Wow, the last time we had this many bans at a time in one year, the game was considered to be in a catastrophic nose-dive, a death-spiral of poor design and play choices threatening its survival. And now, I guess we're treating it as just a normal thing that happens?
No, have you not been reading things? Standard IS in a death spiral of poor design and play choices.
This is what happens when you remove efficient answers.
No, have YOU not been reading?
The players might be acting like we're in a death spiral, but Wizards has largely treated it as Oopsie, Woopsie, No Big Deal, Sometimes These Things Happen, It's Already Fixed, Don't Worry.
Oh you want Wizards to admit and openly call out that the format upon which we all depend on is in a death spiral?
Sorry, I misunderstood.
I wouldn't mind that, sure, but I'm mostly talking about it being nice if they'd more directly acknowledge "Ah *****, that was our ****-up, we did this."
Sure, the knee-jerk solution of things like Kamigawa after Mirrodin sucks, but it at least left it clear that Wizards knew they had done it BAD and WRONG and were recoiling in horror from their mistakes. This time around feels more glib, slip-it-under-the-rug.
Wow, the last time we had this many bans at a time in one year, the game was considered to be in a catastrophic nose-dive, a death-spiral of poor design and play choices threatening its survival. And now, I guess we're treating it as just a normal thing that happens?
No, have you not been reading things? Standard IS in a death spiral of poor design and play choices.
This is what happens when you remove efficient answers.
No, have YOU not been reading?
The players might be acting like we're in a death spiral, but Wizards has largely treated it as Oopsie, Woopsie, No Big Deal, Sometimes These Things Happen, It's Already Fixed, Don't Worry.
Wow, the last time we had this many bans at a time in one year, the game was considered to be in a catastrophic nose-dive, a death-spiral of poor design and play choices threatening its survival. And now, I guess we're treating it as just a normal thing that happens?
If your concern is very fast infinite combos, your list makes even less sense. There's a slew of very fast, abusive combos it doesn't even attempt to address, and the Banned as Commander section especially looks much more like a meta-specific "Commanders We Got Combo Wrecked By" list than a thorough or effective ban on commanders that enable or power fast combo. Kokusho is on there, for crying out loud. If you're getting nuked out Turn 2-4 by that deck, something has already gone horribly wrong before the start of the game, most likely a catastrophic difference in power level and game intent between different players in the pod.
I mean, duh? Group hug really throws game tempo out the window. I usually win when someone in the pod group hugs and I hate it. I've already stated before that group hug has a horrible unbalancing effect on the table, and combo decks like mine run away with free resources WAY harder than most other archetypes. It's not compelling gameplay to steamroll the table because someone fed so many resources into the game that I skipped right by the set-up and positioning phases of play and find myself ready to lock in unopposed Turn 4. EDH with hug in the pod is a completely different game than EDH without hug in the pod, and I don't find that version of the format at all challenging.
Have you tried _____? His name can be anything, like ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ.
It is worth pointing out that this doesn't work. You need to pick the name of an actual Magic card, not just a made up name.
I see it now but its a fairly obscure, possibly even outdated, rule that doesn't pop up on the normal places to look. Such as magicinfo, gatherer, mtgsalvation, etc. And when I mean obscure I mean a single isolated page that is 13 years old (2004) that the average new player won't know it exists unless they read about it on a comment/forum section or were rules lawyered about the misuse.
EDIT: Like if this is a rule to be taken seriously it needs to be visible on the more modern places. Not including the extra obscure rules text as provided by MaRo is a gross amount of misinformation. It also means that the rule is more of a guideline than an actual rule if its not enforced in such a regularly visible manner. It doesn't matter if its from a Silver Bordered set or a Black Bordered set if its not for plain view.
There's exactly one person on Silver-Border rules staff, and that's the Silver-Border Rules Manager: Mark Rosewater. Silver-border rules have never been handled in the official way you're talking about.
They aren't permanents in the graveyard, they are permanent cards (cards with a type fitting the category "permanent"). The set of game objects that fit under "a permanent" are only considered permanents while on the field, they're referred to as cards fitting specific criteria in rules text otherwise. See Unearth as a template example.
On the lack of Killbots, not every legend is meant for Commander. RB also got a buttload (bolt-load?) of very playable commanders to play with compared to pretty much every other colour combo (UB got two cool ones, GW and RG got one each and UW has 0 if you don't count Calcutron), and the other RB ones do more interesting things than just come into play for stupid cheap and be annoying to kill. I'm betting she wasn't originally a legend either, they may have just slapped the tag on her to emphasize the evil villain theme and come up with a cool flavour story for the wonky Ninjutsu-esque mechanic they made for this card.
This feels like it's deliberately talking past the point that the lack of Killbots also makes Mary a very feelbad card in Limited, which they claimed to have worked to ensure a very smooth drafting environment for Unstable so... the result is Mary is lame in Commander AND the format MaRo insisted they went out of their way to tune the set for, not just Commander.
The notion that The Big Idea needs the supporting creatures more than Mary is a little disingenuous. The Big Idea creates its own supporting creatures, in bulk. Mary only has the Killbot and, technically, Dr. Julian kind of, and can do nothing to improve that situation on its own. We were told they worked hard to make this set a strong Limited environment. Making Mary almost undraftable doesn't fit well with that narrative.
so you are casting it for 4 (2x4=8, meaning you still have to pay 2GG)
Casting it for GG, 4 2/Xs and a Sol Ring. The important detail is that the 2/Xs in the example are creatures you probably happen to be running by default ANYWAY in mono-G beats, as they're just extremely solid green utility dudes. Pretty sure tstorm was pointing out that all of your utility guys are suddenly ramp to your 2HKO commander.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: spite scooping punishes people for playing the kinds of decks most groups purportedly WANT them to play, decks that are exposed to interaction. This encourages players that want to actually successfully implement their gameplan to brew increasingly insular, solitaire-style decks that don't care what opponents are doing, so that they don't get screwed out of making their desired plays by needing to interact.
According to ilovesaproling's typically hostile and antagonistic stance, non-deterministic combos with random elements that have to depend on statistics (negligible, but still extant chance of whiffing) to elicit forfeits from the pod if you don't want to play it out step be step...
Are not combos.
I'm talking things like Dualcaster Mage in response to Warp World with roughly as many permanents on board as cards in your deck and high token-generator density in the deck, or Fiery Gambit in Zada, Hedron Grinder brews with enough bodies on the board that you're statistically VERY likely to flip enough coins to the damage reward to kill the pod, but not guaranteed to.
On the main topic: a decent way to both pack solid, conclusive game-enders and avoid bruising the feelings of more casual players to badly is to run combos that are more fragile, more of a gamble. The more moving pieces your finisher takes to lock, the more room there is for someone to feel heroic disrupting you, the less likely having combos in your brew is to salt casual tables.
Like the general consensus says, you don't HAVE to have a combo, but having some way of efficiently wrapping the game up is essential if you sat down to play a game for fun and not to bizarrely torment your companions. Splashy threats, reliable beaters, etc. etc. Combo is just the fastest, most effective at clearing a full pod at a time type of finisher, so a lot of people favor it as ending games more reliably than other options.
I wouldn't mind that, sure, but I'm mostly talking about it being nice if they'd more directly acknowledge "Ah *****, that was our ****-up, we did this."
Sure, the knee-jerk solution of things like Kamigawa after Mirrodin sucks, but it at least left it clear that Wizards knew they had done it BAD and WRONG and were recoiling in horror from their mistakes. This time around feels more glib, slip-it-under-the-rug.
No, have YOU not been reading?
The players might be acting like we're in a death spiral, but Wizards has largely treated it as Oopsie, Woopsie, No Big Deal, Sometimes These Things Happen, It's Already Fixed, Don't Worry.
There's exactly one person on Silver-Border rules staff, and that's the Silver-Border Rules Manager: Mark Rosewater. Silver-border rules have never been handled in the official way you're talking about.
This feels like it's deliberately talking past the point that the lack of Killbots also makes Mary a very feelbad card in Limited, which they claimed to have worked to ensure a very smooth drafting environment for Unstable so... the result is Mary is lame in Commander AND the format MaRo insisted they went out of their way to tune the set for, not just Commander.
Casting it for GG, 4 2/Xs and a Sol Ring. The important detail is that the 2/Xs in the example are creatures you probably happen to be running by default ANYWAY in mono-G beats, as they're just extremely solid green utility dudes. Pretty sure tstorm was pointing out that all of your utility guys are suddenly ramp to your 2HKO commander.
Are not combos.
I'm talking things like Dualcaster Mage in response to Warp World with roughly as many permanents on board as cards in your deck and high token-generator density in the deck, or Fiery Gambit in Zada, Hedron Grinder brews with enough bodies on the board that you're statistically VERY likely to flip enough coins to the damage reward to kill the pod, but not guaranteed to.
On the main topic: a decent way to both pack solid, conclusive game-enders and avoid bruising the feelings of more casual players to badly is to run combos that are more fragile, more of a gamble. The more moving pieces your finisher takes to lock, the more room there is for someone to feel heroic disrupting you, the less likely having combos in your brew is to salt casual tables.