Applause indeed!
This reminds me of when I first started playing, but my experience was significantly different. I learned to play with my dad and a friend of his. At the time we played 3-player, 100 life games with decks that were less 'decks' and more collections (we're talking about hundreds, if not well over a thousand cards). The games were crazy, long and an epic story if you can imagine it. When each of us owned like 1 Wrath of God in the 800 cards we were playing, it doesn't come up often: but when it did!
Anyway, your article brought back some fond memories of my own. It was a long while before my inclination turned from 'pure fun' to a more competitive craving. The game is still fun for me, but the challenge of the battle is far more of what entertains me now. I'll never go back to the days of playing the way I did back then, but I'll never forget those games either.
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Sadly this kind of complexity is forbidden by the modern RC. You no longer have to be Smarter Than a 5th Grader to play EDH. The RC has explicitly pointed out a desire towards lower-complexity and more intuitive play with as few circumstantial rules as possible. In all honesty, I can't say I'm a fan of your suggestion but the RC has made it clear about wanting to avoid anything resembling what you mentioned.
(As a side note, I fail to see how installing an additional circumstantial rule that prevents 'tuck' spells from functioning as the card describes is following their professed goal, but that may simply be my failure.)
I haven't had much appreciation for the RC ever since having spent time with Sheldon and their rules changes have ceased to surprise me. I truthfully believe that making an official break between EDH and "Commander", allowing the RC to govern EDH all they wanted (it's a format they, sorta, created) and allowing WotC to directly control Commander seems like a necessary change at some point. What happens when WotC's Commander 2016 product line includes copies of Spell Crumple and Hinder, only for excited purchases to realize that they're strict downgrades from Dissipate now. This has the same sort of problematic feel as the notion concerning Sol Ring: if it were banned by the RC but WotC had product releasing soon that included a Sol Ring in all the new commander decks, can you imagine the problems? "I want to play my commander precon", "sure, just take out the Sol Ring - Oh, and due to the new no-tuck Rule, Derevi was banned so you need a new commander" etc. This has been dramatized for effect, but the point is that if WotC is printing cards for EDH/Commander like Spell Crumple and Derevi with the idea that they both exist within a meta, it should be on WotC to decide how the rules for that meta adapt with time. The RC might be a great place for WotC to hire people to be on their Commander-oriented product team, but this is just one more example of how the RC's actions can be considered by many as uninformed and are obviously disconnected in a fundamental way from the producers of the product they're trying to rule.
Remember that each copy has to resolve individually. Hope you enjoy shuffling.
Tidespout Tyrant + Riftsweeper + Isochron Scepter [Holding: Demonic Consultation) + Claws of Gix + Ichor Wellspring
Activate Isochron Scepter naming Ugin's Nexus.
-If exiled by Demonic Consultation, step 1: Cast Claws of Gix and return Riftsweeper to your hand with Tidespout Tyrant trigger.
-If exiled by Demonic Consultation, step 2: Cast Riftsweeper returning Claws of Gix to your hand with Tidespout Tyrant trigger, return Ugin's Nexus to your library as the only card in it.
-If exiled by Demonic Consultation, step 3: Cast Claws of Gix returning Riftsweeper to your hand with Tidespout Tyrant trigger, then cast Ichor Wellspring drawing your only card in library: Ugin's Nexus.
-If exiled by Demonic Consultation, step 4: Cast Cast Ugin's Nexus. Sacrifice Ugin's Nexus to Claws of Gix - take another turn!
-If exiled by Demonic Consultation, step 5: Cast Riftsweeper returning Claws of Gix to your hand with Tidespout Tyrant trigger and returning Ugin's Nexus to your library as the only card in your library. (Status: Ugin's Nexus as only card in library, Claws of Gix in hand, Riftsweeper in play.)
+If in hand by Demonic Consultation, step 1: Cast Ugin's Nexus and returning Riftsweeper to your hand.
+If in hand by Demonic Consultation, step 2: Cast Claws of Gix, then sacrifice Ugin's Nexus - take another turn!
+If in hand by Demonic Consultation, step 3: Cast Riftsweeper returning Claws of Gix to hand with Tidespout Tyrant trigger and shuffling Ugin's Nexus into your library. (status: Ugin's Nexus randomly in library somewhere, Claws of Gix in hand, Riftsweeper in play.)
**EXTRA TURN**
**If Ugin's Nexus is the only card in your library:
**-Draw Ugin's Nexus for turn.
**-Cast Ugin's Nexus returning Riftsweeper to hand with Tidespout Tyrant trigger.
**-Cast Claws of Gix.
**-Sacrifice Ugin's Nexus to Claws of Gix - Extra Turn!
**-Cast Riftsweeper returning Claws of Gix to your hand with Tidespout Tyrant trigger and returning [/card]Ugin's Nexus[/card] as the only card in your library.
**-STATUS: Ugin's Nexus as only card in library, Claws of Gix in hand, Riftsweeper in play. Proceed to loop.
**If Ugin's Nexus is randomly in your library:
**+Activate Isochron Scepter to Demonic Consultate.
**+Return to the original decision point above, following the steps based on if Demonic Consultation places Ugin's Nexus in your hand or in your exile.
**+With each additional iteration of this process in which you still have a library, Demonic Consultation will continue to exile more and more of it until only Ugin's Nexus remains.
Kill Condition:
If Tidespout Tyrant beats aren't enough, we still have a way of winning.
Starting Status: Ugin's Nexus exiled. Riftsweeper in hand still and Claws of Gix in play still.
Cast Riftsweeper returning Isochron Scepter to hand with Tidespout Tyrant trigger and returning Hornet Sting from your exile to your library.
Cast Claws of Gix.
Sacrifice (or cast) Ichor Wellspring to draw the Hornet Sting.
Cast Isochron Scepter [Imprint:Hornet Sting] returning Riftsweeper to your hand with Tidespout Tyrant trigger.
Activate Isochron Scepter for the best win condition ever.
Cast Riftsweeper returning Claws of Gix to hand with Tidespout Tyrant trigger and returning Ugin's Nexus to your library as the only card.
1) CASUAL League - feel free to play with whatever point system you'd like here and creating 'wacky' points that vary week-to-week keep people unable to build decks specifically to farm them, keep people interested, and keeps a place for something similar to the RC's vision. It is well and clearly advertised that this is a casual league and that those intentionally seeking to ruin the experience for others will be removed.
2) Competitive League - you may have some limited number of point system evaluation but the general idea is to win. It is well and clearly advertised that this is a competitive league and that the experience expected should be on par with that.
League play should consist of a very simple buy-in/reward system. People will pay the full price of a pack, they'll get a pack of whatever the most recent set is. The points associated with winning at the end of certain intervals in the league will reward leftover promos and/or additional packs, store credit, etc based on the LGS's finances. (Keep in mind, getting people in buying a pack each week and augmenting their decks through your store will encourage additional revenue sources).
3) French 1v1 Tournament - this should be exactly as stated, meeting less often (depending on desire of local gamers) and you can structure the rewards as you please.
Yep. Just target Oboro, tap itself to bounce itself, replay Oboro for turn, EOT trigger sees a non-Island in play
1) the person has a winning board presence, in which case proceeding is a rather silly waste of time - concede and start a new game.
2) the person doesn't have a winning board presence, in which case the game has been logistically ruined and become an unbearable game of who's lucky enough to hit a land clump first - conceding and starting a new game, without that person.
In *some* rare cases, when someone has cheap removal and the board presence is limited to a single big creature, you might end up turning situation 1 into a modified version of situation 2 (with the augment that the MLD player isn't to blame/excluded).
I will admit that I struggle with this at times. I built an Animar shell that was extremely lethal and decided, for the sake of 'toning it down', to build an Animar-Slivers secondary version. The problem is that Animar, when he starts doing his thing is exceedingly powerful and arguments could be made that the Animar-Slivers deck was comparably potent to an ideal Animar build and can situationaly surpass it (I love you Hivestone). This is one of MANY examples of me attempting to 'tone down' a deck and still producing something that was overly powerful for one playgroup I was in. I finally broke down and built Rubinia Soulsinger + Copy and Clone Effects deck, which relies on my opponent's resources to win, and thus my deck is always fairly strong, but never outright overpowered. This seems to have worked well and been my greatest success with that group.
There may be arguments about 'running more answers' but at a certain point if you run more answers you need to run less threats; if you run less threats you need your threats to be more potent; if you need your threats to be more potent, the best way to play is to play a combo. The 'run more answers' solution very quickly turns into 'just play a deck like mine, instead' if taken to its logical conclusion.
So, the question to I-win-out-of-nowhere combo players is rather simple: would you rather play archenemy against a table in which, whenever you lose, you end up watching the rest of the table play the game out while you do nothing, or would you rather play something less out-of-nowhere? It really is the combo players decision and if you want to play with your style, more power to you: but don't you dare get upset when you get teamed up on and killed aggressively every game, because the rest of the table has no clue if you're a dozen turns from winning or could win on your next turn and the only safe way for them to play is to assume your win could come imminently and play accordingly.
Nitpicking, but:
Let me know if I'm missing any, but 4 seems short of many, and two of them don't untap normally, making them little better (and possibly worse) than:
- Dark Ritual
- Cabal Ritual
- Desperate Ritual
- Pyretic Ritual
- Manamorphose
- Mana Geyser
ETC...Now, with that said: Tolarian Academy is still an insanely strong card. I would argue that in the "can you abuse this if your deck is trying to" category, however, that both Academy and Cradle are too powerful. If the judgement for a card's place on the banned list is "can this be broken if that is someone's goal", then there's a LOT more cards that belong on the list. However, if the idea of the format is to allow social interactions to modify the way cards are played (and discourage people from "breaking" things) and that the banned list should serve to only remove cards that are innately destructive to the format, I do not believe Academy qualifies in the same way that something like Biorhythm, Sway of the Stars and Worldfire do.
I can't say I think Blue is weak, nor do I think it's a huge deal, but this is one of the situations in which I cannot understand the RC's decision making process. Drawing the line of "too powerful" somewhere between Academy and Cradle seems particularly arbitrary and inexplicable.
Personally I don't really care if Academy or Cradle is banned or unbanned but it feels a bit odd to draw the line between them, I think.
Admittedly, and this comment goes somewhat against my view, Academy provides a more substantial boost to Blue than Cradle does for Green, due to Green already having many ways to boost mana production, without actually even touching direct land ramp. This means that Green is already strong at producing large chunks of mana and that is an intentional component to the color's strength. Compare this to Blue which has very few means of increasing mana production outside of artifacts (which all colors have access to) and temporary effects, meaning that a large mana production source like Tolarian Academy, even if it tapped for an equal amount of mana as Gaea's Cradle, would still provide a larger increase in power; the same way giving $100,000 to a homeless person would provide a larger change than giving $100,000 to Bill Gates.
I hate to say it, but there are two very valid opinions here and pretending like either isn't worthwhile is bigoted or short-sighted.
On a perfect hand comparison level, yes, Academy is stronger. Anyone arguing against this is simply wrong.
However, EDH isn't a format in which most cards are banned because of power level. The banned list generally consists of cards who create undesirable game-states. Generally speaking most playgroups are responsible for managing the power level of their games via the social contract policy that is in place. While there are plenty of decks that could be designed to abuse an opening godhand with either Academy or Cradle, we're ignoring the part where these would be played in formats in which others would have an equally meaningful early game.
Personally speaking I don't think it would ruin the format if Academy was unbanned, but I believe the banned list as it is has created an already "ruined" format. If people want to do broken things they can and will find ways to (attempt to) do so. Academy in a deck that isn't trying to abuse it isn't somehow innately more broken than Cradle is. If the banned list goal is to prevent broken things, drawing the line somewhere between Academy and Cradle seems arbitrary at best. If the RC wants the banned list to create a non-broken format, they have proven themselves woefully unqualified for doing so; but they've said time and again that the social contract is intended to regulate "broken" playstyles and they simply manage the cards which are inherently able to produce undesirable boardstates. I do not believe Academy innately does that.
All this said, there's no one 'right' opinion. Those that see Academy as potentially powerful aren't wrong; those who see Academy as a fun card to play with which doesn't require abuse to be fun aren't wrong. Assuming that your opinion on how the format should be is any more right or valid than someone else's is, however, wrong.