. Suppose you want to write to write a book. What do you think will come out better? The work of one amateur author, or whatever everyone posts on an internet forum? The amateur's book can certainly be better of course, but it will be far better than random forum posters.
When doing a collaborative creative process, you need someone in charge with the authority to say, "no, that idea sucks." You have a horrible signal to noise ratio which stifles the genuinely good ideas.
When you take the time to just have the talented authors work with each other, it's much more likely that people will change their minds. I've come around on Sol Ring, for the record, and believe it's best left OFF the ban list. This came as a direct result of listening to someone making a compelling argument. But if the discussion involved an entire internet forum that argument would easily been drowned out by the constant stream of needing to say, "No, your idea sucks, and here's why." "Your idea also sucks for a totally different reason, and here's why." "Here's why you didn't understand why your idea sucks..."
I hate to break it to you, but most of your ideas suck-- they're either obvious or bad.
You can't get a project like this to work without a leader to manage the project. That leader is the person who decides who has enough game design talent to effectively contribute to the ban list, and they pick 3 to 5 other people. That's your quality control. These people work privately to build a ban list, then present it along with written rationale for the cards on the list.
Note that this system isn't so different from how the RC works, or how Wizards handles its ban list. Looking through the posters on this thread, the only person I'm reasonably confident would do a good job heading up such a team would be Devon, and that's because he mostly survived an aggressive vetting process by Wizards (though ban lists are a bit more development than design). And myself of course. But everyone thinks they are personally talented enough so that's no surprise.
I agree with most everything you said. It's tough to create this kind of thing with a bunch of random people that you don't even know and can't even see.
The reason I made this thread is to try and gauge whether or not many of us actually have a reason to be unhappy with the RC's banlist. As I said in the OP, this is more a social experiment than anything. Arguments on the Official Banlist Discussion Thread have been largely circular in nature with no one to keep tabs on what the general player actually wants. By tallying the results and giving a good visual representation of the changes that we'd potentially like to make to the list, I feel as though we might make more progress and clarify our thoughts a little more on the subject. If we want change, we can't really sit in the Official Banlist Discussion thread and keep bumping it in order to complain about our misgivings.
Anyway, I've looked through the thread and have made a tentative running tally of the suggestions. +1 for approval and -1 for disapproval. Cards can have net negative values at the moment. I will update the OP with results.
Emmara is like the worst parts of Legends and Homelands got pregnant, aborted the fetus, tossed it in the trashcan, set it on fire and wrapped the corpse in a Dragon's Maze pack wrapper.
Competitive players are the ones who care about the banlist anyway.
Casual players will house ban whatever silly things they lose to because that makes them happy. That is great. We should be creating a banned list for competitive players, based on what they can break in the format because they are the only ones who will abide by it strictly anyway.
There is currently no one single dominant multiplayer strategy. I have looked around and I have played very good players, but no one deck will consistently win every game. EDH is a multiplayer, singleton format, thus it is incredibly hard for any one deck to truly dominate the metagame (which we don't even have). So if we don't have an established metagame, there is no best deck, and no one single card is breaking the format, what is the problem? Why are people complaining? If the competitive players can't find a way to break the format doesn't that mean that things are just fine?
We don't fix or improve anything by banning Intuition, Hermit Druid, Mana Crypt, Imperial Seal, or Mishra's Workshop (a card I am surprised I didn't see mentioned as it is 10x more broken than Cradle or Coffers). Casual players aren't playing those cards anyway. Competitive players are playing those cards against other competitive players who appreciate the challenge. Banning them doesn't help Timmy with Craw Wurm.dec because he is always going to build whatever jank makes him happy.
Just leave the format alone. Leave the banned list alone (or take cards off). This format is the last place where some amazing cards are playable outside of Vintage and it would be great if it stayed that way. If you truly have a problem with any cards that aren't on the banned list already, you probably aren't a competitive player and you can just house ban them. Stop trying to bully the community into setting the standard at a lower level because you don't want a challenge.
I will just repost this so that it is here as well:
Casual players will house ban whatever silly things they lose to because that makes them happy. That is great. We should be creating a banned list for competitive players, based on what they can break in the format because they are the only ones who will abide by it strictly anyway.
There is currently no one single dominant multiplayer strategy. I have looked around and I have played very good players, but no one deck will consistently win every game. EDH is a multiplayer, singleton format, thus it is incredibly hard for any one deck to truly dominate the metagame (which we don't even have). So if we don't have an established metagame, there is no best deck, and no one single card is breaking the format, what is the problem? Why are people complaining? If the competitive players can't find a way to break the format doesn't that mean that things are just fine?
We don't fix or improve anything by banning Intuition, Hermit Druid, Mana Crypt, Imperial Seal, or Mishra's Workshop (a card I am surprised I didn't see mentioned as it is 10x more broken than Cradle or Coffers). Casual players aren't playing those cards anyway. Competitive players are playing those cards against other competitive players who appreciate the challenge. Banning them doesn't help Timmy with Craw Wurm.dec because he is always going to build whatever jank makes him happy.
Just leave the format alone. Leave the banned list alone (or take cards off). This format is the last place where some amazing cards are playable outside of Vintage and it would be great if it stayed that way. If you truly have a problem with any cards that aren't on the banned list already, you probably aren't a competitive player and you can just house ban them. Stop trying to bully the community into setting the standard at a lower level because you don't want a challenge.
Honestly when I started playing EDH I thought it was meant to be a completely degenerate format where the only bans would be the groups. Then again, I think that Un-cards should be completely legal in this casual format. If casual players arn't going to try and break anything than I really question why we're arguing so much over having any ban list at all.
In fact, I think I might make the motion in my playgroup to not use any kind of restriction. Always thought that things like Staying Power were the most hilarious cards in the game anyway.
Emmara is like the worst parts of Legends and Homelands got pregnant, aborted the fetus, tossed it in the trashcan, set it on fire and wrapped the corpse in a Dragon's Maze pack wrapper.
I guess I'll add my vote on the two in the flux state up there.
Metalworker is truly degenerate, the epitome of "fastmanaiwin.dek" leave him banned.
Tooth and Nail is a 9 mana fricken sorcery, it's fine. At 9 mana, you should be winning the game anyway. Time Stretch is just 1 mana more and no one complains about that. seriously? I can break way more with two extra turns(which let me assemble my combo and win on the spot anyway) than I can with two creatures that die to most removal anyway. For the record, no I don't think that Time Stretch should be banned.
I agree with most everything you said. It's tough to create this kind of thing with a bunch of random people that you don't even know and can't even see.
...
Anyway, I've looked through the thread and have made a tentative running tally of the suggestions. +1 for approval and -1 for disapproval. Cards can have net negative values at the moment. I will update the OP with results.
The problem is that you're reducing the ban list to a democratic system, where everyone's opinion has equal weight. But that's not an accurate reflection of reality, which is the original point I was getting at. Not everyone's ideas are good, and their votes don't matter.
This probably comes off as brash and arrogant, but at least let me be open about my opinions here. My opinions on this matter have more weight and value than the vast majority of posters here. I don't appreciate the fact that my opinion only counts in this poll with value 1 while everyone else's also counts at value 1. You'll get a number at the end, but I don't think that number represents anything meaningful.
The problem with defining [EDH] by what is "fun" is that everyone seems to define fun as what they don't lose to. If you keep losing to easily answered cards, that means you should improve your deck. If you don't want to improve your deck, then you should come to peace with the idea that you are going to lose because you chose to not interact with better strategies.
The problem with defining [EDH] by what is "fun" is that everyone seems to define fun as what they don't lose to. If you keep losing to easily answered cards, that means you should improve your deck. If you don't want to improve your deck, then you should come to peace with the idea that you are going to lose because you chose to not interact with better strategies.
The thing is, it's really difficult to objectively test end-game cards. When I did the Sol Ring test, it was doable because Sol Ring was available turn 1, and set the stage for later plays. In order to test something like Tooth and Nail, we'd have to take into account a huge number of other factors; so many different things can happen in that first nine turns of the game. The guy playing T&N might not even still be alive on turn 9!
I think it's a philosophy issue if anything. At some point, the game simply has to end. Magic was DESIGNED as a game that ultimately moved you towards its own end (read Maro's most recent article on 10 Things Every Game Needs for a reinforcement of this), and the mechanic by which Magic does this is having more and more powerful cards available as the game progresses, so eventually some card is powerful enough to break through and seal the deal.
Tooth and Nail would be busted if it cost 2, but at 9 it does exactly what it should do - move the game towards its end. So does Time Stretch and Emrakul.
On that note: I am HUGELY in favor of bringing Emmy off the banned list, for exactly that reason. People that complained about her only complained about the state of the board once she was out, ignoring the fact that the battle to bring her out in the first place was the REAL game. She might have been the deal-sealer, but if the game progressed to the point where I was able to play her, then the game's gone on long enough. (Unless some cheaty method was used to bring her out, in which case that method is the culprit, not Emmy.)
Let games end - so we can play more!
EDIT: I would also like to throw my unilateral support behind tedv. He's right - as undemocratic as it may seem, some opinions ARE wrong.
(Unless some cheaty method was used to bring her out, in which case that method is the culprit, not Emmy.)
There are numerous methods out there for cheating a creature into play. If a creature is too format-warping upon cheated into play, you ban the creature, not the litany of cheating methods. It's the simplest and most direct solution. Pretending as if that's not the case is disingenuous.
The thing is, it's really difficult to objectively test end-game cards. When I did the Sol Ring test, it was doable because Sol Ring was available turn 1, and set the stage for later plays. In order to test something like Tooth and Nail, we'd have to take into account a huge number of other factors; so many different things can happen in that first nine turns of the game. The guy playing T&N might not even still be alive on turn 9!
I've thought about how to modify your Sol Ring test so it could be applied to other cards that you clearly want to draw at a certain time in the game, but not necessarily on turn 1.
I think the solution is to set aside the card being tested at the start of the time. Any time you draw a card, you may choose to draw that card instead of drawing from your deck. Basically you have a once-per-game opportunity to top deck that card exactly when you need it. Note that this is a mere extension of the Sol Ring test, where you choose to "top deck" Sol Ring in your initial 7 cards.
Now you can test the effect of top decking Tooth and Nail right when you hit 9 mana, or Primeval Titan / Consecrated on turn 4-5 or whatever. You can even try it with Emrakul to see if the game degenerates. (I bet it won't.)
Anyway, one of my play groups has been discussing a modified local ban list. We're currently considering candidates are are mapping out a similar scientific test for each of the cards in question. Expect to see something posted... some day.
The problem with defining [EDH] by what is "fun" is that everyone seems to define fun as what they don't lose to. If you keep losing to easily answered cards, that means you should improve your deck. If you don't want to improve your deck, then you should come to peace with the idea that you are going to lose because you chose to not interact with better strategies.
@tedv: I understand that making this democratic will undeniably come up with terrible results, I'm simply hoping that some measure of certainty can be gained regarding certain cards that have been on our minds for years. Undoubtedly, there will be terrible suggestions, this is why I won't include them unless they have significant support or I have followed arguments on the Official Banlist Discussion thread for sometime.
If a random guy says "oooh let's unban Protean Hulk, and another guy says "oooh let's ban Yosei, the Morning Star, and nobody agrees with them, I will not include these into the final result. I know it's a difficult and largely impossible thing to come up with any form of cohesion, but I'm hoping that some of the results will shine through and the decision of the community will be obvious with at least a few cards (like Hermit Druid and Kokusho, the Evening Star).
I understand that not all opinions can be taken as equal. Keep in mind that I'm not actually creating a new banlist, I only want to see if there is any sort of (vague though it may be) consensus on a few specific cards.
I think it's too early to make any actual changes to the "Community banlist" yet, but I'm hoping to get a few games in with the list once everything is said and done.
Emmara is like the worst parts of Legends and Homelands got pregnant, aborted the fetus, tossed it in the trashcan, set it on fire and wrapped the corpse in a Dragon's Maze pack wrapper.
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I know that feel.
I'm always kind of nervous trading for / buying anything on the 'borderline banned' list (pretty much every card that's been mentioned in this thread qualifies). Personally, I don't think I'd alter the current list much if at all.
Frankly the rule that you can only generate mana of your commander's colours is extraneous and makes cards like these function far above their intended power level. I really don't understand why this rule exists in EDH given that you can already only include cards in your own colours. Its like telling a blind man not to peek.
--Black Lotus--
Yes, I'm serious. The decks that want to abuse Lotus already do so with Sun Titan + Lotus Bloom, and it is mostly outclassed by Gilded Lotus in multiplayer anyway. How many decks even run Dark Ritual? I'd much rather have Black Lotus legal and Sol Ring banned.
I agree with both of these claims. Ive had a Zedruu player give me a Celestial Dawn and if it wasnt for him being my buddy, I wouldve knocked the living **** out of him.
I seriously dont get why the moxen and lotus are banned. I mean stronger claims could be made about lotus being uber free mana but the mox seem fine to me.
/thread
I only have a strong opinion on a few:
I would agree with Hermit Druid and maybe Cradle and Tooth/Nail. I'd also agree with unbanning Koko.
I have to argue my best against banning Coffers though. It doesn't win the game outright or by itself, it comes with the serious drawback of not only being horrible early game, but not guaranteed to even be good later, and every single deck has access to multiple answers. I used to run it in all my decks, but it sucked bad enough that I took it out of everything but mono-black where yes, sometimes it's amazing, but I rarely win because of it. Someone always kills it immediately. And on top of that, you have to run minimal utility lands just to make sure it's good. No way does it need to be banned.
Banner by Nakamura, Thanks!
EDH Math
EDH Decks:
Ghost Council: The Magic Mafia of Orzhova
BB Drana: Down with the Sickness
Rasputin: Reality is Broken
Vish Kal Bleeder: Bloody Kisses
Teysa, Orzhov Dominatrix
Stonebrow: Breaking Things
BWR Kaalia Punisher: Heaven's on Fire
Grimgrin: Dead Reckoning
A 1/1 creature with a tap ability and no protection that requires worthwhile targets in the GY and an artifact on the field (or vice-versa, if you're using it offensively). Tinker tutors out the best card in any given situation. Welder is fragile, situational, fairly slow recursion. There's not much of a comparison there. Welder is a powerful card, but it's nowhere near ban-worthy.
Power Artifact- Honestly...who uses this for stuff other than infinite mana?
Mind over Matter- Come on now...who has actually used this honestly as a "neat tool".
Hermit Druid- ...I don't think I need to say anything here.
Intuition- Much like Gifts Ungiven, this is 3 mana at instant speed to tutor up an "I win the game" boardstate. Or just EoT Intuition for Life from the Loam, Academy Ruins, & Engineered Explosives GG?
To the people mentioning Karakas should be unbanned, that is fricken stupid. Not to mention this makes Mangara of Corondor like a Tier 1 or higher deck.
To come off, as others have echoed for months(years?) now...
Kokusho, the Evening Star- Seriously guys, if you're losing to him, it means you actually need to play some graveyard hate, or at least some exile-based removal. White has a plethora of it(Morningtide comes to mind). Black has at the very least Ashes to Ashes and Withered Wretch. Blue can Time Stop him at the very least. Green can Ground Seal to prevent you from reanimating him. Red has Leyline of Punishment and Sulfuric Vortex. This is a common strategy. Everybody uses the graveyard as a 2nd hand. If people are so concerned about him, just leave him banned as a general, but usable in the deck as a singleton. And honestly I feel like there are much better generals you can use over him(Maga, Traitor to Mortals comes to mind if you want this kind of deck).
Everything else on the list should be there rightfully so.
Steel Sabotage'ng Orbs of Mellowness since 2011.
Library is more broken than Bazaar. You can tap it for mana or draw a card for free? That's just like Karakas giving a free unsummon of any general.
Unbanning Black Lotus. I guess that makes my Sharuum deck that much more powerful in always having 3 free colored mana to use every time I cast my general.
Intuition is fine. Otherwise, how else am I gonna tutor Reveillark, Karmic Guide, and Eternal Witness end of opponent's turn?
Survival of the Fittest is pretty ridiculous. Not to mention Hermit Druid. Wizards has a knack for making meta-warping 2cmc green cards, eh?[quote]
Survival is not meta warping at all in commander. It's easily disrupted and anybody who's played the game for more then 5 minutes knows what you're up to and will act accordingly.
The EDH stax primer
When you absolutely, positively got to kill every permanent in the room, accept no substitutes.
Both of these rules (only including correctly-colored cards, and only producing correctly-colored mana) individually would generally produce the same game, but if you've got one without the other, you can have corner cases that are, honestly, a different game. Hybrid mana, Phyrexian mana, and control-change effects being the primary instigators.
Coalition Victory is generally easier in this format than Felidar Sovereign. CV just needs your 5c general, some shocklands & ABU duals or Prismatic Omen, and you win as soon as the spell resolves. Felidar Sovereign doesn't let you win until your next upkeep, which gives all of your opponents a chance to either deal with FS, or deal with you. Of course, you could flash FS into play at the end of the turn prior to yours, but then you're dealing with a two-card combo (or more), and there's dozens of other combos that can similarly win the game.
When comparing these to Moxen, also realize that the Moxen produce colored mana, which in some decks is infinitely more valuable than colorless (generally, these are 5c decks). Calling for a ban on Sol Ring/Mana Crypt is all well and good, but unbanning the Moxen is a bad idea; then your 5c deck could add all of those to their mana acceleration, at the expense of the mono-red deck that can only add the Ruby.
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I can see the argument for unbanning Painter's Servant and banning Iona. I'm not strongly attached to this, but it seems like a fine switch many people approve of.
I don't think Metalworker is a very interesting addition to the format, but it could probably be unbanned just in the interest of keeping the list small.
Vote strongly against the other unbannings. Sway of the stars is an absolutely miserable card - don't suggest to unban it unless you've ever seen it resolve. Karakas can make everyone's generals largely irrelevant with a single drawbackless land drop.
Don't like the "cost issue" bans. None of them are cards that make the format inaccessible, which is the reason behind the original decision to ban the P9.
I wouldn't terribly mind seeing Palinchron, Hermit Druid, Mana Crypt or Imperial Seal banned, but I don't think any of them need to be, either. (Power level in optimized competitive lists is not the primary measuring stick.)
I would terribly mind missing Cabal Coffers, Gaea's Cradle, or Tooth and Nail. Splashy, big mana effects in the late game are part of what define this format.
The real issue is quality control. Suppose you want to write to write a book. What do you think will come out better? The work of one amateur author, or whatever everyone posts on an internet forum? The amateur's book can certainly be better of course, but it will be far better than random forum posters.
When doing a collaborative creative process, you need someone in charge with the authority to say, "no, that idea sucks." You have a horrible signal to noise ratio which stifles the genuinely good ideas.
When you take the time to just have the talented authors work with each other, it's much more likely that people will change their minds. I've come around on Sol Ring, for the record, and believe it's best left OFF the ban list. This came as a direct result of listening to someone making a compelling argument. But if the discussion involved an entire internet forum that argument would easily been drowned out by the constant stream of needing to say, "No, your idea sucks, and here's why." "Your idea also sucks for a totally different reason, and here's why." "Here's why you didn't understand why your idea sucks..."
I hate to break it to you, but most of your ideas suck-- they're either obvious or bad.
You can't get a project like this to work without a leader to manage the project. That leader is the person who decides who has enough game design talent to effectively contribute to the ban list, and they pick 3 to 5 other people. That's your quality control. These people work privately to build a ban list, then present it along with written rationale for the cards on the list.
Note that this system isn't so different from how the RC works, or how Wizards handles its ban list. Looking through the posters on this thread, the only person I'm reasonably confident would do a good job heading up such a team would be Devon, and that's because he mostly survived an aggressive vetting process by Wizards (though ban lists are a bit more development than design). And myself of course. But everyone thinks they are personally talented enough so that's no surprise.
I agree with most everything you said. It's tough to create this kind of thing with a bunch of random people that you don't even know and can't even see.
The reason I made this thread is to try and gauge whether or not many of us actually have a reason to be unhappy with the RC's banlist. As I said in the OP, this is more a social experiment than anything. Arguments on the Official Banlist Discussion Thread have been largely circular in nature with no one to keep tabs on what the general player actually wants. By tallying the results and giving a good visual representation of the changes that we'd potentially like to make to the list, I feel as though we might make more progress and clarify our thoughts a little more on the subject. If we want change, we can't really sit in the Official Banlist Discussion thread and keep bumping it in order to complain about our misgivings.
Anyway, I've looked through the thread and have made a tentative running tally of the suggestions. +1 for approval and -1 for disapproval. Cards can have net negative values at the moment. I will update the OP with results.
Casual players will house ban whatever silly things they lose to because that makes them happy. That is great. We should be creating a banned list for competitive players, based on what they can break in the format because they are the only ones who will abide by it strictly anyway.
There is currently no one single dominant multiplayer strategy. I have looked around and I have played very good players, but no one deck will consistently win every game. EDH is a multiplayer, singleton format, thus it is incredibly hard for any one deck to truly dominate the metagame (which we don't even have). So if we don't have an established metagame, there is no best deck, and no one single card is breaking the format, what is the problem? Why are people complaining? If the competitive players can't find a way to break the format doesn't that mean that things are just fine?
We don't fix or improve anything by banning Intuition, Hermit Druid, Mana Crypt, Imperial Seal, or Mishra's Workshop (a card I am surprised I didn't see mentioned as it is 10x more broken than Cradle or Coffers). Casual players aren't playing those cards anyway. Competitive players are playing those cards against other competitive players who appreciate the challenge. Banning them doesn't help Timmy with Craw Wurm.dec because he is always going to build whatever jank makes him happy.
Just leave the format alone. Leave the banned list alone (or take cards off). This format is the last place where some amazing cards are playable outside of Vintage and it would be great if it stayed that way. If you truly have a problem with any cards that aren't on the banned list already, you probably aren't a competitive player and you can just house ban them. Stop trying to bully the community into setting the standard at a lower level because you don't want a challenge.
Honestly when I started playing EDH I thought it was meant to be a completely degenerate format where the only bans would be the groups. Then again, I think that Un-cards should be completely legal in this casual format. If casual players arn't going to try and break anything than I really question why we're arguing so much over having any ban list at all.
In fact, I think I might make the motion in my playgroup to not use any kind of restriction. Always thought that things like Staying Power were the most hilarious cards in the game anyway.
As can be seen from the tentative tally, many people are against the banning of Coffers and Cradle.
Tooth and Nail and Metalworker are currently in a state of flux with 0 net votes.
People generally don't want to see Karakas unbanned.
People would like to see Kokusho, the Evening Star off the banlist.
Many people want to see Hermit Druid banned.
Metalworker is truly degenerate, the epitome of "fastmanaiwin.dek" leave him banned.
Tooth and Nail is a 9 mana fricken sorcery, it's fine. At 9 mana, you should be winning the game anyway. Time Stretch is just 1 mana more and no one complains about that. seriously? I can break way more with two extra turns(which let me assemble my combo and win on the spot anyway) than I can with two creatures that die to most removal anyway. For the record, no I don't think that Time Stretch should be banned.
Steel Sabotage'ng Orbs of Mellowness since 2011.
So, in summary, a bunch of people with no qualifications, having done no testing, have whined about a handful of cards they don't understand.
So what do you plan to do with this? Are you going to nail your 99 theses to the RC's door?
Or are you going to go out and test these ideas and bring us back some relevant data?
The problem is that you're reducing the ban list to a democratic system, where everyone's opinion has equal weight. But that's not an accurate reflection of reality, which is the original point I was getting at. Not everyone's ideas are good, and their votes don't matter.
This probably comes off as brash and arrogant, but at least let me be open about my opinions here. My opinions on this matter have more weight and value than the vast majority of posters here. I don't appreciate the fact that my opinion only counts in this poll with value 1 while everyone else's also counts at value 1. You'll get a number at the end, but I don't think that number represents anything meaningful.
ban hermit druid
ban mana crypt
ban sol ring
ban mana drain
unban kokusho
unban emrakul
unban yawgmoth's bargain
unban protean hulk
unban upheaval
unban sway of the stars
unban erayo as commander
don't ban survival
don't ban oath of druids
don't ban coffers
don't ban gaea's cradle
don't ban iona
don't ban palinchron
don't unban karakas
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I think it's a philosophy issue if anything. At some point, the game simply has to end. Magic was DESIGNED as a game that ultimately moved you towards its own end (read Maro's most recent article on 10 Things Every Game Needs for a reinforcement of this), and the mechanic by which Magic does this is having more and more powerful cards available as the game progresses, so eventually some card is powerful enough to break through and seal the deal.
Tooth and Nail would be busted if it cost 2, but at 9 it does exactly what it should do - move the game towards its end. So does Time Stretch and Emrakul.
On that note: I am HUGELY in favor of bringing Emmy off the banned list, for exactly that reason. People that complained about her only complained about the state of the board once she was out, ignoring the fact that the battle to bring her out in the first place was the REAL game. She might have been the deal-sealer, but if the game progressed to the point where I was able to play her, then the game's gone on long enough. (Unless some cheaty method was used to bring her out, in which case that method is the culprit, not Emmy.)
Let games end - so we can play more!
EDIT: I would also like to throw my unilateral support behind tedv. He's right - as undemocratic as it may seem, some opinions ARE wrong.
what? please explain yourself.
also, changed my mind on resources.
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There are numerous methods out there for cheating a creature into play. If a creature is too format-warping upon cheated into play, you ban the creature, not the litany of cheating methods. It's the simplest and most direct solution. Pretending as if that's not the case is disingenuous.
I've thought about how to modify your Sol Ring test so it could be applied to other cards that you clearly want to draw at a certain time in the game, but not necessarily on turn 1.
I think the solution is to set aside the card being tested at the start of the time. Any time you draw a card, you may choose to draw that card instead of drawing from your deck. Basically you have a once-per-game opportunity to top deck that card exactly when you need it. Note that this is a mere extension of the Sol Ring test, where you choose to "top deck" Sol Ring in your initial 7 cards.
Now you can test the effect of top decking Tooth and Nail right when you hit 9 mana, or Primeval Titan / Consecrated on turn 4-5 or whatever. You can even try it with Emrakul to see if the game degenerates. (I bet it won't.)
Anyway, one of my play groups has been discussing a modified local ban list. We're currently considering candidates are are mapping out a similar scientific test for each of the cards in question. Expect to see something posted... some day.
If a random guy says "oooh let's unban Protean Hulk, and another guy says "oooh let's ban Yosei, the Morning Star, and nobody agrees with them, I will not include these into the final result. I know it's a difficult and largely impossible thing to come up with any form of cohesion, but I'm hoping that some of the results will shine through and the decision of the community will be obvious with at least a few cards (like Hermit Druid and Kokusho, the Evening Star).
I understand that not all opinions can be taken as equal. Keep in mind that I'm not actually creating a new banlist, I only want to see if there is any sort of (vague though it may be) consensus on a few specific cards.
I think it's too early to make any actual changes to the "Community banlist" yet, but I'm hoping to get a few games in with the list once everything is said and done.