I forgot also that in game one I lucksacked a blatant thievery off my first wanderer right after the first urza miscalculated and git hymned. So he would have untapped and killed us even through the hymn had I not rolled exactly my singleton blatant thievery.
I feel like with power cards that aren't really that broken like pe and.prophet I think it's fine to give them some time. The edh meta is very slow to change.
I also do not give a flying monkey fart about finance in the 30 dollar range and there is no way that should be impacting bans.
Library where a very few people stand to make 7 or 8 figures I can understand. Prophet of kruphix was well on it's way to being a 20 dollar card and would have easily been had it been printed today. Finance on edh cards has evolved a lot since those days.
As a side not I am sure my anecdote is not proof of anything. But I can say everyone groans when they see paradox engine and every single time i see it my opinion is reinforced. I really hope it finally gets banned because I've simply had enough.
This thread was made exactly a month after the card was printed and it has been doing more or less the same thing every since then, I just don't see it an also I rarely see people groan when it gets cast.
I really don't think "time unbanned" is a useful metric for determining the future of a card.
Honestly though i think PE is getting worse. Wizards keeps printing wild stuff that interacts with it. And worst really of all is that the longer it sticks the safer it appears so the worse its omnipresence goes.
I'm at the point I don't want to make an artifact deck or a mana dork deck anymore because they seem to demand paradox engine almost. It's so absurdly good in those shells it's hard to eschew. Without making your deck much worse anyway.
I don't see anyone groan any more when someone plays Paradox Engine than they do when they see Mikaeous, the Unhallowed, Aetherflux Reservoir, Exquisite Blood, Seedborn Muse or any other number of powerful combo piece cards hit the table. At this point this crusade over Paradox Engine is reaching the level of absurdity as those for Cyclonic Rift, Sol Ring and numerous other perceived boogiemen. The only metric I've seen in this thread has been anecdotal evidence where you could replace Paradox Engine with any number of other cards and say "Then the game just ended!" and it'd be the same ending to these stories attempting to make apparent how bad Paradox Engine supposedly is for the format. People tend to read reactions and emotions based on their own biases, so it's no surprise that one will automatically translate anyone else's response to something matching their own feelings. And for the record, I'm neutral - I play it in one deck and have played that deck and won plenty without it (so don't try to turn the point I made around on me).
I appreciate healthy debate and discussion over the format. BUT, it gets a bit ridiculous seeing months and months of discussion of the same handful of vocal people coming back and posting new anecdotal stories to try to crusade to make their case when the entire rest of the format has settled fine. Especially considering this card has been out in the wild for... *looks up the release date of Aether Revolt* ...almost 3 years, now. Because that's not enough, the argument is now "It's getting worse! New cards are being printed!" ...And? How many threads pop up here every set with a kneejerk reaction about the supposed power level of a card. Simic Ascendancy anyone? Narset, Parter of Veils? Razaketh, the Foulblooded? Please. Give the sensationalism a rest.
Library where a very few people stand to make 7 or 8 figures I can understand. Prophet of kruphix was well on it's way to being a 20 dollar card and would have easily been had it been printed today. Finance on edh cards has evolved a lot since those days.
As a side not I am sure my anecdote is not proof of anything. But I can say everyone groans when they see paradox engine and every single time i see it my opinion is reinforced. I really hope it finally gets banned because I've simply had enough.
Prophet of Kruphix was ~$2.00 the day before it was banned. It's all time high was preorders before release, at ~$5.00 Library of Alexandria is not banned for secondary market reasons.
Paradox Engine is a 5 mana artifact that does literally nothing without both 1) an established board presence that benefits from untapping, and 2) spells to trigger it. It utilizes a triggered ability, and can be responded to.
The card is a very strong enabler for a few, specific types of decks, and borderline unplayable everywhere else.
If the card has been causing problems at your table, and you have still been unable to figure out how to deal with it, Paradox Engine is not the problem.
You disliking a card is not valid grounds for banning.
I don't see anyone groan any more when someone plays Paradox Engine than they do when they see Mikaeous, the Unhallowed, Aetherflux Reservoir, Exquisite Blood, Seedborn Muse or any other number of powerful combo piece cards hit the table. At this point this crusade over Paradox Engine is reaching the level of absurdity as those for Cyclonic Rift, Sol Ring and numerous other perceived boogiemen. The only metric I've seen in this thread has been anecdotal evidence where you could replace Paradox Engine with any number of other cards and say "Then the game just ended!" and it'd be the same ending to these stories attempting to make apparent how bad Paradox Engine supposedly is for the format. People tend to read reactions and emotions based on their own biases, so it's no surprise that one will automatically translate anyone else's response to something matching their own feelings. And for the record, I'm neutral - I play it in one deck and have played that deck and won plenty without it (so don't try to turn the point I made around on me).
I appreciate healthy debate and discussion over the format. BUT, it gets a bit ridiculous seeing months and months of discussion of the same handful of vocal people coming back and posting new anecdotal stories to try to crusade to make their case when the entire rest of the format has settled fine. Especially considering this card has been out in the wild for... *looks up the release date of Aether Revolt* ...almost 3 years, now. Because that's not enough, the argument is now "It's getting worse! New cards are being printed!" ...And? How many threads pop up here every set with a kneejerk reaction about the supposed power level of a card. Simic Ascendancy anyone? Narset, Parter of Veils? Razaketh, the Foulblooded? Please. Give the sensationalism a rest.
Maybe the game IS getting worse as they design more and more cards to be "good" in edh to sell packs and end up making the game less fun in the end as a result.
You say the format is just fine, but I would disagree. The rate at which casual games get ruined by power creep because one guy just has to play that new stronger card that ends the game regardless of what happened earlier has definitely increased substantially.
One could then say to try and enforce it with social contract, but the more we have to try and house rule things the worse the format is getting.
I think the power creep is a huge problem. Wizards just keeps making 6+ mana spells do more and more and more until you can have an entire deck full of ramp, draw and cantrips, and nonsense that does way too much for its mana in a format where you can your backup card advantage in the command zone.
Re: Paradox engine and sensationalism
The case against PE is reasonably strong compared to the casual banmania stuff:
The detailed numbers I have run suggest that PE is fairly high on the "too much mana too quickly" spectrum independently of casual appeal or whatever. So I think that alone allows a case for the card to be considered.
Has many scenarios in which it creates game ending loops that take a long time to execute
As far as prevalence goes in just 5 months it went from in 5% or so of possible decks to 6%
Take that prevalence number on edhrec and that is still one of the interesting cases for banning to me. This is a colorless card that is in 1 in 18 decks, despite its admittedly serious deckbuilding consequences -- you really cannot be on a ramp package other than dorks or rocks.
It sees play in a fairly diverse array of commanders, and takes up a huge share of the builds of many of them
~ 70% of urza, arcum decks
~ 60% of Azami, seton, rishkar, dralnu
~ 50% of new jhoira, sisay, karn, several partner pairs, mono g selvala
~ 40% of selvala, kydele, muzzio decks
Wizards seems to print a new PE general basically every set or two.
Comparing this card to banmania like Simic Ascendancy is completely unfair. There're many argments for this thing being a problem that are legitimate and should not be thrown out with the "Well it's been around for 3 years and not everyone sees it frequently" stuff.
I have surely shared my anecdotes, because ultimately that is something people think about. How does the card affect actual games of magic?
That's why Prophet got banned - its prevalence was partially the issue, but it had many things in common
1) It warped many UG decks to a be a prophet deck - check, PE strongly encourages artifact and dork decks to play it
2) It dominated the table both of playing time and of focus when it dropped - PE Checks this box although significantly less so than Prophet
3) It was a target for theft, cloning and so on - this is much less of an issue though I have seen cloned and acquired PEs win games infrequently
I think Prophet is probably the best ban comparison we can make other than possibly Metalworker - which compares very interestingly on the mana spectrum.
I think the power creep is a huge problem. Wizards just keeps making 6+ mana spells do more and more and more until you can have an entire deck full of ramp, draw and cantrips, and nonsense that does way too much for its mana in a format where you can your backup card advantage in the command zone.
Re: Paradox engine and sensationalism
The case against PE is reasonably strong compared to the casual banmania stuff:
The detailed numbers I have run suggest that PE is fairly high on the "too much mana too quickly" spectrum independently of casual appeal or whatever. So I think that alone allows a case for the card to be considered.
Has many scenarios in which it creates game ending loops that take a long time to execute
As far as prevalence goes in just 5 months it went from in 5% or so of possible decks to 6%
Take that prevalence number on edhrec and that is still one of the interesting cases for banning to me. This is a colorless card that is in 1 in 18 decks, despite its admittedly serious deckbuilding consequences -- you really cannot be on a ramp package other than dorks or rocks.
It sees play in a fairly diverse array of commanders, and takes up a huge share of the builds of many of them
~ 70% of urza, arcum decks
~ 60% of Azami, seton, rishkar, dralnu
~ 50% of new jhoira, sisay, karn, several partner pairs, mono g selvala
~ 40% of selvala, kydele, muzzio decks
Wizards seems to print a new PE general basically every set or two.
Comparing this card to banmania like Simic Ascendancy is completely unfair. There're many argments for this thing being a problem that are legitimate and should not be thrown out with the "Well it's been around for 3 years and not everyone sees it frequently" stuff.
I have surely shared my anecdotes, because ultimately that is something people think about. How does the card affect actual games of magic?
That's why Prophet got banned - its prevalence was partially the issue, but it had many things in common
1) It warped many UG decks to a be a prophet deck - check, PE strongly encourages artifact and dork decks to play it
2) It dominated the table both of playing time and of focus when it dropped - PE Checks this box although significantly less so than Prophet
3) It was a target for theft, cloning and so on - this is much less of an issue though I have seen cloned and acquired PEs win games infrequently
I think Prophet is probably the best ban comparison we can make other than possibly Metalworker - which compares very interestingly on the mana spectrum.
Mox Diamond and Grim Monolith are on the Reserve List, so that probably has something to do with it, especially grim mono.
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Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Mox Diamond and Grim Monolith are on the Reserve List, so that probably has something to do with it, especially grim mono.
Sure, although I think you got your pricing backwards as Mox Diamond is like 2x the price of Grim's (well more like 50% now, nuuuuuuuts).
Point is that if you watch the prevalence, PE is rapidly becoming accepted as the engine of choice for its decks in a very similar (but slower) way than Prophet of Kruphix did.
I would bet, actually, if you compared "Deck types that want it" that PE is close to Prophet from a prevalence perspective -- and if it's even close it's only because PE requires a very expensive manabase to be extra broken (~700 bucks of crypt, mox, chrome, metalworker, grim, mana vault). But that analysis would be quite difficult to perform unfortunately.
I think the power creep is a huge problem. Wizards just keeps making 6+ mana spells do more and more and more until you can have an entire deck full of ramp, draw and cantrips, and nonsense that does way too much for its mana in a format where you can your backup card advantage in the command zone.
Re: Paradox engine and sensationalism
The case against PE is reasonably strong compared to the casual banmania stuff:
The detailed numbers I have run suggest that PE is fairly high on the "too much mana too quickly" spectrum independently of casual appeal or whatever. So I think that alone allows a case for the card to be considered.
Has many scenarios in which it creates game ending loops that take a long time to execute
As far as prevalence goes in just 5 months it went from in 5% or so of possible decks to 6%
Take that prevalence number on edhrec and that is still one of the interesting cases for banning to me. This is a colorless card that is in 1 in 18 decks, despite its admittedly serious deckbuilding consequences -- you really cannot be on a ramp package other than dorks or rocks.
It sees play in a fairly diverse array of commanders, and takes up a huge share of the builds of many of them
~ 70% of urza, arcum decks
~ 60% of Azami, seton, rishkar, dralnu
~ 50% of new jhoira, sisay, karn, several partner pairs, mono g selvala
~ 40% of selvala, kydele, muzzio decks
Wizards seems to print a new PE general basically every set or two.
Comparing this card to banmania like Simic Ascendancy is completely unfair. There're many argments for this thing being a problem that are legitimate and should not be thrown out with the "Well it's been around for 3 years and not everyone sees it frequently" stuff.
I have surely shared my anecdotes, because ultimately that is something people think about. How does the card affect actual games of magic?
That's why Prophet got banned - its prevalence was partially the issue, but it had many things in common
1) It warped many UG decks to a be a prophet deck - check, PE strongly encourages artifact and dork decks to play it
2) It dominated the table both of playing time and of focus when it dropped - PE Checks this box although significantly less so than Prophet
3) It was a target for theft, cloning and so on - this is much less of an issue though I have seen cloned and acquired PEs win games infrequently
I think Prophet is probably the best ban comparison we can make other than possibly Metalworker - which compares very interestingly on the mana spectrum.
*Says PE should be banned for prevalence in EDH
*Also points out that maybe 1 in 18 decks plays it
Were you playing when PoK was legal? It was in 2-3 decks in every single game of magic I played, and I played a lot in those days. Of UGx decks, I would say it was in more than half of the decks, and that it warped gameplay completely. I would not tap out once the UG player had 4 mana because I didn't want to lose to PoK the next turn. By itself, it could win you the game.
PE is not the same at all. Not as prevalent by a longshot, despite being legal in 100% of decks.
I understand that it can make for long turns, but you know what - so does Top, Sylvan Library, and so many other cards.
You are comparing to PoK but I would compare to Food Chain. Food Chain is deplorable when it is played because it almost always marks the end of the game. What a bad card for EDH where you always have access to a creature to exile and a creature to cast. But you know what, Food Chain only fits in certain specific decks. Of my 17 decks, only MW and Karador could benefit from 'cloning' a food chain. None of my other decks would benefit in any way I can think of. PE is similar - if I am playing MW or a Gx deck with lots of dorks, sure, PE cloning could benefit me... but most of my other decks would prefer to clone a sol ring.
It sees play in 70% of Arcum decks? Arcum has a tap ability and does really well with Artifacts. Thousand-Year Elixir sees just as much play.
I totally agree with Kelzam's post. I am sick and tired of seeing the same points repeated over and over again. We know the RC has kept an eye on it. Clearly they have never felt the need to ban it. It isn't seeing more and more play - just maybe more play in certain new decks.
To be ubiquitous enough to be banned, it isn't about being prevalent in Arcum decks or Selvala decks. Those decks are toxic, and I have no interest in playing against them. To be ubiquitous enough to be banned, an artifact like this would have to be played in at least 25% of decks before you can even think about it.
I am willing to bet that Sylvan Primordial was played in more than half of green decks at the time of banning. PoK was probably in close to 75% of UG decks.
Next time you watch a game of Commander clash, throw in PE on turn 5 and let me know what it does to the game. People play mana rocks but they get blown up. People play dorks but they die. PE relies on having a threshold of the two easiest types of permanents to destroy in magic.
So, Pokken, I get that you hate the card (and I would too if my meta was full of it), but can we just bury this dead horse?
I think you misunderstood what I was saying about prevalence in terms of 'deck types that want it' -
UG Creature decks with a high volume of ETBs were the ones that played Prophet.
Decks with a high volume of creatures or artifacts with tap effects are the ones that play Paradox Engine.
My opinion based on how I remember playing through the meta, is that Paradox engines are as common in the types of decks that they belong in as Prophet of Kruphix was in decks that it belonged in. I played a lot then and while Prophet was quite present, it was not being played in every UG deck - usually a deck wanted 30+ creatures and a high percentage of them to generate value.
I think people regularly overstate just how common it was; I would be very surprised if it approached 10% prevalence in UGx decks during its reign.
At the time PoK was popular it also happened that UGx creature value decks were pretty popular, as the variety of commanders in general was quite low. Wizards has seriously changed the meta of commander over the years. Creature value toolbox is not nearly as common or as powerful as it used to be.
And finally, Paradox engine being in 1 in 18 decks is far different than Prophet being in even 1 in 10 decks it could be in; Paradox Engine can be in *any* deck, not just the 25% or so of decks that are UGx (which are already skewed hard toward creature value decks). The fact that Paradox engine is in 6% of all decks is frigging mind blowing to me. How does that not alarm you that a colorless card that people decry as "just a CEDH combo derp" is in 6% of the decks posted on Edhrec?
I feel the need to add a clarifying point here which is that I do not think that the fairly high prevalence is the sole factor impacting a ban decision. It mostly relates to the "omnipresence" part of "problematic casual omnipresence."
It is high on both measures of omnipresence
* Gameplan-aligned omnipresence - Where the card is good in your deck. From the measures on Edhrec, this card has an absurd level of gameplan aligned omnipresence. Decks where it is very good are going to play it over half the time.
* General omnipresence - The card's position as a part of the metagame at large. Card is half as common as Sensei's Divining Top, more common than Chrome Mox and in as many decks total as cards like necropotence and worldy tutor - It is definitely out there.
Through years of discussion we've established that this is only a small sliver of what goes into banning a card. But I think this makes a case that pardaox engine
1) Has a rating on the problematic casual omnipresence scale that is >0
2) Is demonstrably increasing
Reminder on the problematic casual omnipresence verbiage in case--
Problematic Casual Omnipresence. Some cards are so powerful that they become must-includes in decks that can run them and have a strongly negative impact on the games in which they appear, even when not built to optimize their effect. This does not include cards which are part of a specific two-card combination — there are too many of those available in the format to usefully preclude — but may include cards which have numerous combinations with other commonly-played cards.
I would hope it goes without saying that I completely reject your attempt to moderate me (and this thread in general) - but apparently it doesn't, so consider it said. If a mod needs me to stop posting in this thread they can tell me. If I feel like I have something new to say I will say it.
I'll note that prophet took a long time to catch on and was a dollar rare for a long time.
Also it was only in UG creature value decks. If your table was UG creature value decks then yes you'd see a lot of prophet.
Similarly if your meta is a bit stronger you will see a lot of engine. It's almost at auto-include status for players who have the mana rocks to support it in their collection. But there's only so popular the now 50$ paradox engine will be that runs best with cards that themselves cost tons of money.
I appreciate healthy debate and discussion over the format. BUT, it gets a bit ridiculous seeing months and months of discussion of the same handful of vocal people coming back and posting new anecdotal stories to try to crusade to make their case when the entire rest of the format has settled fine. Especially considering this card has been out in the wild for... *looks up the release date of Aether Revolt* ...almost 3 years, now. Because that's not enough, the argument is now "It's getting worse! New cards are being printed!" ...And? How many threads pop up here every set with a kneejerk reaction about the supposed power level of a card. Simic Ascendancy anyone? Narset, Parter of Veils? Razaketh, the Foulblooded? Please. Give the sensationalism a rest.
Take a quick look at how long Sundering Titan was legal. Think about how it hits ban criteria. Do you think just because it went for so long it suddenly got worse?
Consider a bunch of people actually have issues with PE, but don't post here.
Yes there is, and always will be kneejerk. Panharmonicon was one from Revolt, but PE has actually been doing bannable stuff. You certainly do not have to discuss it, but please don't turn people who are into something else.
Paradox Engine is a 5 mana artifact that does literally nothing without both 1) an established board presence that benefits from untapping, and 2) spells to trigger it. It utilizes a triggered ability, and can be responded to.
The card is a very strong enabler for a few, specific types of decks, and borderline unplayable everywhere else.
If the card has been causing problems at your table, and you have still been unable to figure out how to deal with it, Paradox Engine is not the problem.
You disliking a card is not valid grounds for banning.
Dies to removal will always be a terrible argument
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.
UG Creature decks with a high volume of ETBs were the ones that played Prophet.
No real horse in this race, but this is not correct. People played UGx decks because prophet existed. Full stop. If your deck wasn’t built to abuse Prophet, you changed your deck. I did, and many, many other decks that I encountered did too.
That was the problem. If you were playing UGx, and you weren’t playing prophet, it was wrong. Much like not playing PrimeTime with G. I could probably dig it up, but I’m fairly certain the RC even stayed as such in the ban announcement or just before.
That is certainly not the case with Paradox Engine, you’ve even said so yourself.
On a side note, the problem with “discussions” like these, much like that in the Coalition Victory thread, is that personal anecdotes often get paraded as facts, which in turn spreads misinformation. That’s my problem with these threads. Healthy discussion is fine, but until something actually changes, and not new cards being printed, then there isn’t much to discuss that hasn’t already been discussed ad nauseam. There are actual sources of real information out there that is relevant here, bringing personal anecdotes into the matter usually means you are in the minority and trying to sway others, which really just Missy’s the waters.
Strong card? Sure is. Does it belong in every deck? Heck no.
UG Creature decks with a high volume of ETBs were the ones that played Prophet.
No real horse in this race, but this is not correct. People played UGx decks because prophet existed. Full stop. If your deck wasn’t built to abuse Prophet, you changed your deck. I did, and many, many other decks that I encountered did too.
That was the problem. If you were playing UGx, and you weren’t playing prophet, it was wrong. Much like not playing PrimeTime with G. I could probably dig it up, but I’m fairly certain the RC even stayed as such in the ban announcement or just before.
That is certainly not the case with Paradox Engine, you’ve even said so yourself.
On a side note, the problem with “discussions” like these, much like that in the Coalition Victory thread, is that personal anecdotes often get paraded as facts, which in turn spreads misinformation. That’s my problem with these threads. Healthy discussion is fine, but until something actually changes, and not new cards being printed, then there isn’t much to discuss that hasn’t already been discussed ad nauseam. There are actual sources of real information out there that is relevant here, bringing personal anecdotes into the matter usually means you are in the minority and trying to sway others, which really just Missy’s the waters.
Strong card? Sure is. Does it belong in every deck? Heck no.
So I'm not 100% sure what you're saying here, but people played UGx creature decks long before Prophet and continued to do so long after prophet.
There were were plenty of UGx decks that didn't want to play a lot of creatures. And Seedborn Muse was significantly stronger in those decks if they even wanted that effect. I'm trying to think back to those days, but in general the metagame was quite a bit less refined. But there were plenty of BUG control decks and have been for most of Magic's history, and they didn't really want Prophet because they wanted clean boards.
The case in retrospect against Prophet is often somewhat hyperbolic. But it made a specific subset of UG decks abominable, not all UG decks. It did tend to centralize UG creature based strategies but it was not an autoinclude except in creature decks.
Paradox Engine is rapidly becoming the same way, which is that it's an autoinclude in a certain subset of decks - large volume of mana rocks or mana creatures, and you should probably be playing Paradox engine.
I take issue with your comments about anecdotes. No one in this thread has ever said:
"Here is my anecdote, therefore Paradox Engine is broken." That is a literal strawman you're setting up here with statements like:
There are actual sources of real information out there that is relevant here, bringing personal anecdotes into the matter usually means you are in the minority and trying to sway others, which really just Missy’s the waters.
I believe that anecdotes about how a card is actually affecting games is important. But I have said myself that this is a small part of the story. There is a mammoth case for bannning Paradox Engine independently of anecdotes. No one thinks me having a couple bad games with PE is justification for banning.
With Prophet of Kruphix, I believe that the stories of how it actually saw play factored into a good understanding of just why it was not fun as a card. It becomes a lot more real when you see what it's actually doing -- someone dropped PoK, then someone cloned it, then someone stole the original one, then everyone took turns taking extra sub-turns in everyone else's upkeep until no one gave a ***** anymore, etc. etc. Someone cast Prophet, untapped and answered everything until they combo'd off on the last end step, sometimes winning a game of archenemy by being able to play as much mana as everyone else combined.
Stories have value in discussions as long as we aren't trying to make them the argument. When I tell you a story about PE, my point is for you to understand just how centralizing it is when I see it -- whenever someone casts a PE in games I have seen it in, the game immediately becomes 100% about that resolved PE.
Far from muddying the waters, I think understanding what the card actually does is important, on both sides. No one threw a fit about Cryogen saying he saw it once at SCGCon and it did nothing - I certainly welcome hearing that, because I'm open to the idea that my experience is not the same as everyone else's.
Edit: What I would love to do is review the old SCD threads about Prophet of Kruphix. Does anyone have access to these? I feel like the arguments back and forth are almost identical in some ways. There were tons of anecdotes on both sides, mostly with stuff like:
FOR
-Prophet took over the whole game and guy won a game of archenemy
-Prophet was cloned by 3 of 4 players and then someone combo'd out
AGAINST
-I saw it, I killed it, the tempo blowout won the game
-Saw it, everyone ganged up on the prophet player and he lost
Edit 2: for historical reference here is the Prophet of Kruphix ban thread from the MTGcommander forums:
Nothing has been archived out of public view. Prophet was probably banned before we set up this sub if there isn't a SCD. You'd have to search the general ban list thread for Prophet discussion.
If I can jump in here - the difference, to me, between prophet and PE is that prophet is a really, really, really, unfairly good card for fair games of commander. It isn't a pure cEDH card.
PE, on the other hand, is a vicious combo enabler. It's a card you want in combo decks, and it wins.
PoK "took over" what should have been 75% games of EDH. PE drives your deck into becoming 90-100% deck, just by virtue of being such a powerful (but "narrow") combo card.
I'm not saying PE should or shouldn't be banned because of this, I'm just pointing out how I feel the two cards occupy different spaces in EDH. Prophet felt "fair" in some ways and slotted so easily into fair decks, but then was actually obscenely powerful and made it so any "fair" deck should just run prophet and warp itself around that card. PE will never be mistaken for a fair card, it will never just get slotted into a deck, but a deck that wants to go off will want it. It hits a very different deckbuilding sweet spot, that isn't occupied by as many EDH players. But within that band, it is immensely powerful, and does possess qualities of a bannable card.
Quit being a crybaby and kill it. Yes it's strong but it's really no different than Deadeye Navigator, another highly complained about card. Just kill it. If you can't then you need to consider your deckbuilding strategy. (With mod note for flaming)
Whenever I play Prophet, nothing really changes much. Sure, I get extra mana and my stuff untaps, but my opponents are usually more solitaire-like with their decks, so it mostly acts as just "And untap" each turn.
Prophet isn't particularly durable. In fact, there's no color that can't take care of it.
PoK in EDH reminds me a little of Tarmogoyf in that removal dies to it. It's a card that forces your opponents to react instead of playing pro-actively, which is phenomenal against decks that have low levels of interaction. Also, forcing out removal for a 2/3 is great when you are sitting on a wincon in your hand that you're afraid will get blown up
At this point I have accepted that it rarely survives the turn and is more removal bait than useful card. Having said this the one time it lands and sticks you're on to a winner.
because i run a full suite of spot removal and play magic both proactively and reactively. I realize that I'm not playing solitaire and need to interact with my opponent's deck.
If a table cant band together to kill a measley 2/3 with no built in protection, then they were destined to lose anyways. If your deck doesnt have answers to a measley 2/3 with no built in protection, then it was destined to lose anyways. There are MUCH scarier threats that can hit the battlefield than a Prophet of Kruphix. You need to build your decks accordingly or risk being blown out by them.
Power level aside, I find the play pattern it creates to be very annoying. You can't just say "I'm done. You're turn." You say that and then you and the players who has the next turn have to look at the player with PoK and be like "Well, Can I go now or do you have stuff?" and this happens at the end of every turn as long as the card is out. It's tedious and annoying on a Chaos Moon level and it's in ever single Simic/x deck, at least nobody plays Chaos Moon.
I despise this card. Sometimes it will be answered immediately - but when its not, it capitalizes the majority of the time available for everyone in the game.
PoK is a card that completely centralizes the game because it is either "steal/clone it" or "kill it before I get buried in advantage" for every player.
Its super powerful.. but its only an enabler. It doesn't do a huge amount alone it requires something else for it to abuse.
Maybe the solution is to unban other tempting Bribery targets? The recurring theme of Commander seems to be that green gets a card that all the blue players want to steal, and the green card gets banned so they can't. Ban bribery so that once PoK is banned, we don't have threads on how all the metas have warped into three blue players racing to bribery the green player's Courser of Kruphix or something.
To me its most impressive power has been its ability to avoid the banlist. Like what's up with that?
There are so many broken things in this format. This has a fragile body, requires two colors to be played, and doesn't actually win the game.
I hate Dead-Eye much more. It is monocolor, wins the game and is quite hard to remove once it's soulbonded.
As has been said multiple times, Prophet is the enabler, not the killer. It was the Momir Vig that got out of hand. It was the cards drawn from Zegana that swung the game in that player's favor.
I'm a bit sick of hearing people complain about this card, TBH. (Editorial comment: I died at this one, deja vu much?)
Find a group that wants to play the same kind of games you do, and understand that if you play with someone new, you have to be prepared for anything.
(this is me) I'm kinda 60/40 in favor of banning Prophet at this point but not because of power primarily, more the undesirable board state that it tends to create. It's really not fun to play with or against.
(And someone telling me I'm a whiner for not liking the board states): The phrase "unfun board state" is going to be the death of the format. House rules are one of the supposed cores of the format, and house rules should weed out house problems. (Editorial comment: Dead enough for ya yet chief?)
Prophet, in my meta, is strong, sure, but certainly nothing like the other two [Sylvan Primordial and primeval titan]. Prophet requires me to have a hand to be useful. The others did not.
I commonly cast PoK and fail to win - even if it doesn't immediately eat removal.
At least until people decide Seedborn Muse needs to be banned, too, because people are never going to stop being douchebags with cards, and for some reason, a large number of the casual Magic base derives fun at the lack of fun they can force others to have, thus causing the vocal minority to be even louder. Turn 2-4 Iona when you're playing monocolor is so much more unfun, IMO.
If we look at a statistical breakdown of the commander metagame we can see that PoK is in the top 20 creatures of all commander beating out many monocolor bombs that are considered staples, such as Deadeye Navigator, Craterhoof Behemoth, Terastadon, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, and Woodfall Primus. You are more likely to see a PoK in a random opponents deck then any of the cards listed. (Editorial comment: I really found this one interesting because it shows that my prevalence estimates are fairly close to correct - PoK was only in the top 20 creatures, and the few creatures referenced such as Hoofdaddy and Deadeye are both hovering around 10% today; so it's unlikely PoK was much higher than 10%)
if prophet resolves and the person playing it is even remotely competent at magic, the game is over. Prophet is hands down the most broken card in the format, it is essentially the equivalent of taking four turns to each other player's single turn, the card should not have been printed (editorial: Mmmm, hyperbole)
I'm guessing people on the committee play the card, that's why it's never been touched. Probably tooth and nail too. (Editorial comment: Wow, the more things change
Oh man...mods can we please get this thread either locked or merged with the ban list thread. This isn't even a conversation anymore.
This is a 5 mana card that produces no mana draws no cards doesn't tutor has no etb litteraly does nothing before being open to any instant removal for god sakes it dies to a lightning bolt.. If you don't have the counter to stop a prophet be glad your not aginst a real broken card like doomsday doomsday + any cmc 1 cabtrip kills the table for the same mana cost as this slow creature based enabler.
Prophet by itself is not a must answer. With a board and a card advantage engine it needs to die the turn it was played. A T2 PoK from Land, Manavault, Land isn't a threat, yet. A T5 PoK with Mystic Remora or Survival out is a different story, the game will end. PoK is one among many 'must answer' cards. I don't feel like it sits that high on the list. Hermit Druid, Ad Nauseam, Necro, Doomsday, Tooth and Nail, and C Sphinx are all higher up in my book
I play at more than just my own table. FNM, etc., gives me legitimate cause for concern regarding a card's legality.
The prophet isn't the most broken card in the format however, I believe it is the most commonly broken card in the format. What I mean by that is, it is the card that is ruining the largest number of games. It seems like everybody and their grandmother has a copy of PoK and a large number of them think it's a good idea to put it into their decks.
Mods - apologies if this summary of the previous thread is too much C&P for this topic, but I think it's really salient stuff. Prophet is a stellar example of a card where people were very divided (even me, with my very balanced commentary if I do say so myself).
People made literally the exact same arguments against it and for it in a lot of cases.
The biggest difference is that we don't see the same level of cloning/bribing as we saw with prophet, and of course the reason for that is that PE is a somewhat narrower card. But not narrow enough in my opinion:) Its power level ceiling is much higher but it's not quite busted enough to join dramatic scepter in CEDH only town.
The other major parallel I see with PE and Prophet is the kind of line of thinking of:
~"it's just a broken enabler that enables what you choose to do with it"
How that plays out is quite a bit different. PE is far more likely to straight up combo out, and far less likely to durdle out during other people's turns. But that is a major parallel; there's kind of a venn diagram happening where PE and Prophet both overlap with ruining the game and comboing like this:
Too many circles to also add "And a fun time was had by someone other than just the guy playing it" but suffice it to say it's a small sad circle for both
EDIT:
For some prevalence numbers, I went through the comparison of EDhrec numbers similar to this quote from the previous thread on Prophet
If we look at a statistical breakdown of the commander metagame we can see that PoK is in the top 20 creatures of all commander beating out many monocolor bombs that are considered staples, such as Deadeye Navigator, Craterhoof Behemoth, Terastadon, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, and Woodfall Primus. You are more likely to see a PoK in a random opponents deck then any of the cards listed.
On the list of artifacts in the last 2 years, Paradox Engine is 59th on the top 100. That is insaaaane. Prophet broke top 20 on creatures, but let's remember that creatures are way worse in EDH than spells and artifacts almost invariably. The threshold for a creature to be played is pretty huge, and at that time most of the creature decks were UGx - these days most decks will be playing a ton of artifacts with or without paradox engine.
The artifacts list is rather skewed as well because things like Fist of the Suns sit at 18th or so on the back of being in 18% of 5-color decks (derp) and Sunforger being in 12% of WRx decks. If you correct for purely actually mono colored artifacts, PE comes in:
Paradox Engine is simply boring. So easy to combo with it or just evenw asting time in the table calculating how mutch mana it generates with mana rocks. even traded mine off because when i used, it wasn't fun at all. Really boring in the end.
Whats the point of this card other then ops i comboed? Haven't seen PE in my group for a year, because the card had no purpose other then win a game in hyper competitive way. I'm in the team of banning it because the card has no other purpose other then combo. Cards like Mikaeus, Kiki-Jiki can be played fairlly and have other strats to them other then combo wins. Paradox Engine doesn't have anything going for it other then been a combo win.
I'm thankefull my griyp isn't been ravaged by it, but i cans ee how "pointless" the card is for majority. I won't groan if it remains unbanned, but i won't shed a tear if its gone either.
Quit being a crybaby and kill it. Yes it's strong but it's really no different than Deadeye Navigator, another highly complained about card. Just kill it. If you can't then you need to consider your deckbuilding strategy. (With mod note for flaming)
Whenever I play Prophet, nothing really changes much. Sure, I get extra mana and my stuff untaps, but my opponents are usually more solitaire-like with their decks, so it mostly acts as just "And untap" each turn.
Prophet isn't particularly durable. In fact, there's no color that can't take care of it.
PoK in EDH reminds me a little of Tarmogoyf in that removal dies to it. It's a card that forces your opponents to react instead of playing pro-actively, which is phenomenal against decks that have low levels of interaction. Also, forcing out removal for a 2/3 is great when you are sitting on a wincon in your hand that you're afraid will get blown up
At this point I have accepted that it rarely survives the turn and is more removal bait than useful card. Having said this the one time it lands and sticks you're on to a winner.
because i run a full suite of spot removal and play magic both proactively and reactively. I realize that I'm not playing solitaire and need to interact with my opponent's deck.
If a table cant band together to kill a measley 2/3 with no built in protection, then they were destined to lose anyways. If your deck doesnt have answers to a measley 2/3 with no built in protection, then it was destined to lose anyways. There are MUCH scarier threats that can hit the battlefield than a Prophet of Kruphix. You need to build your decks accordingly or risk being blown out by them.
Power level aside, I find the play pattern it creates to be very annoying. You can't just say "I'm done. You're turn." You say that and then you and the players who has the next turn have to look at the player with PoK and be like "Well, Can I go now or do you have stuff?" and this happens at the end of every turn as long as the card is out. It's tedious and annoying on a Chaos Moon level and it's in ever single Simic/x deck, at least nobody plays Chaos Moon.
I despise this card. Sometimes it will be answered immediately - but when its not, it capitalizes the majority of the time available for everyone in the game.
PoK is a card that completely centralizes the game because it is either "steal/clone it" or "kill it before I get buried in advantage" for every player.
Its super powerful.. but its only an enabler. It doesn't do a huge amount alone it requires something else for it to abuse.
Maybe the solution is to unban other tempting Bribery targets? The recurring theme of Commander seems to be that green gets a card that all the blue players want to steal, and the green card gets banned so they can't. Ban bribery so that once PoK is banned, we don't have threads on how all the metas have warped into three blue players racing to bribery the green player's Courser of Kruphix or something.
To me its most impressive power has been its ability to avoid the banlist. Like what's up with that?
There are so many broken things in this format. This has a fragile body, requires two colors to be played, and doesn't actually win the game.
I hate Dead-Eye much more. It is monocolor, wins the game and is quite hard to remove once it's soulbonded.
As has been said multiple times, Prophet is the enabler, not the killer. It was the Momir Vig that got out of hand. It was the cards drawn from Zegana that swung the game in that player's favor.
I'm a bit sick of hearing people complain about this card, TBH. (Editorial comment: I died at this one, deja vu much?)
Find a group that wants to play the same kind of games you do, and understand that if you play with someone new, you have to be prepared for anything.
(this is me) I'm kinda 60/40 in favor of banning Prophet at this point but not because of power primarily, more the undesirable board state that it tends to create. It's really not fun to play with or against.
(And someone telling me I'm a whiner for not liking the board states): The phrase "unfun board state" is going to be the death of the format. House rules are one of the supposed cores of the format, and house rules should weed out house problems. (Editorial comment: Dead enough for ya yet chief?)
Prophet, in my meta, is strong, sure, but certainly nothing like the other two [Sylvan Primordial and primeval titan]. Prophet requires me to have a hand to be useful. The others did not.
I commonly cast PoK and fail to win - even if it doesn't immediately eat removal.
At least until people decide Seedborn Muse needs to be banned, too, because people are never going to stop being douchebags with cards, and for some reason, a large number of the casual Magic base derives fun at the lack of fun they can force others to have, thus causing the vocal minority to be even louder. Turn 2-4 Iona when you're playing monocolor is so much more unfun, IMO.
If we look at a statistical breakdown of the commander metagame we can see that PoK is in the top 20 creatures of all commander beating out many monocolor bombs that are considered staples, such as Deadeye Navigator, Craterhoof Behemoth, Terastadon, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, and Woodfall Primus. You are more likely to see a PoK in a random opponents deck then any of the cards listed. (Editorial comment: I really found this one interesting because it shows that my prevalence estimates are fairly close to correct - PoK was only in the top 20 creatures, and the few creatures referenced such as Hoofdaddy and Deadeye are both hovering around 10% today; so it's unlikely PoK was much higher than 10%)
if prophet resolves and the person playing it is even remotely competent at magic, the game is over. Prophet is hands down the most broken card in the format, it is essentially the equivalent of taking four turns to each other player's single turn, the card should not have been printed (editorial: Mmmm, hyperbole)
I'm guessing people on the committee play the card, that's why it's never been touched. Probably tooth and nail too. (Editorial comment: Wow, the more things change
Oh man...mods can we please get this thread either locked or merged with the ban list thread. This isn't even a conversation anymore.
This is a 5 mana card that produces no mana draws no cards doesn't tutor has no etb litteraly does nothing before being open to any instant removal for god sakes it dies to a lightning bolt.. If you don't have the counter to stop a prophet be glad your not aginst a real broken card like doomsday doomsday + any cmc 1 cabtrip kills the table for the same mana cost as this slow creature based enabler.
Prophet by itself is not a must answer. With a board and a card advantage engine it needs to die the turn it was played. A T2 PoK from Land, Manavault, Land isn't a threat, yet. A T5 PoK with Mystic Remora or Survival out is a different story, the game will end. PoK is one among many 'must answer' cards. I don't feel like it sits that high on the list. Hermit Druid, Ad Nauseam, Necro, Doomsday, Tooth and Nail, and C Sphinx are all higher up in my book
I play at more than just my own table. FNM, etc., gives me legitimate cause for concern regarding a card's legality.
The prophet isn't the most broken card in the format however, I believe it is the most commonly broken card in the format. What I mean by that is, it is the card that is ruining the largest number of games. It seems like everybody and their grandmother has a copy of PoK and a large number of them think it's a good idea to put it into their decks.
Mods - apologies if this summary of the previous thread is too much C&P for this topic, but I think it's really salient stuff. Prophet is a stellar example of a card where people were very divided (even me, with my very balanced commentary if I do say so myself).
People made literally the exact same arguments against it and for it in a lot of cases.
The biggest difference is that we don't see the same level of cloning/bribing as we saw with prophet, and of course the reason for that is that PE is a somewhat narrower card. But not narrow enough in my opinion:) Its power level ceiling is much higher but it's not quite busted enough to join dramatic scepter in CEDH only town.
The other major parallel I see with PE and Prophet is the kind of line of thinking of:
~"it's just a broken enabler that enables what you choose to do with it"
How that plays out is quite a bit different. PE is far more likely to straight up combo out, and far less likely to durdle out during other people's turns. But that is a major parallel; there's kind of a venn diagram happening where PE and Prophet both overlap with ruining the game and comboing like this:
Too many circles to also add "And a fun time was had by someone other than just the guy playing it" but suffice it to say it's a small sad circle for both
EDIT:
For some prevalence numbers, I went through the comparison of EDhrec numbers similar to this quote from the previous thread on Prophet
If we look at a statistical breakdown of the commander metagame we can see that PoK is in the top 20 creatures of all commander beating out many monocolor bombs that are considered staples, such as Deadeye Navigator, Craterhoof Behemoth, Terastadon, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, and Woodfall Primus. You are more likely to see a PoK in a random opponents deck then any of the cards listed.
On the list of artifacts in the last 2 years, Paradox Engine is 59th on the top 100. That is insaaaane. Prophet broke top 20 on creatures, but let's remember that creatures are way worse in EDH than spells and artifacts almost invariably. The threshold for a creature to be played is pretty huge, and at that time most of the creature decks were UGx - these days most decks will be playing a ton of artifacts with or without paradox engine.
The artifacts list is rather skewed as well because things like Fist of the Suns sit at 18th or so on the back of being in 18% of 5-color decks (derp) and Sunforger being in 12% of WRx decks. If you correct for purely actually mono colored artifacts, PE comes in:
sol ring
lightning greaves
swiftfoot boots
commander's sphere
solemn simulacrum
skullclamp
chromatic lantern
mind stone
darksteel ingot
gilded lotus
fellwar stone
thought vessel
sensei's divining top
thran dynamo
ashnod's altar
burnished hart
worn powerstone
hedron archive
mana crypt
caged sun
mana vault
whispersilk cloak
expedition map
everflowing chalice
sword of the animist
nevinyrral's disk
panharmonicon
wayfarer's bauble
steel hellkite
paradox engine
A fairly respectable 30th.
Thats a pretty fair selection of excerpts. Your right that the difference is that it is both a bit narrower and has significantly less of a centralizing effect on the format (as it isn't prompting people to run steal/reanimate effects more often like Prophet did). That lowers its rating for me (compared to Prophet) on problematic casual omnipresence (especially since the decks that do use it skew more competitive while things like Prophet, Prime Time, and Sylvan got jammed in casual decks at a higher rate). Needing to have a critical mass of mana rocks to work effectively puts significant downward pressure on stealing it, its one thing that it requires you to build around it more for your own deck but its even more significant in that its unlikely your opponents can take advantage of it without a similar deck. Prophet at least was Seedborn Muse in its fail state (getting stolen by a straight up creatureless deck) and Seedborn Muse is a great card.
My issue is that as more and more cards that synergize with PE get printed, the number of decks it should be an auto include in increases, and the greater likelihood it will find its way to more and more casual tables and start ruining games. It seems like this is inevitable at some point, but I'm not sure what the tipping point is, and I'd rather wait until its reached than preemptively ban it.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Yeah, so I think the issue with PE is fundamentally is that it's not so good that casuals don't play it and ruin games with accidental combos. That plus it being a really strong and fairly accessible combo enabler in a lot of decks means you see it in a lot of 75% decks. And then it's also playable in CEDH.
Being both competitive and casual makes it even worse than POK for me, when you combine in how much more annoying it is to remove at instant speed in comparison (and how much less punishing it is when you do so in most cases).
And for a little more exegesis on my favorite quote from the Prophet thread:
If we look at a statistical breakdown of the commander metagame we can see that PoK is in the top 20 creatures of all commander beating out many monocolor bombs that are considered staples, such as Deadeye Navigator, Craterhoof Behemoth, Terastadon, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, and Woodfall Primus. You are more likely to see a PoK in a random opponents deck then any of the cards listed.
I did some more prevalence research by the way. At the time PoK was running rampant, it was in the vicinity of the 20th most played creature in EDH and it was the only multicolored creature to be there.
It is in 13% of decks it can go in and a total of 5600 decks out of 44878 decks.
The closest comparison to it (the next most common UG creature) is Prime Speaker Zegana) in 6561 of 53567 decks (at 23rd).
So for all of you "prophet was in every UG decK!!!" people it is extremely likely that Prophet was in around 7000-10000 of 54000 decks.
It was probably in fewer decks than Paradox Engine is in now, though its prevalence rate is higher because it's UG specific vs. being able to be played in any deck.
So the next time you feel the urge to say "Prophet was played way more than Paradox Engine!" This is almost certainly incorrect.
Yeah, so I think the issue with PE is fundamentally is that it's not so good that casuals don't play it and ruin games with accidental combos. That plus it being a really strong and fairly accessible combo enabler in a lot of decks means you see it in a lot of 75% decks. And then it's also playable in CEDH.
Being both competitive and casual makes it even worse than POK for me, when you combine in how much more annoying it is to remove at instant speed in comparison (and how much less punishing it is when you do so in most cases).
And for a little more exegesis on my favorite quote from the Prophet thread:
If we look at a statistical breakdown of the commander metagame we can see that PoK is in the top 20 creatures of all commander beating out many monocolor bombs that are considered staples, such as Deadeye Navigator, Craterhoof Behemoth, Terastadon, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, and Woodfall Primus. You are more likely to see a PoK in a random opponents deck then any of the cards listed.
I did some more prevalence research by the way. At the time PoK was running rampant, it was in the vicinity of the 20th most played creature in EDH and it was the only multicolored creature to be there.
It is in 13% of decks it can go in and a total of 5600 decks out of 44878 decks.
The closest comparison to it (the next most common UG creature) is Prime Speaker Zegana) in 6561 of 53567 decks (at 23rd).
So for all of you "prophet was in every UG decK!!!" people it is extremely likely that Prophet was in around 7000-10000 of 54000 decks.
It was probably in fewer decks than Paradox Engine is in now, though its prevalence rate is higher because it's UG specific vs. being able to be played in any deck.
So the next time you feel the urge to say "Prophet was played way more than Paradox Engine!" This is almost certainly incorrect.
Thats far from enough data to make the sort of closing statement you just did.
First of all, though somewhat unrelated to my other points, more people are playing edh today than when prophet was legal, so comparing raw numbers without adjusting for this inflation would be disingenuous. More people could theoretically be playing PE while it still being played in a lower percentage of total decks.
But relevant to the point that the data you provide doesn't back up your assertion: you make a lot of guesses based on other cards being similarly ranked but with no data showing that this is a valid correlation. There may, for instance, be more spread between places today while the places could have been more clustered when prophet was legal. To be more clear, the difference between tenth place and twentieth today could be (and this is pulled from my ass as I'm not actually looking it up) 4,000 decks, while in Prophets day it may have been 1000. The 20th most played creature today could be ran in a significantly lower percentage of decks than the 20th most played creature 8 years ago. In order to compare Prophet to cards that have similar rankings today and have it be relevant, you'd have to show that the deck percentages are about the same for each ranked place as they were in Prophets day.
More glaringly, you haven't actually shown what percentage of decks run PE, so you only provide half the answer (and based on flawed data at that). I did do the homework on this though, and I'm seeing it as being in 6 percent of listed decks.
Further, there is a severe problem with the way EDHrec ranks creatures. Xenagod, ranked 20th in the past 2 years, appears in fewer decks than Zegana, ranked 23rd. Despite this he makes up a larger share of decks that could run him, because there are fewer RGx decks than UGx decks. Zegana is also more narrow that Prophet (she wants decently sized creatures so she can draw lots of cards, whereas Prophet wants things that can be cast at instant speed, which includes any creature due to its ability, and/or activated abilities that require taps or mana. It's good everywhere, and it's a massive bomb.
It's a shame I can't find data from back then, I'd really like to see the numbers. I'd also like to see the top commanders list. For PE it's a who's who of broken artifact commanders and cEDH perennials, with it's more casual guys being legendary eldrazi, Seton, and Memnarch. Prophet, otoh, was showing up under more casual commanders. That's an important difference, problematic casual omnipresence doesn't look at cEDH numbers.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
So the next time you feel the urge to say "Prophet was played way more than Paradox Engine!" This is almost certainly incorrect.
Prophet was played more.
I hate EDHrec. It doesn’t paint anywhere near to a complete picture, and often caters to a higher tier of players than the casuals the format is pointed at.
Fact: I’ve played EDH for 10+ years. I’ve built hundred of decks, both in paper and online. I have visited EDHrec exactly 1 time, and have never posted a decklist on there. That point, in and of itself, buries any point you are trying to make by using EDHrec. It’s a valuable tool, but hardly paints a complete picture.
Another fact: I’ve revived my MTGO account to play some jank. My groups haven’t gotten together as much and it helps scratch that itch. I started about the beginning of June again, play about 3-4 games a night, both 1v1 and Multi-player. I have yet to see Paradox engine, even once. So in over 100 matches, this boogeyman, has yet to be played. In a forum that isn’t exactly kind to the social contract.
Originally, I had played MTGO from M11 thru Amonkhet. I saw PrimeTime, Sylvan Primordial, and Prophet of Kruphix all played significantly more than I have ever seen P.E. The same goes for paper.
You are really underselling how much PoK was played, and with literally no data to back it up.
I’ve also reviewed my decks. The deck that would probably make the most use out of P.E is my DragonLord Ojutai. I run Sol Ring, Signet, Mind Stone, Coalition Relic, and Basalt Monolith(with power artifact, to fuel a game ending Stroke of Genius if needed). What’s the reason to run P.E? Untap Ojutai? Make 5 additional mana? I’d have to add a few more expensive($$) rocks, more draw to keep the spells in hand, and all the while tweak the deck as a whole. For what? To make P.E. Do something stupid?
What I am curious about, though, is what the rock/dork density is in those decks that have P.E. That would be actual relevant information. What does it take for X cards to make P.E work degenerately? Is it 10 rocks/dorks? 10% of your deck, after ~40% of your deck is dedicated to mana-sources that don’t work with P.E? How much draw power is there? Is it confined to a specific color combination? Does it appear more in Blue decks than Green, etc.?
Your only basis for its prevalence was a quote from years ago that PoK was in the top 20 most played creatures.
Honestly, if PE was a card I saw at non-cEDH tables, I could get on board with banning it. But the fact remains that the only times I see it in non-cEDH decks is my own Phenax, god of deception. I never see the card.
T&N is so much more present in 50-75% metas.
And here is the main talking points, I think:
- PoK could go into any UGx deck and do well. If you had creatures, it let you play creatures at 4x the rate of your opponents. If you played spells, it let you play instants and flash in your commander before your next turn. It was always good, and made the rest of your deck broken. PoK almost always did something because at the least you could cast your commander and you were in the main card-draw colours. The main issue with PoK, however, was that if you didn't kill it the turn it came down, you would never get the chance. You could not wait until your turn and cast Damnation. You could not wait until your turn and tutor your spot removal spell. Once they untapped, it was nearly impossible to kill PoK. Whether or not you played combo did not matter, it was a value engine that took over the game within one turn cycle.
- PE does absolutely nothing by itself. You need to follow-up with a spell to do anything with it. Meaning, it is not a good play if you have 5 mana. You need more mana or you give your opponents a whole turn cycle to deal with it. Next, if you have no mana dorks or mana rocks, PE is not broken. As creatures and artifacts are the two easiest permanents to destroy, I do not believe that, on average, people have enough of these permanents to go off. Finally, you play PE specifically to combo off. It is like High Tide. The percentage of EDH players who want to combo off is relatively low. This is why most of us do not see PE very often.
Much of your argument has been that PE is abusable in most decks most of the time - that most decks have enough mana rocks to take advantage of PE. I just went through the 21 decks 'random deck of the week' thread. None had PE. 3-4 of them had enough mana rocks to take advantage of PE should it have been in the list.
I understand your point about it being a degenerate card. I understand that it is very present in your circle. I know it is a staple of cEDH. cEDH is not noteworthy, though, since it is an unmanageable format. PE should not be banned for cEDH any more than any other combo card.
I am just pointing out that it is not very present in Commander as a whole, and that the average commander deck, whether or not it is correct, does not have 10+ mana rocks. I think they usually have between 3 and 6 mana rocks. Mana dorks almost only exist in cEDH... understandably, since losing your mana ramp to wrath of god is frustrating.
Please keep in mind that EDHRec bases its stats on people posting decks online. People who post decks online are a minority of commander players. The people who post online are on average More competitive and more invested in magic than people who do not post online. The price of PE is thankfully another reason why it does not show up in the same numbers as PoK did.
I want you to know that I take all your arguments as valid and interesting arguments. I just do not agree with your take on what the implications are. I think our main disagreement is about what percentage of decks can actually utilize PE.
If I had PE showing up as often as you do, I would be playing a lot more artifact hate. Cleansing Nova, Vandalblast, Shatterstorm, even more ETB creatures that break artifacts. If everyone has 10+ artifacts these cards will always be good.
I feel like with power cards that aren't really that broken like pe and.prophet I think it's fine to give them some time. The edh meta is very slow to change.
I also do not give a flying monkey fart about finance in the 30 dollar range and there is no way that should be impacting bans.
Library where a very few people stand to make 7 or 8 figures I can understand. Prophet of kruphix was well on it's way to being a 20 dollar card and would have easily been had it been printed today. Finance on edh cards has evolved a lot since those days.
As a side not I am sure my anecdote is not proof of anything. But I can say everyone groans when they see paradox engine and every single time i see it my opinion is reinforced. I really hope it finally gets banned because I've simply had enough.
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Honestly though i think PE is getting worse. Wizards keeps printing wild stuff that interacts with it. And worst really of all is that the longer it sticks the safer it appears so the worse its omnipresence goes.
I'm at the point I don't want to make an artifact deck or a mana dork deck anymore because they seem to demand paradox engine almost. It's so absurdly good in those shells it's hard to eschew. Without making your deck much worse anyway.
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I appreciate healthy debate and discussion over the format. BUT, it gets a bit ridiculous seeing months and months of discussion of the same handful of vocal people coming back and posting new anecdotal stories to try to crusade to make their case when the entire rest of the format has settled fine. Especially considering this card has been out in the wild for... *looks up the release date of Aether Revolt* ...almost 3 years, now. Because that's not enough, the argument is now "It's getting worse! New cards are being printed!" ...And? How many threads pop up here every set with a kneejerk reaction about the supposed power level of a card. Simic Ascendancy anyone? Narset, Parter of Veils? Razaketh, the Foulblooded? Please. Give the sensationalism a rest.
(Also known as Xenphire)
Prophet of Kruphix was ~$2.00 the day before it was banned. It's all time high was preorders before release, at ~$5.00
Library of Alexandria is not banned for secondary market reasons.
Paradox Engine is a 5 mana artifact that does literally nothing without both 1) an established board presence that benefits from untapping, and 2) spells to trigger it. It utilizes a triggered ability, and can be responded to.
The card is a very strong enabler for a few, specific types of decks, and borderline unplayable everywhere else.
If the card has been causing problems at your table, and you have still been unable to figure out how to deal with it, Paradox Engine is not the problem.
You disliking a card is not valid grounds for banning.
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Maybe the game IS getting worse as they design more and more cards to be "good" in edh to sell packs and end up making the game less fun in the end as a result.
You say the format is just fine, but I would disagree. The rate at which casual games get ruined by power creep because one guy just has to play that new stronger card that ends the game regardless of what happened earlier has definitely increased substantially.
One could then say to try and enforce it with social contract, but the more we have to try and house rule things the worse the format is getting.
Re: Paradox engine and sensationalism
The case against PE is reasonably strong compared to the casual banmania stuff:
Take that prevalence number on edhrec and that is still one of the interesting cases for banning to me. This is a colorless card that is in 1 in 18 decks, despite its admittedly serious deckbuilding consequences -- you really cannot be on a ramp package other than dorks or rocks.
It sees play in a fairly diverse array of commanders, and takes up a huge share of the builds of many of them
~ 70% of urza, arcum decks
~ 60% of Azami, seton, rishkar, dralnu
~ 50% of new jhoira, sisay, karn, several partner pairs, mono g selvala
~ 40% of selvala, kydele, muzzio decks
Wizards seems to print a new PE general basically every set or two.
Comparing this card to banmania like Simic Ascendancy is completely unfair. There're many argments for this thing being a problem that are legitimate and should not be thrown out with the "Well it's been around for 3 years and not everyone sees it frequently" stuff.
I have surely shared my anecdotes, because ultimately that is something people think about. How does the card affect actual games of magic?
That's why Prophet got banned - its prevalence was partially the issue, but it had many things in common
1) It warped many UG decks to a be a prophet deck - check, PE strongly encourages artifact and dork decks to play it
2) It dominated the table both of playing time and of focus when it dropped - PE Checks this box although significantly less so than Prophet
3) It was a target for theft, cloning and so on - this is much less of an issue though I have seen cloned and acquired PEs win games infrequently
I think Prophet is probably the best ban comparison we can make other than possibly Metalworker - which compares very interestingly on the mana spectrum.
-----------------------
tiny prevalence nugget
PE sees more play than
Good times
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Mox Diamond and Grim Monolith are on the Reserve List, so that probably has something to do with it, especially grim mono.
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Source? Because I'm pretty sure that it's solely banned due to PBtE.
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Sure, although I think you got your pricing backwards as Mox Diamond is like 2x the price of Grim's (well more like 50% now, nuuuuuuuts).
Point is that if you watch the prevalence, PE is rapidly becoming accepted as the engine of choice for its decks in a very similar (but slower) way than Prophet of Kruphix did.
I would bet, actually, if you compared "Deck types that want it" that PE is close to Prophet from a prevalence perspective -- and if it's even close it's only because PE requires a very expensive manabase to be extra broken (~700 bucks of crypt, mox, chrome, metalworker, grim, mana vault). But that analysis would be quite difficult to perform unfortunately.
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*Says PE should be banned for prevalence in EDH
*Also points out that maybe 1 in 18 decks plays it
Were you playing when PoK was legal? It was in 2-3 decks in every single game of magic I played, and I played a lot in those days. Of UGx decks, I would say it was in more than half of the decks, and that it warped gameplay completely. I would not tap out once the UG player had 4 mana because I didn't want to lose to PoK the next turn. By itself, it could win you the game.
PE is not the same at all. Not as prevalent by a longshot, despite being legal in 100% of decks.
I understand that it can make for long turns, but you know what - so does Top, Sylvan Library, and so many other cards.
You are comparing to PoK but I would compare to Food Chain. Food Chain is deplorable when it is played because it almost always marks the end of the game. What a bad card for EDH where you always have access to a creature to exile and a creature to cast. But you know what, Food Chain only fits in certain specific decks. Of my 17 decks, only MW and Karador could benefit from 'cloning' a food chain. None of my other decks would benefit in any way I can think of. PE is similar - if I am playing MW or a Gx deck with lots of dorks, sure, PE cloning could benefit me... but most of my other decks would prefer to clone a sol ring.
It sees play in 70% of Arcum decks? Arcum has a tap ability and does really well with Artifacts. Thousand-Year Elixir sees just as much play.
I totally agree with Kelzam's post. I am sick and tired of seeing the same points repeated over and over again. We know the RC has kept an eye on it. Clearly they have never felt the need to ban it. It isn't seeing more and more play - just maybe more play in certain new decks.
To be ubiquitous enough to be banned, it isn't about being prevalent in Arcum decks or Selvala decks. Those decks are toxic, and I have no interest in playing against them. To be ubiquitous enough to be banned, an artifact like this would have to be played in at least 25% of decks before you can even think about it.
I am willing to bet that Sylvan Primordial was played in more than half of green decks at the time of banning. PoK was probably in close to 75% of UG decks.
Next time you watch a game of Commander clash, throw in PE on turn 5 and let me know what it does to the game. People play mana rocks but they get blown up. People play dorks but they die. PE relies on having a threshold of the two easiest types of permanents to destroy in magic.
So, Pokken, I get that you hate the card (and I would too if my meta was full of it), but can we just bury this dead horse?
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UG Creature decks with a high volume of ETBs were the ones that played Prophet.
Decks with a high volume of creatures or artifacts with tap effects are the ones that play Paradox Engine.
My opinion based on how I remember playing through the meta, is that Paradox engines are as common in the types of decks that they belong in as Prophet of Kruphix was in decks that it belonged in. I played a lot then and while Prophet was quite present, it was not being played in every UG deck - usually a deck wanted 30+ creatures and a high percentage of them to generate value.
I think people regularly overstate just how common it was; I would be very surprised if it approached 10% prevalence in UGx decks during its reign.
At the time PoK was popular it also happened that UGx creature value decks were pretty popular, as the variety of commanders in general was quite low. Wizards has seriously changed the meta of commander over the years. Creature value toolbox is not nearly as common or as powerful as it used to be.
And finally, Paradox engine being in 1 in 18 decks is far different than Prophet being in even 1 in 10 decks it could be in; Paradox Engine can be in *any* deck, not just the 25% or so of decks that are UGx (which are already skewed hard toward creature value decks). The fact that Paradox engine is in 6% of all decks is frigging mind blowing to me. How does that not alarm you that a colorless card that people decry as "just a CEDH combo derp" is in 6% of the decks posted on Edhrec?
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I feel the need to add a clarifying point here which is that I do not think that the fairly high prevalence is the sole factor impacting a ban decision. It mostly relates to the "omnipresence" part of "problematic casual omnipresence."
I do think that being as commonly played as cards like Aetherflux Reservoir and Panharmonicon which are unarguably very popular cards puts paradox engine in the running for omnipresence.
It is high on both measures of omnipresence
* Gameplan-aligned omnipresence - Where the card is good in your deck. From the measures on Edhrec, this card has an absurd level of gameplan aligned omnipresence. Decks where it is very good are going to play it over half the time.
* General omnipresence - The card's position as a part of the metagame at large. Card is half as common as Sensei's Divining Top, more common than Chrome Mox and in as many decks total as cards like necropotence and worldy tutor - It is definitely out there.
Through years of discussion we've established that this is only a small sliver of what goes into banning a card. But I think this makes a case that pardaox engine
1) Has a rating on the problematic casual omnipresence scale that is >0
2) Is demonstrably increasing
Reminder on the problematic casual omnipresence verbiage in case--
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I would hope it goes without saying that I completely reject your attempt to moderate me (and this thread in general) - but apparently it doesn't, so consider it said. If a mod needs me to stop posting in this thread they can tell me. If I feel like I have something new to say I will say it.
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Also it was only in UG creature value decks. If your table was UG creature value decks then yes you'd see a lot of prophet.
Similarly if your meta is a bit stronger you will see a lot of engine. It's almost at auto-include status for players who have the mana rocks to support it in their collection. But there's only so popular the now 50$ paradox engine will be that runs best with cards that themselves cost tons of money.
Take a quick look at how long Sundering Titan was legal. Think about how it hits ban criteria. Do you think just because it went for so long it suddenly got worse?
Consider a bunch of people actually have issues with PE, but don't post here.
Yes there is, and always will be kneejerk. Panharmonicon was one from Revolt, but PE has actually been doing bannable stuff. You certainly do not have to discuss it, but please don't turn people who are into something else.
Dies to removal will always be a terrible argument
No real horse in this race, but this is not correct. People played UGx decks because prophet existed. Full stop. If your deck wasn’t built to abuse Prophet, you changed your deck. I did, and many, many other decks that I encountered did too.
That was the problem. If you were playing UGx, and you weren’t playing prophet, it was wrong. Much like not playing PrimeTime with G. I could probably dig it up, but I’m fairly certain the RC even stayed as such in the ban announcement or just before.
That is certainly not the case with Paradox Engine, you’ve even said so yourself.
On a side note, the problem with “discussions” like these, much like that in the Coalition Victory thread, is that personal anecdotes often get paraded as facts, which in turn spreads misinformation. That’s my problem with these threads. Healthy discussion is fine, but until something actually changes, and not new cards being printed, then there isn’t much to discuss that hasn’t already been discussed ad nauseam. There are actual sources of real information out there that is relevant here, bringing personal anecdotes into the matter usually means you are in the minority and trying to sway others, which really just Missy’s the waters.
Strong card? Sure is. Does it belong in every deck? Heck no.
So I'm not 100% sure what you're saying here, but people played UGx creature decks long before Prophet and continued to do so long after prophet.
There were were plenty of UGx decks that didn't want to play a lot of creatures. And Seedborn Muse was significantly stronger in those decks if they even wanted that effect. I'm trying to think back to those days, but in general the metagame was quite a bit less refined. But there were plenty of BUG control decks and have been for most of Magic's history, and they didn't really want Prophet because they wanted clean boards.
The case in retrospect against Prophet is often somewhat hyperbolic. But it made a specific subset of UG decks abominable, not all UG decks. It did tend to centralize UG creature based strategies but it was not an autoinclude except in creature decks.
Paradox Engine is rapidly becoming the same way, which is that it's an autoinclude in a certain subset of decks - large volume of mana rocks or mana creatures, and you should probably be playing Paradox engine.
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I take issue with your comments about anecdotes. No one in this thread has ever said:
"Here is my anecdote, therefore Paradox Engine is broken." That is a literal strawman you're setting up here with statements like:
I believe that anecdotes about how a card is actually affecting games is important. But I have said myself that this is a small part of the story. There is a mammoth case for bannning Paradox Engine independently of anecdotes. No one thinks me having a couple bad games with PE is justification for banning.
With Prophet of Kruphix, I believe that the stories of how it actually saw play factored into a good understanding of just why it was not fun as a card. It becomes a lot more real when you see what it's actually doing -- someone dropped PoK, then someone cloned it, then someone stole the original one, then everyone took turns taking extra sub-turns in everyone else's upkeep until no one gave a ***** anymore, etc. etc. Someone cast Prophet, untapped and answered everything until they combo'd off on the last end step, sometimes winning a game of archenemy by being able to play as much mana as everyone else combined.
Stories have value in discussions as long as we aren't trying to make them the argument. When I tell you a story about PE, my point is for you to understand just how centralizing it is when I see it -- whenever someone casts a PE in games I have seen it in, the game immediately becomes 100% about that resolved PE.
Far from muddying the waters, I think understanding what the card actually does is important, on both sides. No one threw a fit about Cryogen saying he saw it once at SCGCon and it did nothing - I certainly welcome hearing that, because I'm open to the idea that my experience is not the same as everyone else's.
Edit: What I would love to do is review the old SCD threads about Prophet of Kruphix. Does anyone have access to these? I feel like the arguments back and forth are almost identical in some ways. There were tons of anecdotes on both sides, mostly with stuff like:
FOR
-Prophet took over the whole game and guy won a game of archenemy
-Prophet was cloned by 3 of 4 players and then someone combo'd out
AGAINST
-I saw it, I killed it, the tempo blowout won the game
-Saw it, everyone ganged up on the prophet player and he lost
Edit 2: for historical reference here is the Prophet of Kruphix ban thread from the MTGcommander forums:
http://mtgcommander.net/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16793&p=181084&hilit=prophet#p181084
(I would really recommend skimming that entire thread - it is pure gold).
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PE, on the other hand, is a vicious combo enabler. It's a card you want in combo decks, and it wins.
PoK "took over" what should have been 75% games of EDH. PE drives your deck into becoming 90-100% deck, just by virtue of being such a powerful (but "narrow") combo card.
I'm not saying PE should or shouldn't be banned because of this, I'm just pointing out how I feel the two cards occupy different spaces in EDH. Prophet felt "fair" in some ways and slotted so easily into fair decks, but then was actually obscenely powerful and made it so any "fair" deck should just run prophet and warp itself around that card. PE will never be mistaken for a fair card, it will never just get slotted into a deck, but a deck that wants to go off will want it. It hits a very different deckbuilding sweet spot, that isn't occupied by as many EDH players. But within that band, it is immensely powerful, and does possess qualities of a bannable card.
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/607230-prophet-of-kruphix
Such gems as:
Mods - apologies if this summary of the previous thread is too much C&P for this topic, but I think it's really salient stuff. Prophet is a stellar example of a card where people were very divided (even me, with my very balanced commentary if I do say so myself).
People made literally the exact same arguments against it and for it in a lot of cases.
The biggest difference is that we don't see the same level of cloning/bribing as we saw with prophet, and of course the reason for that is that PE is a somewhat narrower card. But not narrow enough in my opinion:) Its power level ceiling is much higher but it's not quite busted enough to join dramatic scepter in CEDH only town.
The other major parallel I see with PE and Prophet is the kind of line of thinking of:
~"it's just a broken enabler that enables what you choose to do with it"
How that plays out is quite a bit different. PE is far more likely to straight up combo out, and far less likely to durdle out during other people's turns. But that is a major parallel; there's kind of a venn diagram happening where PE and Prophet both overlap with ruining the game and comboing like this:
Too many circles to also add "And a fun time was had by someone other than just the guy playing it" but suffice it to say it's a small sad circle for both
EDIT:
For some prevalence numbers, I went through the comparison of EDhrec numbers similar to this quote from the previous thread on Prophet
On the list of artifacts in the last 2 years, Paradox Engine is 59th on the top 100. That is insaaaane. Prophet broke top 20 on creatures, but let's remember that creatures are way worse in EDH than spells and artifacts almost invariably. The threshold for a creature to be played is pretty huge, and at that time most of the creature decks were UGx - these days most decks will be playing a ton of artifacts with or without paradox engine.
The artifacts list is rather skewed as well because things like Fist of the Suns sit at 18th or so on the back of being in 18% of 5-color decks (derp) and Sunforger being in 12% of WRx decks. If you correct for purely actually mono colored artifacts, PE comes in:
A fairly respectable 30th.
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Whats the point of this card other then ops i comboed? Haven't seen PE in my group for a year, because the card had no purpose other then win a game in hyper competitive way. I'm in the team of banning it because the card has no other purpose other then combo. Cards like Mikaeus, Kiki-Jiki can be played fairlly and have other strats to them other then combo wins. Paradox Engine doesn't have anything going for it other then been a combo win.
I'm thankefull my griyp isn't been ravaged by it, but i cans ee how "pointless" the card is for majority. I won't groan if it remains unbanned, but i won't shed a tear if its gone either.
Thats a pretty fair selection of excerpts. Your right that the difference is that it is both a bit narrower and has significantly less of a centralizing effect on the format (as it isn't prompting people to run steal/reanimate effects more often like Prophet did). That lowers its rating for me (compared to Prophet) on problematic casual omnipresence (especially since the decks that do use it skew more competitive while things like Prophet, Prime Time, and Sylvan got jammed in casual decks at a higher rate). Needing to have a critical mass of mana rocks to work effectively puts significant downward pressure on stealing it, its one thing that it requires you to build around it more for your own deck but its even more significant in that its unlikely your opponents can take advantage of it without a similar deck. Prophet at least was Seedborn Muse in its fail state (getting stolen by a straight up creatureless deck) and Seedborn Muse is a great card.
My issue is that as more and more cards that synergize with PE get printed, the number of decks it should be an auto include in increases, and the greater likelihood it will find its way to more and more casual tables and start ruining games. It seems like this is inevitable at some point, but I'm not sure what the tipping point is, and I'd rather wait until its reached than preemptively ban it.
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Being both competitive and casual makes it even worse than POK for me, when you combine in how much more annoying it is to remove at instant speed in comparison (and how much less punishing it is when you do so in most cases).
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And for a little more exegesis on my favorite quote from the Prophet thread:
I did some more prevalence research by the way. At the time PoK was running rampant, it was in the vicinity of the 20th most played creature in EDH and it was the only multicolored creature to be there.
I give you the 20th most played creature in EDH today:
Xenagos, God of Revels https://edhrec.com/cards/xenagos-god-of-revels
It is in 13% of decks it can go in and a total of 5600 decks out of 44878 decks.
The closest comparison to it (the next most common UG creature) is Prime Speaker Zegana) in 6561 of 53567 decks (at 23rd).
So for all of you "prophet was in every UG decK!!!" people it is extremely likely that Prophet was in around 7000-10000 of 54000 decks.
It was probably in fewer decks than Paradox Engine is in now, though its prevalence rate is higher because it's UG specific vs. being able to be played in any deck.
So the next time you feel the urge to say "Prophet was played way more than Paradox Engine!" This is almost certainly incorrect.
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Thats far from enough data to make the sort of closing statement you just did.
First of all, though somewhat unrelated to my other points, more people are playing edh today than when prophet was legal, so comparing raw numbers without adjusting for this inflation would be disingenuous. More people could theoretically be playing PE while it still being played in a lower percentage of total decks.
But relevant to the point that the data you provide doesn't back up your assertion: you make a lot of guesses based on other cards being similarly ranked but with no data showing that this is a valid correlation. There may, for instance, be more spread between places today while the places could have been more clustered when prophet was legal. To be more clear, the difference between tenth place and twentieth today could be (and this is pulled from my ass as I'm not actually looking it up) 4,000 decks, while in Prophets day it may have been 1000. The 20th most played creature today could be ran in a significantly lower percentage of decks than the 20th most played creature 8 years ago. In order to compare Prophet to cards that have similar rankings today and have it be relevant, you'd have to show that the deck percentages are about the same for each ranked place as they were in Prophets day.
More glaringly, you haven't actually shown what percentage of decks run PE, so you only provide half the answer (and based on flawed data at that). I did do the homework on this though, and I'm seeing it as being in 6 percent of listed decks.
Further, there is a severe problem with the way EDHrec ranks creatures. Xenagod, ranked 20th in the past 2 years, appears in fewer decks than Zegana, ranked 23rd. Despite this he makes up a larger share of decks that could run him, because there are fewer RGx decks than UGx decks. Zegana is also more narrow that Prophet (she wants decently sized creatures so she can draw lots of cards, whereas Prophet wants things that can be cast at instant speed, which includes any creature due to its ability, and/or activated abilities that require taps or mana. It's good everywhere, and it's a massive bomb.
It's a shame I can't find data from back then, I'd really like to see the numbers. I'd also like to see the top commanders list. For PE it's a who's who of broken artifact commanders and cEDH perennials, with it's more casual guys being legendary eldrazi, Seton, and Memnarch. Prophet, otoh, was showing up under more casual commanders. That's an important difference, problematic casual omnipresence doesn't look at cEDH numbers.
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Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Prophet was played more.
I hate EDHrec. It doesn’t paint anywhere near to a complete picture, and often caters to a higher tier of players than the casuals the format is pointed at.
Fact: I’ve played EDH for 10+ years. I’ve built hundred of decks, both in paper and online. I have visited EDHrec exactly 1 time, and have never posted a decklist on there. That point, in and of itself, buries any point you are trying to make by using EDHrec. It’s a valuable tool, but hardly paints a complete picture.
Another fact: I’ve revived my MTGO account to play some jank. My groups haven’t gotten together as much and it helps scratch that itch. I started about the beginning of June again, play about 3-4 games a night, both 1v1 and Multi-player. I have yet to see Paradox engine, even once. So in over 100 matches, this boogeyman, has yet to be played. In a forum that isn’t exactly kind to the social contract.
Originally, I had played MTGO from M11 thru Amonkhet. I saw PrimeTime, Sylvan Primordial, and Prophet of Kruphix all played significantly more than I have ever seen P.E. The same goes for paper.
You are really underselling how much PoK was played, and with literally no data to back it up.
I’ve also reviewed my decks. The deck that would probably make the most use out of P.E is my DragonLord Ojutai. I run Sol Ring, Signet, Mind Stone, Coalition Relic, and Basalt Monolith(with power artifact, to fuel a game ending Stroke of Genius if needed). What’s the reason to run P.E? Untap Ojutai? Make 5 additional mana? I’d have to add a few more expensive($$) rocks, more draw to keep the spells in hand, and all the while tweak the deck as a whole. For what? To make P.E. Do something stupid?
What I am curious about, though, is what the rock/dork density is in those decks that have P.E. That would be actual relevant information. What does it take for X cards to make P.E work degenerately? Is it 10 rocks/dorks? 10% of your deck, after ~40% of your deck is dedicated to mana-sources that don’t work with P.E? How much draw power is there? Is it confined to a specific color combination? Does it appear more in Blue decks than Green, etc.?
Honestly, if PE was a card I saw at non-cEDH tables, I could get on board with banning it. But the fact remains that the only times I see it in non-cEDH decks is my own Phenax, god of deception. I never see the card.
T&N is so much more present in 50-75% metas.
And here is the main talking points, I think:
- PoK could go into any UGx deck and do well. If you had creatures, it let you play creatures at 4x the rate of your opponents. If you played spells, it let you play instants and flash in your commander before your next turn. It was always good, and made the rest of your deck broken. PoK almost always did something because at the least you could cast your commander and you were in the main card-draw colours. The main issue with PoK, however, was that if you didn't kill it the turn it came down, you would never get the chance. You could not wait until your turn and cast Damnation. You could not wait until your turn and tutor your spot removal spell. Once they untapped, it was nearly impossible to kill PoK. Whether or not you played combo did not matter, it was a value engine that took over the game within one turn cycle.
- PE does absolutely nothing by itself. You need to follow-up with a spell to do anything with it. Meaning, it is not a good play if you have 5 mana. You need more mana or you give your opponents a whole turn cycle to deal with it. Next, if you have no mana dorks or mana rocks, PE is not broken. As creatures and artifacts are the two easiest permanents to destroy, I do not believe that, on average, people have enough of these permanents to go off. Finally, you play PE specifically to combo off. It is like High Tide. The percentage of EDH players who want to combo off is relatively low. This is why most of us do not see PE very often.
Much of your argument has been that PE is abusable in most decks most of the time - that most decks have enough mana rocks to take advantage of PE. I just went through the 21 decks 'random deck of the week' thread. None had PE. 3-4 of them had enough mana rocks to take advantage of PE should it have been in the list.
I understand your point about it being a degenerate card. I understand that it is very present in your circle. I know it is a staple of cEDH. cEDH is not noteworthy, though, since it is an unmanageable format. PE should not be banned for cEDH any more than any other combo card.
I am just pointing out that it is not very present in Commander as a whole, and that the average commander deck, whether or not it is correct, does not have 10+ mana rocks. I think they usually have between 3 and 6 mana rocks. Mana dorks almost only exist in cEDH... understandably, since losing your mana ramp to wrath of god is frustrating.
Please keep in mind that EDHRec bases its stats on people posting decks online. People who post decks online are a minority of commander players. The people who post online are on average More competitive and more invested in magic than people who do not post online. The price of PE is thankfully another reason why it does not show up in the same numbers as PoK did.
I want you to know that I take all your arguments as valid and interesting arguments. I just do not agree with your take on what the implications are. I think our main disagreement is about what percentage of decks can actually utilize PE.
If I had PE showing up as often as you do, I would be playing a lot more artifact hate. Cleansing Nova, Vandalblast, Shatterstorm, even more ETB creatures that break artifacts. If everyone has 10+ artifacts these cards will always be good.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers