Players don't get banned for no reason. Players get banned as a last resort.
You're only getting half the story here, at most. And WotC's policy is never to comment on disciplinary issues.
I'm not going to speculate as to the OP's particular issue but I can speak to the fact that if you don't do anything wrong you should be fine. And even if you unknowingly buy stolen tickets you are generally ok. They usually just advise you to be more careful.
However, if you are seen to be repeatedly buying stolen tix, or to be continuously trading with accounts that do, you are going to be in for a rough time.
The only time an account gets insta-banned is if a stolen card is used.
The safest bet is to either buy tix from the store, or from reputable dealers.
They guys who work fraud detection are extremely smart, and they have a lot of tools to catch scammers and thieves. I'd be willing to wager that accounts that get banned really do deserve it.
... What if there was a draft queue that was only for players with a draft rating within a specified range? Would that meet the desired result of what you are looking for?
"It was at about this point that the coding work was done and we were ready to introduce the 1700 Room to the game. The idea behind the 1700 Room was to give highly rated players a "frequent flier lounge" where they could hang out, chat, and find games against other highly rated players. Our thought was to reward players for doing well and thus make online ratings more meaningful. In addition, we know Magic is more fun when you play against someone with approximately the same skill level as you, so we wanted to create an environment where the game's best players could find a challenge. In fact, our first thought was to have an 1800 Room, but we quickly discovered that there were not enough 1800+ rated players to give us the "critical mass" we needed to have the draft queues fire regularly.
At the same time we were talking about what precisely to put into the 1700 Room, we were trying to figure out what to do with the recently gathered evidence that most players prefer a flatter prize structure. We looked at who was playing the 8-4 queue versus the 4-3-2-2 queue and saw the expected result that higher rated players preferred the more top-heavy payout, while lower rated players preferred 4-3-2-2. We knew we wanted to make the 1700 Room attractive enough to lure in the so-called "sharks" (in fact, one of our early proposed names for the room was "The Shark Tank"). We also judged that there weren't enough players to maintain three different versions of the most popular draft queue so something had to give. We decided to switch all the regular queues to the more-popular 4-3-2-2 payout and move all the top-heavy payouts into the 1700 Room. We thought this would introduce an obvious distinction between the rooms and we thought a 9-5 payout would be attractive enough that players would separate themselves nicely.
Well, it's been a year and unfortunately the 1700 Room seems to be a failure. No one ever goes there to hang out and chat. (Plenty of hanging out and chatting goes on amongst highly-rated players, but it happens privately.) No one ever goes to the 1700 Room to playtest constructed either ... it has not become the place where you can go and know that you'll get a tough game. (Again, private arrangements are accomplishing this goal.) The one reason that people do go into the 1700 Room is to sign up for the 9-5 booster draft queues, but those have gotten steadily less and less popular. The problem seems to be that they don't fire often enough, which is compounded by the fact that they are several clicks away from the regular draft room. Apparently, most drafters want to draft RIGHT NOW and they weren't willing to wait the 30-45 minutes they had to wait to get a 9-5 draft. Instead, everyone just ran the 4-3-2-2 because drafting for lower prizes is still more fun than waiting in a queue. Over recent months the wait for a 9-5 has gotten longer and longer as more and more highly rated players have stopped even checking in or considering getting into the slow queue. Instead of firing a couple times an hour, the 9-5 queue now fires a couple of times a day."
Don't play EDH with anyone on whose couch you wouldn't sleep.
This is a great quote, and pretty much encapsulates my current view on EDH.
The RC moderates to friends who are starting to play together.
Once your group has played together long enough, and you know each other well enough, you've probably outgrown the need for the RC.
They also moderate to the most basic common denominator so that if you do deceide to play in a different group you will have at least some idea of what to expect. However, you should always ask anyway because it's possible that a new group has a wildly different outlook.
Point being, the RC's EDH is supposed to promote social interaction and funtimes. Anything else you get from, or do with the game, is on you.
Black Lotus is only broken when you use it to cast good stuff. No one cares about a turn 1 War Mammoth. The same holds true for all banned cards that only provide mana are draw cards. These cards are only as good as the other cards they enable you to play. Of the ban list, the few cards that don't meet this criteria are emrakul, biorythym, and sway of the stars.
Not sure if sarcasm ...?
Black Lotus (and other Power) are banned because of the perceived barrier of entry they create.
Some other cards are banned (TA for example or Channel), because the early game mana boost they provide is considered too fast. Some acceleration is considered OK, obviously, since Crypt and Sol Ring are allowed.
Where that line is, however, has always been a bit blurry.
Doesn't Hermit Druid just fall into the category of cards that are only broken when the controller wants to break it?...
This is EXACTLY the reason he's not banned. Ditto WGD. It's inherently fair unless you warp your entire deck around it.
And someone who set out to build that kind of deck has already made a very conscious choice to break the format before they ever sit down to play.
You can't stop someone like that from breaking EDH because there are just too many powerful cards available in the Vintage pool.
BitN is significantly worse then a Bolt, since it is a Sorcery and can't hit creatures or 'walkers. In addition, it can not trigger any damage related abilities, like Bloodthirst, so the only Black deck which may have wanted a card like that (Vampires) can't use it.
I'd rather see someone complain about Hornet Sting before Bump.
Trading a card for another card is parity. Casting Think Twice from your hand is parity. There is no positive advantage generated. All you are getting is filtering.
If Think Twice were exiled from your graveyard after you cast it, but before you could flash it back, you would have gained no card advantage.
If you never cast it from your hand, but were somehow forced to discard it, and then cast it from your graveyard, that would also be parity.
Casting Think Twice from your graveyard (after casting it from your hand) generates card advantage.
It is the second actual casting of Think Twice which is the factor, not the option of being able to cast it.
I'm pretty sure someone looked at how many TPF drafts fired and went "OMG IMAGINE IF WE GOT $2 FOR EVERY ONE OF THOSE"
I think the biggest problem with Onslaught is that it's a creature block (for the most part) and a majority of the good creatures back then are either completely outclasses, or have been reprinted since, so you are essentially left with fetch lands.
I remember doing one OLS draft back when it was nix tix/nix pax earlier this year (and on that note, do we really need to redo OLS when there are other formats we haven't done?) and I lost in the first round due to time out, it just ended up as a massive creature stall.
OLS does have some good cards: Future Sight, Blatant Thievery, Insurrection, Akroma's Veng, in addition to the Fetches.
Legion was the all creature expansion, and that is pretty awful.
But Scourge had the Decree cycle and has some eternal staples like Mind's Desire and Stifle.
I mean, it's not the best EV set ever, but it's decent.
Online MTG can be very satisfying, as long as you go in with real expectations. If you want to build decks, play games, and collect cards it's a perfect medium.
But, if for you, like many people, Magic is *really* about hanging out with friends then you probably won't enjoy it as much as you will be expecting to.
You may be able to connect with some people online but a good majority of the players you interact with will skew toward the competitive side.
You're only getting half the story here, at most. And WotC's policy is never to comment on disciplinary issues.
I'm not going to speculate as to the OP's particular issue but I can speak to the fact that if you don't do anything wrong you should be fine. And even if you unknowingly buy stolen tickets you are generally ok. They usually just advise you to be more careful.
However, if you are seen to be repeatedly buying stolen tix, or to be continuously trading with accounts that do, you are going to be in for a rough time.
The only time an account gets insta-banned is if a stolen card is used.
The safest bet is to either buy tix from the store, or from reputable dealers.
They guys who work fraud detection are extremely smart, and they have a lot of tools to catch scammers and thieves. I'd be willing to wager that accounts that get banned really do deserve it.
Take that as you will.
Panoptic creates repetitive game states.
Thank you. Thank you for getting it.
Mind if I sig this?
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Article.aspx?x=magic/magiconline/articlerb081004
"It was at about this point that the coding work was done and we were ready to introduce the 1700 Room to the game. The idea behind the 1700 Room was to give highly rated players a "frequent flier lounge" where they could hang out, chat, and find games against other highly rated players. Our thought was to reward players for doing well and thus make online ratings more meaningful. In addition, we know Magic is more fun when you play against someone with approximately the same skill level as you, so we wanted to create an environment where the game's best players could find a challenge. In fact, our first thought was to have an 1800 Room, but we quickly discovered that there were not enough 1800+ rated players to give us the "critical mass" we needed to have the draft queues fire regularly.
At the same time we were talking about what precisely to put into the 1700 Room, we were trying to figure out what to do with the recently gathered evidence that most players prefer a flatter prize structure. We looked at who was playing the 8-4 queue versus the 4-3-2-2 queue and saw the expected result that higher rated players preferred the more top-heavy payout, while lower rated players preferred 4-3-2-2. We knew we wanted to make the 1700 Room attractive enough to lure in the so-called "sharks" (in fact, one of our early proposed names for the room was "The Shark Tank"). We also judged that there weren't enough players to maintain three different versions of the most popular draft queue so something had to give. We decided to switch all the regular queues to the more-popular 4-3-2-2 payout and move all the top-heavy payouts into the 1700 Room. We thought this would introduce an obvious distinction between the rooms and we thought a 9-5 payout would be attractive enough that players would separate themselves nicely.
Well, it's been a year and unfortunately the 1700 Room seems to be a failure. No one ever goes there to hang out and chat. (Plenty of hanging out and chatting goes on amongst highly-rated players, but it happens privately.) No one ever goes to the 1700 Room to playtest constructed either ... it has not become the place where you can go and know that you'll get a tough game. (Again, private arrangements are accomplishing this goal.) The one reason that people do go into the 1700 Room is to sign up for the 9-5 booster draft queues, but those have gotten steadily less and less popular. The problem seems to be that they don't fire often enough, which is compounded by the fact that they are several clicks away from the regular draft room. Apparently, most drafters want to draft RIGHT NOW and they weren't willing to wait the 30-45 minutes they had to wait to get a 9-5 draft. Instead, everyone just ran the 4-3-2-2 because drafting for lower prizes is still more fun than waiting in a queue. Over recent months the wait for a 9-5 has gotten longer and longer as more and more highly rated players have stopped even checking in or considering getting into the slow queue. Instead of firing a couple times an hour, the 9-5 queue now fires a couple of times a day."
This is a great quote, and pretty much encapsulates my current view on EDH.
The RC moderates to friends who are starting to play together.
Once your group has played together long enough, and you know each other well enough, you've probably outgrown the need for the RC.
They also moderate to the most basic common denominator so that if you do deceide to play in a different group you will have at least some idea of what to expect. However, you should always ask anyway because it's possible that a new group has a wildly different outlook.
Point being, the RC's EDH is supposed to promote social interaction and funtimes. Anything else you get from, or do with the game, is on you.
Not sure if sarcasm ...?
Black Lotus (and other Power) are banned because of the perceived barrier of entry they create.
Some other cards are banned (TA for example or Channel), because the early game mana boost they provide is considered too fast. Some acceleration is considered OK, obviously, since Crypt and Sol Ring are allowed.
Where that line is, however, has always been a bit blurry.
This is EXACTLY the reason he's not banned. Ditto WGD. It's inherently fair unless you warp your entire deck around it.
And someone who set out to build that kind of deck has already made a very conscious choice to break the format before they ever sit down to play.
You can't stop someone like that from breaking EDH because there are just too many powerful cards available in the Vintage pool.
I'd rather see someone complain about Hornet Sting before Bump.
If Think Twice were exiled from your graveyard after you cast it, but before you could flash it back, you would have gained no card advantage.
If you never cast it from your hand, but were somehow forced to discard it, and then cast it from your graveyard, that would also be parity.
Casting Think Twice from your graveyard (after casting it from your hand) generates card advantage.
It is the second actual casting of Think Twice which is the factor, not the option of being able to cast it.
Here ya' go:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/academy/11
Basic, but solid. You can Google more advanced articles if you are so inclined.
OLS does have some good cards: Future Sight, Blatant Thievery, Insurrection, Akroma's Veng, in addition to the Fetches.
Legion was the all creature expansion, and that is pretty awful.
But Scourge had the Decree cycle and has some eternal staples like Mind's Desire and Stifle.
I mean, it's not the best EV set ever, but it's decent.
But, if for you, like many people, Magic is *really* about hanging out with friends then you probably won't enjoy it as much as you will be expecting to.
You may be able to connect with some people online but a good majority of the players you interact with will skew toward the competitive side.