T1 forest x crypt/mox/pertal/ elvish spirit guide x roffellos.
T2 land x explosive vegetation variant
T3 land x OG kozilek/GenWave for x=7
The most likeliest of scenarios. But assuming that you'll be running all thr green ramp cards and not missing a Forest land drop, you are guaranteed to have six mana on turn 3 and can cast at least one ramp spell turn 3, meaning turn 4 you have a minimum of 10 mana. That is a crazy amount of mana to have extremely safe odds of getting very early on.
I tend to avoid infinite combos in my deck, so when I go off with Paradox Engine, it doesn't tend to be an "I win" combo so much as I use topdeck manipulation and chain together draw spells until I draw into one of the deck's various win conditions. As a result, things can sometimes take awhile, depending on my board state at the time and how long it takes to draw into a win condition, kind of like what Pokken refers to as "functionally comboing in a nondeterministic way." Usually I can win on the round I cast Paradox Engine, but that round might take awhile. The result is not exactly durdling, but not a great game state, either. This is not atypical of what I see when less competitive/combo-oriented players run Paradox Engine.
Would people call 'durdling' for a long term and winning to be an undesirable game state? I don't. I would ask the pilot to either bite the bullet and make an infinite combo, or to not play the deck very often. Mishra Eggs is a deck I face relatively often and the turns are unbearably long. Remember a game with two 40 minute turns that ended with me at 4 life, two other opponents dead, and the pilot scooping because he was out of win conditions. It isn't fun.
But, I think 'creates an undesirable game state' refers to cards that stop people from being able to play because of the rules (i.e. Leovold, who tends to make people not have any cards in hand very easily).
PE, in my opinion, could only be banned if it is too ubiquitous. I would say that its ubiquity is decreasing, and that in most metas it is not as prevalent as PoK.
Regarding Rofellos - He is essentially a low cmc mana doubler with little downside in your command zone. Playing all basics is not a big downside when the upside is double mana. You already have incentives for playing all basics in monocolour because of things like Gauntlet of Power and Extraplanar lens.
Rofellos is silly in the command zone.
That being said, which ban criteria does he violate?
The durdles were referenced as part of the issue with Prophet of Kruphix so I think taking an extremely long nondeterministic "combo" turn definitely violates problematic game states in some fashion. Taking very long turns is honestly one of the worst offenses in my mind.
Re: Roffelcopter
I think he's really borderline; he violates the too much mana too quickly ban criteria and none other, but being in the command zone exacerbates it.
Rofellos generates +3 mana on turn 3, which I don't think is really that big of a deal because there are a number of decks that can do this in more colors fairly consistently; most artifact ramp decks and most mana dork ramp decks will do this. Rofellos gets to play fewer bad supporting cards, but at the cost of not playing more than a handful of utility lands, which is a real cost, though arguable whether it's worse than having to play a bunch of ramp spells.
However, BW inspired me to run the math, and, assuming you play:
Your odds of a turn 1 Rofellos are pretty disturbingly high especially with mulligans (~30% pre-mulligan). I think I just assumed that would be rarer than it was for some reason.
I'm not sure if that changes the calculus or not, since a turn 2 Azusa is significantly more likely (~60% with 10 turn 0 or 1 ramp sources, which is pretty common, 40% with 6).
My suspicion is that if Azusa is not currently a blight on the format, Roffelcopter wouldn't be much worse. He does have a few ways to be more annoying casually (enabling a fairly budget elf deck that'd be very powerful, for example), but I'm not sure that's a bad thing.
I think I would need to see it in practice but I think the game has changed quite a bit since Primeval Titan and then Sylvan Primordial ruled the format. Multicolored bombs have really changed the color dynamic a bit, and they've actually printed a crazy number of bombs in other colors in recent years that didn't previously have stuff like Sylvan Primordial
On the flipside of that, the colorless bombs from the latest Zendikar block are kinda scary, adding newlamog to the Rofellos deck maybe is scary? It doesn't seem to have fundamentally broken Azusa decks, but I dunno. Rof can be a hair faster than her.
------------------------
My summary thinking at this point is that at the very least the comparison to Azusa is very fair. Both have extremely high odds of generating 8-10 mana on turn 4, which is actually fairly comparable to Metalworker or PE--though their offense goes way down outside of the command zone obviously.
There're pros and cons of each commander, but Rofellos can do it in more ways (medium lands elves, heavy lands, low lands with land search) and with less support (playing 30+ forests vs. needing a 45+ lands and a somewhat tailored decklist to finding them). And probably slightly more consistently.
I think that might be the dealbreaker, honestly, that shoves Rofellos into problematic casual omnipresence and makes him worse than Azusa. He makes at least 2 or 3 discrete deck archetypes, where Azusa really only has one (other than total casuals), maybe one and a half if you stretch it and split "green fatties" from "brown fatties."
I dunno. Elfball is a think and being able to have reliable large quantities of mana would just empower those decks even more.
So weirdly I think that dork decks would see play but they'd mostly be worse than Ezuri. But it would see play and contribute to seeming omnipresence.
I'm still kinda noodling on it but I think rof's design lends himself to playing more, better, higher impact cards and less ramp - really you don't need to play much ramp at all, except maybe a handful of the better land search spells (the 3 cmc and 4 CMC ones that are + cards).
(edit: though of course people would play the stronger 0 cmc rocks in competitive builds, I don't expect you'd see a lot of lotus petals in most rof decks).
He basically is like having a high powered dork in the command zone, so the value added from having dorks goes down quite a bit. Kind of the same way that creature tutors are less valuable in a Momir Vig deck, and card draw less valuable in Prime Speaker Zeg, etc.
I dunno. Elfball is a think and being able to have reliable large quantities of mana would just empower those decks even more.
So weirdly I think that dork decks would see play but they'd mostly be worse than Ezuri. But it would see play and contribute to seeming omnipresence.
I'm still kinda noodling on it but I think rof's design lends himself to playing more, better, higher impact cards and less ramp - really you don't need to play much ramp at all, except maybe a handful of the better land search spells (the 3 cmc and 4 CMC ones that are + cards).
He basically is like having a high powered dork in the command zone, so the value added from having dorks goes down quite a bit. Kind of the same way that creature tutors are less valuable in a Momir Vig deck, and card draw less valuable in Prime Speaker Zeg, etc.
Payoffs are generally less needed in high numbers than ways to get your deck to approach those things I have found. Same is true of win conditions.
Also the critical mass of dorks also helps that other gameplans whether it be Survival of the Fittest, Natural Order or name your favorite creature becomes a different creature card.
Theres also the fact that he scales pretty well with commander tax, since the longer the game goes the more mana he produces, so recasting him for... i dunno, 10 isnt that bad if hes going to tap for 8+ mana next turn.
Theres also the fact that he scales pretty well with commander tax, since the longer the game goes the more mana he produces, so recasting him for... i dunno, 10 isnt that bad if hes going to tap for 8+ mana next turn.
Definitely a legitimate point.
I surely noticed that with Maelstrom Wanderer decks, they tended to cover the spread whenever he died just on cascading into more ramp.
So weirdly I think that dork decks would see play but they'd mostly be worse than Ezuri. But it would see play and contribute to seeming omnipresence.
As someone who has played dork decks under both Selvalas, I can safely say that they're not directly worse, just different. They trade a bit of explosiveness in for more stability, and that's exactly what I fear will happen if Rofellos is allowed to roam free on the format. Dorks do add to Rofellos in that you now have 7 mana T3 instead of 6, and there are certain cards sitting at 7 mana that are pretty powerful, whether casual or not. (Zendikar Resurgent!) For a green deck in these days, drawing cards isn't an issue anymore. So even if you don't have access to Ezuri in your command zone anymore, getting to him shouldn't be an issue either. And that's ignoring the various other mass overruns (Craterhoof) you can run. And Natural Order. And Green Sun. And the list goes on.
Rofellos would, as the commander of a ball-deck, be much more powerful than Selvala could ever hope to be. In addition, every mono-green big-dudes deck will be wondering "Yes I could run Selvala or Omnath or whatever, but why should I when Rofellos exists?"
I would be all for allowing him back in the 99 - nut draws happen and all that and it's part of the format's charm - since he won't recur nearly as easily as he does as a commander, but that ship has seemingly sailed.
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Speaking of Sevala 2.0 I think in Mono-G there are a lot of situations where she can make more mana quicker than Roff ever could. So I see where the idea comes from to take a look at him again.
So weirdly I think that dork decks would see play but they'd mostly be worse than Ezuri. But it would see play and contribute to seeming omnipresence.
As someone who has played dork decks under both Selvalas, I can safely say that they're not directly worse, just different. They trade a bit of explosiveness in for more stability, and that's exactly what I fear will happen if Rofellos is allowed to roam free on the format. Dorks do add to Rofellos in that you now have 7 mana T3 instead of 6, and there are certain cards sitting at 7 mana t
Selvala is MUCH different than Rofellos with respect to dorks, because a turn 1 accelerant puts her out on turn 2. Rofellos does not come out earlier from a t1 dork.
Decks are essentially mandatory in Selvala because casting her on turn 3 is pretty medium. If Rofello cost 3, I would obviously think differently.
The difference between 7 and 6 mana is much smaller than the difference between 8 mana on turn 3 and not untapping with selvala til turn 4
Speaking of Sevala 2.0 I think in Mono-G there are a lot of situations where she can make more mana quicker than Roff ever could. So I see where the idea comes from to take a look at him again.
I think that you can make the argument that selvala is at least comparable in some ways. Rofellos offers more raw power to cmc but selvala brings some card advantage and more explosiveness with a more flexible manabase.
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.
4/10 outside of the command zone seems a scoche high to me. Definitely less explosive than metalworker though more consistently - in optimized state probably +5 total by turn 4, which is good but not materially better than bloom tender or priest of titania, or even exploration. Definitely worse than metalworker to me and probably by a lot. Again talking optimized.
I think he's functionally nearly equivalent to azusa, and she rates maybe a 2 for me.
The main thing I guess is he might be an issue in casuals. But I'm pretty sure those game groups get rolled by a medium azusa.
Eh, not sure on the land count. I suspect it might be right to play 34 or even fewer and lots of basic search spells. Unlike azusa you're not getting any value out of extra lands so you may be better off running stuff like like cultivate et al, and avoiding the extra land drop stuff since it is kinda winmore again I haven't really brewed at it but I'm always leery of flooding when commander makes mana.
Anyone remember what the early rofellos decks played?
All those cards you mentioned are representative of the cream of the crop of ramp, and many have much more narrow building restrictions. Priest, for instance, is only viable in elves. Metalworker ramps harder faster, but again with much greater deck building restrictions. Ramping for 3 on turn 3 is it's floor. That's really good for a floor especially one that you are garaunteed to hit. Any small synergy, like untapping with him and using your lands to cast a ramp spell like nature's lore, makes him hit even more Mana, and he can get very explosive by turn 4. Not enough to warrant a ban if he was just a creature, but sitting in the cz changes the calculus on what is acceptable. Even still, I think he's quite borderline.
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The thing to remember that's really hard to remember is that "too much mana too quickly" has to be assessed in its optimal state. At least, that is the conclusion I have reached by looking at the history of the banlist on that front--specifically tolarian academy being on there despite in its casual state being rather weaker than Gaea's Cradle or even Mana Crypt, and also how Metalworker was ever on there at all when it's basically completely harmless in a casual deck.
In the 99 in its optimal state, Rofellos is surely not any worse than Metalworker in terms of mana production; MW is an order of magnitude stronger in well tuned decks meant to take advantage of it.
In the command zone, Rofellos is significantly stronger than MW, since the Rofellos deck creates a basically 100% chance of +3 mana on turn 3 and +4 on turn 4 which is a crapload. I'm just not sure if that's worse than Mana Crypt still or not, since even a 10% chance or so of +2 mana on turn 1 is quite powerful.
When the argument becomes about how easy it is to do or how much support it requires it slips into "problematic casual omnipresence" by virtue of fitting into too many scenarios/decks.
The thing to remember that's really hard to remember is that "too much mana too quickly" has to be assessed in its optimal state. At least, that is the conclusion I have reached by looking at the history of the banlist on that front--specifically tolaria west being on there despite in its casual state being rather weaker than Gaea's Cradle or even Mana Crypt, and also how Metalworker was ever on there at all when it's basically completely harmless in a casual deck.
When the argument becomes about how easy it is to do or how much support it requires it slips into "problematic casual omnipresence" by virtue of fitting into too many scenarios/decks.
yes, academy. fixed. Sorry, I was just searching for tolaria west's in my collection to sell at GP cleveland so had them on the brain. thanks amulet titan!:P
In the 99 in its optimal state, Rofellos is surely not any worse than Metalworker in terms of mana production; MW is an order of magnitude stronger in well tuned decks meant to take advantage of it.
I don't think this is accurate at all. The artifacts have to be in your hand, so rocks can't be played to generate more mana. If we are just compaing tuned to tuned, Forests are going to dump on the battlefield, and be worth at least 2 mana. What artifacts are tuned decks getting value in the hand?
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.
In the 99 in its optimal state, Rofellos is surely not any worse than Metalworker in terms of mana production; MW is an order of magnitude stronger in well tuned decks meant to take advantage of it.
I don't think this is accurate at all. The artifacts have to be in your hand, so rocks can't be played to generate more mana. If we are just compaing tuned to tuned, Forests are going to dump on the battlefield, and be worth at least 2 mana. What artifacts are tuned decks getting value in the hand?
I ran the numbers on this previously but Metalworker has a very high likelihood (approaching 10% in a tuned deck, not having to be in hand) of generating critical mass of mana (tapping for 8) on turn 3 -- significantly higher by turn 4.
I have not run all of Rofellos' scenarios with exploration/burgeoning that could put forests onto the battlefield super fast, but those scenarios become rather complex -- because Rofellos generating mana on par with Metalworker would require things like 5 forests in hand plus a tutor or rofellos plus exploration.
If someone else wants to plot the rofellos scenarios for comparison to MW I'd be happy to review but too tedious for me. There are a ton of them.
Figuring out how tuned you want to be (playing all the angles for turn 1 rofellos for example) is gonna be tough; I just assumed in MW they were playing all good rocks, but not trying for stuff like dark ritual/lotus petal.
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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T2 land x explosive vegetation variant
T3 land x OG kozilek/GenWave for x=7
The most likeliest of scenarios. But assuming that you'll be running all thr green ramp cards and not missing a Forest land drop, you are guaranteed to have six mana on turn 3 and can cast at least one ramp spell turn 3, meaning turn 4 you have a minimum of 10 mana. That is a crazy amount of mana to have extremely safe odds of getting very early on.
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Would people call 'durdling' for a long term and winning to be an undesirable game state? I don't. I would ask the pilot to either bite the bullet and make an infinite combo, or to not play the deck very often. Mishra Eggs is a deck I face relatively often and the turns are unbearably long. Remember a game with two 40 minute turns that ended with me at 4 life, two other opponents dead, and the pilot scooping because he was out of win conditions. It isn't fun.
But, I think 'creates an undesirable game state' refers to cards that stop people from being able to play because of the rules (i.e. Leovold, who tends to make people not have any cards in hand very easily).
PE, in my opinion, could only be banned if it is too ubiquitous. I would say that its ubiquity is decreasing, and that in most metas it is not as prevalent as PoK.
Regarding Rofellos - He is essentially a low cmc mana doubler with little downside in your command zone. Playing all basics is not a big downside when the upside is double mana. You already have incentives for playing all basics in monocolour because of things like Gauntlet of Power and Extraplanar lens.
Rofellos is silly in the command zone.
That being said, which ban criteria does he violate?
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Re: Roffelcopter
I think he's really borderline; he violates the too much mana too quickly ban criteria and none other, but being in the command zone exacerbates it.
Rofellos generates +3 mana on turn 3, which I don't think is really that big of a deal because there are a number of decks that can do this in more colors fairly consistently; most artifact ramp decks and most mana dork ramp decks will do this. Rofellos gets to play fewer bad supporting cards, but at the cost of not playing more than a handful of utility lands, which is a real cost, though arguable whether it's worse than having to play a bunch of ramp spells.
However, BW inspired me to run the math, and, assuming you play:
Your odds of a turn 1 Rofellos are pretty disturbingly high especially with mulligans (~30% pre-mulligan). I think I just assumed that would be rarer than it was for some reason.
I'm not sure if that changes the calculus or not, since a turn 2 Azusa is significantly more likely (~60% with 10 turn 0 or 1 ramp sources, which is pretty common, 40% with 6).
My suspicion is that if Azusa is not currently a blight on the format, Roffelcopter wouldn't be much worse. He does have a few ways to be more annoying casually (enabling a fairly budget elf deck that'd be very powerful, for example), but I'm not sure that's a bad thing.
I think I would need to see it in practice but I think the game has changed quite a bit since Primeval Titan and then Sylvan Primordial ruled the format. Multicolored bombs have really changed the color dynamic a bit, and they've actually printed a crazy number of bombs in other colors in recent years that didn't previously have stuff like Sylvan Primordial
(Stuff like thousand-year storm, swarm intelligence, Sunbird's invocation, and so on).
On the flipside of that, the colorless bombs from the latest Zendikar block are kinda scary, adding newlamog to the Rofellos deck maybe is scary? It doesn't seem to have fundamentally broken Azusa decks, but I dunno. Rof can be a hair faster than her.
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My summary thinking at this point is that at the very least the comparison to Azusa is very fair. Both have extremely high odds of generating 8-10 mana on turn 4, which is actually fairly comparable to Metalworker or PE--though their offense goes way down outside of the command zone obviously.
There're pros and cons of each commander, but Rofellos can do it in more ways (medium lands elves, heavy lands, low lands with land search) and with less support (playing 30+ forests vs. needing a 45+ lands and a somewhat tailored decklist to finding them). And probably slightly more consistently.
I think that might be the dealbreaker, honestly, that shoves Rofellos into problematic casual omnipresence and makes him worse than Azusa. He makes at least 2 or 3 discrete deck archetypes, where Azusa really only has one (other than total casuals), maybe one and a half if you stretch it and split "green fatties" from "brown fatties."
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So weirdly I think that dork decks would see play but they'd mostly be worse than Ezuri. But it would see play and contribute to seeming omnipresence.
I'm still kinda noodling on it but I think rof's design lends himself to playing more, better, higher impact cards and less ramp - really you don't need to play much ramp at all, except maybe a handful of the better land search spells (the 3 cmc and 4 CMC ones that are + cards).
(edit: though of course people would play the stronger 0 cmc rocks in competitive builds, I don't expect you'd see a lot of lotus petals in most rof decks).
He basically is like having a high powered dork in the command zone, so the value added from having dorks goes down quite a bit. Kind of the same way that creature tutors are less valuable in a Momir Vig deck, and card draw less valuable in Prime Speaker Zeg, etc.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Payoffs are generally less needed in high numbers than ways to get your deck to approach those things I have found. Same is true of win conditions.
Also the critical mass of dorks also helps that other gameplans whether it be Survival of the Fittest, Natural Order or name your favorite creature becomes a different creature card.
Definitely a legitimate point.
I surely noticed that with Maelstrom Wanderer decks, they tended to cover the spread whenever he died just on cascading into more ramp.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
As someone who has played dork decks under both Selvalas, I can safely say that they're not directly worse, just different. They trade a bit of explosiveness in for more stability, and that's exactly what I fear will happen if Rofellos is allowed to roam free on the format. Dorks do add to Rofellos in that you now have 7 mana T3 instead of 6, and there are certain cards sitting at 7 mana that are pretty powerful, whether casual or not. (Zendikar Resurgent!) For a green deck in these days, drawing cards isn't an issue anymore. So even if you don't have access to Ezuri in your command zone anymore, getting to him shouldn't be an issue either. And that's ignoring the various other mass overruns (Craterhoof) you can run. And Natural Order. And Green Sun. And the list goes on.
Rofellos would, as the commander of a ball-deck, be much more powerful than Selvala could ever hope to be. In addition, every mono-green big-dudes deck will be wondering "Yes I could run Selvala or Omnath or whatever, but why should I when Rofellos exists?"
I would be all for allowing him back in the 99 - nut draws happen and all that and it's part of the format's charm - since he won't recur nearly as easily as he does as a commander, but that ship has seemingly sailed.
Selvala is MUCH different than Rofellos with respect to dorks, because a turn 1 accelerant puts her out on turn 2. Rofellos does not come out earlier from a t1 dork.
Decks are essentially mandatory in Selvala because casting her on turn 3 is pretty medium. If Rofello cost 3, I would obviously think differently.
The difference between 7 and 6 mana is much smaller than the difference between 8 mana on turn 3 and not untapping with selvala til turn 4
I think that you can make the argument that selvala is at least comparable in some ways. Rofellos offers more raw power to cmc but selvala brings some card advantage and more explosiveness with a more flexible manabase.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
All those cards you mentioned are representative of the cream of the crop of ramp, and many have much more narrow building restrictions. Priest, for instance, is only viable in elves. Metalworker ramps harder faster, but again with much greater deck building restrictions. Ramping for 3 on turn 3 is it's floor. That's really good for a floor especially one that you are garaunteed to hit. Any small synergy, like untapping with him and using your lands to cast a ramp spell like nature's lore, makes him hit even more Mana, and he can get very explosive by turn 4. Not enough to warrant a ban if he was just a creature, but sitting in the cz changes the calculus on what is acceptable. Even still, I think he's quite borderline.
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In the 99 in its optimal state, Rofellos is surely not any worse than Metalworker in terms of mana production; MW is an order of magnitude stronger in well tuned decks meant to take advantage of it.
In the command zone, Rofellos is significantly stronger than MW, since the Rofellos deck creates a basically 100% chance of +3 mana on turn 3 and +4 on turn 4 which is a crapload. I'm just not sure if that's worse than Mana Crypt still or not, since even a 10% chance or so of +2 mana on turn 1 is quite powerful.
When the argument becomes about how easy it is to do or how much support it requires it slips into "problematic casual omnipresence" by virtue of fitting into too many scenarios/decks.
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You mean Tolarian Academy.
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I ran the numbers on this previously but Metalworker has a very high likelihood (approaching 10% in a tuned deck, not having to be in hand) of generating critical mass of mana (tapping for 8) on turn 3 -- significantly higher by turn 4.
I have not run all of Rofellos' scenarios with exploration/burgeoning that could put forests onto the battlefield super fast, but those scenarios become rather complex -- because Rofellos generating mana on par with Metalworker would require things like 5 forests in hand plus a tutor or rofellos plus exploration.
If someone else wants to plot the rofellos scenarios for comparison to MW I'd be happy to review but too tedious for me. There are a ton of them.
Figuring out how tuned you want to be (playing all the angles for turn 1 rofellos for example) is gonna be tough; I just assumed in MW they were playing all good rocks, but not trying for stuff like dark ritual/lotus petal.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
The numbers I ran included playing one rock and still having 3+ rocks.
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Rofellos will generally always either make the same amount each turn or more.
Regardless we're talking about too much too quickly not too much eventually
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