The new philosophy document goes to great lengths to say "these are not a checklist," just some things we look for.
Honestly, if you want the most important sentence in that paragraph, I would bold "it combines with cards which players already have heavy incentives to play,"
That's what I was thinking - Paradox Engine requires so much outside the box thinking to work. You'd need to be playing it in a deck that ramps, for example. Given that high cost of inclusion, the ban caught me off guard as well. Now that Paradox Engine is banned, there's really no point in playing cards like Sol Ring or Birds of Paradise anymore, which'll please the folks who don't like fast mana.
By what metric do you say that PE hits the 'problematic casual omnipresence'? We have spent time trying to even come up with a way of evaluating this. Every meta is so different.
I didn't say that (though when we collect data we do so from a bunch of different sources and try to get data about the big picture). I was not making a judgement one way or the other on Paradox Engine. I was merely pointing out that there wasn't necessarily a straight line from Paradox Engine to Doomsday, and it was possible for one to be an issue and not the other.
Thus far, the RC has not banned a card like PE that needs other pieces to work. If they banned PE, they would have to consider Food Chain, Doomsday, Protean Hulk and many other cards that require little extra effort to break, and which pretty well exclusively get played to win the game on the spot.
Consider, maybe, but only in the sense that we consider everything. If PE were to be banned (and I have no comment on that one way or another), it would be because of the effect it was having on the casual community. Food Chain and Doomsday see almost zero play there, and Hulk is working out as we expected - occasional use as a value engine that's not all that problematic.
As evidenced from the past few years "Problematic Casual Omnipresence" is the banlist criteria we lean on most heavily. Paradox Engine doesn't necessarily end up in the same space in that bucket as the other cited cards do.
Does that really matter though? I mean, not to be argumentative, but who are we to say whether or not a card should be legal on the basis of how interesting it is? There are already droves of legal commanders that I think are boring as dirt.
"There are already boring options, so you should add a bunch more" is not a compelling reason to make a change.
I would stop thinking in terms of "these cards would be broken" and start thinking in terms of "these cards would make for fun and interesting decks to face." Right now, there isn't enough reason to make the change to worry about why we shouldn't make the change. The positives are almost entirely centered around "these are cool characters from lore" rather than "these are cool cards to build around". That's a plus, but it's not enough to justify a major gameplay change, even before you get to the downsides.
On the bright side, WAR suggests that maybe they'll be looser about planeswalker designs in the future. Maybe there'll be fun, quirky ones to build around. But right now, when I hear "I want to build a Kiora deck!" it's solely driven by Kiora's backstory, not because the Kiora cards are interesting.
Note that "say they work as in the CR" just generates a million arguments. Do you have to obey color identity? Can it be the same card that's in your deck? How long do I have to give my opponents?
And yes, we got these questions all the time when we didn't have rules around wishes. The CR pretty much handwaves away wishes outside of a competitive setting, so the most appropriate thing is to leave it up to playgroups and set a default that prevents people from imposing their vision without discussion.
4: I don't believe any current planeswalkers are particularly egregious aside from maybe tamio with doubling season, but banning a small handful of commanders to make dozens more legal is a no-brainer decision for increasing the card pool.
This begins with the supposition that increasing the card pool is a goal, which I don't think it is. There's no shortage of Commanders.
(Note that this was a valid problem for Brawl, which is why allowing Planeswalkers made sense there. I've actually recommended to the Brawl team that they drop the color identity rules entirely for the same reason. Restrictions on a Standard-sized card pool are problematic. On a Vintage-sized one, necessary.)
You can argue that I'm somehow taking this out of context despite the fact that from the surrounding conversation it is clear that I was arguing that the format rules of EDH, specifically the singleton nature, make T&N a far stronger card in EDH than any other format and you argued the opposite by saying it is, in fact, weaker in EDH than other formats because it cannot get two of the same creature.
Pointing out that the singleton rule is making the card (slightly) weaker is not the same as arguing that the card as a whole is weaker in the format. It's pointing out that trying to apply "interacts badly with the rules of the format" isn't a good place to be arguing for a ban of the card. It's problems are not based in the rules of Commander.
(It's problems are largely based around the fact that the card is generally insane and Commander is the format where games go long enough that you can probably cast it.)
Well if we want to get all nitty-gritty, T&N plays way better in EDH than regular Magic because it bypasses the singleton structure of the format by virtue of being a tutor.
Your logic is backwards. T&N is actually slightly weakened by the singleton format, as you can't get two of the same creature.
You're right! If you remove the very narrow context, use of the word "slightly", and no actual statement that it's weaker in Commander than regular Magic, it's a direct quote. You got me.
\
Papa funk has said that in order to legalize all planeswalkers they would have to ban doubling bbc season in addition to whichever other PWs they saw fit.
That's a pretty broad paraphrase. The actual quote (from http://www.starcitygames.com/article/36937_Ask-The-Commander-Rules-Committee-Other-Than-Me.html) was "We probably end up having to ban Doubling Season." as one of four reasons we aren't interested in planeswalker Commanders. That's quite possible, since Doubling Season is already pretty borderline, and this would be a pretty big bump.
I'd say that of the three, this is the one we're most nervous about, but I'm excited to see where it goes.
Honestly, if you want the most important sentence in that paragraph, I would bold "it combines with cards which players already have heavy incentives to play,"
Well done, sir.
I didn't say that (though when we collect data we do so from a bunch of different sources and try to get data about the big picture). I was not making a judgement one way or the other on Paradox Engine. I was merely pointing out that there wasn't necessarily a straight line from Paradox Engine to Doomsday, and it was possible for one to be an issue and not the other.
Consider, maybe, but only in the sense that we consider everything. If PE were to be banned (and I have no comment on that one way or another), it would be because of the effect it was having on the casual community. Food Chain and Doomsday see almost zero play there, and Hulk is working out as we expected - occasional use as a value engine that's not all that problematic.
As evidenced from the past few years "Problematic Casual Omnipresence" is the banlist criteria we lean on most heavily. Paradox Engine doesn't necessarily end up in the same space in that bucket as the other cited cards do.
"There are already boring options, so you should add a bunch more" is not a compelling reason to make a change.
On the bright side, WAR suggests that maybe they'll be looser about planeswalker designs in the future. Maybe there'll be fun, quirky ones to build around. But right now, when I hear "I want to build a Kiora deck!" it's solely driven by Kiora's backstory, not because the Kiora cards are interesting.
And yes, we got these questions all the time when we didn't have rules around wishes. The CR pretty much handwaves away wishes outside of a competitive setting, so the most appropriate thing is to leave it up to playgroups and set a default that prevents people from imposing their vision without discussion.
This begins with the supposition that increasing the card pool is a goal, which I don't think it is. There's no shortage of Commanders.
(Note that this was a valid problem for Brawl, which is why allowing Planeswalkers made sense there. I've actually recommended to the Brawl team that they drop the color identity rules entirely for the same reason. Restrictions on a Standard-sized card pool are problematic. On a Vintage-sized one, necessary.)
Pointing out that the singleton rule is making the card (slightly) weaker is not the same as arguing that the card as a whole is weaker in the format. It's pointing out that trying to apply "interacts badly with the rules of the format" isn't a good place to be arguing for a ban of the card. It's problems are not based in the rules of Commander.
(It's problems are largely based around the fact that the card is generally insane and Commander is the format where games go long enough that you can probably cast it.)
You're right! If you remove the very narrow context, use of the word "slightly", and no actual statement that it's weaker in Commander than regular Magic, it's a direct quote. You got me.
I linked to the article that has the answer in it. Just search for planeswalker.
That's a pretty broad paraphrase. The actual quote (from http://www.starcitygames.com/article/36937_Ask-The-Commander-Rules-Committee-Other-Than-Me.html) was "We probably end up having to ban Doubling Season." as one of four reasons we aren't interested in planeswalker Commanders. That's quite possible, since Doubling Season is already pretty borderline, and this would be a pretty big bump.
I suspect that's a pretty significant paraphrase too.