What's funny is that I finally agree with the competitive players, because really, they're arguing the same thing I am as a casual player: the format tries to be two different things at once and it's not working. It was not originally established as a competitive format, that's true, but that's what it has become in a lot of places. SCG has Commander pods at every single event. LGS's like my own have weekly Commander events. Some try to keep it casual and fun like mine, while others are cutthroat and bloodthirsty.
It does not try to be two different things, people try to shoehorn in the second thing because its close. What people do in the name of Commander is not the same as a game of EDH.
It would honestly solve all the issues of the format. There wouldn't be a need for casual v. competitive anymore, because we'd have an actually working ban list that keeps the format in check, and coming from an authoritive figure.
No, it wont. There is no DATA to make ban determinations, its all just 'feel'. There wont be Top 8's etc to base decisions off. Why would that opinion be any better than the RCs?
If people are sick of reading about stuff just stop taking part. You have 100% control over what you read. Simic Ascendancy isn't going to get banned just because you didn't tell someone to shut up on the internet.
It does not try to be two different things, people try to shoehorn in the second thing because its close. What people do in the name of Commander is not the same as a game of EDH.
The RC knows it can't cover both ideas, so they picked social. People try to run side tournamnets and other stuff for prizes because it LOOKS like a good idea. The RC knows its not, so they dont support it. They cannot regulate everyone else, they just do what they think is best for EDH.
Competetive decks like that don't register for them in terms of bans or rules.
If people are sick of reading about stuff just stop taking part. You have 100% control over what you read. Simic Ascendancy isn't going to get banned just because you didn't tell someone to shut up on the internet.
The RC knows it can't cover both ideas, so they picked social. People try to run side tournamnets and other stuff for prizes because it LOOKS like a good idea. The RC knows its not, so they dont support it. They cannot regulate everyone else, they just do what they think is best for EDH.
Competetive decks like that don't register for them in terms of bans or rules.
Good, so they shouldn't be the ones who decide what the Commander ban list is, right?
Casual gamers that really want the format broken up into "competitive vs casual decks" should seriously consider taking up board games or cube instead. I'm not trying to be facetious or condescending here either. Given the fact that "edh players" span the casual through vintage-level crowds, means that the card pool might simply be too expansive for a lot of folks to handle. Casual folks and people pushing for a larger ban list might benefit from a more closed off gaming environment.
Cube can definitely provide this, as everyone is theoretically on an even footing with respect to the card pool and budget = pure skill. The designer and contributors of the cube can include and exclude anything they want. It's really easy to manage the internal cohesion of a cube, and facilitate archetypes and strategies that you do like to play. The cube community is also really growing, and there is tons of room to explore format-wise, while edh may honestly be stagnating for lots of people.
There are also plenty of great board games, lcgs, and other card games that are self contained, reward intelligence and skill, are a hell of a lot cheaper than keeping up with magic. Netrunner, Seasons, Chaos in the Old World, etc. are all fantastic games that definitely can scratch the magic itch, and are a less likely to leave that deflated ego feeling that magic often does.
WotC just needs to hijack the format when they drop their next set of Commander products. They just need to determine a banned list (one that actually addresses the issues with the format) and spread it out to the player base. People will pick it up over the original RC ban list assuming it gets used as the basis for Commander tournies at large events.
It would honestly solve all the issues of the format. There wouldn't be a need for casual v. competitive anymore, because we'd have an actually working ban list that keeps the format in check, and coming from an authoritive figure.
This is a great idea if you want to see even more complaints and the format eventually die. How do you think Wizards would determine the ban list? How do they determine what's a problem in every other format? They collect data from tournaments with published deck lists. The closest we have to that are the side tournaments at SCG events, where there are prizes on the line and broken decks aplenty.
Congratulations, your new ban list is Ad Nauseam, Hermit Druid, and Mana Crypt. Have fun in your crappy games because Sundering Titan, Recurring Nightmare, Limited Resources, and the like only ruin games, not end them.
OR we keep it classified as a social format, play house rules, be nice, and have fun, with a single format called EDH.
Tell that to the people that come to my LGS and all have very different ideas of what Commander should be, who have ruined three systems I have tried to keep things "casual and fun" while still making them pay to play. And to the people at SCG/WOTC events who play in "Commander Chaos" pods that are over in four turns.
And not that there isn't a place for that kind of gameplay, but Commander is so schizophrenic that nobody knows what it's supposed to be anymore.
Good, so they shouldn't be the ones who decide what the Commander ban list is, right?
So they invented the format and have brought it to here, but lets just grab it away because a few people don't think they are doing a good job? There is a saying about babies and bathwater, I always get it wrong though...
Tell that to the people that come to my LGS and all have very different ideas of what Commander should be, who have ruined three systems I have tried to keep things "casual and fun" while still making them pay to play. And to the people at SCG/WOTC events who play in "Commander Chaos" pods that are over in four turns.
I understand how that could be frustrating, but I don't see the point in comming here and trying to undo the RC. How would a banlist decided by WotC be any more accepted than a ban list made by you? Or the RC?
If people are sick of reading about stuff just stop taking part. You have 100% control over what you read. Simic Ascendancy isn't going to get banned just because you didn't tell someone to shut up on the internet.
No reasonable designer can look at this format and say it's fine. There's obvious inconsistencies. The problem is when you have a subjective line of criteria to outline your format, you leave to much room for open discussion leading no where. Then having a catch all rule "House Ban It" to escape goat out of any serious discussion of broken cards..well its agonizing.
Do I think this format could be better ? 100%. Definitely. Do the RC care to take it to the next step ? Obviously not. There's no incentive and until there is, you're stuck with what Sheldon and Co think is fun (or not)
Ok, so the problem with governance is that law is determined by subjective criteria?
There are pages and pages of discussion to be had on that point, but it's enough for me to say that the assumptions made here have been pretty well discredited academically. The assumption is that there's some well of rational, logical objectivity to be discovered. A veritable fountain of wisdom, drinking from which ordains you into an immutable class of the enlightened. From the Divine Right of Kings to the Divine Right of Harvard and Yale University and the Supreme Court of the United States, this idea is a con. Only undiscerning people have ever believed it. So like any other system of rules, we assent to it when the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs of change. When the scale tips in the other direction, we revolt. On that criterion, the RC is doing an acceptable job.
Objectivity? If there is any objectivity, it's that what the RC says is factually objective. That they banned Prime Time is an objective fact. Whether they've justified themselves is subjective, and also irrelevant. There is no opening for discussion, no more than Lawrence v. Texas is still open to discussion. Discussing it just deludes people into thinking the process is participatory, really. So the solution is to stop discussing it as if one's input matters. It doesn't.
On the point of what groups do to have fun, the comment about how a multiplayer format can never be competitive rings true to me. Take the example of a marathon. Runner 1 is a bad runner, but he has some sort of "political" advantage outside the race. Runners 2 and 3 are both good runners, but lack this advantage. Runner 4 is Runner 1's enforcer. He trips out the legs and tackles all Runner 1's competitors, at the cost of Runner 4 himself losing the race. Runner 1 wins. The example may not be what is thought as "Competitive", but it's Game Theory optimized, so there's no avoiding it without curtailing it outside the Game. Ban Lists are "in-Game" controls, so they won't work, no matter how well-tailored they are.
So to everyone's dissatisfaction, Ban-Lists are both inherently, intractably subjective, and insufficient to the task of policing a multiplayer Free-For-All in the first place.
If you want "pure" competition, you have to play either 1v1 or teams. In this FFA format, banning players and decks that you don't like playing with will always be the only solution available. That's where "splitting the format" comes in. You can play 1v1 Commander. It's the most balanced and competitive way to play Commander, and the split has already happened.
I think most people understand the fact that FFA multiplayer will always be this way. I see most of the competitive-casual debate revolving around people wanting to justify themselves in behavior that their group continually complains about, or conversely, people trying to outlaw strategies and specific cards that they'd rather not modify their decks to deal with. Basically, the analogy of an interest group lobbying for some legal change. Nobody is complaining about the system. They just want the system to change to better service them.
This is a great idea if you want to see even more complaints and the format eventually die. How do you think Wizards would determine the ban list? How do they determine what's a problem in every other format? They collect data from tournaments with published deck lists. The closest we have to that are the side tournaments at SCG events, where there are prizes on the line and broken decks aplenty.
Congratulations, your new ban list is Ad Nauseam, Hermit Druid, and Mana Crypt. Have fun in your crappy games because Sundering Titan, Recurring Nightmare, Limited Resources, and the like only ruin games, not end them.
Wizards officially supports the format and gives it it's own, small, ban list.
Wizards and others start holding legit tournaments for EDH and track the results.
Wizards uses this DATA to further the ban list.
EDH gains a sense of balance within itself.
Tell me, how did Wizards start banning any broken things? Oh that's right, those things were legal and being played and abused in their respective formats until they were banned. The dark before the dawn my friend. Yes, things might be bad for a bit at first, but in the end it means a better game.
And where did I say they should just drop the whole current RC ban list? It's pretty obvious there are a lot of cards that don't play well with EDH, like Worldfire, and Karakas. Keep the list. But collect data and make intelligent decisions on the ban list.
There are pages and pages of discussion to be had on that point, but it's enough for me to say that the assumptions made here have been pretty well discredited academically.
(See: A Treatise on the Rights and Obligations of the Voltron Player, or, A Refutation of John Locke's "How to Play Group-Hug" by David Hume, published 1751.)
Wizards officially supports the format and gives it it's own, small, ban list.
Wizards and others start holding legit tournaments for EDH and track the results.
Wizards uses this DATA to further the ban list.
EDH gains a sense of balance within itself.
Tell me, how did Wizards start banning any broken things? Oh that's right, those things were legal and being played and abused in their respective formats until they were banned. The dark before the dawn my friend. Yes, things might be bad for a bit at first, but in the end it means a better game.
And where did I say they should just drop the whole current RC ban list? It's pretty obvious there are a lot of cards that don't play well with EDH, like Worldfire, and Karakas. Keep the list. But collect data and make intelligent decisions on the ban list.
I don't want a ban list built around the worst combo decks ever assmebled. I also don't want a list that changes dramatically from one quarter to the next. I want a game where people don't have to win all the time to feel like they matter. EVERY format besides EDH caters to Spikes, why does this one have to also?
If people are sick of reading about stuff just stop taking part. You have 100% control over what you read. Simic Ascendancy isn't going to get banned just because you didn't tell someone to shut up on the internet.
Wizards officially supports the format and gives it it's own, small, ban list.
Wizards and others start holding legit tournaments for EDH and track the results.
Wizards uses this DATA to further the ban list.
This is a ban list based off of objective data from tournaments. Tournaments with prizes on the line and people competing to win by any means necessary.
It's pretty obvious there are a lot of cards that don't play well with EDH, like Worldfire, and Karakas. Keep the list. But collect data and make intelligent decisions on the ban list.
This is a ban list based off of subjective criteria. You can claim all you want that there is an objective reason why Karakas is banned, but if you've read any random page on this thread you know that one persons objectivity is another persons subjectivity.
You're ignoring one more point about competitive ban lists by Wizards. They don't care how busted a card is, they just care about how over-represented it is and how it lessens the diversity of the format. They didn't give a crap about JtMS until he started showing up in every blue deck (hey, just like Primeval Titan). If Jace had only been in 10% of the blue decks, he wouldn't have been banned. Transfer this to EDH, and Hermit Druid will still be legal because it's not representive of the format, but you'll see crap like Demonic Tutor, E-Wit, and SDT banned.
Wizards officially supports the format and gives it it's own, small, ban list.
Wizards and others start holding legit tournaments for EDH and track the results.
Wizards uses this DATA to further the ban list.
EDH gains a sense of balance within itself.
Tell me, how did Wizards start banning any broken things? Oh that's right, those things were legal and being played and abused in their respective formats until they were banned. The dark before the dawn my friend. Yes, things might be bad for a bit at first, but in the end it means a better game.
And where did I say they should just drop the whole current RC ban list? It's pretty obvious there are a lot of cards that don't play well with EDH, like Worldfire, and Karakas. Keep the list. But collect data and make intelligent decisions on the ban list.
You're assuming that it's the best decks that will always win. They won't. This is FFA, not 1v1. Sanctioned Tournaments with prizes on the line will result in widespread, intractable, out-of-game collusion. Games where one person is "support", and plays only Pithing Needle, Shadow of Doubt, Counterspells, and other such combo hosers. Commanders will either be color-wheel placeholders like Sivitri Scarzam, or Scion of the Ur-Dragon combo out generals. Prize-pools will be split behind closed doors.
Then if WOTC does go to the "data" and make bans, they will find that the only predictor of success is how big a group's contingent is within a tournament. If they do go ahead and make bans on "power level", they'll find that the community doesn't change, players just move on to the new best combo, and players continue to collude and split prize pools. It would take a police effort larger than the one over Major League Baseball to have any impact on this.
This isn't a competitive format because it can't be.
People who come advocating for a more "competitive" game and a more "objective" banlist all seem to ignore this fact. And in the end they're making the phony assumption that if the ban-list they have in mind were adopted, their preferred strategy would be top tier. It wouldn't. That's because the top-tier strategy would be a non-strategy. It would be collusion.
So instead of out-of-game regulation taking the form of collusion, as would be the case in competitive play, it now takes the form of polite, social conversation and house-rules. What's your preference?
But if you still find yourself going up against these strategies that you'd rather not deal with, I'm not going to suggest to politely take the offender aside socially and explain. Apparently, that's not working in enough places. If you don't like someone's combo, take a third player aside and tell them that you're going to shill for them. That you're going to come to the table with a deck that has nothing but answer cards for the other players' decks. That they can play whatever they want, tribal, casual, whatever, and that you're going to make sure no one but them can win. See how long people continue to play with these decks that you don't like, or continue to play at all. And in the meantime, make sure to stop and notice what it looks like for a format to die.
Who gets to determine if it's unfun? What is the criteria for unfun? I think Worldfire is incredibly fun. Can we unban that? Why not?
Oh, because I don't get to influence R&D? Oh.
Yeah, sounds like you understand it. They're not the RC because they're right, they're right because they're the RC.
It doesn't matter whether the RC alleges that they're making a ban for reasons of fun, competitiveness, style points, or bad art. They make bans, people stop playing cards. That they even bother to justify themselves is an unrequired service to the player base, one that they likely perform because they hope it will make logical sense to a lot of people, and they maybe they can convince people that they would do the same thing. Otherwise, it's a favor to all of us.
If we decide to continue to play EDH, we'd better do it in a way that doesn't discourage people to play with us. Because if we can't agree and people stop playing, we don't have a format. One way to get people to agree is have a publicly posted ban-list, but that may not work everywhere. It's your decision whether you want to play by that Ban-list, play by another one, or not play at all.
Who gets to determine if it's unfun? What is the criteria for unfun? I think Worldfire is incredibly fun. Can we unban that? Why not?
Oh, because I don't get to influence R&D? Oh.
The RC encourages house rules. If you and your playgroup like it, by all means play it. If you have a minority opinion, that's how you fix it.
If you play strangers, ask about it. It says on the official page: "These cards (and others like them) should not be played without prior agreement from the other players in the game."
Exactly. If your group likes it, fire away. And don't let one guy yell about how its banned. Politety say 'this is our ban list, please conform'. If they dont then play without him.
As for the "I'm not influentual" whining, how much influence does the Duel Commander committee have? If there is demand, things will be picked up, regardless of who came with it.
If people are sick of reading about stuff just stop taking part. You have 100% control over what you read. Simic Ascendancy isn't going to get banned just because you didn't tell someone to shut up on the internet.
(If any of my points have been made already, I apologize in advance. I only read the first and currently last pages of this thread because going through 6 pages of whining is not my cup of tea, frankly.)
When you think about it, EDH is already split into Social and Competitive: the multiplayer banlist is for Social and the 1v1 banlist is for the competitive. Any personal preferences regarding the banlist(s) can be discussed with your opponent(s) before starting.
I think Ral, though, is rather more upset with the fact that the general population of players has little to no say in the banlist formation process. And he seems to distrust R&D's ability to address the concerns of the playership at large, particularly about consistency of the banlist and what constitutes "fun" gameplay. Unfortunately, there will never be a "consistent" banlist for multiplayer, if only because the power and "fun" levels of cards is very open to debate. Furthermore, (and I don't mean to defend Sheldon or the EDH R&D, I just want to out things in perspective) the R&D for EDH never sought a consistent banlist; just one that removed the most easily or inadvertently abused cards from the pool. Prime Time fits pretty well I to this intent. Hermit Druid requires a deck built around it to some extent (this includes tossing the combo pieces into a has-no-basics deck) to be abused. Other cards on the banlist as well as cards up for consideration for banning, can be debated ad nauseum.
In any case, Ral's other concern (the lack of players' opinions in the R&D process) is rather myopic. When you think about it, there are as many opinions about the ban-status of a card as there are players. If R&D were to try to account for all of them in an effort to please everybody, nobody would be happy. Statistical analysis wouldn't work either for (at least) two reasons: 1) data would come from "competitive" decks, which is somewhat at odds with a Social multilateral banlist; 2) even if data came from voluntary deck submission, the statistics would be confounded by the voluntary nature of data collection, so the decks would hardly be representative of the population of all EDH decks. Data collection from tournaments would necessarily be flawed, since the decks are highly tuned and the playstyles more cutthroat; were data taken from tournament play, the analysis would be biased to favor uncompetitive decks (since the cards in the competition decks would get banned more often). Basically, we are in the double-bind of wanting a logical way to calculate the Social banlist without any way to collect adequately representative data.
The solution? Amend your group banlist on an individual play-group basis. Playing a tourney and don't like their banlist? Don't play. But you really want to? Too bad. The tourney banlist is not your prerogative.
As far as I'm concerned, it alreadyis two formats. EDH (Commander) for casual/social gaming, and Duel Commander for competitive.
In fact, I'm in the process of helping to organize a series of tournaments in different cities specifically for Duel Commander. So far, 4 cities are on board (Windsor, Sarnia, Ann Arbor, and Toronto), with Windsor and Ann Arbor already having hosted their first tournaments.
I keep two Duel Commander decks at all times, and I keep them seperate from my regular EDH decks - I'd never play one format with a deck from the other. They're just built too differently.
It baffles me that people think this format has to be like every other format. Please let those of us who enjoy playing with Sol Rings and other cards that we can hardly play elsewhere continue to play this format we enjoy so much, and make something up for yourself. If you thought competition was greater than the EDH format itself, you'd be playing a different format. I don't agree with every card on the ban list but I'm glad the rules committee has taken the format in the direction they've decided on taking it.
I'd like this to happen. Because I don't even play commander that much anymore. I like Vintage Commander and I want it banned. Kill me.....Kill me......
As far as I know, the Duel Commander banlist wasn't started by very influential guys, so saying you can't change anything because you don't have a foot in the door with Wizards doesn't have to be true.
Agreed 100%. They didn't like the status quo and made their lives better. I really think they took the initiative and no one called them down, they said 'cool on ya, let me look at that'. If someone wants a T1 banlist get cracking.
If people are sick of reading about stuff just stop taking part. You have 100% control over what you read. Simic Ascendancy isn't going to get banned just because you didn't tell someone to shut up on the internet.
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casual = deck with cards that you like
Of course you get to have an opinion, its right here and on their website. Just because they don't cater to you does not mean you don't get a say.
No, it wont. There is no DATA to make ban determinations, its all just 'feel'. There wont be Top 8's etc to base decisions off. Why would that opinion be any better than the RCs?
What does that even mean? What's the difference?
The RC knows it can't cover both ideas, so they picked social. People try to run side tournamnets and other stuff for prizes because it LOOKS like a good idea. The RC knows its not, so they dont support it. They cannot regulate everyone else, they just do what they think is best for EDH.
Competetive decks like that don't register for them in terms of bans or rules.
OR we keep it classified as a social format, play house rules, be nice, and have fun, with a single format called EDH.
/thread.
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Good, so they shouldn't be the ones who decide what the Commander ban list is, right?
Cube can definitely provide this, as everyone is theoretically on an even footing with respect to the card pool and budget = pure skill. The designer and contributors of the cube can include and exclude anything they want. It's really easy to manage the internal cohesion of a cube, and facilitate archetypes and strategies that you do like to play. The cube community is also really growing, and there is tons of room to explore format-wise, while edh may honestly be stagnating for lots of people.
There are also plenty of great board games, lcgs, and other card games that are self contained, reward intelligence and skill, are a hell of a lot cheaper than keeping up with magic. Netrunner, Seasons, Chaos in the Old World, etc. are all fantastic games that definitely can scratch the magic itch, and are a less likely to leave that deflated ego feeling that magic often does.
/2 cents
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
I thought you were the spirit of EDH?
This is a great idea if you want to see even more complaints and the format eventually die. How do you think Wizards would determine the ban list? How do they determine what's a problem in every other format? They collect data from tournaments with published deck lists. The closest we have to that are the side tournaments at SCG events, where there are prizes on the line and broken decks aplenty.
Congratulations, your new ban list is Ad Nauseam, Hermit Druid, and Mana Crypt. Have fun in your crappy games because Sundering Titan, Recurring Nightmare, Limited Resources, and the like only ruin games, not end them.
Misc. EDH Stuff: Commander Cube | Zombies (Horde)
Resources:Commander Rulings FAQ | Commander Deckbuilding Guide
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Tell that to the people that come to my LGS and all have very different ideas of what Commander should be, who have ruined three systems I have tried to keep things "casual and fun" while still making them pay to play. And to the people at SCG/WOTC events who play in "Commander Chaos" pods that are over in four turns.
And not that there isn't a place for that kind of gameplay, but Commander is so schizophrenic that nobody knows what it's supposed to be anymore.
I understand how that could be frustrating, but I don't see the point in comming here and trying to undo the RC. How would a banlist decided by WotC be any more accepted than a ban list made by you? Or the RC?
That really sounds like an issue at your LGS. Again I am sure thats frustrating, but not my experience at all.
Ok, so the problem with governance is that law is determined by subjective criteria?
There are pages and pages of discussion to be had on that point, but it's enough for me to say that the assumptions made here have been pretty well discredited academically. The assumption is that there's some well of rational, logical objectivity to be discovered. A veritable fountain of wisdom, drinking from which ordains you into an immutable class of the enlightened. From the Divine Right of Kings to the Divine Right of Harvard and Yale University and the Supreme Court of the United States, this idea is a con. Only undiscerning people have ever believed it. So like any other system of rules, we assent to it when the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs of change. When the scale tips in the other direction, we revolt. On that criterion, the RC is doing an acceptable job.
Objectivity? If there is any objectivity, it's that what the RC says is factually objective. That they banned Prime Time is an objective fact. Whether they've justified themselves is subjective, and also irrelevant. There is no opening for discussion, no more than Lawrence v. Texas is still open to discussion. Discussing it just deludes people into thinking the process is participatory, really. So the solution is to stop discussing it as if one's input matters. It doesn't.
On the point of what groups do to have fun, the comment about how a multiplayer format can never be competitive rings true to me. Take the example of a marathon. Runner 1 is a bad runner, but he has some sort of "political" advantage outside the race. Runners 2 and 3 are both good runners, but lack this advantage. Runner 4 is Runner 1's enforcer. He trips out the legs and tackles all Runner 1's competitors, at the cost of Runner 4 himself losing the race. Runner 1 wins. The example may not be what is thought as "Competitive", but it's Game Theory optimized, so there's no avoiding it without curtailing it outside the Game. Ban Lists are "in-Game" controls, so they won't work, no matter how well-tailored they are.
So to everyone's dissatisfaction, Ban-Lists are both inherently, intractably subjective, and insufficient to the task of policing a multiplayer Free-For-All in the first place.
If you want "pure" competition, you have to play either 1v1 or teams. In this FFA format, banning players and decks that you don't like playing with will always be the only solution available. That's where "splitting the format" comes in. You can play 1v1 Commander. It's the most balanced and competitive way to play Commander, and the split has already happened.
I think most people understand the fact that FFA multiplayer will always be this way. I see most of the competitive-casual debate revolving around people wanting to justify themselves in behavior that their group continually complains about, or conversely, people trying to outlaw strategies and specific cards that they'd rather not modify their decks to deal with. Basically, the analogy of an interest group lobbying for some legal change. Nobody is complaining about the system. They just want the system to change to better service them.
Too bad, so sad.
Wizards officially supports the format and gives it it's own, small, ban list.
Wizards and others start holding legit tournaments for EDH and track the results.
Wizards uses this DATA to further the ban list.
EDH gains a sense of balance within itself.
Tell me, how did Wizards start banning any broken things? Oh that's right, those things were legal and being played and abused in their respective formats until they were banned. The dark before the dawn my friend. Yes, things might be bad for a bit at first, but in the end it means a better game.
And where did I say they should just drop the whole current RC ban list? It's pretty obvious there are a lot of cards that don't play well with EDH, like Worldfire, and Karakas. Keep the list. But collect data and make intelligent decisions on the ban list.
(See: A Treatise on the Rights and Obligations of the Voltron Player, or, A Refutation of John Locke's "How to Play Group-Hug" by David Hume, published 1751.)
I don't want a ban list built around the worst combo decks ever assmebled. I also don't want a list that changes dramatically from one quarter to the next. I want a game where people don't have to win all the time to feel like they matter. EVERY format besides EDH caters to Spikes, why does this one have to also?
Oh, because I don't get to influence R&D? Oh.
This is a ban list based off of objective data from tournaments. Tournaments with prizes on the line and people competing to win by any means necessary.
This is a ban list based off of subjective criteria. You can claim all you want that there is an objective reason why Karakas is banned, but if you've read any random page on this thread you know that one persons objectivity is another persons subjectivity.
You're ignoring one more point about competitive ban lists by Wizards. They don't care how busted a card is, they just care about how over-represented it is and how it lessens the diversity of the format. They didn't give a crap about JtMS until he started showing up in every blue deck (hey, just like Primeval Titan). If Jace had only been in 10% of the blue decks, he wouldn't have been banned. Transfer this to EDH, and Hermit Druid will still be legal because it's not representive of the format, but you'll see crap like Demonic Tutor, E-Wit, and SDT banned.
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not if i aim to end the game with Divine Intervention then no one wins and yes i have a deck for that
You're assuming that it's the best decks that will always win. They won't. This is FFA, not 1v1. Sanctioned Tournaments with prizes on the line will result in widespread, intractable, out-of-game collusion. Games where one person is "support", and plays only Pithing Needle, Shadow of Doubt, Counterspells, and other such combo hosers. Commanders will either be color-wheel placeholders like Sivitri Scarzam, or Scion of the Ur-Dragon combo out generals. Prize-pools will be split behind closed doors.
Then if WOTC does go to the "data" and make bans, they will find that the only predictor of success is how big a group's contingent is within a tournament. If they do go ahead and make bans on "power level", they'll find that the community doesn't change, players just move on to the new best combo, and players continue to collude and split prize pools. It would take a police effort larger than the one over Major League Baseball to have any impact on this.
This isn't a competitive format because it can't be.
People who come advocating for a more "competitive" game and a more "objective" banlist all seem to ignore this fact. And in the end they're making the phony assumption that if the ban-list they have in mind were adopted, their preferred strategy would be top tier. It wouldn't. That's because the top-tier strategy would be a non-strategy. It would be collusion.
So instead of out-of-game regulation taking the form of collusion, as would be the case in competitive play, it now takes the form of polite, social conversation and house-rules. What's your preference?
But if you still find yourself going up against these strategies that you'd rather not deal with, I'm not going to suggest to politely take the offender aside socially and explain. Apparently, that's not working in enough places. If you don't like someone's combo, take a third player aside and tell them that you're going to shill for them. That you're going to come to the table with a deck that has nothing but answer cards for the other players' decks. That they can play whatever they want, tribal, casual, whatever, and that you're going to make sure no one but them can win. See how long people continue to play with these decks that you don't like, or continue to play at all. And in the meantime, make sure to stop and notice what it looks like for a format to die.
Yeah, sounds like you understand it. They're not the RC because they're right, they're right because they're the RC.
It doesn't matter whether the RC alleges that they're making a ban for reasons of fun, competitiveness, style points, or bad art. They make bans, people stop playing cards. That they even bother to justify themselves is an unrequired service to the player base, one that they likely perform because they hope it will make logical sense to a lot of people, and they maybe they can convince people that they would do the same thing. Otherwise, it's a favor to all of us.
If we decide to continue to play EDH, we'd better do it in a way that doesn't discourage people to play with us. Because if we can't agree and people stop playing, we don't have a format. One way to get people to agree is have a publicly posted ban-list, but that may not work everywhere. It's your decision whether you want to play by that Ban-list, play by another one, or not play at all.
Exactly. If your group likes it, fire away. And don't let one guy yell about how its banned. Politety say 'this is our ban list, please conform'. If they dont then play without him.
Is that a question? I don't understand.
When you think about it, EDH is already split into Social and Competitive: the multiplayer banlist is for Social and the 1v1 banlist is for the competitive. Any personal preferences regarding the banlist(s) can be discussed with your opponent(s) before starting.
I think Ral, though, is rather more upset with the fact that the general population of players has little to no say in the banlist formation process. And he seems to distrust R&D's ability to address the concerns of the playership at large, particularly about consistency of the banlist and what constitutes "fun" gameplay. Unfortunately, there will never be a "consistent" banlist for multiplayer, if only because the power and "fun" levels of cards is very open to debate. Furthermore, (and I don't mean to defend Sheldon or the EDH R&D, I just want to out things in perspective) the R&D for EDH never sought a consistent banlist; just one that removed the most easily or inadvertently abused cards from the pool. Prime Time fits pretty well I to this intent. Hermit Druid requires a deck built around it to some extent (this includes tossing the combo pieces into a has-no-basics deck) to be abused. Other cards on the banlist as well as cards up for consideration for banning, can be debated ad nauseum.
In any case, Ral's other concern (the lack of players' opinions in the R&D process) is rather myopic. When you think about it, there are as many opinions about the ban-status of a card as there are players. If R&D were to try to account for all of them in an effort to please everybody, nobody would be happy. Statistical analysis wouldn't work either for (at least) two reasons: 1) data would come from "competitive" decks, which is somewhat at odds with a Social multilateral banlist; 2) even if data came from voluntary deck submission, the statistics would be confounded by the voluntary nature of data collection, so the decks would hardly be representative of the population of all EDH decks. Data collection from tournaments would necessarily be flawed, since the decks are highly tuned and the playstyles more cutthroat; were data taken from tournament play, the analysis would be biased to favor uncompetitive decks (since the cards in the competition decks would get banned more often). Basically, we are in the double-bind of wanting a logical way to calculate the Social banlist without any way to collect adequately representative data.
The solution? Amend your group banlist on an individual play-group basis. Playing a tourney and don't like their banlist? Don't play. But you really want to? Too bad. The tourney banlist is not your prerogative.
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Palladia-Mors of {The Spirit of EDH}
EDH
WLinvala, Queen of the AngelsW
WUThe Prison of the Grand ArbiterUW [Primer]
URNiv-Mizzet, Handcycling ComboRU
UTalrand, Drake-Slinging to VictoryU
WUGDerevi, Tactical ShufflingGUW
BCao Cao, Discard Stax of Absolute MiseryB
In fact, I'm in the process of helping to organize a series of tournaments in different cities specifically for Duel Commander. So far, 4 cities are on board (Windsor, Sarnia, Ann Arbor, and Toronto), with Windsor and Ann Arbor already having hosted their first tournaments.
I keep two Duel Commander decks at all times, and I keep them seperate from my regular EDH decks - I'd never play one format with a deck from the other. They're just built too differently.
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