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Quote from Gruul Storyteller »

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Quote from Perkunas687 »

Hello all,

Can anyone confirm for me what happened to Dovin Baan, and whether Kaya can now planeswalk with non-walkers?

I saw it mentioned in the original synopsis, but it seemed to have limited info. I don't know if Dovin is dead-dead, or 'dead . . . . ? '.

Thanks in advance.

Dovin is dead dead. Killed on screen and his body was found by a reliable narrator.

Kaya can planeswalk with essentially anyone. It's just 'harder'. This is part of her ghost power. Which is bull because Jaya straight up tells her before she tries that even ghosts die in the blind eternities.

These are the two worst developments to come out of Forsaken. I don't know why these are glossed over and the status of ships is hotly discussed.

Mostly what Ree Wicker already said, so no use in retreading that ground.

As for the Kaya plot point, can't speak for Weisman, but other writers seem tired with the post-mending limitations.

Negatives:
Venser tried inventing a plane-traveling ship like the Weatherlight to help rescue Mirrans, but he died before he could complete his work.
The Weatherlight is essentially landlocked on Dominaria and can't be used for its intended purpose.
The portals that connected Wildfire - Rabiah - Dominaria for travel and commerce no longer work.

Positives:
Nicol Bolas's Lazotep Gateway
Jiang and his dog Mowu
Kaya and Rat

Because you fall in one of two camps for planar travel:
1) Post-mending
2) Pre-mending

Personal headcanon: The mending is unraveling and that the efforts that took place to fix it were merely a temporary solution.

I personally have my bias and fall in the pre-mending category. Because the stories told then are impossible feats now, like the story of Belbe for example from the Phyrexia arc can never happen. You don't get a moving piece like the artwork for Belbe's Portal in a post-mending world for non-walkers when the default answer is to make everyone a walker.

That the only way they could even come close to this same type of storytelling was when Dack Fayden couldn't walk away when the Immortal Sun was active which resulted in his untimely death.

If the rules of the mending become so screwed up that it effectively undoes it, I'm all for that. The mending was always a mistake, from the start, it ruined Magic story's most unique facet, the Planeswalkers. Instead of focusing on plane bound characters that could only go to other planes with help from magical machines and planeswalkers, with those planeswalkers being larger than life demi gods looming over the story and occasionally interacting in cool ways, we've gone to focusing on planeswalkers all the time but taking away most of what made them a cool concept. When most planeswalkers are no different than any other regular character then they just aren't any more interesting than any other regular character, because being able to hop planes was never the interesting thing about planeswalkers (especially when the planes are usually just worlds of hats). In fact, it makes them LESS interesting than other characters, because they have an innate bug out button they can push when ***** goes sideways, whereas plane bound characters are much more invested in and connected to their planes, and thus face higher stakes and more compelling motivations.

As a side note, the world of hats model combined with following neowalkers around everywhere has had the effect of making the multiverse seem much smaller. When the world of hats model started pre mending, each world was occupied by unique characters you were just meeting and would leave when you left the world. There could be some connections to other worlds via planeswalkers, like Karn on Mirrodin or Bolas being involved with Kamigawa, but again those connections involved god like figures who were for the most part in the background. The result was that the worlds felt truly cut off from each other, even when we had the Weatherlight and planar portals, because without those contrivances we weren't following characters from plane to plane (Weatherlight again is the major exception, but that was basically putting a crew on the Enterprise). With neowalkers, you just have superheros that you follow from story to story, so when they hop from Ixalan to Innistrad to Kaladesh you don't get the feel that they are going to different universes, but just different continents on the same world that have different kinds of magic. Typing it out right now, I realize that the only difference between a story where Ixalan, Kaladesh, Tarkir, Theros and Innistrad are different worlds vs one where they are distant continents on the same world is that the former actually has LESS potential, because if they were on the same world you'd be able to set up a story where all those places find each other and interact.

But yeah, rambling aside, the god like immortal shapeshifting (often mad) beings that were oldwalkers were always more interesting than the superhero neowalkers. We already had superhero type characters in the old story, they were just plane bound characters. Oldwalkers were something that tied Magic closer to fantasy and gave Magic something that other properties didn't have. Neowalkers just don't stand out from the crowd, which is why the Gatewatch was immediately, derisively, and correctly labeled the Jacetus League. And all this was supposedly done so that the story could focus on the characters and spin better stories than in the past. Well, after almost 15 years I'd say that's failed miserably. Nothing that's been put out since then has been as good as the Thran, Kamigawa, Urza's Saga, or even the pretty paint by numbers Weatherlight saga or the intentionally pulpy Ravnica block. There's been a few great web stories, but overall the arcs have been pretty meh. And that's just quality, the creativity has been way down as well. The most outside the box flat out awesome thing has been Bolas' eternals plot, which can be described as a dragon wizard enslaves an Egypt plane to farm warriors to turn into zombies with which to attack a city world via stargate. Unfortunately, it falls apart for being a letdown in practice and serving the ultimate and tired motivation of Bolas wants to nom nom nom sparks so he can become a god like being again, which is honestly why I was rooting for him to succeed because its almost like meta commentary that Bolas realized how much neowalkers sucked and wanted to kill them off as a concept so Oldwalkers could come back. Compare that to the insanity of Invasion, which featured as a subplot 9 insane god wizards strapping into mechs to nuke Robot Hell with a bomb powered by the souls of gods. That's so over the top 90's metal its a statue of Jack Black made out of 70's vans with murals painted on their sides. I'd rather see confusing cluster****s that shred the continuity like Scourge than confusing cluster****s that shred the continuity like Scars of Mirrodin, because at least the former is a weird mescaline trip while the latter is some banal nonsense.

Quote from Gruul Storyteller »

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Quote from user_938036 »

Quote from Perkunas687 »

Hello all,

Can anyone confirm for me what happened to Dovin Baan, and whether Kaya can now planeswalk with non-walkers?

I saw it mentioned in the original synopsis, but it seemed to have limited info. I don't know if Dovin is dead-dead, or 'dead . . . . ? '.

Thanks in advance.

Dovin is dead dead. Killed on screen and his body was found by a reliable narrator.

Kaya can planeswalk with essentially anyone. It's just 'harder'. This is part of her ghost power. Which is bull because Jaya straight up tells her before she tries that even ghosts die in the blind eternities.

These are the two worst developments to come out of Forsaken. I don't know why these are glossed over and the status of ships is hotly discussed.

People have complained about those points, how Chandra and Nissa where handled,as DJK3654 said, hits on sociopolitical issues that have more real life meaning to people and thus its getting the bigger focus.

Also I'd add more people had been writing off Dovin as dead, just took the sequel to kill him.

Quote from Gruul Storyteller »

As for the Kaya plot point, can't speak for Weisman, but other writers seem tired with the post-mending limitations.

Negatives:
Venser tried inventing a plane-traveling ship like the Weatherlight to help rescue Mirrans, but he died before he could complete his work.
The Weatherlight is essentially landlocked on Dominaria and can't be used for its intended purpose.
The portals that connected Wildfire - Rabiah - Dominaria for travel and commerce no longer work.

Positives:
Nicol Bolas's Lazotep Gateway
Jiang and his dog Mowu
Kaya and Rat

Because you fall in one of two camps for planar travel:
1) Post-mending
2) Pre-mending

I think you just help realized why the Kaya thing is so bothersome to me. With Bolas bridge he need to have an undead army coated in magical rock to keep them safe so, Mowu seems to be a living statue and can survive by becoming inorganic and Wrenn bounding with tree folk most likely has them become a part of her body so her spark can protect them both. With Kaya she can take anyone with her with almost no limit (just a risk which we will most likely never see) and nothing about her ghost powers ever screamed she could take people with her on walks.

Which creates a fairly relevant plothole.

Question: If Kaya can just shepherd the dead across planes, why did Nicol Bolas need a planar gate to shepherd the dead from Amonkhet to Ravnica? Such as quietly sending small insurgent groups of elite lazotep forces into abandoned districts.

Answer: That wasn't originally a power Kaya had. Her abilities were assassinating ghosts and phasing through walls.

If her abilities have been turned into "she can turn into a ghost and do ghost *****" then I'll approve of it if we get to see her possess a villain and make them punch themselves in the nads. We're already at that level of camp, they might as well embrace it.

The biggest strike against RN is that it is extremely repetitive. It creates a loop that does not go arbitrary (without other chicanery in the mix anyway), which isn't ideal. If RN is working, you are just repeatedly casting RN for the rest of the game until you no longer need to, and usually cycling through the same 2-3 creatures.

I don't think that this is enough to keep it banned any longer. We already have Meren being repetitive graveyard city and Whisper can pull of an RN impression easily enough, when she doesn't obsolete it that is.

Im fine with Chandra being bi in the future, but I always hated Chandra/Nissa shipping. They had no chemistry,and the only thing their relationship offered was being a lesbian relationship. A lot of that comes from Nissa being boring as hell though, so there's no reason that Chandra can't be shipped with another woman down the road and have it actually work (and they really should keep her bi).

General Jarkeld is pretty bad.

Ishi-Ishi, Akki Crackshot basically does nothing except weakly hate on a tribe that isn't overly common.

He triggers off of a hell of a lot. In a normal black deck, he'll trigger off of your sacrificed, creatures you return from the yard with reanimation effects or phyrexian reclamation, triggers off discard, triggers off if gy hate like bojuka big, triggers off of self mill, etc. In more dedicated decks he'll also trigger off milling your opponents, off of dredge (both the self mill aspect and the creature being put into your hand), and off of delve and other exile from the yard as a cost effects. And that's all before getting into his own activated ability Mana outlet. He's a nice way to sap life totals in more casual metas that actually impacts the board and can get things going on his own if the game is stalled, and he shines as a fun commander. Great design, and his flexibility means he should see extensive play in everything but cEDH.

Carthage has a bit of a point, unlike many other commanders that can be run a bunch of different ways but provide a path to something degenerate, the way Anje works really pushes you down that path. The bonus for playing madness cards is that you get to untap her and thus dig deeper. If you only run the good madness cards, this doesn't come up often and rarely gets you multiple untaps. You want to be able to take advantage of the bonus, but that means you have to run a bunch of weaker cards that you don't really want to play. Then, even if your intention is to use her as a CA machine than let's you cast madness spells as cantrips, you soon realize that you only have so much Mana and the weakness of many of the madness cards means you'd rather not waste your Mana on them, as you get to the untap anyway. So now you realize the payoff is really to cycle through all those bad cards to the good ones, which means you need to run some things worth spending all that time digging for. It's still an extra step to get from there to Worldgorger combo, but it's not much. And in any case, she's not really supporting madness.

She'd have worked better if she triggered off casting madness spells to cut off the temptation to cycle through all your madness cards. What would have worked even better though would have been to have her give all cards with madness Madness 0 instead of her untap ability. That would have supported actually playing those madness cards (because turning them into free cantrips once a turn, and free period if you have other discard options) makes even the weak ones a lot better.

Quote from Anachronity »

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I am a little sad that the beautiful boarder of some of these new cards didn't translate to any legendary creature. The cast-for-discount to exile thing would have been interesting for a commander.

I'm actually pretty baffled about us not getting any legends with adventure in a set made for Brawl.

I like Questing Beast though; vigilance+haste+evasion at that CMC is unique to it, and it just sort of passively wrecks superfriends and planeswalker commanders as a bonus.

There's an adventure commander in the bant Brawl deck, Chulane, Teller of Tales. He doesn't have an adventure or directly reference it, but he's sort of an adventure lord that can operate more broadly (which is a good thing). Like, he's generally good for rewarding you for casting creatures and being able to get them back to your hand to do it again, but he really makes adventure creatures a lot better by giving you a reliable way to get them back in hand to recast their adventures. He lets you cycle the same adventures over and over again if need be, and he gives the otherwise generally tiny creatures some more oomph by having them draw you a card and sometimes ramp you when you cast them. He's in the colors with the payoffs, and you really need to be able to recycle adventure creatures because there are too few to actually make a deck with them otherwise, even in brawl.

Quote from Buffsam89 »

Really, the cause of repetitiveness with tutors is the opponents, not the pilot. If you are routinely playing the same deck(s), of course the tutor targets are going to be close to the same ever time. The only time I ever see tutoring as a problem is if it’s only used to end the game. There are exceptions to this, but “fair” tutoring is grabbing a tool to help you survive, not to end the game. So, if you are experiencing a high number of games where players are tutoring to win, then that’s a player problem and not a tutor problem. No matter what action gets taken against tutors, you’re going to experience games with players that are just going to do whatever it takes to win.

No doubt tutors reduce variance, but sometimes there is minimal amount of available redundancy in an effect *cough*Doubling Season*cough*, and without the tutor, you’d never be able to play it in the format on a consistent basis. I’d rather tutors exist to ensure obscure strategies can exist.

Personally, I’d rather slam my head against the wall than attempt to persuade those 2 individuals to “see it your way”, but fight on, brother.

Well, one is impossible to deal with, but Carthage is polite. I'm always fine with having a conversation with someone I disagree with when they aren't a dick.

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I mean... what colors are we and what is our definition of "tutor"? Enlightened Tutor, Idyllic Tutor, Open the Armory, Steelshaper's Gift, Recruiter of the Guard, Stonehewer Giant, Thalia's Lancers, Plea for Guidance
Mystical Tutor, Personal Tutor, Fabricate, Trinket/Trophy/Treasure mages, Muddle the Mixture, Tezzeret the Seeker, Whir of Invention, Merchant Scroll, Spellseeker, Long-Term Plans
Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Grim Tutor, Imperial Seal, Diabolic Tutor, Buried Alive, Rune-scarred Demon, Entomb, Diabolic Intent, Dark Petition, Razaketh, the Foulblooded, Beseech the Queen, Increasing Ambition, Ad Nauseam, Mausoleum Secrets, Tainted Pact, Demonic Consultation, Insidious Dreams, Diabolic Revelation, Mastermind's Acquisition
Gamble, Godo, Bandit Warlord. Imperial Recruiter
Green Sun's Zenith, Worldly Tutor, Chord of Calling, Birthing Pod, Tooth and Nail, Eldritch Evolution, Protean Hulk, Woodland Bellower, Summoner's Pact, Primal Command, Natural Order, Fauna Shaman, Survival of the Fittest, Finale of Devastation, Defense of the Heart, Wild Pair
I got bored before I got to the multicolor ones like Eladamri's Call, but I think I proved the point. There are roughly a bajillion tutors in EDH.

Depending on the colors and how much disposable income one has access to (I see you, Imperial Seal), it's pretty easy to end up running maybe a dozen tutors. Even if one tries to avoid the "broken" tutors, there are still the "not-good-enough-for-cEDH-but-still-pretty-powerful" tutors like T&N and Diabolic Revelation that can end up warping more casual metas when every game ends with double-tutoring for a combo or something.

You listed many, many options. And some aren't even worth playing. I love Diabolic Revelation. Honestly, why would anyone bring that up as a problem?
And, if someone wants to play Wild Pair or Thalia's Lancers? What do you have against them?

I'm also sure that my question was facetious. I can count to ten and use gatherer as well + not many or any good decks will waste 10 slots on a pure tutors. Using gatherer or edhrec to stuff your deck full of tutors will not build a good deck.

Also, many of the tutors you list also support weaker decks. There's also a case to be made that tutoring allows weaker decks to compete with stronger decks. and once again, where you might see T&N as a problem card in casual, I see T&N as the epitome of being a Timmy in EDH. Doing powerful things is fun.

Competitive edh decks run TONS of tutors

Here's a sample of the tutors that are run in a teferi cedh deck, which is mono blue so they don't even go into other colors:
intuition
muddle the mixture
mystical tutor
whir of invention
spellseeker
trinket mage
fabricate
merchant scroll
reshape
transmute artifact
tezzeret the seeker
inventor's fair

This is not out of place at all for more competitive decks.

Yes, competitive decks, which is why the core of your argument that "It hurts variety in a casual format which makes decks and games go stale earlier than they should" is bull. cEDH doesn't count when discussing casual, just like Modern tournament diversity doesn't count when discussing 60 card casual. When playing at the highest levels, decks streamline and the number of viable decks inevitably decreases. And more importantly, its not something that defines the casual meta. lack of diversity and variance in cEDH does nothing to casual games. Even trying to argue about it as a problem is foolish. cEDH is a Spike meta. Its for people who want to challenge their skill with the best decks against the best decks. Yeah, competitive Teferi is going to have more tutors than a casual deck and play with far less variance than a casual deck, because that's the play experience cEDH players WANT. If you're arguing that its a problem, you're arguing that they shouldn't play the way they like. If you're arguing that its harming casual, you've got nothing to back it up.

Most of those cards from that list, for instance, aren't going to be issues outside of cEDH where they are searching up combos in a streamlined list as soon as possible. Is Trinket Mage typically a problem? How often does Transmute Artifact pop up outside of tuned lists? How about Muddle the Mixture, is that causing tons of problems when it pops up?

The biggest issue with this argument is that I can see where people are coming form when they say we should ban the fast universal tutors. Demonic, Vampirirc, and Imperial Seal are cheap, have little to no opportunity cost (2 life is negligible), and do the most to streamline even casual decks. But tutors exist on a continuum, two actually, from universal to highly specific, and from efficient to crap. Demonic is both highly efficient and universal, Urborg Panther is both extremely narrow and extremely crap. In between there is a wide variety of tutors, and you have to draw the line somewhere on where they become problematic. No reasonable person should argue that Rampant Growth or Muddle the Mixture are hurting the format, just as no reasonable person can argue that Demonic Tutor doesn't have an impact on variance. I disagree that the tutors should be banned, but I concede there are issues with Demonic, Vampiric, and Imperial Seal and can understand the argument for banning them despite disagreeing with it. Once you get to something like Diabolic Tutor I start doubting the relevance of your opinion, because Diabolic Tutor is not a good card and a sure sign that the pilot is working on a tight budget at best. When someone starts bringing up absolute garbage like Tainted Pact or Insidious Dreams, I have stifle laughter.

Jesus, ten tutors seems excessive unless you are counting ramp spells. Demonic and Vampiric definitely, then Imperial Seal if your rich or play online, then depending on the deck Sidisi and maybe Rune Scarred? Maybe if you are all in on a combo you'll go for some of the more esoteric black tutors, like demonic consultation or even cruel tutor, but usually your going to be mono black if you get that deep, which means you can't use the better non universal tutors like Worldy, Enlightened, and Mystical. But sure, if your pushing and in 4+ colors, you could find 10. Its unrealistic as hell though. Most people simply don't play that way, so your argument is bogus. Demonic and Vampiric are auto includes if you own them, which with Demonic has become more common as its been reprinted, but tell me how many casual players run Demonic Consultation or Cruel Tutor? How many run the uber pricey Imperial Seal? Then many tutors that casuals do run, like Diabolic, suck.

Perhaps if you count narrow tutors like Trinket mage and pals, or the harbingers, things like that, then hitting ten is easier, but those are narrow enough to not cause the same issues as the universal tutors. The ones that search for a broader category like Worldy etc are closer to the universal tutors in this regard. On the opposite end of the scale, Defense of the Heart, PHulk, and T&N aren't just tutors, they're self contained combos that grab multiple cards directly to play (typically grabbing an instant win combo). There's more of an issue with the total package there than the fact that they tutor, and yet when not grabbing combo they are perfectly fine (sidebar anecdote incoming: I just played a game on mtgo yesterday in which a guy running Ezuri flash hulked turn 2 and we were all ready to be upsetty until he just grabbed a bunch of mana dorks and creatures that grab lands because he didn't run any combos besides the flash hulk itself. It put him way ahead on mana but he lacked the draw to leverage it and we all lost turn 6 to grind clock Duskmantle Guildmage combo).

I mean, Natural Order does that with very little support. An extra mana vs a creature that dies is somewhat reasonable. Hell, Defense of the Heart gets you 2 creatures and is usually on, for 4 mana, but is much more vulnerable so its a wash. I still think that because its self contained in one card, with no downside or preconditions, and in Blue instead of Green, Bribery for your library would be a fat piece of cheese that shouldn't be printed and could potentially be banned, but I'm not sure if it would be a guarantee. Entomb + any 2 mana or less reanimation spell is just better, even as a combo. Defense of the Heart is higher risk higher reward, while NO is worth the nominal setup for cutting off a mana.

Quote from Cereberus632 »

It’s also in a deck that has no real ramp/very little ramp. Only 1 haste outlet and secondly, it’s a perfectly valid target to steal my blighsteel with various effects I never said it wasn’t. But I was also playing a deck which whole theme was partly big stompy collossai (now big colourless creatures).

And secondly, regardless of if I was running Blightsteel or not (which is the point of EDH partly to run big stompy things), what isn’t in favor is tell players “don’t play big dumb stompy archtype because it could be taken from deck and used against you”.

Like I am hearing “Well if you don’t want to be bribed don’t run Blighsteel” but actually reading “don’t run big stompy win condition cards like Blighsteel (Worldspine Wurm, various Eldrazi, the Praetors, the many Collossai etc) Because they could be bribery.

That isn’t a mindset and espacially when someone main reason for a card like bribery is simply to make the point “you shouldn’t big stompy” instead claim “you should *****ty cards that are synergetistically a win condition but useless on their lonesome”. Your focusing on the mechanical aspect, like why shouldn’t I play a card because it’s being bribed?

You guys keep trying to focus on “Well your salty you got blighsteeled/why should you be angry got killed by a card you were playing when you were one playing it”. To just reemphasis, I am not salty about being killed by own blighsteel.

If I play a card like blighsteel, I fine with playing against a Blighsteel (which is also why I don’t play Sol Ring. I am not fine playing against Sol Ring so I won’t in my EDH decks). And let’s take apart what you said, “Run answers” you know like I said in the OP, “I know Homeward Path and more exist”.

It’s not an issue of a card I am running being used against me there are 1001 answers to that. It’s the issue of being told “Well if you didn’t run (Big Stompy/Individual Powerful Cards not requiring Synergstic Themetic connection to work) you wouldn’t be bribed”.

You see no issue with that statement and the ideology of someone who would genuine believe that and try to push that as the way someone should play EDH?

Like I said, the other half of "if you don't want it to be stolen with bribery, don't run it" is "If you run it, expect it to be a bribery target." Nobody is telling you not to run Blightsteel, they are telling you to accept that running blightsteel means you have a great bribery target in your library. You admit in your first post that this thread exists because you were salty that someone killed you with your own blightsteel. Did you complain about it? Were you obviously upset? If it seemed like you were being overly salty about it, then I could see your opponents telling you not to run Blightsteel if you don't want that to happen again. You of course don't have to take their advice, but if you continue to run it you should just accept that it may get stolen. Steal effects are just part of the game, and healthy for it.

Quote from Cereberus632 »

Quote from plushpenguin »

I've played my fair share of goodstuff decks and I have nothing against anyone who wants to build something of the sort.

However, you just gotta have some kind of plan for a Bribery and a Knowledge Exploitation targeting you. And if the opponent knows that you are playing a goodstuff deck, they are more likely to target you because you are more likely to have something relevant to the current situation.

Which I have talked about already in my first post above. I know there are answers (Homeward Path for one). But telling someone “they shouldn’t build an EDH deck filled with stompy things so they don’t get briberied” is actively against the spirit of the format. Which is why I am posting this thread.

And for the reanimate strategy is distinctly different from telling someone “they cannot/shouldn’t play x which format design to enable you to play because it could cheated out on you by your opponent”.

Nah, not really. Not running such creatures is a way to avoid bribery, but when someone says something like "if you don't want to get your blightsteel taken by bribery, don't run blightsteel" they are also implicitly saying "if you want to run blightsteel, be prepared to see it grabbed by bribery effects." Basically, if you want to run big, stompy, game winning fatties, don't complain when someone else steals them. You've already decided that it's ok to run those creatures so you have no room to complain when they get used against you. Is it a bit of a feel bad to get killed by your own blightsteel? Of course, but no more than it's a feel bad to get killed by someone else's. Heck, it's a feel bad to get your wincon creature exiled by STP as well. These are pretty low level feel bad that are impossible to remove from the game without ruining the game. This isn't a case of locking people out or pulling off a cheesy combo or just targeting on person, it's just a player not having something go well for them, which is going to happen at some point to all but one player at most in any game.

What's actively against the spirit of the format is the attitude that you should be able to run what you want without your opponents being able to take advantage of that in any way. Bribery is as much an EDH card as blightsteel, a fun splashy card that only gets to shine in this format. You think it's fun to run blightsteel, they think it's fun to use bribery to grab it from your deck. If that is really so problematic for you, then you should cut blightsteel because that prevents it, otherwise stop complaining and deal with the fact that it gets stolen sometimes. You know that in addition to counter magic there are other options for dealing with that. You can exile blightsteel, you can hit it with an aura that prevents it from attacking, you can steal it back, etc. If someone manages to stick boots on it oh well, too bad, they got a 2 card combo that needed a card from your deck to work. If that's something they are gunning for every game, taking out blightsteel would be worth it for the look on their face when it's not there, while if it's just something that happens occasionally oh well, sometimes you don't win. You should run some artifact removal to deal with the boot up anyway, it's an equipment that shouldn't be allowed to stick. Throw in homeward path and some tutors for it to turn their bribery in your favor. Through in brand if your red. Through in that mass path to exile spell from Ixalan that exiles all attackers. Use mass sacrifice spells.

Btw, blightsteel is more problematic than bribery, it's a cheesy one hit kill. Its not banworthy, but it checks more boxes than bribery. It's a classic centralizing card whose existence in a game results in it being fought over, it's just not prevelant enough to spur people to run steal effects just to get it. If you consistently include it in your decks, you'll sleep your meta into running more steal effects as it's such a juicy target. That's a problem caused by blightsteel. What you are doing is complaining that the other players want a chance to benefit from you running such a swingy card that can end them out of nowhere. You should also consider that if blightsteel gets hit with bribery and thrown directly at your face rather than used to take out the table first, then perhaps your opponents don't like playing against blightsteel and using it only to take you out as a way to remove it from the game (and send you a message, which they also sent by literally telling you to stop running it). People don't like getting one hit killed by a surprise blightsteel, as you seem to be figuring out.

Quote from schweinefett »

Quote from illakunsaa »

I'm pretty sure the ban criteria is a joke. Sol ring has hit all criteria for years and it's still legal.

just as mishra's workshop hits all the restricted criteria for vintage; brainstorm for legacy. But each format needs their 'signature' card(s) that help define the format. It just so happens that sol ring is that card for EDH.

....and wait a minute; does sol ring really break all of these points?

• Cause severe resource imbalances (i'd severely debate the qualifier severe)
• Allow players to win out of nowhere (not by itself)
• Prevent players from contributing to the game in a meaningful way. (it's not a hoser)
• Cause other players to feel they must play certain cards, even though they are also problematic. (yes; though on any given game, there's usually some number of other artefacts i'd rather be stealing)
• Are very difficult for other players to interact with, especially if doing so requires dedicated, narrow responses when deck-building. (every colour can deal with artefacts - though mana abilities can't be interacted with easily)
• Interact poorly with the multiplayer nature of the format or the specific rules of Commander. (not really?)
• Lead to repetitive game play. (sol ring does this, but in the same way that basic island does.)

I think that many EDH players are a bit too hung up on not having structure to the rules. Maybe a larger emphasis on a social agreement is needed? Maybe as a part of the official rules, before the game starts, players need to describe their deck and what they expect to contribute/expect from the upcoming game.

An aside - I played with randoms one day at the local LGS some months ago, and i started the game by saying that i got a rakdos suicide aggro deck that's somewhat tuned ~75%-90% probably. one other person described their deck as a warrior tribal, another as a nearly unmodified precon, and the 4th kept tightlipped. The table got crushed on turn 3 or 4 by human tribal. By calling it human tribal, it's like he was deliberately hiding the fact that it's a hermit druid combo. the fact that it and najeela are humans is irrelevant.

At that point, everyone's playing the game by the rules, but the 'human tribal' guy was not playing by the spirit of the format, or at least how i saw the format to be. If i want to crush my opponent, i have legacy for that. If i wanna play magical cardboard wizard with a pet lord of tresserhorn who leads my pile of old-school rubbish, i got EDH for that. But if my mates want to play magical cardboard wizards with a more 'serious' bent to it, i'd wanna know so i'd know to choose a gun over a toothpick to the gunfight.

I don't think the banlist is the problem; it's the ideals and principles/philosophy of the format not being well understood by some players.

I'd say most of those players understand just fine, they just take advantage because they're dicks. That dude knew he intended to combo before turn 5, and knew that the purpose of describing the decks was to give everyone an idea of the power level to expect in the game, and he knew the power level of everyone else's deck was lower than what he was rolling with, and still made a decision to describe his deck in a way that understated it's power level and hid that it was a combo deck. He knew he was going to get an in game advantage from doing so, and knew that doing so would go against what everyone else in the group was trying to do, namely to have a social game where people were being honest about power level. That's just a dick move.