The new Avacyn seems more for Standard than for EDH. Comparable to Baneslayer, albeit not likely to be as format-dominating as she was due to weaker defenses.
I harbor an infinite amount of hatred for this card. I hated drafting during this block because I got multiple copies of this card in every sealed/draft tournament I played in.
I absolutely hated BoK drafts because of this one card.
The thing I like about Hostility is using Thunderblade Charge with it (+9 power on the field every time you hit someone in combat, +18 if the creature that got through had Double Strike), or using Mana Echoes and some method of storing the mana you get. A single Demonfire for 10 becomes 10 3/1s with Haste and another 55 mana in your pool. Cue Comet Storm for YES.
Lead off with a massive Mana Geyser, drop Hostility, throw out some burn spells, Past in Flames the Mana Geyser and all of the burn you just played, then swing for the fences with your 3/1 army.
I'll share my experience with Recurring Nightmare. I had this card in my EDH Cube. I drafted a deck around it in two separate sessions.
In the first session, players in the game ran graveyard hate, instant-speed mass removal like Disk, and countermagic. I had it in my hand from the start of the game, but it was basically stranded there. Any time the blue mage sitting to the left of me with a grip of countermagic was tapped out, Sharuum had a Tormod's Crypt ready to aim my way. The one time there was neither, Sharuum had a Disk ready to pop and wipe all my guys if I tried to cast it. Both cases would leave me unable to use the Nightmare immediately, which makes it vulnerable to destruction. And then, before the game was out, someone Windfall'd and made me discard it.
In the second session, none of the above things happened. Nobody made any attempt to interact with me, and I quickly started looping RN with Grave Titan and Kokusho, the Evening Star. Everyone in the game complained, and I ended up pulling it from the Cube.
Sounds like what happened with my playgroup when we implemented our "1 banned card per deck" rule, except the only player with decent graveyard hate was me and there were two players with counterspells.
6 mana is not practical for a card that has a slim chance of being as good as a 4 mana sorcery. Recurring Insight is good because it draws upwards of 6 cards per casting, sometimes as many as 14 (no strings attached, but getting the full 14 is rare in the extreme).
Harmonize is consistent, useful in it's color, and hits two full turns before Caller of Beasts. CoB isn't worth the slot.
(sol ring would feel like it, but that's because it is in every deck - a sign that it should have been banned in the first place).
That same sentence can apply to basic lands, Swords to Plowshares, and numerous other cards. Mana is a resource, and there are decks out there that don't run Sol Ring. It's safe to say that a majority of players would run Sol Ring in their decks, but it is not universal.
Omnipresence is only an issue if decks have to be built around either using that card or countering it (JTMS, for example, was banned in Standard/Extended/Modern for this reason). Sol Ring's ubiquitous nature is not inimical to EDH as a format.
The real problem with Sol Ring is that people don't think of it as such a problem. They look at what it helps play, and even understand how powerful it is if asked, but simply don't remove it from their decks because everyone runs it.
For the record, I replaced my Sol Ring with Mox Diamond in every deck. There isn't a notable decrease in tempo for a majority of the decks I did that to (due to most of them being high-Devotion by coincidence), but for the decks that felt the loss of tempo there was a notable decrease in early-game aggression from the rest of the table. It ended up balancing out for those decks.
I will not deny that Sol Ring is a powerful asset, but I have yet to be convinced that it is ban-worthy to any degree.
I honestly dislike this card. The most I would pay for a Threaten is 5 mana (Word of Seizing), and only because it steals the target without much opportunity to respond, and the most I would pay for a Fling is 3. Since it doesn't untap what it steals it's versatility is diminished, and since you have to sacrifice the creature immediately it doesn't allow you to double-up.
Surprisingly, some cards retroactively received Lifelink (i.e. Loxodon Warhammer) while others did not (i.e. Genju of the Fields). I'm still not sure how they chose which ones did and which did not. Myabe only the cards that received reprints after lifelink was keyworded and altered from a trigger?
Actually, for a brief time period in 10th edition, Genju did get errata'ed to have actual lifelink. This was prior to WotC changing their policy about errata changing the functionality of the card, as at the time the Extended metagame was being blindsided by a mono-White control deck that ran Genju as it's main win-condition (the deck was designed prior to Proclamation of Rebirth taking off, but it was annoyingly effective).
The basic idea behind the deck was to use Holy Day, Ethereal Haze, and Kami of False Hope to prevent any and all damage other decks could do until the White deck built up enough mana to activate the Genju multiple times each turn, then turn the Genju into the ultimate blocker that gained more life than the owner lost. The errata changed it so the Genju was functionally obsolete, and the deck died instantly.
WotC changed it back to the original intent with the new errata policy, but it was amusing that there was a deck capable of going toe-to-toe with Dr. Teeth back in the day.
This, Goblin Lore, and Control of the Court are a favorite of mine for Red decks, but Burning Inquiry is the best because it serves as disruption (the other two are luck-based filters for when my hand has too many lands).
The cycle as a whole is fairly bad. Ceta is the only one I would consider using over the Honden cycle, and even then I'd prefer to run that along-side the Honden cycle in that wedge for added mileage.
All said I think that the reasons for baning Worldfire are poor and that an unbaning will do surprising little. Kind of like how unbaning Worldgorger Dragondid not turn every deck into reanimation combo deck.
Worldgorger doesn't sit in a safe zone. The reason combos based around a General are given more scrutiny is that there's simply no way to interact with the Command Zone, thus half of the combo gets to sit pretty.
Most 2-card combos involve buying time until you assemble both pieces, but with Worldfire you have half of the combo for the entire game.
@ Sinfire: player A floats mana, casts World fire, Z-Z, passes turn. You draw swamp, pass turn
He kills player b, passes turn. You draw Sol ring, pass turn. He kills player c, passes turn. You draw pact, cast pact, drop land, cast Sol ring.
Absurdly stupid, but theoretically possible.
That's not only Magical Christmas Land, its assuming the guy playing Zo-zu isn't going to do the smart thing and go after the players that have 0-mana removal spells (Red and Black both have them, and Blue has at least one free bounce spell).
Relying on an absurdly stupid premiss isn't a good argument for Worldfire at all.
I absolutely hated BoK drafts because of this one card.
Lead off with a massive Mana Geyser, drop Hostility, throw out some burn spells, Past in Flames the Mana Geyser and all of the burn you just played, then swing for the fences with your 3/1 army.
And Chandra Ablaze+Hostility=Fun times.
TLDR: He's useable, but in an archtype widely considered underpowered in EDH.
Sounds like what happened with my playgroup when we implemented our "1 banned card per deck" rule, except the only player with decent graveyard hate was me and there were two players with counterspells.
Harmonize is consistent, useful in it's color, and hits two full turns before Caller of Beasts. CoB isn't worth the slot.
That same sentence can apply to basic lands, Swords to Plowshares, and numerous other cards. Mana is a resource, and there are decks out there that don't run Sol Ring. It's safe to say that a majority of players would run Sol Ring in their decks, but it is not universal.
Omnipresence is only an issue if decks have to be built around either using that card or countering it (JTMS, for example, was banned in Standard/Extended/Modern for this reason). Sol Ring's ubiquitous nature is not inimical to EDH as a format.
For the record, I replaced my Sol Ring with Mox Diamond in every deck. There isn't a notable decrease in tempo for a majority of the decks I did that to (due to most of them being high-Devotion by coincidence), but for the decks that felt the loss of tempo there was a notable decrease in early-game aggression from the rest of the table. It ended up balancing out for those decks.
I will not deny that Sol Ring is a powerful asset, but I have yet to be convinced that it is ban-worthy to any degree.
Actually, for a brief time period in 10th edition, Genju did get errata'ed to have actual lifelink. This was prior to WotC changing their policy about errata changing the functionality of the card, as at the time the Extended metagame was being blindsided by a mono-White control deck that ran Genju as it's main win-condition (the deck was designed prior to Proclamation of Rebirth taking off, but it was annoyingly effective).
The basic idea behind the deck was to use Holy Day, Ethereal Haze, and Kami of False Hope to prevent any and all damage other decks could do until the White deck built up enough mana to activate the Genju multiple times each turn, then turn the Genju into the ultimate blocker that gained more life than the owner lost. The errata changed it so the Genju was functionally obsolete, and the deck died instantly.
WotC changed it back to the original intent with the new errata policy, but it was amusing that there was a deck capable of going toe-to-toe with Dr. Teeth back in the day.
Worldgorger doesn't sit in a safe zone. The reason combos based around a General are given more scrutiny is that there's simply no way to interact with the Command Zone, thus half of the combo gets to sit pretty.
Most 2-card combos involve buying time until you assemble both pieces, but with Worldfire you have half of the combo for the entire game.
That's not only Magical Christmas Land, its assuming the guy playing Zo-zu isn't going to do the smart thing and go after the players that have 0-mana removal spells (Red and Black both have them, and Blue has at least one free bounce spell).
Relying on an absurdly stupid premiss isn't a good argument for Worldfire at all.