Quote from DementedKirby »Interesting... I will probably just maintain my primers here just because they have some history and have been here for a while. There's lots of discussions and I believe that they'll still be useful if I'm still able to edit and maintain them. That being said, the staff here at MTGSalvation have made the experience and forums an amazing place and their dedication deserves way more merit and credit than can be given. I hope that, once MTGNexus is up and running, an announcement can be made and thus be able to create an account there (and hopefully no one takes my username). It won't be easy juggling between being active in two different sites, but I will probably only be attentive here to my primers. If the exodus towards MTGNexus is a certain thing, then I will join that immigration.
If the people who make up the relevant parts of the community to you are moving, then going over there could be reasonable. If not, then, at least personally, the community is way more important than the staff. In my case, at this point in time, I'm almost exclusively focused on the Mafia side of things, with the occasional foray into EDH. The EDH section is losing a number of serious people to this schism, so I'm probably just forgoing the game altogether for the time being; I haven't played Magic since August of last year anyways, if I recall correctly. Both communities will probably change, but it's a question of convenience of staying here or loyalty to people who are moving, the primary group of which and force behind which is staff. Both sites are at an unstable state. This site needs a staff that is actively focused on it and appreciates the community, Nexus will need people who like the old staff of Salvation enough to want to be there, and doesn't have the funding or people to be as stable as Salvation potentially can be at this time.
That said, as a user, you probably won't even notice most of it. The staff are just people, just the same as users. Their authority is an artificial concept. So make sure that whatever you choose, it's based on your feelings about the community, not just following either the staff to Nexus or just staying here for the site structure itself, as either way, you'll likely end up disappointed if that's the reasoning for your choice.
http://mtgcommander.net/Forum/viewtopic.php?p=184598#p184598
I'll start by precluding the rest of this post by saying that I actually agree with a lot of your sentiment here. I don't like the presence of either Gaea's Cradle or Sol Ring in the format. My idea of an optimal ban list would be around twice as long as the current one.
That said, there's some things going for Sol Ring that are exactly why it becomes more contentious.
1. Ubiquity. Gaea's Cradle is run solely in green decks, Sol Ring is run in almost every deck in the format.
2. Price. Gaea's Cradle is over $150. Sol Ring is in every precon and can be picked up for $8.
3. Lack of conditions. Gaea's Cradle requires a creature presence. The more cutthroat the meta, the harder it can be to get that creature presence.
4. Ability to deckbuild. The average EDH player is not necessarily a good Magic player. I'm sorry to burst all those bubbles, but it's true. Sol Ring can be much easier for people to play (and copy other people playing) than Gaea's Cradle.
5. Analytical power level. Both personally and otherwise, I have seen some amount of the research, and it turns out, that if you unban every single card in Magic, Sol Ring and Mana Crypt are the most powerful cards in the format. While you might think "Well, hey, wouldn't Black Lotus and Moxen be too amazing, 99% of the time, Sol Ring is better than a Mox. And while Lotus allows for some pretty ridiculous first turns, Sol Ring still works out better in the long run. When you get past the first turn with the Sol Ring, its sheer advantage becomes absurd.
Umm... So? The one of the two that I put up can easily be seen as more reprehensible. If your deck loses to, say, Warp World, but otherwise is very powerful, that's not necessarily bad deck design. If you complain a ton whenever someone casts Warp World, that's not really okay, but if you just go with the flow, and have a good attitude, then you will go far. Similarly, there are a decent amount of decks that die to Rest in Peace, Stranglehold, Ruination, Vandalblast, etc...
Meanwhile, if you are relying heavily on exactly one card, that means that you are trying to make every game the exact same, and if that single card somehow gets obstructed, in any way, then you are in trouble. I mean, let's say that you have a Kiki-Jiki, Mirror-Breaker deck, with your only creature and only method of winning besides attacking with Kiki-Jiki for no more than 2, being a single Zealous Conscripts. I think it's pretty straight-forward that this person is building their deck badly, since it is ABSOLUTELY relying on a single card exclusively to win.
As for this imaginary skew towards green... Black and red each has a decent number of three-mana or less wraths (Or effectively wraths, like Volcanic Fallout) that can deal with a lot of small creatures. White has some too. If you're worried about individual creatures, every color has solid low-cost point removal of some sort or other. Blue has countermagic in either scenario. White also has Fog effects, which can push into late game pretty well. Oh, and while we're at it... Ghostly Prison, Propaganda, Web of Inertia, and War Tax. Colorless cards like Ensnaring Bridge, Glacial Chasm, and Halls of Mist. Island Sanctuary. Orim's Chant. The Vow enchantment cycle. Peacekeeper. Yes, green decks will have a distinct advantage on mono-red decks. But what is one of the other colors that can play particularly heavy quick creatures and non-artifact accel besides green? Oh hey, red! What else? Oh, well we can hurt their ability to search their library with Aven Mindcensor, Leonin Arbiter, Shadow of Doubt, Chronic Flooding (remarkably significant), Memory Erosion, Sadistic Sacrament (You can even hit Gaea's Cradle turn 1 off of a Dark Ritual), Mesmeric Orb, Psychogenic Probe, Widespread Panic, Bitter Ordeal, Extract, Praetor's Grasp, Rootwater Thief, Seek...
While you're at it, you can even use Sinkhole, Stone Rain, Ice Storm, Wasteland, and Strip Mine to hurt the Gaea's Cradle decks well enough, honestly. You don't even necessarily have to hit the Cradle to have them work well against that deck. If someone Strip Mine's the green deck's first land, the deck is pretty seriously delayed.
On a side note, generally the only cards on the table for banning in terms of artifact fast mana are Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, and Mana Vault... If you really feel that those are essential to the format, as expressed earlier, you should learn how to deck-build better.
If you're having such an issue with the green decks (by the way, Gaea's Cradle gets turned off pretty hard by wraths, land removal, and deck hate), then run answers. Plenty exist.
Also, you use the word "god-hand." A-ha! So you admit that this shouldn't actually be happening reliably enough that no-one can deal with it ever! Yeah, if people are getting out an insurmountable board presence turn 2 even before Gaea's Cradle is out, then something is very wrong with your meta.
As a final point after all of this jazz, I can't believe that you're complaining about Gaea's Cradle when Hermit Druid exists...
If banning any one card changes your game plan significantly in EDH, then you have built your deck badly and deserve what you get.
I would not suggest blindly merging them, but there are a lot of things on the legacy banlist for which I think banning in edh would help the format a lot.
Why the hell would everyone's curves be starting at 3? By turn 3, decks should be starting in on their midgame, even without fast mana.
This is my general rule for many different things, not just splashing a color.
I've heard of people doing as low as 21 when they are abusing partial paris; you partial down until you get the number of lands that you need for early game (generally reachable within partials down to 5), and you won't be drawing very many lands throughout the rest of the game, since you have such a low number to begin with, so you can instead have more useful stuff to draw.
This was somewhat of a comment that partial paris enables stupid deckbuilding, though I personally do not go out of my way to advantage of that fact...
But I do in fact a 33-land aggro deck, and I get mana-flooded a lot with that deck. I also have a 29-land deck that plays just fine, with only 6 manafacts (, three Signets, , ).
If you do the math, it sout that partial paris rules ensure a rather absurdly high chance of drawing a specific card or a worthwhile tutor for that card: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/articles/15187-the-math-of-banning-sol-ring-in-commander
I don't know how many people here have both played no-ban edh and studied it a decent amount, but it was found in groups that I saw it played that was actually the best card in the format, hands-down. comes second. So what do we have here? The fastest repeatable mana and the most powerful tutor in the format are the best cards one can possibly play? What a twist!
So play a deck with 25 lands, a low curve, and agressive partial paris.
Yeah, that deck not only isn't an aggro deck but also is abysmal.
I run a Geist of Saint Traft deck and find it to be quite powerful, but if I'm at a table that I expect really can't deal with a serious aggro deck, then I tone things down. But it gets infinitely more absurd on the control side. The arguably best three decks in the format are:
Hermit Druid Combo
Stax Control
Hexproof Aggro-Control
Getting rid of the Aggro presence completely removes the Scissors from the Rock-Paper-Scissors of Combo-Control-Aggro.