If you're concerned about somebody taking one of your expensive cards, one thing I've found is that you can just keep it on yourside of the table and tell them they control it but you're going to be the one to touch it and you'll tap if for them when they want to use it.
That gets pretty hard to do with stuff like Thieves' Auction, but for a random one time theft effect it should be okay.
I don't even think Iona and PS need to switch places. PS can just be strait unbanned.
There are numerous ways to achieve the same style of lock that Iona + PS causes with legal cards and people aren't playing them. It seems like a big stretch in reasoning to assume that players will jump at the chance to jam Painters Servent combos when those styles are already discouraged by the social contract and have numerou legal versions.
Is PS really a more abusable card that Protean Hulk? Hulk enables many more potential combos and is baically causing no problems since it's been unbanned.
Iona is pretty good in a Captain Sisay deck, but then again what isn't good in a Sisay deck.
I think the main case for keeping Iona free is that it's relativly rare to see it played, atleast in my experiecne, which would be indiciative that the card is being handled by the formats social contract. There are many card that can warp the degenerate the game if played with that intent, but as long as many people aren't playing them in that way they are fine.
The best case if for the RC to focus there limited bans on cards that people just can't stop themselves from playing and abusing, see Leovold, Prime Time, Sylvan Prime, and PoK. I think Cyclonic Rift or Purpheros are the closest legal cards that have very high presence and huge power.
With so many people voting for Purphoros, God of the Forge. One of you should make a thread in the rules discussion forum for him.
It's a bit annoying with how easy it to to create a massive ammount of small creatures for resonable amounts of mana. I've been at 34 life and died because it came back to the Purph players turn.
When we were taking nominations for the dream banlist poll this year. I recommended these three extra turn cards because I've been seeing them hurt more and more games in my local area. I realized they didn't have a thread in the rules discussion forum, hence this thread.
My biggest problem with extra turn cards like Time Warp, Capture of Jingzhou, and Temporal Manipulation is how players play them as part of their decks. I don't see people using them to take one single extra turn and get similar value to Relentless Assualt; instead what I always see is players using these cards to change the multiplayer game into being one of solitaire. Making themselves the only player still playing through excessive recursion and copying of these cards. Even if the extra turn chain does eventually break and they are forced to pass to the next player, the time mage is often so far ahead on board-state and resources that them being able to win the game becomes virtually guaranteed.
I think the main risk of extra turn cards in commander games can be summed up in the three Time Warps. Most of the modern ones self exile or shuffle back into the deck to prevent them being reused from the graveyard. It's probably more trouble then it's worth to try looping Stitch in Time or Final Fortune varients. Additionally, the few cards that exist as counterplay; Stranglehold and Ugin's Nexus don't really stop extra turns given blues ability to easily bounce them and then start the chain unimpeded.
What do you guys think? Should these time magic cards be banned or are they fine?
I think in theory LoA could have been unbanned. The problem is that the RC missed a good chance to unban it when it was much cheaper. Now it's way too expensive for it to be unbanned without creating the precived barrier to entry problem that it was banned for originally.
What are peoples thoughts on Expropriate? My last two nights of playing EDH had atleast one game where a player resolved this and then basically immediately won on their extra turn.
Skullclamp is clearly a good card, but I never liked it in Jaya because you don't have much to clamp except for Squee and Kobald tokens. I think there is a case to be made for taking it out, but then you might ba able to put more support for it in to make a stronger card.
I played Neheb, the Eternal in my deck for a bit and while I did get some wins from afflict; he doesn't really have as much of an impact as I'd like in my own list, which is a bit disappointing because he's very good at the helm of a mono red deck. I often found him just getting removed or then small amount of mana I did get wasn't used for anything.
I see your point that if a card isn't being played often, it's not often cuasing harm, so there is not much of a reason to ban it; because you're mpacting only a few players and even fewer games. It would seem the RC also shares that philosophy with their most recent bannings being some of the most popular cards in the entire format, Prophet of Kruphix and Sylvan Primordial.
However, the RC didn't always look at popular cards as damaging. I remember when Trade Secrets was banned. It was basically not played by anybody, but some people were concerned about the cards ability to cause collusion and king make. Yet the king making required two players to agree to it and their is bascially no way to stop collusion in a multiplayer format. It was a card that was banned for it's potential to damage games in theory then it's actual IRL uses, which were seldom.
I'd put Painter's Servant in the same cetegory. It was basically not played at all in any decks, since Grindstone used to be banned to deny the combo. Then it still wasn't played that often, but the RC desicded to ban it to deny the potential for it to cause any harm. It certainly was not the scourge of the format back in the day.
I think comapring Terastodon to Blightsteel Colossus misses the mark a bit. They are both large creatures, but one you're playing to use (or abuse) it's ETB trigger and the other is just a beater that can quickly knock out an opponent. The green equivlent of Blightsteel Colossus would be Worldspine Wurm.
BSC is a quicker clock and requires removal that exiles. WSW is best delt with by exiling it, but you can use a normal kill spell to break it into 1/3rds; which really doesn't slow down it's clock too much. I wouldn't rate it as strongly as BSC, an early WSW could take over a game and kill people in the early turns, but it's not likely to sweep the table and isn't the kind of strong target that other green creatues have been in the past.
I think it's porbably worthwhile for the RC to keep Natural Order unbanned because their strategy has been to ban the cards that it gets, since green has so many busted cratues tutors that banning one or two of them wont really stop the problam and the creatures themselves need to be dealt with. Normally, when NO becomes a 'good card' it means that WotC has printed some absurdly broken titan or primordial that BL action will need to be taken on.
But not the rules printed in the past 7 years of boxed Commander product that arguably served to get the most number of people into the format.
If somebody reads the rules inserts and makes an exactly 100 card deck, their deck will still be legal. If they think a player using a larger then normal deck is cheating, then it's easy to explain that the rules were changed to allow for larger decks.
I want to put two copies of Sol Ring in my deck. Why should you let me? Because I want to.
"You may have 100 cards" is simpler, cleaner, and more elegant than "You may have 100 or more cards."
This is not an argument to cut away any rules. This is an argument to change a rule.
Regular constructed and limited magic has always used a minimum deck size, but there is no maximum limit. It's a change that makes the commander rules consistent with the rules of normal magic.
I feel like the argumeent that by increasing deck size, it makes bad players worse is a slippery slope.
If you have a bad player sit down with a larger then noramal deck size deck in a game of paper magic and it's going to be obvious and it takes very little effort for one of their opponents orheck any other maic player at the LGS to say something like "You're deck would be better uf ut were 100 cards." to get the point across. Heck, even if you find a player who insists their 150 card beast is better, try and persuade them to cut it doen to 100 for a few games and they'll see it perfofm better themselves.
To add an example to two decks AA listed. I think a 5-color modal theme deck would be totally happy to go over 100 cards; you've got multible cycles of charms, 2 and 3 color, 5 commands and 5 confluences, you'd want to include creatures that could do multible things, like all the Morphling varients, Zacama, Primal Calamity, and Deathrite Shaman. We didn't even get to split cards yet and you'd want some support cards for the high numbsr of instants and sorceries you'd be playing. That's the kind of over 100 card deck I'd like to see.
That gets pretty hard to do with stuff like Thieves' Auction, but for a random one time theft effect it should be okay.
There are numerous ways to achieve the same style of lock that Iona + PS causes with legal cards and people aren't playing them. It seems like a big stretch in reasoning to assume that players will jump at the chance to jam Painters Servent combos when those styles are already discouraged by the social contract and have numerou legal versions.
Is PS really a more abusable card that Protean Hulk? Hulk enables many more potential combos and is baically causing no problems since it's been unbanned.
I think the main case for keeping Iona free is that it's relativly rare to see it played, atleast in my experiecne, which would be indiciative that the card is being handled by the formats social contract. There are many card that can warp the degenerate the game if played with that intent, but as long as many people aren't playing them in that way they are fine.
The best case if for the RC to focus there limited bans on cards that people just can't stop themselves from playing and abusing, see Leovold, Prime Time, Sylvan Prime, and PoK. I think Cyclonic Rift or Purpheros are the closest legal cards that have very high presence and huge power.
It's a bit annoying with how easy it to to create a massive ammount of small creatures for resonable amounts of mana. I've been at 34 life and died because it came back to the Purph players turn.
Turns out bugs just arn't very good in commander and are always either way overcosted or way to weak to compete with people playing decent creatures.
My biggest problem with extra turn cards like Time Warp, Capture of Jingzhou, and Temporal Manipulation is how players play them as part of their decks. I don't see people using them to take one single extra turn and get similar value to Relentless Assualt; instead what I always see is players using these cards to change the multiplayer game into being one of solitaire. Making themselves the only player still playing through excessive recursion and copying of these cards. Even if the extra turn chain does eventually break and they are forced to pass to the next player, the time mage is often so far ahead on board-state and resources that them being able to win the game becomes virtually guaranteed.
I think the main risk of extra turn cards in commander games can be summed up in the three Time Warps. Most of the modern ones self exile or shuffle back into the deck to prevent them being reused from the graveyard. It's probably more trouble then it's worth to try looping Stitch in Time or Final Fortune varients. Additionally, the few cards that exist as counterplay; Stranglehold and Ugin's Nexus don't really stop extra turns given blues ability to easily bounce them and then start the chain unimpeded.
What do you guys think? Should these time magic cards be banned or are they fine?
Time Warp/Capture of Jingzhou/Temporal Manipulation
Expropriate
Serra Ascendant
Cabal Coffers
Seedborn Muse
What are peoples thoughts on Expropriate? My last two nights of playing EDH had atleast one game where a player resolved this and then basically immediately won on their extra turn.
Skullclamp is clearly a good card, but I never liked it in Jaya because you don't have much to clamp except for Squee and Kobald tokens. I think there is a case to be made for taking it out, but then you might ba able to put more support for it in to make a stronger card.
I played Neheb, the Eternal in my deck for a bit and while I did get some wins from afflict; he doesn't really have as much of an impact as I'd like in my own list, which is a bit disappointing because he's very good at the helm of a mono red deck. I often found him just getting removed or then small amount of mana I did get wasn't used for anything.
However, the RC didn't always look at popular cards as damaging. I remember when Trade Secrets was banned. It was basically not played by anybody, but some people were concerned about the cards ability to cause collusion and king make. Yet the king making required two players to agree to it and their is bascially no way to stop collusion in a multiplayer format. It was a card that was banned for it's potential to damage games in theory then it's actual IRL uses, which were seldom.
I'd put Painter's Servant in the same cetegory. It was basically not played at all in any decks, since Grindstone used to be banned to deny the combo. Then it still wasn't played that often, but the RC desicded to ban it to deny the potential for it to cause any harm. It certainly was not the scourge of the format back in the day.
BSC is a quicker clock and requires removal that exiles. WSW is best delt with by exiling it, but you can use a normal kill spell to break it into 1/3rds; which really doesn't slow down it's clock too much. I wouldn't rate it as strongly as BSC, an early WSW could take over a game and kill people in the early turns, but it's not likely to sweep the table and isn't the kind of strong target that other green creatues have been in the past.
I think it's porbably worthwhile for the RC to keep Natural Order unbanned because their strategy has been to ban the cards that it gets, since green has so many busted cratues tutors that banning one or two of them wont really stop the problam and the creatures themselves need to be dealt with. Normally, when NO becomes a 'good card' it means that WotC has printed some absurdly broken titan or primordial that BL action will need to be taken on.
If somebody reads the rules inserts and makes an exactly 100 card deck, their deck will still be legal. If they think a player using a larger then normal deck is cheating, then it's easy to explain that the rules were changed to allow for larger decks.
Regular constructed and limited magic has always used a minimum deck size, but there is no maximum limit. It's a change that makes the commander rules consistent with the rules of normal magic.
If you have a bad player sit down with a larger then noramal deck size deck in a game of paper magic and it's going to be obvious and it takes very little effort for one of their opponents orheck any other maic player at the LGS to say something like "You're deck would be better uf ut were 100 cards." to get the point across. Heck, even if you find a player who insists their 150 card beast is better, try and persuade them to cut it doen to 100 for a few games and they'll see it perfofm better themselves.
To add an example to two decks AA listed. I think a 5-color modal theme deck would be totally happy to go over 100 cards; you've got multible cycles of charms, 2 and 3 color, 5 commands and 5 confluences, you'd want to include creatures that could do multible things, like all the Morphling varients, Zacama, Primal Calamity, and Deathrite Shaman. We didn't even get to split cards yet and you'd want some support cards for the high numbsr of instants and sorceries you'd be playing. That's the kind of over 100 card deck I'd like to see.