MTG Salvation

Greetings! I notice that I haven't posted in this thread in nearly two years. Well, I recently pulled Edgar Markov out over a three day weekend and wanted to see what I have missed while in that time.

Regarding my personal deck, I have been able to add cards here and there thanks in part to Time Spiral remastered and Battlebond coming to Peru and delivering quality reprints such as Minion's Murmurs and Diabolic Intent.

Something which I did a search for and saw we haven't talked about through 22 pages of this thread is Reforge the Soul. Yes, it is not as good as Wheel of Fortune. I am not advocating it be placed in the most optimal version of the deck. However, for those playing on a budget, it is a fantastic card which can be tutored up to the top of the deck to force Miracle. Moreover, and let us be honest here, a true Wheel is worth the 5 mana if/when you have to hard cast it. I would rather see RtS than the bidding war Wheel. Finally, just like with Wheel of Fortune, you can draw into free mana and keep casting spells that same turn with your new grip of 7.

Edit: hit post by accident. I was not finished. I will keep editing and adding to this.

Thanks for the reply umtiger. While I do not agree with everything and do not have the energy to explain where and why, I do appriciate the feedback.

I do not know how to organized my thoughts and feeling about the Magic. I love the art, flavor text, mechanics, rules and how the card bend and break them. Theory crafting and evaluating cards is lots of fun as well.

Actually playing? Rock-paper-scissors gets old after while, and tutors accelerate that process.

If you are playing for prizes, then you want your deck to go off as quickly and consistantly as possoble. If we are playing for fun and just enjoying the interactions of decks and cards, then tutors get in the way of the random nature of the format.

It sounds like typical neckbeard crying to me.

The MtG community is simultaneously the best in all gaming and also painfully toxic and everything in between.

Your deck looks awesome and like a lot of fun. I am going to bookmark it and steal the idea for later.

I agree with what people are saying is the intention of the format, but the progressive slide is inevitable in my experiences.

When I began in late 2007, it was the bulk rare and common/uncommon box fodder format. Nobody was using their good cards. Nobody was breaking apart their legacy or vintage decks to use original dual lands and fetch lands. However, it did not take long for that to change.

Even in the most casual of EDH games, it still feels bad to hold a 6cmc spell you are dying to cast and you top deck a land which has an EtB tapped clause and are set back a whole round at the table. As a result, it become a priority to invest in a stable and consistent mana base. Before you know it, your deck(s) are not budget anymore and the feeling you get from "The sunk cost fallacy" creeps in. It doesn't even have to be an arms race, but simply justifying the cost of what you have invested in.

Quote from DirkGently »

Quote from Mimicvat »

The flashback one is pure value, and the BUG one is pure value, while the ones with trash mechanics and weaker colours are also weaker and trashier. Everything went pretty much as expected, nothing to see here people.

how is anje not value? She basically reads: you may cast any number of madness cards for their madness cost, and draw a card when you do it. Seeeeeems strong to me. How many good madness cards we’ll have remains to be seen, but there aren’t a ton of good morphs or flashback spells either. Also anje costs 3. If any commander breaks into cEDH, my money is probably on anje.

Ghired is combat focused, so ofc he’s not broken good. But with haste that’s still at least 10/13 of stats for 5, with more each turn...for low/mid power tables I’m sure he’ll be fine.

Because what good madness cards exist?

There are only 41 of them in Rakdos including the the ome spoiled, and all of them are subpar creatures, removal, and "raise dead" effects.

What are you going to do with that? Use Phyrxian Altar to sacrifice the creatures for mana to try and fuel casting more madness cards, return them to your hand with the raise dead effects and build up a storm count... maybe?

Quote from umtiger »

Combo is WAY, WAYeasier than before. I mean, back in the old days, making infinite mana was the goal of most playable infinite loops...and then you'd do something with the mana (e.g. Stroke of Genius). Now, you don't even need infinite mana often. The combo pieces themselves go infinite and provide the win-con.

Not even close to true and you should know better.

Yes, infinite mana has been a go-to for decks, but so has infinite turns, infinite damage, infinite storm, infinite etb/sacrifice, infinite tokens and so on.

Changing life totals is not about stopping 2-card combos or decreasing how often they are played. It will always be the fastest way to win no matter what they change. That's not going to change. Just like how one color has always been better than the others.

Wow, a lot to unpack there, but I will try to be brief. Least important point first, when you said one color is better than the others, yet fail to state which one, I bet that you want us all to assume that it is blue because that is the stereotype. When asked, people overwhelmingly voted blue as the number one color. However, as the numbers played out, it was shown that is not even close to true. When calculated out, White was said to have hurt a deck's chances of winning by -4%, blue sat in the middle at +3% and black was at the top at +5%. While not far and away better, even green outperformed blue. In terms of mono colored decks, black also came in first place and blue surprisingly came in second to last, ahead of only white. When paired, Simic is the first guild to even have blue and shows up as the third place behind Rakdos and Golgari in first place. So, no, there is no one best color, especially if you thought it was blue. If you thought it was black, like I did, well... kind of? But not far and away the best.

Next, you even acknowledge that lowering life totals is not about combos, but making aggro decks more viable, yet fail to miss my entire point that despite aggro being considerably more VIABLE in other formats, they still are not being played at a proportionally higher rate. Even before Commander was a format, people played star magic and casual free for all at 20 life with 60x4 decks and combo/stax decks were still the most effective decks. Asking to lower the starting life total is crying into the wind. It is not going to happen, nor should it happen, and you have failed to give any evidence that it would make any meaningful difference, regardless of your reason to want it.

I feel like talking about how combo is bad for the format or that combo is growing rampant is a straw man. The point of lowering starting life total is not to hobble combo. It's about giving attacking more value in EDH.

It's important in any game to communicate with people you play with. But how do you communicate with that player when 40 life x 3 or 4 to them feels unsurmountable? And honestly, it is to most players. They're just not going to be able to close out a game.

3 players in a 4-man pod archenemy'd a player for two games after he went infinite in the first. He wondered how come? We said it was because of his infinite loops. He replied, "I have to play infinite loops because everyone attacks me." We explained, "The infinite loops are the only reason we're attacking you first all the time. Unless someone else has something crazy, we're just going to attack you first." Then he said, "I won't win many games without the combo."

That anecdotal story just supported my position perfectly and worked to disprove what Sheldon wrote.
Sheldon is/was worried that the response to an infinite combo is that other player will try to go for their combos, and try to go for them as quickly if not faster than the person they lost to. Instead, you and your group teamed up and attacked the combo player. but why would you do that if attacking is not viable? Especially at 40 life? Additionally, you wrote that if another player had tried to do the same, they would be treated the same. These statements further prove that of a 4 person pod, 75% do NOT go for combo and instead choose attacking or some other method. It seems to me that the problem is one player who is too dense to figure out the solution to a problem when you even spell it out for them, yet you seem to feel that this story supports your position rather than destroys it. Had you told a story of how game two resulted in you and your friends racing to try and combo off before the guy who won game one, then you would be evidence of what Sheldon fears. Instead, the "social contract" is working, but one player ails to realize what is happening even when confronted about it. maybe your personal issue could be solved by proposing lending them a deck without a combo, then playing a game where he is not targeted right away by 3 players.

There's a reason why infinite loops are clutches/safety-valves. Notice how defensive cards or interaction (e.g.Force of Will, Nature's Claim, etc.) aren't the defacto safety-valves for these types of players.

The fact that players use too few interactive/reactive/defensive cards to stop combo is a whole other topic and more of a problem than combo is.

Attached below, you will find a screen shot of the statistics from The Command Zone's episode "Exactly How Good is Sol Ring? Commander Gameplay STATS (pt1) l CZ#238 l Magic the Gathering EDH" which was found at the 1 hour, 8 minutes and 45 second mark.

We can argue how valid their numbers are or how much stock you want to put into their findings, however, it does give us some interesting information to work with.

This thread began with anecdotal evidence from Sheldon's observations and valid concerns, though I feel he also uses the slippery slope logical fallacy. It is my opinion that:

1) His personal observations are not a true representation of the format. We have raw data to look at which contradicts it, and until somebody is able to collect more/better data, this is what we have to go off of.

2) I began playing not long after reading The Aardvark's article "Elder Dragon Highlander: There Can be Only One Hundred" which cause the first big explosion in popularity of the format, as there were no forums and nobody playing (in California where some of the best magic players in the world are from), yet afterwards all of the sops up and down Northern California had play groups and eventually this very sub forum popped up. The second big explosion was obviously in 2011 with the WotC Commander precon decks and the format went international, as non-English speaking countries (like Peru where I live now) first heard of it.

I give all of this back ground to get to my point, which is that in all this time, two card combos have been a thing, yet throughout all of these years, the more things change, the more they stay the same. People were using Tooth and Nail for Kiki Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Sky Hussar before Mikaeus, the Unhallowed had ever been printed. Heck, before mike and Trike, Triskelion used to combo with Mephidross Vampire. Combos are not any easier, faster, or more appealing than they have ever been. So, when Sheldon writes:

The problem comes from the tendency to want to do it a little earlier next time because someone beat you to it. And then earlier after that. Arms races lead to bad places.

This, in turn, forces me to ask what it is that he thinks might be causing a "sudden" (yet immeasurable) push towards combo that we have otherwise yet to see in all of this time? The evidence provided by The Command Zone indicated quite the opposite to be true.

3) Changing life totals will NOT make a meaningful difference in the propensity to use combo decks. Yes, higher life totals leads to longer games, which was part of the point of the format (5 players 200 life means 40 each). Longer games (compared to 60 card duels) is also the appeal of the format. It is why EDH/Commander is home to so many cards which are staples now used to spend years buried inside cardboard long boxes of bulk jank. However, the reason players use combos is not ONLY because of the high life totals. Combos are used in 20 life duels, which is literally the most aggro-friendly environment there could possible be, at least in terms of the life total argument. Players are not choosing to use combo is 20 life 60x4 magic because the life totals are too high. Players have chosen combo in Modern where fast tutors do not exist, and of the best combo decks of their day, only KCI used fast mana rocks like Mox Opal, which is doesn't seem to be in any danger of being placed on the ban list. So, it is not the fast mana or the fast tutors which cause players to chose combo either. Well then, what could it be that causes players to choose combo over other decks, when you don't have fast tutors and don't have/need the fast mana, and you only need to kill one player who is at 20 life? maybe... just maybe, it is because combo is resilient and often times fun to pull off (unless it is eggs. I have found that most eggs players hate eggs).

Furthermore, according to every resources I have found, even 20 life duel Commander still tends to favor combo/control match-ups at the top tables more than anything else. Players tend to play the back-and-forth blue battle to dig through their decks, exchange counterspells and try to power out a combo far more than they are to just beat down an opponent. Now, if you have contradictory evidence, then please be polite and share it rather than be a troll and tell me that I am an idiot for not knowing better. I tried to look up the raw numbers from mtgTop8, Channel Fireball's article on competitive duel commander, and the forums and posting talking about the top decks and that is the conclusion that I have come to.

So how do games of 1v1 EDH play out? What can you expect from a typical game? For the most part, 1v1 games play out like a slug-fest between counterspells and attrition. Both players engage in a tug-of-war of resources, land drops, and value. (snip) Typical control games aside, you can also encounter fast combo decks. Usually, these combo decks will also employ counterspells and removal to back up their combos and engines, so be prepared. You will rarely see many glass cannon combo, and more of a combo/control fusion.

As a result, I yet again see evidence that reducing the life total to 30 and even 20 has no demonstrable change in the play pattern and propensity to choose aggro decks more over combo.

========================================================

So, in summary:
1) I am dubious of the validity of the claim that combo is a growing trend, nor that if it is, then it will spiral out of control, or even that it if both of the previous two statements are true, that it is bad for the format/game.
2) The proposed solution of reducing life totals has no evidence supporting that it would solve the "problem" of too many combo decks.
3) The proposed solution of banning fast tutors and/or fast mana will also fail to have the desired results, again backed up with evidence from formats where they are banned/not in the card pool to begin with.
4) (Insert witty joke here, everybody laughs)

Quote from Bitterblossom125 »

Fun fact: this list is far from the most competitive version of edgar markov. That would be http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/31-01-19-symphony-of-the-knight/

As for scapegoat, I have a lot of experience using it against fairly good decks. The one mana per turn is nothing and doesn't slow you down. I have never cast it against a wrath and still lost the game that I can remember. It has won me at least two games. I actually tutored for it once just to be certain I would win since I didn't need a finisher at the time. And whaddaya know, somebody cast a wrath which I stopped, winning me the game. In my experience, the most common reason this deck loses is wraths, and stopping one increases the odds of winning drastically. I will never cut scapegoat.

Thanks for the reply, and I would like to respond to a few key points:

First of all, the list you linked to is quite unimpressive to me. I do not know how you figure that it is the most competitive build of Edgar Markov. Combo does not mean more competitive. From reading the primer, I looks like it is trying to do what other decks do better, and by that I mean with fewer cards, fewer points of failure, costing less mana to pull off, and often with control elements to protect their combo which Edgar lacks. I would much rather play Kess, Zur, or Breya versions of Doomsday than Edgar Markov. Moreover, it feels like a waste of the Commander itself. Outside of Razaketh, the Foulblooded, there is no reason to use Edgar over the other options. If people enjoy it, then great, but if I want to play combo competitively, which I do, then I have better options. I play Edgar Markov as the most competitive agro deck I have ever seen. It can straight beat decks down in no time.

Second, concerning Scapegoat, it still resets your board. The point of a wrath is to clear the board, and without any haste enablers (which this deck does not have), you still have to recast your hand of Vampires and want for another round at the table and more potential Wrath effects to resolve without Scapegoat in your hand any longer. How is that better than something like Boros Charm? I know that the difference between one and two mana is a big deal in competitive magic, but I would think that the difference between surviving a Wrath while the rest of the table lost their board and having to recast my hand and wasting a full round at the table is a larger setback. Maybe I am wrong.

I wonder how Pokken feels abput Strip Mine in many decks. I have cut it and Wasreland from all of my decks as well.

In my nearly 12 years of playing EDH/Commander (since late 2007), neither land has ever mattered to me. There is no land in Magic which scares me to the point of needing either card. Not Gaea's Cradle, Dark Depths, Maze's End, Academy Ruins, or anything else you can think of. I have never lost BECAUSE of those lands. Lots of green mana doesn't matter, just stopping the Tooth and Nail or whatever they want to cast with it. Academy Ruins doesn't matter with graveyard hate. Merit Lage doesn't have Hexproof/Shroud, and Either pair of boots should be removed on sight in most cases anyway. The list goes on.

When we want to talk about the Tower, it is more useful in my Athreos (Shadowborn Apostle) deck than either Strip Mine or Wasteland have EVER been in Commander for 12 years.

I learned quickly that I was not cracking my Wasteland in each game I played, and noticed that the colorless was worse for me than any other land would have been.

My mono black Kagemaro, First to Suffer deck also loves the Tower as well.

I agree that it is overrated, and I also agree that people run too many colorless sources inntheir mono colored and two color decks and that Tower is often one of those cards which should be replaced, but it does have its place in some decks.

The answer to this question is something which has been hashed over countless times in various ways. I just went back to a post i made a year and a half ago that got my most up votes here at MTG Salvation and feel that it is just as relevant in context.

Commander appeals to players on so many levels.

In my 13+ years of experience, I have seen patterns and stories retell themselves from all over. Many old school players started with no idea how to play, just a starter deck and a rule book they didn't understand. Countless newbies make the same mistake. I cannot tell you how often I have seen someone with a 73 card three color deck with 16 or 17 lands. They began with some theme deck, bought boosters, added cards they liked and "made room for them" by cutting lands, then continued to pack more cool stuff in until it became the dumpster fire in front of them.

I cannot tell you how many times someone has seen my Magic: the Gathering pin on my bag at work or on the street and told me how they play magic too and that they beat all their friends with their samurai deck or red burn deck... and we are not talking about an optimized sly deck. We are talking something that has Volcanic Hammer and Lava Axe or whatever some 5-15 year old burn spell is from when they started playing.

Not everyone who plays this game is a fanatic who lurks forums, reads article, watches YouTube videos and strives to improve their play. Many of them just like to play a card game with their friends.

Commander appeals to Timmy who loves to cast big creatures and finally has a format where games realistically get to turns where they can actually cast them.

Commander appeals to Vorthos, who loves to tell a story with their deck.

Commander appeal to Spike who likes to break it in half and pretend they are the biggest fish in their little bowl.

Commander appeals to Johnny, who is forced to only have one of each cards and tries to assemble their crazy combo.

Commander is where the guy who wants to use skull clamp can without it being over powered.

Commander is where someone like my wife can get a pre-con deck and build it on a budget over time and watch it grow into something all her own and be proud of it every step of the way.

To expand a little, Magic has always been a game where both cards and decks are designed to fight the inherent randomness of the game. That is why, when allowed 4x copies of a card, most cards are played with those 4 copies, and when there are fewer than 4, there is a reason/rational for it.

If I could play multiple copies of Thrumming Stone in my Atheros (Shadowborn Apostle) deck, I would. There is no other card in magic like it. Not even something similar. As a result, the deck is forced to play things like Secret Salvage and Remembrance as alternative ways of pulling copies from the library.

Even in 60 card 4x copies magic, decks regularly play redundant copies of the most important cards. Look at modern 8 Whack or other decks like 8 Post and 8 Rack. They get those names because a redundant version ofa powerful card was printed and they upped the count of said effect to its limit.

I was told a story about how the first best deck in the history of magic was back before the 4 card limit and decks were only 40 cards. The deck was about 18 Black Lotus, 18 or so Wheel of Fortune and about 4 or so Feldon's Cane. You just cast your free mana and wheel over and over again, eventually using the cane to shuffle your graveyard back into your library and kept going until your opponent lost. You won every time you went first or they passed he turn. That, I am told, is what inspired the 4x rule. Well, the next best decks just ran 4x the power 9 and mostly did the same thing along with Wheel of Fortune and Braingeyser as a finishers and still inning on turn one, or if it was passed to them. This essentially means that they needed a restricted list, else the game would stagnate.

Singleton is good for Commander and god for Magic. I cannot tell you how many LGS locations benefited from Commander and having a sudden demand for bulk cards. I know that my friends and I scoured countless boxes of cards which were once rarely touched for months or even years. Boxes were pulled out of storage, quarter and dollar rare piles were rifled through just looking for hidden gems and cards which finally found a home.

Redundant cards with a twist or higher casting cost suddenly became useful. Some cards which were unplayable jank have become staples and powerhouses. The higher life totals and longer game length resulted in turns where you can actually expect to cast something with a cmc over 4 and have it matter. Heck, 8 drops and even 12 drop cards were being cast as blow out spells. X spells were able to be cast are crazy high values you once only dreamed of, or were only able to through an infinite mana combo, now were just hard cast at 10+.

This is the format where people like to talk about how many non-infnite tokes or creatures they have had, cards they have drawn, or how much non-infinite life they have gained or damage they have done. Some of that is inspired by the deep card pool that we are FORCED to choose from rather than just playing 60x4 casual magic.

I could go on, as you can imagine. Thanks for reading this far.

One important point on how often commanders are cast is hot often they stick. I've found that commanders that are central to the gameplan tend to get cast when they are prepping to win, or can be protected. You don't need to cast a commander more than once if the game ends before it dies. So this is an interesting data point but not necessarily a reflection on the importance of commanders to the format, as actually being really important to the deck can lead to the commander being cast fewer times do to it winning the game or the pilot protecting it, or recurring it.

An interesting stat would be how often is a commander removed each game.

How often do you cast your commander?

their conclusions are about the same as my experience in my local group. even the most aggressive commanders tend to not be cast more than about 2 times. the tax ends up high enough where there are just better plays, unless the entire deck revolves around the commander as the sole means to win. we've upped our spot removal to deal with threats/combos and it incidentally also helped deal with commanders pretty consistently. a lot of them act more like enchantments, or one shot spells than true creatures. there's always exceptions to that.

How many board wipes are played in a game?

my local group's results again mimic what they've said. most of us are running just 1 board wipe. we all pretty much saw the necessity of spot removal and toned down our wipes in favor of that. plus, almost any time the table actually needs to be wiped someone has one. it only takes 1 to get the job done, you don't really have to cast them repeatedly. there are of course always a few exceptions here depending on the commander, but for the most part its been fairly common to only need/see 1-2 per game before it ends.

How many turns does a game last?

my meta is a little faster and a few of us have tracked it over time. for the most part our findings were really similar, turns 5/6/7 are where the meat of the game happens, with all turns before that being mostly setups. by turn 8/9 the majority of games are over, this is indeed where everything comes together. of course, sometimes games run longer if there's enough spot removal to deal with whatever is being thrown down, or if someone shows up with a deck specifically created to force the long game.


How many attacks are made in a game? How many by a single player?

our group also has similar results to theirs. i've seen even really aggressive commanders tend to hang back if there's any risk. its tough to absolutely say how much attacking is going, and it will vary depending on deck - for instance yuriko is going to attack a lot - prime speaker zegana not so much. where it does match up to their findings exactly is the tendency to hang back and do a single player/game ending attack. sometimes leaving yourself wide open just isn't worth the risk, so most will aim for the sure thing. why sacrifice all your early game duders if on turn 6 you can hoof out.

How man my spells which cost 6+ are cast by a player or in the while game?

we're by no means cedh'ers. some of our group think they are, but don't even know what a chrome mox or a sphere of resistance does. that said, our games are also fairly low in terms of cmc. a lot of us recognized the importance of momentum, of affordability, you often can't wait to have 6+ mana to deal with something, and you'll often end up being stopped by a player that's playing more efficiently at a lower curve. the number one thing that drives away new comers to our group is that they've aimed too hard for late game 6+ mana plays, and we've all aimed for lower curves. what good is one spell thats easily stopped if you can instead cast 9 that are all working together to barf your deck our. its an inevitability of any group to see a curve get lower and plays become more aggressive. my own decks rarely see more than 4-5 cards in the 6+ mana range. a lot of the things that get spoiled every set that people say OMG EDH STAPLE really aren't. they're cut or not even considered. a high casting cost doesn't automatically make something good.

all in all, i think this kind of video, as well as this kind of discussion, point out the glaring differences between some edh players. is one strategy better than the other? well... it depends on the group. inevitably i feel that any group that's consistent is going to fall more in line with the conclusions drawn here as its just the nature of becoming more competitive and wanting to beat your friends. there's nothing wrong with that. the hope would be those that are frustrated that they can't keep up, or that everyone tries too hard, or OMG I ******* HATE ISLANDS dudes will see some of this and realize that its time to tweak their decks. it wont' happen because that type of player doesn't actively analyze their meta or their deck, but that would be the hope. that someone would make the connections here and go oh, time to not run everything in green that's 9+ mana with no way to get there

Check the Gadwick rulings : "If Gadwick enters the battlefield without being cast, or if it was cast for a cost other than its mana cost, the value of X for its first ability is 0. (2019-10-04)"

A token would enter without being cast

Here is a janky one I've been working on trying to pull off.

Dual Casting + any creature + Hidden Strings + Something that taps for R and more (Empowered Autogenerator, Izzet Boilerworks) + Something to do with the mana (Fireball) or copy triggers (Ral, Storm Conduit).

I use quite a few tutors (up or down, whatever is available), but I do think they can be problematic. Here’s how I usually justify mine:

-I vary the game by only playing each deck a few times before disassembly, so if the plan ends up excessively linear it won’t be true for long.

-I’m oftentimes trying to accomplish something unusual, and not something that will immediately or easily win the game. To make weak strategies good, it can be necessary to remove variance.

-I like working towards optimal decks within the narrow constraints I set for myself. Everyone except cEDH has constraints, and no tutors is a fine constraint if you’re otherwise pretty unconstrained in your approach. But given how specific my deck ideas tend to be, I think it’s not only unnecessary to omit tutors, but also limits my ability to see how functional a silly strategy could be, with all the stops pulled out, and thus how viable the strat is as a whole.

I too find the sorin thing confusing - I guess it maybe has more to do with being overly harsh to a single player than it does being a powerful play? It’s definitely a weird thing to find particularly egregious.

It does seem like a bad play to me. I’d wait until a threat had better been established, or better, wait until it’s 1:1.

Quote from Drain Life »

Quote from Dragoon91 »

Quote from Drain Life »

I honestly do not even understand how the play line described gave him the six mana needed for his fourth turn play of Kethis, the Hidden Hand and Helm of Kaldra. He made each land drop and only ramped with Sac-Tribe Elder, which means he should have only had five mana on turn four, but this is a side observation.

The Helm is legendary, so Kethis reduces its cost by one.

Thanks, I had head errata which changed it to legendary creatures.

By the way, head errata is real and we do it all the time. For example, try reading Floral Spuzzem and find the error.

You need to wait long enough for Floral Spuzzem to make a decision?

Quote from Drain Life »

I honestly do not even understand how the play line described gave him the six mana needed for his fourth turn play of Kethis, the Hidden Hand and Helm of Kaldra. He made each land drop and only ramped with Sac-Tribe Elder, which means he should have only had five mana on turn four, but this is a side observation.

The Helm is legendary, so Kethis reduces its cost by one.

Quote from Drain Life »

I haven't seen commander damage be the reason somebody lost in over 10 years.

Whereas I see it weekly.

to ban iona... can you remember the last time you even saw someone PLAY iona?

Did you read the article? Did you read what I said above?

At this point, it’s laughable for anybody not to see the Iona ban for what it really was.

Sheldon went so far as to say himself the banlist is expected to be kept short. Do you really think that it would be in the best interest of the format to ban a metric sh** ton of cards to make the point of “hey, don’t be a dick”? That’s what Iona is. A dick move. She adds absolutely nothing to the games she gets played in. Are there better, easier, more efficient options? Damn Skippy. But, when you’re crafting that deck to take out to some group of friends or to-be acquaintances, you should remember that Iona is banned because she’s a fun-suck. So don’t be a fun-suck. If the people you’ve played with for years don’t care about fun-sucking, or thrive on the sucking of fun, then go ahead, play Winter Orb and Friends. Hell, even ask if you can play Iona herself. There is literally nobody stopping you, not even the RC.

There doesn’t have to be an arms race. We are all out here competing for absolutely nothing. At least the people who the format is catered to, anyways.