Painters Servant and Solemnity can both lead to locks if built around, but servant does so with more cards, is colorless and thus available for more decks, and is one half of a colorless two card combo that can reasonably hit turn 2.
While I lean towards wanting it unbanned, I could see the logic behind it staying banned as while it does not tip the scale in any single category, it's borderline in several categories.
Being able to lock the game isn't worthy of a ban. Being a part of a fast 2 card combo that goes in literally any deck is not be enough (though the potential for resulting ubiquity might be). It's ability to accidentally combo with other players cards isn't enough. It's turning on of color hosers and the resulting potential for undesirable game states isn't enough. Many cards meet one of those criteria that should never be banned. PS is a rare card that does all of those things.
Personally, I think banning Iona would make PS much safer, and the grindstone combo is already available with RiP Helm (though less efficient and in white rather than colorless).
I'd like to point out that solemn decree combo, while comparable to PS Iona, is substantially weaker. It's in W/U rather than mono white, and thus not usable by as many decks, it costs more mana, it's harder to cheat out (especially as being mono white PS Iona can go in decks with colors that can cheat creatures out efficiently), Iona is a borderline card on her own without the combo and will sometimes just achieve the lock without any help, and Iona prevents you from casting spells getting around spells that cannot be countered and copies.
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!
I also went through the old thread about painter's servant, but i figured i shouldn't necro an old thread.
Creates Undesirable Games / Game Situations.
I'm not sure that painter's servant does. It interacts strangely with many cards (i recently had a legacy game with painter, earnest fellowship in play to make an opponent's creature drop his sword of light and shadow), and i think that's fun and mind-bendy, but not necessarily undesirable. According to EDHrec, iona, shield of emeria exists in 61 decks, and all is dust in just over 10,000 decks. Island, on the other hand, features in over 150,000, just for an approximate "how often a moment of feel-bad" would occur.
Problematic Casual Omnipresence.
Possibly...? i highly doubt it after an initial rush of "WOAH! now i can uber-charge my blind seer shenanigans deck!", it's probably going to fall by the wayside.
Produces Too Much Mana Too Quickly.
Nope. or at least not by itself. And at least not with any card i can think of off the top of my head. is there anything outside of things like chaos moon? and that's not very good as is.
Interacts Badly with the Structure of Commander.
Not sure. Don't think so. Doesn't affect colour identity, right?
Creates a Perceived High Barrier to Entry.
Doesn't cost that much, and was somewhat recently printed.
The majority of anti-unbanning sentiments are around the 2-card combos of things like ugin, the spirit dragon and wash out. But similar arguments have been made about keeping things like worldgorger dragon and protean hulk on the banlist. There's also the sentiment that the net positive of unbanning it doesn't outweigh the net negative of it. I'm not completely sure i'm sold on that sentiment. Having played painter myself in legacy, there are some genuinely fun interactions you could have. suddenly, radiance can do some real nifty things. You could even make cloven casting always active by making all your spells multi-coloured. I know that there's a lot of feel bad potentials here, but i think the general positives are many. From the very niche uses like jasmine seer to chrome mox being able to tap for more colours, to king crab shenanigans to a whole range of weird things.
I also get that iona is a pretty crappy feel-bad that can come up - but is that any worse than teferi + knowledge pool?
With the recent unbanning of cards like protean hulk and worldgorger, i think the vast majority of players in EDH has shown that the ones who do want to go broken combo will do so, but the vast majority of us want to just use the cards to make weird interactions (or at least i'm not aware of a sudden influx of world gorger dragon combos when it was unbanned).
I feel like since the last discussion was over 2 years ago, it might be worth revisiting this. Our thoughts might've changed, and the banlist philosophy might've had a change in definition over the years.
1) there's almost no real use to Painter's Servant other than degenerate combo. It's pointless in a fair deck.
2) 2-card combo that costs 2-3 mana each. What does Teferi/Knowledge Pool(costing 5-6 mana each) have to do with this? You may as well say it's no stronger than Omniscience/Enter the Infinite
1) there's almost no real use to Painter's Servant other than degenerate combo. It's pointless in a fair deck.
2) 2-card combo that costs 2-3 mana each. What does Teferi/Knowledge Pool(costing 5-6 mana each) have to do with this? You may as well say it's no stronger than Omniscience/Enter the Infinite
Do I really need to go on?
Your tone is very matter of fact. I agree with op. I don’t think painted combos are any more degenerate then other 2 card combos. The social contract exists to put a soft ban on combos. Why not let people play with their color matters cards with painter?
I’m not even sure if you made it denegerate it would be any better then stuff like Teferi planeswalker stax. Or tasigur flash hulk.
I’ve always felt like Painters Servant isnt a problem of being a two card combo, but of how many two card combos he enables.
Since Ugin is decently recent it’s pretty expected that Servant will enable even more things in the future, similar to why Pod was banned in Modern.
2) 2-card combo that costs 2-3 mana each. What does Teferi/Knowledge Pool(costing 5-6 mana each) have to do with this?e
He's talking about the lock with Iona. Which costs 9 mana, not 2-3, and is therefore much slower than teferi lock. It also doesn't prevent instant-speed interaction like teferi does (well, iona does for certain colors if she hits first, I suppose).
I agree. PS is not that bad. It breaks some marginal cards.... makes some cards like Pyroblast much better.... really, if Iona is a concern, ban Iona - nobody will miss her.
1) there's almost no real use to Painter's Servant other than degenerate combo. It's pointless in a fair deck.
2) 2-card combo that costs 2-3 mana each. What does Teferi/Knowledge Pool(costing 5-6 mana each) have to do with this? You may as well say it's no stronger than Omniscience/Enter the Infinite
Do I really need to go on?
1) There are plenty of uses outside of a 2-card combo. earnest fellowship, king crab, cards with radiance among other somewhat janky uses. One of the fun part of EDH is the breadth of deck building strategies available, and manipulating colours is one of those overlooked ones. Sure it might warp cEDH, but i'm not convinced that power, as such is something that causes cards to be banned. Because if that were the case, i can see a very strong case for hermit druid among others.
2) i specifically mention teferi/knowledge pool because painter's servant and iona, shield of emeria locks the table out of playing cards. They are more 'equivalent', as far as it goes in magic, than other 2 card combos.
the argument that painter + grindstone is OP is extremely weak. You need to untap grindstone once per opponent in the game, and it also requires the player to draw a card to actually kill them. So it's possible to 'survive' the combo by just using any of the green sun's zenith-style effects, and it usually needs 1 turn per opponent kill, which allows the table some amount of time to find an answer.
Also, cards like mycosynth lattice and enchanted evening do something similar to painter's servant (except that servant is a creature AND artifact, making it easier to hose, and costs less). So i'm not really sure if it's inherently that broken. (also, note that you can march of the machine-lock people out with the lattice. I don't think there are any cards that turns all red permanents into creatures or anything yet).
I know that my playgroup's testing is pretty invalid (since we have a very skewed meta), but i know that my blind seer deck benefits from it, and it's never really broken any game (i don't use grindstone, but i do use king crab, baleful stare, suq-ata firewalker and essence leak. Highly broken stuff, here!).
To be honest considering how cautious the RC is with unbanning cards, i can see this taking another 5 years before it's potential unbanning. But I feel like there is a pretty good argument for at least testing it.
1) there's almost no real use to Painter's Servant other than degenerate combo. It's pointless in a fair deck.
Lets be honest, the same can be said for Worldgorger Dragon, who's only other consequence for inclusion is screwing your boardstate over with timely removal. I'd also argue, in my experience at least, I haven't seen any "benign" uses out of Protean Hulk either, just fetching combos since its unbanning.
The main problem with Painter's Servant to me is that it can accidentally break games based not on the cards the person puts with PS in their deck, who may be interested in cool and fair interactions, but with the cards the other people play.
The main problem with Painter's Servant to me is that it can accidentally break games based not on the cards the person puts with PS in their deck, who may be interested in cool and fair interactions, but with the cards the other people play.
I'm skeptical on the ability of this can happen in a multiplayer game.
So let's say we are playing multiplayer and I cast Painter's Servant. My opponent is across the table and casts Iona naming the same color and decalres themsleves the winner. Except they aren't because I control the Painter's Servant. I can make the servent perform a fatal attack or block to get rid of the lock, or sacrifice it to some effect in my own deck. It's hardly game over.
The main problem with Painter's Servant to me is that it can accidentally break games based not on the cards the person puts with PS in their deck, who may be interested in cool and fair interactions, but with the cards the other people play.
I'm skeptical on the ability of this can happen in a multiplayer game.
So let's say we are playing multiplayer and I cast Painter's Servant. My opponent is across the table and casts Iona naming the same color and decalres themsleves the winner. Except they aren't because I control the Painter's Servant. I can make the servent perform a fatal attack or block to get rid of the lock, or sacrifice it to some effect in my own deck. It's hardly game over.
That's why on the original post, i put up the numbers of cards that show up on EDHrec (completely arbitrary numbers, but gives us a rough idea):
island (to give context): 152,210 decks sol ring (another one to give context) 244,295 decks
(this list is by no means exhaustive, but i'm struggling to find cards that interact badly with painter)
The cards that really interacts badly with painter's servant would be iona and ugin, really. the others do some weird stuff to the game, or bends it to a somewhat weird board state (my favourite being earnest fellowship). I don't think it's possible to convince anyone on the RC by just theorising here though; i'd be up for testing it.
in my brief testing, it's been making games stranger (but that's how we like 'em). akroma's memorial becomes a house! but it's hardly game-breaking though. But then again, i built my deck for fun times. i don't recall any of my opponent's cards interacting badly. meteor crater became marginally better.
sheldon, was there anything more specific that you had in mind when you say that it interacts badly with another player's cards? most of those cards i listed above are quite niche, and my knowledge of the total card pool is somewhat limited. I don't think many of them would wreck a game; more that they'd make the game go weird. I understand that its always better to be safer and more cautious though. I just feel that the world would benefit more than suffer from its release, and opening the game's potential strategies seems good.
lol riptide is so OP with painter's (kidding, obviously).
Heads up, you need to click the "as card" below Iona to see how many decks Iona's in - 61 is the number she's the commander in, not in the 99. In the 99 she's in 7422. She is, in fact, more played than chameleon spirit Anyway as mentioned before, I think Iona is not a problem unless one person controls both.
I assume it's the ugin interaction that's the most dangerous (all is dust is powerful, but it's basically just a jokulhaups with more setup). But PS has been banned since long before ugin existed so...?
PS was banned at the same time grindstone was unbanned, in '09. Which leads one to believe the motivation was to prevent the painter/grindstone combo. Which is just...silly, honestly. It seems like fretting over nothing to me.
Well, it's certainly very good in 1v1. One of my legacy decks is based on exactly that. But in EDH, it's a very slow win.
Ah; i don't use EDHrec very much, so i'd no idea that there was a check like that. but still, i can't figure out how many decks there are total on EDHrec, but the closest i could find is 307,105. so that makes iona pop up about 2% of the time (amongst the people who would post their decks on EDHrec).
i can imagine a deck where the whole aim is to rite of replication a painter's servant, and havingeachmedallionevermade; every card you cast costs 5 less! boom! that'd be pretty nuts actually.
Dirk, have you tested PS? not sure if your playgroup is generally open to stuff like this. It's one thing to say it's fine, and another to actually experience it. My 1 playgroup is fine with it, but it's also fine with griselbrand and karakas, so i'm not sure its saying much.
I just moved to another country, so I'm new to the local scene. It's also a pretty big group (usually 3-4 tables going at once, and not always the same people) so it's not so simple to ask permission. Also, tbh, PS isn't the sort of card I'd personally be interested in running.
Could it be used bustedly? Kind of, I mean grindstone is an ok combo. But c'mon, while food chain, doomsday, and ad nauseam are legal I don't think the combo argument holds much water. Nor does the vague threat that "It's one thing to say it's fine, and another to actually experience it." There are tons of things I wouldn't want to experience which are fully legal, that doesn't mean they need to be banned. I'm sure someone could make a PS-focused deck that would suck to play against, but almost certainly not moreso than lots of other cEDH decks.
The only argument I see with any legs whatsoever, at the moment, is the ugin issue, since he's commonly played. But armageddon is legal, and that's much much easier to pull off. Nobody is pushing for march/lattice to get banned, and that's kind of the same thing, if not worse since you can draw a 1-mana removal to kill the PS which you can't with march/lattice. Which again, no one thinks is a problem.
The main problem with Painter's Servant to me is that it can accidentally break games based not on the cards the person puts with PS in their deck, who may be interested in cool and fair interactions, but with the cards the other people play.
Agreed. I would want to know what situation we're worried about here, exactly.
Or why we're only worried about that situation in regards to Painter's Servant instead of Mycosynth Lattice or Enchanted Evening, both of which are far more likely to accidentally nuke a game. Other players -- not the person playing the Lattice or Evening -- are far more likely to randomly have cards that interact poorly because playing Vandalblast and Fracturing Gust is just good deckbuilding, as opposed to playing random color-hosers. It really is justIona.
Or why we're only worried about that situation in regards to Painter's Servant instead of Mycosynth Lattice or Enchanted Evening, both of which are far more likely to accidentally nuke a game. Other players -- not the person playing the Lattice or Evening -- are far more likely to randomly have cards that interact poorly because playing Vandalblast and Fracturing Gust is just good deckbuilding, as opposed to playing random color-hosers. It really is justIona.
It was that way for some time but then when Ugin came out there was another kind of scare card. Ultimately I think there is some fear in what it could do with future cards but its a design space that is very rarely utilized. Assembing an artifact creature + a planeswalker isn't exactly easy and to be honest..... why the hell is Iona an ok thing assuming no other card is even with her?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Hey - I didn't realise that i was supposed to continue from the original thread.. I just thought since it's such an old thread, i'd get in trouble for necro-ing, so i'd start a new thread. My bad.
So in the only recent game i played, painter's servant in my blind seer deck, comboed with king crab. painter's servant didn't last long though, since i think people were nervous i might have a Suq'Ata Firewalker somewhere or a narwhal or something. i don't recall it having any other effect.
Hey - I didn't realise that i was supposed to continue from the original thread.. I just thought since it's such an old thread, i'd get in trouble for necro-ing, so i'd start a new thread. My bad.
It's all good. We don't worry about necro in order to keep all the SCDs contained to one thread. I really dislike other forums where someone will start a discussion and immediately get shut down with a "there are already four threads why don't you read those first" response.
I do think that PS is the card on that banlist that could most easily come off. It has a good balance of actually adding things to the format while not knocking any of the ban criteria out of the park. Unfortunately it adds a number of griefy interactions, but I don't see many other currently banned cards that would be better candidates (maybe panoptic mirror, whose biggest gameplay issue is being repetitive). Actually, I'd like to see ashnods coupon unbanned so I can recur it infinitely to force an opponent to get me infinite glasses of water.
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!
I don't think panoptic mirror would ever get unbanned; imprinting any time warp effect basically means game over most of the time.
I'm curious about gifts ungiven actually; i didn't even realised it was banned in the first place! I don't see much wrong with it, but i can see the potential for abuse - 4 mana get any 2 cards from your deck seems very good (basically 2 demonic tutor at instant speed, no less!). But I can see painter being less of an issue than gifts. They might very well end up in the same deck too (blind seer colour durdles, obviously).
Time warp is obviously the worst case scenario, but any kind of board wipe can make things pretty dumb too. or land wipe. There's a lot of things that get pretty stupid with mirror, really. While I wouldn't be upset if it got unbanned, since it does take a full rotation to do anything, I don't think it would be my first removal from the list.
In terms of safest removal from the list, I'd say first would be PS, and then gifts - but out of the two, gifts is a lot more interesting to me, personally.
Well, really the "safest" removal would probably be mox ruby or something since basically no one would be playing it anyway. But I hope the P8 never get unbanned since I don't wanna shell out for them and I don't wanna be missing cards from my collection either.
While I lean towards wanting it unbanned, I could see the logic behind it staying banned as while it does not tip the scale in any single category, it's borderline in several categories.
Being able to lock the game isn't worthy of a ban. Being a part of a fast 2 card combo that goes in literally any deck is not be enough (though the potential for resulting ubiquity might be). It's ability to accidentally combo with other players cards isn't enough. It's turning on of color hosers and the resulting potential for undesirable game states isn't enough. Many cards meet one of those criteria that should never be banned. PS is a rare card that does all of those things.
Personally, I think banning Iona would make PS much safer, and the grindstone combo is already available with RiP Helm (though less efficient and in white rather than colorless).
I'd like to point out that solemn decree combo, while comparable to PS Iona, is substantially weaker. It's in W/U rather than mono white, and thus not usable by as many decks, it costs more mana, it's harder to cheat out (especially as being mono white PS Iona can go in decks with colors that can cheat creatures out efficiently), Iona is a borderline card on her own without the combo and will sometimes just achieve the lock without any help, and Iona prevents you from casting spells getting around spells that cannot be countered and copies.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Here I am just wishing I could slot it in to my Jaya Ballard, Task Mage deck
I also went through the old thread about painter's servant, but i figured i shouldn't necro an old thread.
Creates Undesirable Games / Game Situations.
I'm not sure that painter's servant does. It interacts strangely with many cards (i recently had a legacy game with painter, earnest fellowship in play to make an opponent's creature drop his sword of light and shadow), and i think that's fun and mind-bendy, but not necessarily undesirable. According to EDHrec, iona, shield of emeria exists in 61 decks, and all is dust in just over 10,000 decks. Island, on the other hand, features in over 150,000, just for an approximate "how often a moment of feel-bad" would occur.
Problematic Casual Omnipresence.
Possibly...? i highly doubt it after an initial rush of "WOAH! now i can uber-charge my blind seer shenanigans deck!", it's probably going to fall by the wayside.
Produces Too Much Mana Too Quickly.
Nope. or at least not by itself. And at least not with any card i can think of off the top of my head. is there anything outside of things like chaos moon? and that's not very good as is.
Interacts Badly with the Structure of Commander.
Not sure. Don't think so. Doesn't affect colour identity, right?
Creates a Perceived High Barrier to Entry.
Doesn't cost that much, and was somewhat recently printed.
The majority of anti-unbanning sentiments are around the 2-card combos of things like ugin, the spirit dragon and wash out. But similar arguments have been made about keeping things like worldgorger dragon and protean hulk on the banlist. There's also the sentiment that the net positive of unbanning it doesn't outweigh the net negative of it. I'm not completely sure i'm sold on that sentiment. Having played painter myself in legacy, there are some genuinely fun interactions you could have. suddenly, radiance can do some real nifty things. You could even make cloven casting always active by making all your spells multi-coloured. I know that there's a lot of feel bad potentials here, but i think the general positives are many. From the very niche uses like jasmine seer to chrome mox being able to tap for more colours, to king crab shenanigans to a whole range of weird things.
I also get that iona is a pretty crappy feel-bad that can come up - but is that any worse than teferi + knowledge pool?
With the recent unbanning of cards like protean hulk and worldgorger, i think the vast majority of players in EDH has shown that the ones who do want to go broken combo will do so, but the vast majority of us want to just use the cards to make weird interactions (or at least i'm not aware of a sudden influx of world gorger dragon combos when it was unbanned).
I feel like since the last discussion was over 2 years ago, it might be worth revisiting this. Our thoughts might've changed, and the banlist philosophy might've had a change in definition over the years.
Thoughts?
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
2) 2-card combo that costs 2-3 mana each. What does Teferi/Knowledge Pool(costing 5-6 mana each) have to do with this? You may as well say it's no stronger than Omniscience/Enter the Infinite
Do I really need to go on?
Your tone is very matter of fact. I agree with op. I don’t think painted combos are any more degenerate then other 2 card combos. The social contract exists to put a soft ban on combos. Why not let people play with their color matters cards with painter?
I’m not even sure if you made it denegerate it would be any better then stuff like Teferi planeswalker stax. Or tasigur flash hulk.
Since Ugin is decently recent it’s pretty expected that Servant will enable even more things in the future, similar to why Pod was banned in Modern.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
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
1) There are plenty of uses outside of a 2-card combo. earnest fellowship, king crab, cards with radiance among other somewhat janky uses. One of the fun part of EDH is the breadth of deck building strategies available, and manipulating colours is one of those overlooked ones. Sure it might warp cEDH, but i'm not convinced that power, as such is something that causes cards to be banned. Because if that were the case, i can see a very strong case for hermit druid among others.
2) i specifically mention teferi/knowledge pool because painter's servant and iona, shield of emeria locks the table out of playing cards. They are more 'equivalent', as far as it goes in magic, than other 2 card combos.
the argument that painter + grindstone is OP is extremely weak. You need to untap grindstone once per opponent in the game, and it also requires the player to draw a card to actually kill them. So it's possible to 'survive' the combo by just using any of the green sun's zenith-style effects, and it usually needs 1 turn per opponent kill, which allows the table some amount of time to find an answer.
are there that many 2-card combos that it enables that other currently legal cards don't? And of those 2-card combos, with painter's servant, i think it's basically just ugin, the spirit dragon (-x for anything under 8) and iona, right? whereas, i dunno, rings of brighthearth, ashnod's altar, kark-clan ironworks, mikaeus, the unhallowed, aluren, palinchron, intruder alarm, necrotic ooze... I'm not thoroughly convinced that painter is more broken than any of those combo-machines.
Also, cards like mycosynth lattice and enchanted evening do something similar to painter's servant (except that servant is a creature AND artifact, making it easier to hose, and costs less). So i'm not really sure if it's inherently that broken. (also, note that you can march of the machine-lock people out with the lattice. I don't think there are any cards that turns all red permanents into creatures or anything yet).
I know that my playgroup's testing is pretty invalid (since we have a very skewed meta), but i know that my blind seer deck benefits from it, and it's never really broken any game (i don't use grindstone, but i do use king crab, baleful stare, suq-ata firewalker and essence leak. Highly broken stuff, here!).
To be honest considering how cautious the RC is with unbanning cards, i can see this taking another 5 years before it's potential unbanning. But I feel like there is a pretty good argument for at least testing it.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
Lets be honest, the same can be said for Worldgorger Dragon, who's only other consequence for inclusion is screwing your boardstate over with timely removal. I'd also argue, in my experience at least, I haven't seen any "benign" uses out of Protean Hulk either, just fetching combos since its unbanning.
I'm skeptical on the ability of this can happen in a multiplayer game.
So let's say we are playing multiplayer and I cast Painter's Servant. My opponent is across the table and casts Iona naming the same color and decalres themsleves the winner. Except they aren't because I control the Painter's Servant. I can make the servent perform a fatal attack or block to get rid of the lock, or sacrifice it to some effect in my own deck. It's hardly game over.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
That's why on the original post, i put up the numbers of cards that show up on EDHrec (completely arbitrary numbers, but gives us a rough idea):
island (to give context): 152,210 decks
sol ring (another one to give context) 244,295 decks
iona, shield of emeria: 61 decks
all is dust: just over 10,043 decks
ugin, the spirit dragon: 13,864 decks
wash out: 3680 decks
grindstone: 250 decks
earnest fellowship: 179 decks
blue elemental blast: 321 decks (i had no idea!!)
hibernation 157 decks
Llawan, Cephalid Empress: 373 decks
tidal control: 131 decks
well-laind plans: 99 decks
insight: 163 decks
chameleon spirit: 73 decks
riptide: 24 decks
sapphire medallion: 8184 decks (the other medallions could interact too)
akroma's memorial: 10,803 decks
wrath of marit lage: 102 decks
mana maze: 487 decks
chill: 115 decks
invoke prejudice: 422 decks
(this list is by no means exhaustive, but i'm struggling to find cards that interact badly with painter)
The cards that really interacts badly with painter's servant would be iona and ugin, really. the others do some weird stuff to the game, or bends it to a somewhat weird board state (my favourite being earnest fellowship). I don't think it's possible to convince anyone on the RC by just theorising here though; i'd be up for testing it.
in my brief testing, it's been making games stranger (but that's how we like 'em). akroma's memorial becomes a house! but it's hardly game-breaking though. But then again, i built my deck for fun times. i don't recall any of my opponent's cards interacting badly. meteor crater became marginally better.
sheldon, was there anything more specific that you had in mind when you say that it interacts badly with another player's cards? most of those cards i listed above are quite niche, and my knowledge of the total card pool is somewhat limited. I don't think many of them would wreck a game; more that they'd make the game go weird. I understand that its always better to be safer and more cautious though. I just feel that the world would benefit more than suffer from its release, and opening the game's potential strategies seems good.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
Heads up, you need to click the "as card" below Iona to see how many decks Iona's in - 61 is the number she's the commander in, not in the 99. In the 99 she's in 7422. She is, in fact, more played than chameleon spirit Anyway as mentioned before, I think Iona is not a problem unless one person controls both.
I assume it's the ugin interaction that's the most dangerous (all is dust is powerful, but it's basically just a jokulhaups with more setup). But PS has been banned since long before ugin existed so...?
PS was banned at the same time grindstone was unbanned, in '09. Which leads one to believe the motivation was to prevent the painter/grindstone combo. Which is just...silly, honestly. It seems like fretting over nothing to me.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
Ah; i don't use EDHrec very much, so i'd no idea that there was a check like that. but still, i can't figure out how many decks there are total on EDHrec, but the closest i could find is 307,105. so that makes iona pop up about 2% of the time (amongst the people who would post their decks on EDHrec).
i can imagine a deck where the whole aim is to rite of replication a painter's servant, and having each medallion ever made; every card you cast costs 5 less! boom! that'd be pretty nuts actually.
Dirk, have you tested PS? not sure if your playgroup is generally open to stuff like this. It's one thing to say it's fine, and another to actually experience it. My 1 playgroup is fine with it, but it's also fine with griselbrand and karakas, so i'm not sure its saying much.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
Could it be used bustedly? Kind of, I mean grindstone is an ok combo. But c'mon, while food chain, doomsday, and ad nauseam are legal I don't think the combo argument holds much water. Nor does the vague threat that "It's one thing to say it's fine, and another to actually experience it." There are tons of things I wouldn't want to experience which are fully legal, that doesn't mean they need to be banned. I'm sure someone could make a PS-focused deck that would suck to play against, but almost certainly not moreso than lots of other cEDH decks.
The only argument I see with any legs whatsoever, at the moment, is the ugin issue, since he's commonly played. But armageddon is legal, and that's much much easier to pull off. Nobody is pushing for march/lattice to get banned, and that's kind of the same thing, if not worse since you can draw a 1-mana removal to kill the PS which you can't with march/lattice. Which again, no one thinks is a problem.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
It was that way for some time but then when Ugin came out there was another kind of scare card. Ultimately I think there is some fear in what it could do with future cards but its a design space that is very rarely utilized. Assembing an artifact creature + a planeswalker isn't exactly easy and to be honest..... why the hell is Iona an ok thing assuming no other card is even with her?
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
Misc. EDH Stuff: Commander Cube | Zombies (Horde)
Resources:Commander Rulings FAQ | Commander Deckbuilding Guide
Follow me on Twitter! @cryogen_mtg
Hey - I didn't realise that i was supposed to continue from the original thread.. I just thought since it's such an old thread, i'd get in trouble for necro-ing, so i'd start a new thread. My bad.
So in the only recent game i played, painter's servant in my blind seer deck, comboed with king crab. painter's servant didn't last long though, since i think people were nervous i might have a Suq'Ata Firewalker somewhere or a narwhal or something. i don't recall it having any other effect.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
It's all good. We don't worry about necro in order to keep all the SCDs contained to one thread. I really dislike other forums where someone will start a discussion and immediately get shut down with a "there are already four threads why don't you read those first" response.
Misc. EDH Stuff: Commander Cube | Zombies (Horde)
Resources:Commander Rulings FAQ | Commander Deckbuilding Guide
Follow me on Twitter! @cryogen_mtg
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I'm curious about gifts ungiven actually; i didn't even realised it was banned in the first place! I don't see much wrong with it, but i can see the potential for abuse - 4 mana get any 2 cards from your deck seems very good (basically 2 demonic tutor at instant speed, no less!). But I can see painter being less of an issue than gifts. They might very well end up in the same deck too (blind seer colour durdles, obviously).
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
In terms of safest removal from the list, I'd say first would be PS, and then gifts - but out of the two, gifts is a lot more interesting to me, personally.
Well, really the "safest" removal would probably be mox ruby or something since basically no one would be playing it anyway. But I hope the P8 never get unbanned since I don't wanna shell out for them and I don't wanna be missing cards from my collection either.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6