theflow is right on the money here. If you want to convince them that the list is flawed/oppressive, build a deck that they enjoy playing against but gives you a bunch of negative points. Get excited about big plays you want to make and telegraph them. Use that Bonfire of the Damned for 10 to stop the guy who's way ahead of everyone else. Take 3 turns in 30 seconds. Scoop when it's obvious that you've lost.Quote from theflow »It's embarassing when the reaction to a system like that is self-glorification and the fantasized noble call of valor and necessary crusade of showing a loophole/forcing your way through. Combine that with the ridiculous thought that this shows in all righteousness that the system itself is wrong, and you've got the recipe for face-palms and people excluding you.
They're not creating a list to be infallible. They create the list to show which kind of games they enjoy, and no matter how flawed/abusable the list is - it's still a statement. Besides, the list doesn't have to be flawless, as THEY do not play in those ways anyways. They just know people like you will show up and ruin what they want to do, so they try to protect it. Abusing loopholes just proves their point that these lists are necessary. Why? Because you literally go out of your way to force your personal playstyle onto the group, even through a rule system they clearly devised to keep this kind of behaviour out. This will not prove their list is wrong, it will make them fix the loopholes and eventually this will only prove that it is YOU who is the problem and that YOU are too narrow-sighted to realize that they're trying to to - and that they are probably better of playing WITHOUT YOU. Is that what you want to achieve? Way to go!
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Nov 10, 20143
BetweenWalls posted a message on Looking for deck suggestions to play in restrictive local leaguePosted in: Commander (EDH) -
Nov 10, 20142
PhroX posted a message on Looking for deck suggestions to play in restrictive local leaguePosted in: Commander (EDH)Quote from World_Peace »Quote from DirkGently »Isn't it obvious what you need to do? build a deck that will never need to play more than 4 lands.
A million times this. Malfegor comes to mind as a potential commander, since you can cash in on all the lands you'll accumulate in your hand.
Alternatively, you could generate maximum butthurt by making a prison deck that's almost all stax and 'geddon effects. Twenty turns in you use your rocks to slam Divine Intervention. Brion Stoutarm is sometimes used like that.
Posts like this really dismay me. EDH is meant as a social format, and you're actively encouraging people to "generate maximum butthurt". How is that in any way social? How is that going to lead to the playgroup as a whole enjoying themselves?
If you can't live with the way a particular group plays, don't play with them. Simple as that. No need to prevent them having fun simply because they like different things from you. - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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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.
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Remember that each copy has to resolve individually. Hope you enjoy shuffling.
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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.
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(continues to dream)
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That land would be ABSURD in Legacy/Vintage, as tapping for a red mana is actually a substantial boon. The 'need to be at 8 cards' isn't particularly hard with the current assortment of cantrips combined with fuel for the new 4-of draw spell that is Treasure Cruise.
If you want something for Commander-only and with a focus on the weaker drawing colors (red AND white), you'd probably want something like this:
Land#2
Land#2 enters the battlefield tapped.
T: Add to your manapool one mana of any color in your commander's color identity if your commander is on the battlefield.
T: Draw a card. Activate this ability only if your commander is on the battlefield and you have no cards in hand.
Now, if you don't want to give Legacy and Vintage too much power but you don't want the card to be quite that commander-centric, you can go for a couple of other ideas, such as:
Land#3
Land#3 enters the battlefield tapped.
Land#3 doesn't untap during your untap step.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have no cards in hand, untap Land#3.
2, T: Draw a card.
Land#4
T: Exile the top card of your library, you lose life equal to its converted mana cost. At the beginning of the next turn's upkeep, put that card into your hand. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.
Land#5
T: Add 1 to your manapool.
1, return a basic land you control to owner's hand, T: Draw a card if you have exactly seven cards in hand.
Land#6
At the beginning of your upkeep, draw a card.
At the end of each turn, discard your hand.
T: Add 1 to your manapool.
Land#7
Vanishing 7
T: Add 1 to your manapool.
T: Draw a card. Activate this ability only if you have exactly X cards in hand, where X is the number of time counters remaining on Land#7.
Edit: Fixed some formatting. P.S. Some 8am ideas of my own, take them for what they're worth. Just my attempt at brainstorming some ideas I had in response to your suggestion. Feel free to put the bad ones back on top of your library and shuffle them away.
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The board is clogged with a vast assortment of monsters, all players having many large creatures and feeling a bit stalemated.
The opponent to my right plays Elspeth, Sun's Champion and uses the -3 ability to nuke the board.
I respond by targeting myself with Sudden Spoiling.
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Basilisk Collar for lifelink.
Nim Deathmantle for recursion.
Runechanter's Pike if you're heavily spell based.
Umezawa's Jitte wins games.
Darksteel Plate makes it very difficult to deal with the creature.
Fireshrieker great for comboing with sword of X&Y procs.
Loxodon Warhammer more lifelink and trample and power.
Sword of Vengeance mediocre imo, but playable.
Lashwrithe and Nightmare Lash very playable in a black heavy deck.
Godsend is a new good one.
Batterskull is an old good one.
PS: My wife suggested I should add these:
The Kaldra Set.
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You're right that the point system is poorly put together.
A much better solution would be to ban players that break the spirit of their format from the league. No need for nit-picky rules then.
If you want to troll, you don't have a "right" to join other people's games, no matter how many card shops exist in the area.
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I used to play EDH @ Sheldon's LGS. The store had 2 leagues, 1 'casual' (with similar to the above rules), 1 'cut-throat' with very different rules.
And the above post truly hits the nail on the head, playing EDH in an unfun environment is a waste of time. The 'casual' group has just as much right to exist as the 'cut-throat' group. If a casual player turned up at a cut-throat game and complained constantly about people doing what they're supposed to do in the format: he's wrong. If a cut-throat player forces their way into a casual game with the intent only to ruin the game for those players to prove they're "superior" or "right", they're absolutely wrong.
That said, my favorite points-league I've played in was one in which there were menial points for killing anyone and substantial points for 'neat' or creative plays, which varied week to week as to prevent them from being specifically built around. One week there'd be a 3 point bonus for casting your general, another week there'd be a 3 point bonus for not casting your general. Playing the third (or more) spell in a row with sequential CMC (ie: Dark Ritual, Dark Confidant, Necropotence) and many others. In said league I felt challenged to survive, work towards killing others, actively get points while preventing others from doing so as able.
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There's two very valid sides to this.
I understand that Sheldon, and others, don't want to sift through piles of ranting and petty bickering to try and find useful information. It may be substantially more useful if there was a 'highly moderated' thread for such discussion in which players who could not abide basic courtesies were banned from access to that subforum/thread permanently.
However, that said - the Rules Committee has frequently shown a disconnect with the playerbase (that has expanded to include players outside of just their niche group). The response to the removal of "banned as commander" has been overwhelmingly negative from nearly everyone. It's extremely rare to see the Magic community as united as they seem to be in their confusion and annoyance at this unexpected change.
I've said this before and I'll say it again: I'd be more understanding if I hadn't previously played a part in Sheldon's league play, during which his table was not set randomly. He liked to play with the same people on a regular basis and did not include the bulk of players in that shop, ever. I cannot in any way speak to the entirety of his EDH experience and whom else he plays with; he may well play with strangers constantly in other settings and pick this one scenario to play purely for enjoyment and avoid issues associated with random players. However, someone who plays a central role in making decisions about the format partaking in that behavior when combined with the apparent disconnect between the RC and the players, I cannot help but see a possible correlation.