My issue with the “too complex” argument is how the rules committee seems to be the only ones that are incapable of reading. The same ones that thought it would be easier to explain to people state based actions when a commander dies rather than just tell players “if your commander would die, you can put it back into the command zone instead” because actual members on the committee didn’t know how the rules of the game worked.
Yeah I think that argument is totally ridiculous, considering grist is allowed to be your commander, even though the way that the rules about what can be your commander are worded would suggest that it can't.
I think another historical aspect about the banlist philosophy that gets underdiscussed is system bias, that systems cannot escape the biases of its creators, as well as recency bias. The EDH format and its banlist was formulated by a group of legacy grinders and judges at a time when magic was transitioning from having the bulk of power situated in instants and sorceries to having actually impactful creatures that dominated the metagame. The more recent staple creatures like primetime were seen as more "problematic" than cards like bribery (5 mana, cheat out any creature from an opponents deck) or expropriate because good creatures were the new "boat-rockers" while busted spells were just the status quo that everyone just kind of excepted. IMO, I think its an issue that the collective answer to the clone & steal format that saw primeval titan banned was "just don't play creatures worth stealing".
Super interesting point that I haven't seen brought up before. Thank you for this. I guess it gets harder and harder to know on which side of the pendulum to land. With the Doctor Who decks bringing 10 or mote new very playable clones to the format over night, it gets to the point that the theft and clone effects can't be policed - only the resulting dominating creatures.
If coalition victory should remain banned because its getting easier to cast, then Thassa's oracle and demonic consultation should be banned because you can cast it turn 1, 2, or 3.
Yeah comparing coalition victory to thassa's oracle it's a universe of difference. Oracle is played in many formats, but the only way you could play coalition victory in legacy or vintage is if you combo it with dream halls conflux or something. Oracle could be banned in EDH easily, but coalition victory should have been unbanned long ago even with biomes and such the creature requirement is easy to interact with for many decks causing it to fizzle out.
@@Gleebusaz But there are jerkbags going to casual games and playing Thorical. "But there is prize, thus must win" SOme meta's and LGS have that one guy you can't avoid outside of punching them. and punching people over a card game is a bad look
My problem is that for every card that "should be banned" there are 100 others that meet the same criteria. (Reposting this as a comment I made on another video elsewhere ) The biggest problem with the ban list right now is that it doesn't consistently apply the same logic and reasoning as to why cards are or aren't on the ban list. It instead is supposed to serve as "a guidepost of cards and types of cards to avoid" when no one uses it that way. Every person I have met solely treats it as "a list of cards I can not put in my EDH deck". Either every card on the banlist for being "too oppressive/strong or leading to unfun play patterns" should come off the banlist, OR dozens should go on. Mana Crypt, Dockside, Rhystic Study, Necropotence, Ancient Tomb, The One Ring, Orcish Bowmasters, Smothering tithe, the Fierce Guardianship, Akroma's Will. (And more) I would argue that all of those, and other Commander Super Staples, are so strong that regardless of deck archetype, any deck that can run them should. The only reason people don't run them more often tends to be cost. So, either we should ban those and others on the virtue of "format diversity/power level" or unban a whole lot of cards and explicitly state "Power level and card selection is solely self-policed by players". On the topic of "unfun play patterns" the same thing applies, Leovold, Primeval Titan, Syvlan Primordial, Iona, Sway of the Stars all should be unbanned, OR we need to add 100 more cards like Warp World, Possibility Storm, Ravages of War, Hive Mind, to the list for also leading to "unfun play patterns". In Summary: the problem with what is and isn't banned, is not the fact that specific cards are or aren't on the banlist. It's that there truly isn't a consistent philosophy that is applied consistently.
I agree for the most part, but I think there really is no need for a lot of extremely high power cards to be banned. players are very good at self policing, and I think most people underestimate that
@@crppledizzle9374 in private playgroups, maybe. And even then I have my doubts judging by the plethora of posts on the EDH subreddit concerning playgroup issues. But then we don't all play with private playgroups and have no basis for self policing beyond this banlist. We cannot even agree on basic terminology most of the time, and you want us to sit down and potentially re-write the banlist before each game? So what do you do when you run into someone running Mana Crypt in every deck and you want it banned? Hope they brought a sideboard? It's simply not realistic.
Agree. With the general power creep and WotC designing for the format even casual games have become so much more efficient that a fair part of the ban list isn't all that critical any more.
My issue is they don’t follow their own criteria. And with the recent ‘explanations’ it’s even more clear the ban list is just some made up feel like whatever list. They banned 8 of the power 9 because more of ‘optics’ that expensive cards shouldn’t prohibit you from playing. Time twister is legal in the format somehow, but upheaval bad!
Twister has better alternatives according to RC which is why its not banned. Imagine a card that costs a lot but it has better alternatives so it doesn't matter as much
I genuinely don't know why people get so twisted up on this topic when Commander is a made up feel like whatever format. Like yeah, you hit the nail on the head, that's what it is. Also Timetwister is not even a good card in EDH. Wheels as a whole are really only good if you're doing something degenerate with them, and in that situation losing your graveyard is a downside.
They expect pods to create their own banlists to play how they want but there should be a banlist for just playing games with strangers or pods who don't want to bother creating their own, instead of this thing where everyone has to tune their deck to a certain power level with people they want to play with because it's a 'casual' format
People don’t NEED to make decks of a similar power level, they just naturally do it. You can only play so much of a game that you keep losing, especially if the same 1-2 people keep winning, and it feels worse if it’s consistently a blowout. That’s where power level balancing comes in, people fix up their decks to be within a comfortable range to compete. Now I don’t agree with using “My deck is a 7” as the way to describe a deck, as a 7 can mean anything depending on their normal playgroup. Instead give a concise description of the deck, including the consistent win turn. If your deck relies on surprising your opponent to win, it’s probably not fit for a social format.
"people should make their own banlists" ignores two big problems: it's a lot of effort, especially for new-ish players that don't know every card, and it inevitably causes arguments.
I got my friends who have played a lot of magic to build decks and play like 2 games of commander. None of us had any experience in what cards were legal but that we should not play. Thus the games were miserable and all 3 of them basically refuse to give it another try. I have a better handle on things now, but I needed to absorb like 30 hours of commander content to get the gist of it and use it to guide my and my son's deckbuilding so we can at least enjoy it together. You should be able to look at the official rules for the format, and then try out the format, and have a fun experience just by following the rules. There are a ton of really cool things about Commander, but by this metric it fails so incredibly hard. It can just be a dice roll whether you have a fun experience your first time or not in an uninitiated group. And I still have yet to hear a compelling argument why the baseline policy of "rule zero to ban what you want" in any way works better than "rule zero to unban what you want". In established groups they are functionally the same, but in new or random groups it is a world of difference.
If you're playing any sport or game casually you're going to get absolutely obliterated every now and then. Skill gap exists, equipment and gear budget disparity exists. As someone who's in both communities it's always amused me how whiny "casual players" are about losing a casual game where they didn't have a whole committee meeting to decide the power level first
A nitpick, but the term "stax" didn't originate with the card Smokestack. The term was derived from a deck in the very early days of the format called The $4,000 Solution. It was a heavy resource denial deck that ran very expensive pieces like Tabernacle, Nether Void, The Abyss, Chains Of Mephistopheles, etc. A common abbreviation for the deck's name on Magic forums was "$T4KS". This abbreviation morphed into STAKS, then eventually, stax.
Why do magic players hate giving things normal names? They even use nonsense words instead of just saying what colors they use. So every deck name is like "bogos fish and chips" or "sarnezia megatron"
I am of the opinion that the Companion mechanic should simply be declared to be not functional in Commander, just as Wishes have been. The cards are fine, the Companion mechanic itself is the issue, and it's painfully obvious since even WotC admitted it was a mistake and issued emergency errata.
@@najoheuer You can do this with any game. It's not exclusive to Commander. I would have preferred rules that make sense followed by rule 0 than what we have now.
Personally I do hate the commander banlist because it just doesn't make sense. Signpost bans: If the goal is to just point out signpost cards for what you probably shouldn't play then print a recommended list because that's the same amount of effect which is none. The people who care about how their opponents feel were already not playing those cards and the people who don't care are going to find the next best version of the effect and still be a complete git. Accessibility bans/the power 9: Again if the goal was keeping the format accessible then many cards have crossed the line into that range of too expensive for anyone who isn't Scrooge Mcduck with his vault of gold. If they don't believe that logic is a good reason to ban cards then take the power 9 and the other old junk off the banlist. If they do think it's a good reason plenty of cards need to be added to that list or proxies need to be publicly accepted as legal in commander at the very minimum for those cards. Power bans/unfun bans: If the goal is to ban out powerful/unfun game effects there are lots of additional cards that need to be added to the list if not then a few powerful effects could be removed from that list. Like I'm for a banlist that actually bans out unfun, excessively powerful, and excessively expensive cards. But that's not what we have. We have a banlist that just picks out a few of each of those and throws them onto a token banlist that doesn't really moderate the format. If you want a suggestions list then make a suggestions list and people will figure out how to play "kitchen table magic" in a fair enough way amongst friends. A banlist is really for playing with strangers imo.
@@patterofheads256 I am aware however Time Walk, Ancestral Recall, the Moxen, and Black Lotus are not. And if the argument is that accessibility is not justification for banning. And neither is power since power can be managed with pregame discussions and rule zero. Then there is no logical reason those cards should be banned. As I said I do support banning those cards and other excessively powerful/expensive/poor play experience cards but I'm pointing out that the logic provided by the rules committee is inconsistent.
@gnomersy1087 nah I get you, I just took "the power 9 is banned" Literally. I also don't think library of Alexandria should be banned and I think it's insane that mishra's workshop isn't... not that I've ever played with people who could afford either lol.
I fully admit I love playing Troll Decks...but I also don't care about actually winning. I just want to enjoy the game and make it a whole lot more difficult than it should be. I want annoying to deal with constant pressure over "wait til I draw my game ending combo the whole deck is built around!".
The problem with Lutri is not what it does but what it is. It is essentially saying that red/blue decks start the game with an extra card in hand. But my boy needs to be freed for the 99
I don't think I've talked to anyone that thinks the Lutri shouldn't be legal in the 99 or as the commander. Whenever I've played games against people who ask the table if its okay if they have a Lutri in their deck but not as a companion everyone is always totally fine with it.
@@as95ms98 Yeh I think they just want the banlist to be as concise and consistent and easy to understand as possible, and they're theoretically only sacrificing a few things to maintain that (Lutri in the 99, or braids/rofellos)
I always like to remind people that prior to Ikoria Commander explicitly disallowed any kind of sideboard and it was WotC that insisted on carving out an exception for Companions even though you still couldn’t make most of them work anyway. It was a bad call and they should simply undo it and free Lutri.
11:28 - Trivia time! "Stax" was actually born from the 2003 $T4KS Vintage deck, known as "The Four Thousand Dollar Solution". That original deck ran eight of the Power Nine alongside four copies of Smokestack.
It's always confused me that Library of Alexandria is banned but Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale is still legal it makes no sense if were going off of price
@Morphling92 yes...they literally did...unless you mean "did" Edit: You're right. I honestly always forget that timetwister is a part of the power nine, and Library is the unofficial 10th slot
Not many people know this, but the initial name for the "Stax" deck in Vintage was not derived from the card Smokestack, but rather it was the acronym "$T4KS," which stood for "The Four Thousand Dollar Solution." At the time of its creation, the Boogeyman decks of the format included Gro-A-Tog, a spell-heavy aggro-control deck that usually won off the back of Psychatog, and Long.dec, more commonly known nowadays as Storm. Stax had a favorable matchup against both of these decks, and it cost approximately $4000 to build at the time.
This is probably a longshot, but I've been doing a fair bit of research on early-magic vintage and there's a lot less information out there on the 90's and early 2000's than there is about more modern metagames. Were you around for that time, or was there somewhere you read about stuff like this?
Yeah, saying that the banlist is basically for casual, to avoid degen games... but every game of higher lvls of play, not even cedh, is won through degen combos. Banlist does nothing, its just house rules
Recurring Nightmare is really hard to remove if the person playing it understands priority. Since returning it to hand is part of the cost and you have priority when the stack is empty, it's gonna be hard to remove unless the recurring nightmare player misplays and plays another spell before activating it
There are plenty of cards that require instant speed interaction to stop. Like, you need a counterspell or you just lose. I think recnight would be just fine in the current state of the format. Along with most of the bans. Powercreep is real and things that were scary 15 years ago are just 'meh' nowadays.
@@Its109TheGamer you miss my point. There are plenty of really good or game winning cards you can only interact with when they are on the stack (some of which require a lot less or even no setup at all, contrary to this). Why single this one out for a ban?
@@jgroen5545 I singled it out because PK undervalued why it was banned in the first place. I would like it unbanned as well, but we both know that's not gonna happen
tbh when you described your "Orc army" card and said it shows you fighting "back the forces of darkness", the flavor and lore police almost kicked down my door. youre representing the Orc army which infact fights for the darkness and are enemies to the light.
The Power 9 and entire reserved list need to be reprinted. Screw speculators and people who only have the cards to make money off them. Also reprints don't fuck over older card value. Anyone claiming that it would, is only holding the cards for money reasons not to actually play with them.
i do think cards banned for political reasons like invoke prejudice should be mechanically reprinted under different names/art. the mechanics of invoke prejudice are just good
@@toctheyounger Crusade has actually seen some decent play in mono white decks. I was actually looking to grab one for a rebels tribal deck since its a cheap way to buff some really mediocre creatures. Its basically just the white version of bad moon
Counterpoint about coalition victory: it is quite likely that any instant speed interaction will nullify the effect. As you need both all land types and all colors among creatures you control. There are some exceptions but for it to "win out of nowhere" I think it would have to be kinda fragile when cast. For instance, you could cast it on turn five with a Jodah, Archmage Eternal using that new leyline from MKM that you started the game with. However, an opponent wouldn't only need a counterspell to interact they could use any number of permanent removal cards that are popular to play. I still think coalition victory would be a fine unban
All colors among creatures no less, can't have multiple planeswalkers out to fulfill the requirement it has to be creatures. Definitely should be legal still since while not every deck plays countermagic basically every deck can run creature removal. Can compare it to something like ad nauseam that is legal and ad nauseam does just win on resolution without needing to jump through all the hoops of coalition victory.
Definitely agree. I think the new leyline is very questionable for coalition, may make it a touch too consistent, but I think that an 8 mana sorcery that has multiple points of interaction and otherwise does nothing is totally fine. I'd rather someone play this card and win the game then Cyclonic and have all us replay our last 2 turns.
Cyclonic can be fine. It's a one sided board wipe that can be used to take out at least one player, if not all, when played right, and at the very least will give the caster huge advantage. But "balanced" board wipes? That's just a pain@@eewweeppkk
@@Rc1136Darman1 I'd rather have a card that literally wins the game for somebody because they met a certain goal than have wasted the last 20 minutes of the game and the next 10 minutes of the game playing the same thing.
Honestly though, an instant win is better than the alternative. Im not going to win because i didnt build optimally (or just built poorly) but i still gotta remind everyone that im untapping and can flash in creatures
It wasn't really an instant win tho, it was more like a free Time Walk on every opponents upkeep, so long as the creatures you played kept drawing you more cards, you would just accrue a massive amount of value and do it by playing the game on other people's turns, which was annoying.
LOL My first commander deck, Ezuri Price of Progress, had to immediately remove Prophet of Kruphix because they just banned it, the card was fine it saved people financially on buying a Teferi and Seedborn Muse for the same effect. Classic argument: Dies to Doomblade ;p
@@mr.mammuthusafricanavus8299 It doesn't exactly die to doomblade... maybe if you play it out into open removal mana... but if they have to wait to untap to deal with it, then you immediately get your value.
Balance is banned for the wrong reason. When it's played properly, Balance doesn't make the game 'equal': you can just play a lot of artifacts, or strong creatures. The reason Balance should be banned, is because it doesn't exile itself on resolution, which means it can be abused very easily.
i kind of wish they did renamed reprints with new art for some of the cards like Invoke Prejudice just so these old bits of card design aren't lost forever
My reason for being 'fine' with Coalation Victory (13:09) is that, at best, it a 3 card combo (Commander, lay-line, and spell), for at best 8 mana in one turn (Can easily be 13 if you need to cast commander, or even 18 if you need the layline), that has to resolve with all three cards going off without a hitch . Meanwhile there plenty of 2 card combo with less interactions that cost way less that are legal in Commander. The classic Demonic Consultation + Thassa's Oracle combo require at least one of your opponents to have a counter spell, otherwise you win instantly for a black and two blue. You cant even kill Thassa in this combo, since it an ETB, where you can easily kill the creature on the board that allowing Coalation victory.
Yeah best you can do is stifle the triggered ability of oracle, but how many people are running stifle effects in EDH not many. I think you meant to say a black and 2 blue too since consult is B and oracle UU.
Turn 3 Win with Coalition Victory: Leyline of the Guildpact, Bloom Tender, Any 3 Lands, Coalition Victory. There are ways to even speed it up beyond that. Plus there is an abundance of redundancies for basically every component that still set up rather consistent/easy turn 5 or 6 wins. Prismatic Omen, Dryad of the Illysian Grove, Nylea's Presence as redundancies for the "All Basic Land Types" condition (not to mention that even fetching 2 Tri-lands easily provides all 5 Basic Land Types). Then there is stuff like Fallaji Wayfarer and Transguild Courier that make getting a permanent of all colors easy. We have tutors like Beseech the Mirror that can put Leyline of the Guildpact directly into play for the Bargain. Bloom Tender's mana acceleration has redundancies with Faeburrow Elder and to a lesser extent with Jegantha the Wellspring in the command zone. They are also now a bunch of free counterspells with Force of Will, Force of Negation, Pact of Negation, Fierce Guardianship. There are also a bunch of good/viable tutors now. Like, if you actually wanted to build that deck, it is SO EASY to accomplish now. Arguably dozens of times easier than when Coalition Victory was banned. Sure, there are other combos can win just as quickly, but few of them have so many points of redundancy and so little opportunity cost to add into a deck. Plus, if someone blocks the combo, you don't straight up lose the game on a countered Coalition Victory like you would with a Stifled Thassa's Oracle + Demonic Consultation combo. You can just Eternal Witness or regrowth (or the dozens of other cards that do the same thing) to get back the pieces. You can even just play a completely standard 5 color good stuff strategy that tries to win by spamming card value with how pushed multi-colored card design has been within the last decard, and it all would be viable within the deck because cards like Dryad of the Illysian Grove, Leyline of the Guildpact, Bloom Tender, Fallaji Wayfarer, etc are just good cards in their own right so you aren't just playing random jank, with Coalition Victory being a random "Do I win?" button inside the deck. It just requires so little effort to make it viable inside of a 5 color deck. Many of the cards that make it work best are just cards you are likely to want to be playing in a 5 color deck anyways. The addition of Coalition Victory just makes those decks have a top deck that can just instantly win the game sometimes without them even needing to do anything particularly special. You will often just naturally have the board state that meets the conditions for Coalition Victory so it becomes a 1 card "combo" off the top of your deck. Edit - Forgot that Coalition Victory requires creatures of all colors, so it would also need something like Fallaji Wayfarer or Transguild Courier. I suppose that makes it slightly slower and easier to disrupt, but my point still largely stands that it could just be put into certain 5 color decks as a "I drew this card and just instantly won" sort of thing, because there are 5 color decks that will just naturally have a board state with all basic land types and creatures of all colors even with only 3-4 lands in play and 2-3 creatures in play. And at that point it is just a 1 card "Win the game" if the table goes shields down not expecting you to top deck it.
@Morkins324 the problem with that is that coalition victory is not the only oops i win in the format there are plenty of 2 card infinites in commander where one of the pieces is a commander (Heliod sun crowned+ Walking ballista being a big one) where the other piece basically becomes an i win button
My favorite part about goyf is that it was played in like every color combo. Bant Countertop Goyf, Simic Next Level Blue, The Rock, Abzan Pod, Domain Zoo, RUG Delver, Temur Tarmo Twin, 4c Death Shadow, Abzan Midrange, Naya Midrange, Sultai Traverse the Ulvenwald, and so many more
so i had a thought, whats worse: someone casting sway of the stars or someone casting worldfire? not arguing the ban on Sway, im just curious if an unbanned card thats sorta similar to sway has the same vibe around the table.
Sway of the Stars. At least with Worldfire the only thing I need to do as the caster is setup some method so each of my opponent's on their turn takes 1 damage. Like an easy way you can seal a game with Worldfire is Chandra Awakened Inferno. As she creates an emblem for each opponent that deals 1 damage to them at the beginning of their turn. But there is other methods to do that, like if your commander is Zurgo Bellstrker and you floated 10 mana, you could cast Worldfire then cast Zurgo who is a 2/2 for R. With Sway of the Stars you would need to do that but for 7 life for each opponent. Its like if you armageddon the board, but you don't have a way to end the game.
Interestingly stax as a name came about because in leetspeak when vintage, then called type 1, made a stax deck the acronym made for it was $T4KS or The 4K solution as that's how much it cost roughly at the time to build the deck back when power 9, workshops, etc. were far more affordable than they are now. That was also the time that moxen and such were banned in EDH when a mox jet and such from unlimited ran a few hundred at most with the cheapest being emerald if memory serves though now revised dual lands cost more on average than jewelry back then.
I too am sick to death having the Lutri conversation. Also im glad you came around on Coalition Victory....I had a casual extended deck with a long time ago and it was literally the least satisfying win that ive ever had in magic.
Vince: yeah I didn't get much sleep last night. Anyways I think Karakas would be fine in commander. I feel like he's overlooking that Karakas removes an opponents commander, every turn, for free.
@@juliand.1147Kinnan is strong, but all Rofellos cares is that you make landdrops and it's probably a deck with only forests. Having 6 mana on turn 3 consistently because it would be your commander is pretty damn strong and if you add in ways to play more lands it can get sillier still. If it was only played as a card in the 99 yeah not too strong and certainly worse than sol ring, but sol ring has deserved to be banned forever.
@@dark_rit I can see that Rofellos is stronger when you don't tune the 99, as making use of his ability is easier. On the other hand almost all Kinnan decks include very many ramp pieces that work with Kinnan. I think that such a tuned Kinnan deck is stonger than Rofellos by a good margin. Firstly because Kinnan has draw in the form of the activated ability. Secondly because Kinnan has blue, thereby counters and just more options for cards. Also yes Sol Ring and Mana Crypt totally should be banned.
@@juliand.1147 As someone who did play with Rofellos when he was a commander, he was very strong for his day. Also your not factoring in one of the things about Rofellos. He is budget friendly and would more likely be played over Kinnan by casual players. You can realistically build a good Rofellos deck for easily under a $100, and that is not factoring the price of Rofellos himself or the forests. Plus since commander is a casual format, the player of a tuned Kinnan deck would be very likely asked to tune down their deck or swap to a different deck. Rofellos is that but on a budget. As once you reach about 6 lands, you can cast most spells with Rofellos that are 12 mana or less. Like if you cast a rampant growth on turn 2, you can bring down a Blightsteel Colossus on turn 5 with Rofellos, assuming you made each of your mana drops.
I feel like Dockside, Bowmaster, and The One Ring have the same play pattern as Primeval Titan.. people trying to steal, clone, copy the trigger, reanimate etc.
@@Hakaze See. I like this idea. I think cedh needs its own list, 'cause the differences between casual play and cedh are so great that they're practically completely different formats.
@@Sona_Buvelleyou can make a separate banlist and say it's for cEDH, but that doesn't mean cEDH players will use it. Pretty much all cEDH players have said they would ignore any attempt to separate the format and just follow whatever the main banlist is. Because cEDH isn't a format, anymore than tournament Modern and kitchen table Modern are different formats, it's just playing the format in a competitively optimal way.
The very-real thing you're describing where the real ban list isn't the ban list but rather some vague and inconsistent idea of what's obnoxious is one of the things that made it so hard to get into commander for me (despite many attempts ~10 years ago as casual Magic was shifting to 100% commander). I've barely played Magic since then and not entirely sure why I watched this video but I found it very validating!
My long time friend has recently built OG avacyn and Armageddon is a main stay. Is it rough? Absolutely, do we grin and bear it? For the most part 🤷♂️. He really only plays it with me and a couple of other buddies to save others from the feels bad. It seems to have been working so far for him and it really makes us work for it.
I don't think Armageddon is a very good example to use in the context of PK's video. People don't not play Armageddon because it's toxic, they don't play it because it's not particularly good in Commander. The classic Armageddon play pattern of "rush cards out on turns 1-3 then make it so no one can respond" simply isn't a viable strategy in EDH. Nevermind that Armageddon doesn't have enough redundant cards to make this strategy effective. Your friend's deck seems like a totally reasonable case, and isn't that gross precisely because it a) will win the game in short order, and b) requires a lot more setup. The actually toxic example I would use that matches PK's point would be Ruination, which actually is a disgusting card that isn't played more for social reasons.
i will say part of the issue with recurring nightmare is that it is a bitch and a half to actually interact with because bouncing it is a part of the cost to activate the ability,
I mean, Sensei's Divining Top is similarly agitating to interact with - and it is easily one of the most irritating cards to play against because of how it creates exponentially more decision points in a game.
@MadMage86 the thing with top is that in most decks top is just annoying rather than an overpowered card. Top does have powerful synergies but Recurring nightmare does more for more decks because almost every black deck would love that kind of effect to be able to repeatedly get value creatures and fatties back from the yard. In effect Recurring nightmare can help close the game by itself top is outside of combos mostly just time consuming
@@spearhead2054 which unless it is mass exile they can just get back as soon as they have a creature. in order to deal with a recurring nightmare you need to destroy or exile all creatures hope none of them leave tokens and then destroy nightmare ore rip it from their hand after they bounce it.
To start I love you and highly enjoy watching your content. I was watching the video and my wife was listening and asked why I was watching Winnie the Pooh talk about mtg and now I can’t not hear it. No hate just thought it was funny and wanted to share
I have a 5C Matters deck with Ramos, Dragon Engine as a commander. Coalition Victory would be so incredibly easy to win with and anti-climactic in my Ramos deck that I wouldn't want to put it in even if it WAS legal. The card would be unbelievably lame in 5C commander decks.
You say incredibly easy but it's an 8 mana sorcery that can be interacted with by somebody killing a creature that has a color you need or simply countering it. Color identity doesn't do anything for it so not even Ramos helps get the condition. A swords on your only red pip or any counterspell and you've blown most of your turn doing nothing.
I think Commander should just ban the Companion mechanic and allow Lutri back as a legal card. Even partner commanders still count towards your 100, and companions should too.
Just play the original. The fact that it`s banned from official play doesn`t mean it`s banned in your casual play. The sjw-bans which Invoke was part of didn`t make sense for half the cards anyway. I`m totally on board with not printing stuff like Invoke nowadays but it`s simply a piece of it`s time that in terms of functionality inside the MtG-context is still only represented on 2 cards total the other beeing Nethervoid
Great video Vince, if you were on the rules comity for a day and you could ban one card and un ban another what would you pick? 4 and 5 colour commanders/decks are fine in my eyes i feel like part of the distain is that the commanders that fit in those colours are too common (except for partners which kind of gets around what i said with a massive combination of potential 2+2 colour pairings) breya, saskia and yidris are the only commanders in their 4 colour pairings which is boring because you know the exact game plan that deck is going for turn 1. Plenty of 5 colour options. oodles of 3 colour options. 9, 4 colour options
This was an excellent walkthrough. I see so many people hating on the banlist without understanding the rationalizations behind most of the entries (and omissions). Nearly all of your reasoning was exactly how I understand it. And glad to see some love for Gifts, I'd love to see that off the banlist for LftL setups. I will say that I don't think Tabernacle is a problem, since you mentioned it a couple times. I do own one so I guess I'm biased, but I also own a library and I think library makes way more sense to keep banned. Library can go into a TON of decks, basically every control deck I've ever built would want it, and that create a P2W situation. Tabernacle is a great card, but it's also pretty niche by comparison, plus it's mechanically stax, which people rarely play unless they're playing cEDH or nearly so. So it only creates bad P2W vibes for people who are largely outside the target audience of the banlist, and only for certain decks.
@@ryanbolson23 just google it before saying someone is wrong.. the top results when i googled "origin of stax mtg" say it's $T4KS but multiple results further down point to the card Smokestack as the origin of the name. conclusion is either explanation can be correct depending on who you ask.
The commander play list is a joke. What is and more importantly, what isn’t ban is laughingly inconsistent. So my playgroup just doesn’t follow it. We kinda just throw random jank and bulk into a deck and grind a few games when we aren’t playing legacy or modern. It’s an amazing time when you play commander how it’s suppose to be played. Causally, with random bulk you have lying around. When WOTC started to monetize and capitalize on commander is when I stopped playing it as much. It really is ruining the format and to a certain extent the game.
Braids! Now THAT is my Jam. I had all the Book Packs from back then. 7 Boosters and the Novel for the Cycle. Chainer, Laqautus's Champion, Braids, and Kamahl were my most prized cards.
I agree regarding the instant wins, I had felidar guardian in my Oloro life gain deck resolved it once then took it out as it took all the fun out of playing EDH
Ante cards were banned not because they don't work anymore, but because WOTC realize it classified the game legally as gambling. WOTC didn't want to get into legal trouble for stuff like allowing underage gambling.
For some reason ante was a popular thing in a lot of games in the early 90s. Pogs had ante rules where you kept the ones you flipped. Marbles is an older version of it. The problem is that the kids who were playing the game didn't like losing their stuff and it caused a lot of problems on the playground. A lot of schools banned playing pogs for that reason. It's bad optics that kids are getting into fights at school because of your game.
As for invoke prejudice, i just like the card effect, if ur gona ban it, give me a new one, don't care the card is banned, i don't want the unique effect banned. Blue tax card are amazing and i love them, racism sucks and i don't love it, it shouldn't be that hard to find a middle ground, but somehow it is
@alexandercastleberry480 the only thing that is a stinker is the name and art. Wotc has the power to print new cards with new art. I'm litterally asking wotc to print a card, that i would buy, that already exists. How am i the irrational one
I forgot about how I wanted Golos in my cube but it was always a little too expensive. Now it's down to about a dollar. Thanks for the reminder Kenobi!
There really are cards that SHOULD be on the banlist, but aren’t because of…dumb reasons. Meanwhile some cards are on the banlist when they shouldn’t be 😂 Though I may be biased for my Pirates
I think the biggest problem with the Commander banlist is that there's only one. EDH and cEDH have grown into such wildly different formats that they need to be treated as such, and the ban list for both being unified doesn't support that. There's also a number of cards on the ban list that weren't banned for the reasons addressed in the video. For example, Golos' ban was pushed as being because he was the "generic 5 color commander" and was being seen too much. Now we're just seeing people grab Kenrith and put him at the helm of the same decks. I think there's an argument for Golos remaining banned, though I'm personally not convinced by it and think he should be removed. Honestly, I think the bigger problem with EDH is Rule 0. It's a crutch that gets relied on far too often, especially in response to some very valid points that should actually be addressed by the RC.
I agree, that would fix a lot of problems, but I can also see it causing new ones. It would be a fun thought experiment to start with and see how people feel about it before setting anything in stone
cEDH isn't a format, it's a philosophy of play. It follows the rules of Commander, but with an agreement between all the players to play as competitively as possible. So it will always share the same ban list.
Myself and most CEDH players disagree with the idea of having separate ban lists for one reason. If you separate the formats you’ll actually be left with three formats, CEDH, casual EDH and the competitive version of casual EDH. Competitive EDH is built on the idea of playing EDH at the highest power level. We don’t think of it as a separate format, just going into a game of commander with the expectation of everyone playing through most powerful decks possible. If there was a separate banlist people would still want to play the “casual” banlist at the highest level, at what point would you need to split it into a third banlist?
My Chulane deck wants Limited Resources so bad. If i could have one card of the banned list I'd be sweating between that and Leovold back as my commander.
I insist Emrakul is not too good. In most respects, it's the same as Ulamog; Annihlator 6 is not that different than Annihlator 4 when there's a 30% increase in cost, their body size is proportional to their mana value, they both blank a certain amount of removal with a bit of overlap on stuff they blank (Blasphemous Act) and stuff they don't (Cyclonic Rift, Farewell), they both cost about triple what it would cost to get their cast trigger from a sorcery with the same effect, what, are we banning her for *flying?* Yes, I get the extra turn is functionally haste (and gets even nastier if you have an outside haste source) but you spent 15 bloody mana for her, you'd damn well expect to get value out of such an investment. And if you cheat her, as laid out above, she's not that much better than Ulamog. The banlist is a fossil. It's worried about stuff like Coalition Victory and Biorhythm when Thassa's Oracle and Demonic Consultation is a valid two card 3 mana line. And since they unbanned Worldfire, a card that grinds my teeth for turning the game into super sudden death, I've been beating the drum to let me play the biggest, dumbest idiot in Magic to try and win with good old fashion fisticuffs. Some people in my group tried to argue that it opens up infinite turn lines from bouncing the Emmy but come on as if they don't already just recur time warp with less resources. Break her free from the moon already. Also give me Recurring Nightmare you cowards.
nah. She's still too good because she effectively is an instant wincon. There are so many ways of bouncing her to your hand and consistently casting her each turn that you win the game simply by playing her. No player should threaten to win the game simply by playing their commander in a casual game. And your point about rift or farewell is moot because if the person casts her, someone cyc rift it, they just play it on their extra turn. And farewell is a sorcery so good luck having a turn when the person who plays emrakul takes infinite turns.
@TheLeftistOwl There are *way* easier ways to take infinite extra turns. And if you're casting Cyclonic Rift on the turn she's being played with a stocked extra turn, that's a skill issue. Also consider playing Gerrad's Hourglass Pendant if you're having trouble with infinite turn opponents, there's better counterplay available now than from the 8 month window she was legal to the point she was banned. There are a ton of on-sight commanders in this game, and most of them don't cost 15 mana.
@@TheLeftistOwl There are shitloads of better commanders for winning the game on the spot, you're 15 years too late for Emrakul to be a busted card in the CZ, lmao.
I dont agree with the invoke prejudice example. The whole idea of the card that its a prejudice card. The artwork perfectly captures the Essence of it. To me, its just another example of policing speach. And we can see where it leads to, that modern cards cant show a bit of skin on women, but show men half naked. Its the hypicricy that gets me.
You are incredibly uneducated then. The card was made by a literal nazi (self proclaimed) and had a nazi dogwhistle as it's internal id all while being named that, depicting the kkk and having an effect that makes a colour worse. Also magic still shows plenty of skin on women, but why would it matter unless you only see women as objects, and a shit ton of guys are completely clothed. There is no policing of speech happening, it's just people not wanting to deal with racists, misogynist and any other kind of bigot. Also you spelt hypocrisy wrong, you also clearly don't know what hypocrisy means as the thing you described would be a double standard
There shouldn't be a banlist at this point, there's already enough degen 2 card combos running around. If someone can play a card that is problematic for the whole table and 3 other people combined can't deal with it then maybe they should run more interaction.
@@bingus2464 Lutri never should've been banned and I don't care about ante cards, if someone is doing degen stuff now with the current banlist i'm just picking up my stuff after and finding a different pod. Ante cards being banned or unbanned doesn't change that.
You are missing the point, lutri isnt banned because it is "degenerate" same with ante, they are banned cards because they fundamentally do not work with the rules of the format. I agree that things shouldn't be banned for power, but Magic is a very complex game with a long history that cannot be consolidated into a single format, thus the banlist must exist.
I think you are missing my point and we should just stop talking to each other because it will just result in a shit flinging contest, have a nice day.@@bingus2464
I mean, lutri works perfectly fine in the rules. Just So happens to work out to an auto-include, but nothing in the rules prevents it from being playable. Ante is different as "playing for ante" doesnt exist and/or is literally illegal
I still miss playing "mono black Golos", just playing board wipes and sacrifices while I use him to find Cabal Coffers and Urborg. I did have Cascading Cataracts and Crystal Quarry too so I could start trying to rip big with his activated ability.
Then people would just play Tainted Pact. They already play Tainted Pact Lol Plus, banning Consultation doesn't answer the other degenerate ways to empty your library. Wouldn't banning Thassa's Oracle be better?
@@Bloody-Butterfly I mean, in a high-power or cedh game, the extra 1 or 2 mana usually doesn't matter. I will concede that outside of U/B, ya usually need more cards to pull it off. They gotta work harder for the same ender. Side note: I hope no one is actyally playing Oracle Consultation at casual tables, 'cause that's just scummy af. We can all agree on that Lol I would still argue that if we were gonna ban any part of that combo, just ban the Oracle. Ya know? I think it's cleaner that way.
23:00 4 color decks sound cool on paper, but with all the mana fixing that's available, it really does just allow you to play all the best staples in every color for no real downside. Especially now with 4+ color commanders being stronger than they used to be (which is to say they used to be almost unplayable) I think it improves game variety to play mono and dual colored decks. I don't hate 4+ color decks though, they're cool, but they need a particularly unique theme to not just be "every staple in the format.deck"
I agree - selecting 1-3 colors makes for some decisions on what abilities your deck wants to have access to and what ones it's choosing to forego. If I play Green/Red I'm going to have access to all of green's mana ramp and its card draw effects, and I'll have red's direct damage and burn, but I won't have the kind of hard removal generally reserved for white and black. That's a choice, and I get advantages in simplicity (and cheapness) of mana base while someone going for more colors will have to make sacrifices in the reliability of their mana and probably their wallet. 4+ color getting easier just kind of means decks get to do whatever they want, and it's for this reason that I never ever want to see Golos come off the ban list. That card ramps and can color-fix just for showing up, and doesn't even cost colored mana to do it. One could build Golos as a two-color deck in (say) Dimir colors, and run Cascading Cataracts (which you tutor for) to give you the five colors to use his ability, and that's that. Maybe you splash a third color a little.
One other underrated thing about the otter is the fact companions go into your hand. I have a deck that converts hand size/ card draw into damage. If i could always guarantee a way to get a +1 card in my hand, and i dont have to change anything about my deck to be able to do this? Would be so insane
the talk about Lutri / companion in commander I didn't realize that it didn't count towards your 100 cards. I was under the impression kinda like partners you have your companion + commander and then 98 card deck. As for Lutri itself, I think its a fun design and I would prefer running Lutri over Dualcaster Mage in one of my decks and copy shit.
I don't think it's so much about having an extra card in your deck, as it's about having an extra card essentially in your hand from the start of the game.
Bear in mind, Lutri requires him being cast to copy a spell, Dualcaster doesn't. Companion goes against the design philosophy of Commander. Commander is supposed to be exactly 100 singleton cards with 1-2 legendary creatures representing the color identity of the rest of the deck. Companions are a 101st card that adds an extra deck building restriction to use them as the 101st card. Lutri's rule was to conveniently for Commander and was blanket banned from commander, meanwhile the U/W Bird whose rule is to have 20 extra cards in the deck is specifically banned as a companion (it can still be the commander or in the 99).
The EDH Ban List is just cards that /can/ do well in Timmy-level playgroups, but would either be slow/clunky in higher-level play. Or, in the case of Flash, just being as degenerate as ThOracle/Demonic Consul in cEDH - a completely different format that deserves a separate ban list. Cards like Crusade and Invoke Prejudice aren't problems. I would run Crusade solely because I like the Elspeth Dual Deck art. Just rename most of those cards and make some new art. Invoke Prej is just a really good stax piece.
More interaction with insurection than Coalition victory? Any removal spell at instant speed can stop Coalition victory from winning depending on what creatures they have in play. Qlot of decks have sac outlets, but ALOT more have at least some interaction.
Commander didn't become the largest of MTG formats by restsricting what players can do. The freedom is what has allowed the format to cultivate such a wide base, it's a format for anyone. Old cards, new cards, powerful cards, silly cards and whatever cards you have lying around even if that card is an Armageddon. When I heard about commander I was immediately drawn to the Legacy approach to what cards were allowed. If there was an extensive ban list, babysitting people, in an unsancitoned, non-competitive format I probably wouldn't have ever bothered building my first deck. I think the allowed freedom and rule 0 for what we don't like is easier than banning things some players don't enjoy. It's a lot easier to say "We don't like mass land destruction" as a group than for a player to argue "I should be able to play X card" when it's on the ban list.
I think it would help to have a LCG banlist (for all LCGs, not those weird one-off lists for each store) that can be used a shorthand for games where you don’t want to spend an hour doing rule 0. Then we could simplify rule 0 when playing commander with strangers to be “anything not on the LCG banlist is allowed” and then only spend time before game pre-clearing cards that are on that banlist. Power level and deck budget just ends up being a huge shitshow unless you have a regular playgroup. Also, to reiterate, I think unlike the normal banlist, this banlist would be much more flexible and include all cards which a reasonable person might object to. The intention here is to identify those risky cards (Thoracle, cheap tutors, MLD, Mana Crypt, etc.) so we can have a discussion about those specific cards and ignore the rest.
@@Dyllon2012 I think it's better left alone. Ban Mana Crypt? Sol Ring is arguably a significantly better card, ban that too? Ban Thoracle but leave in Chain of Smog and Witherbloom? 2 cards, 4 mana that can easily win the game. What about every other 2 card easy to assemble win con? We don't have laws that say "you can't say rude things to other people". The people playing these cards know exactly what they are doing. No one has accidently put a thoracle/demonic consultation in their deck. Have some self control if you want people to want play with you. Maybe I'm giving MTG players too much credit, maybe they are incapable self control and completely lack understanding of social contracts but I've never seen anyone tutor for a combo and then win and go "Oh I didn't know that curb stomping your precons was bad taste"
Fun story before Saharazad (pardon spelling) was added to the ban list I played it in a Jeskai “Comunism” deck (Hive Mind group hug) that ran a bunch of wish effects and spell copy effects for the sole reason to pull off the “longest” game of EDH of all time. The idea of the deck was to get Hive Mind into play copy it ad many times as I could (I think I got to like 5) cast Shaharazad with a players can only cast at sorcery speed effect so the only spell to copy was Shasha, and then to in the sub games cast the wishes to pull the cards from the main game and do it all again, I think we got to 4 layers deep before we called it, needless to say I never did the math on it but I think that I could have kept a loop going by going up a layer and going back down, so the game would eventually end. I disassembled the deck immediately afterwards but I did do it that one time, and I bought everyone pizza as an apology.
Super late to this but from the perspective of cedh gifts makes a big difference compared to intuition, you can assemble an underworld breach win combo with just gifts, with intuition you need to have 1 of the 4 combo pieces in hand. (Underworld Breach, Brain Freeze, Lion's Eye Diamond and Sevinne's Reclamation, regardless of which 2 of these 4 get sent to the graveyard if you have enough mana and a handful of other cards in your graveyard you can assemble a win) This may seem a bit specific but Breach combos are some of the most reliable ways to win for some of the best decks in the format.
Karakas is only banned because it can bounce your opponent's cards . If it was just a mono-white Sanctum of Eternity it would be fine. Library of Alexandria is such a non-issue card. We literally have come to modern day with Biblioplex where for an extra 2 mana, you can either draw a card when at zero or seven cards in hand OR you can you put that card in your graveyard. Which Biblioplex does not see a lot of play. Limited Resources is just a card that interacts horribly with multiplayer. It was always a problem when it was unbanned. I love Prime Time, but yeah it was very abusable. Prophet of Kruphix was very strong. You could actually wiggle out of stax locks with it as you were now breaking parity. Oh hey Rofellos. I used to play him when he was legal. He was very strong as you could very easily ramp into ever bigger threats with him. Like a Darksteel Colossus by turn 6 with not even a single ramp spell being cast or a single mana rock, sooner if you did. Sway of the Stars is like Worldfire adjacent. but the difference was it was easier to setup a play that let you kill off the table with Worldfire. While for Sway of the Stars you would need to be able to do 7 damage to each player as a follow-up. I ran Sylvan Primordial. It was such a backbreaking card. Every deck that had green ran it when it was legal. It was Prime Time of its day.
Also I agree the banlist needs more cards on it, not less. If its meant to be a casual format, the power ceiling should be lowered, not kept the way it is.
library of alexandria is deceptively good. 2 mana is infinitely more than 0. it would be like comparing gitaxian probe to some 2 mana draw a card spell. its hard to explain how powerful it is because its been banned like forever so the majority of people havent seen it played, but its rough.
Karakas is banned because it can go in any deck and find uses. Bouncing opponents' stuff is just the floor "fair" use of it. If unbanned this scarce card would skyrocket in price while homogenizing the format.
Coalition Victory is weaker as printed than your suggested end step trigger. Coalition Victory checks on resolution once, were as your version would check on end step presumably multiple times. As you alternatively suggested, an upkeep trigger would be weaker, however, as you'd paint a big flag that says "Kill me."
I have one of the banned-for-sensitivity cards that got reprinted in a precon with new art, specifically the Elspeth vs Tezzeret version of Crusade. Other than it being a 2 mana anthem, I don't see what's wrong with that specific version and have permission to rule zero it into my monowhite soldiers. I have no such objections about not being allowed to use my Tolarian Academy in Esper.
@@data_abortTo be fair, instrad of a functional reprint there have been a few cards that are just better. Honor of the Pure is a less restrictive casting cost and is one sided. The more recent Flowering of the White Tree is also just better.
Not in favor of rule 0 - not everyone is articulate enough to complain about degenerate play strategies, but some of them that have a community consensus on should ultimately see the ban hammer.
I think that the biggest role the banlist has in commander is to act as an additional safety valve to the self-policing present in the format. I was always surprised that the first Vorinclex is not on the list, but on the other hand I never saw it in play. The banlist is basically the RC saying to the community - "that's rude, you shouldn't do it to other players" in cases when it's not apparent.
I absolutely, unequivocally, disagree with the banning of Crusade. There are 21 other cards with some variation of "Crusade" or "Crusader" in their names, it makes zero sense to ban that SPECIFIC card then leave the rest.
One of my favorite troll decks that I played in 60 card casual games had a soft lock of Erayo and Arcane Laboratory. There's a reason why it shouldn't be in EDH. Yes, you can play around it, but boy is it an annoying card if it flips.
@@PleasantKenobi You also advocated for shortening game times. Karakas being unbanned would absolutely make them longer. White is a VERY popular color in EDH, so you'd see it often and in numbers. Imagine not just having to recast your commanders, but also having to resolve all those triggers over and over again. Just one early game Karakas could potentially add 5 minutes to a game timer.And that's the "fair" usage. Imagine some one actually abusing Karakas to flicker their stuffs. And untapping it. Multiple. Times.
Something that a lot of people forget is that Companion counts as sideboard, and sideboard only exists in Commander now just for Companion. Which nobody seems to talk about. That's why I kept making quips about the Rules Committee being bribed by WotC.
How is Yawgmoth's Bargain banned, but Necropotence isn't? 😅 I mean, I get that the whole"only get your cards at your end step" powers it dien significantly, but still...
It changes everything though, like unless you had access to flash, the maximum amount of cards necro lets you hold at any point of time is 7. It might be a good 7, but is it as good as 30 from ad naus or 40 from peer into the abyss??
Yawg's Bargain is the signpost card for things like Necropotence and Ad Nauseam. You aren't really supposed to play those cards. I guess Griselbrand too, but it had to be banned because people still played it in low power metas.
Recurring Nightmare is also banned because it's almost impossible to interact with at all because the player retains priority after it enters the battlefield and returning it to your hand is part of the cost of the ability. Basically the only way to remove recurring nightmare as a problem is to counter spell it or remove it with a instant/ability *if* the player controlling it messes up and passes priority with it still in play. The rules committee has been pretty clear that they don't like cards that are extremely non-interactive in ways that railroad the lines of play of the person playing the card or reduce opponent agency and participation. It's not just that it's pretty broken, it's that RN is broken in ways that are ultimately *unfun* and it is powerful in ways that extremely *uninteresting* and rewards players with far to power for how simple it is. I also think it's not that hard to actually win the game with it. Creating a massive army is not that hard, but you can also pay three mana to loop to extremely strong enter the battlefield or leave the battlefield abilities that only take a couple of triggers to kill the table. Looping Kokusho and gray merchant would create an game win very quickly just off the top of my head; and it wouldn't be that hard to create an infinite mana loop with it either. So just imagine someone being able to generate an infinite mana loop using a card that you cannot interact with outside of counterspells.
Rules committee does not seem to know that by oracle text the activation cost is at sorcery speed, so you can't keep priority and activate it, the stack has to be empty. Card can be responded. Surely it can create a huge amount of infinite loops (only during your turn), but there are so many of them in the format.
@@marcoameri9271 Not how that works. The activation is at sorcery speed (and it always has been), but once the Nightmare resolves, no one gets priority before the Nightmare's controller gets to do something else. If they're smart, that "something else" will be to activate the Nightmare's ability, and since returning it to your hand is part of the *cost* of that ability, not its resolution, it will be safely tucked away in its owner's hand by the time anyone else gets to do anything.
@@ospero7681 oh Yes absolutely, didn't thought about the fact that when it resolves stack is empty. I was thinking that maybe with a little self control and in a lower power deck, maybe the card isn't a win on the spot card. With an infinite mana combo there are also a huge amount of ways to end the game
@@marcoameri9271 Actually, you don't seem to know how priority works, how costs vs abilities work, or what exactly I said was. So I'll break it down for you: That's both not how gaining, retaining, or passing priority works in relation to *casting a permanent spell*. You case the spell, it's on the stack, you pass priority to opponents in turn order. They respond to the spell in some way or they don't, but RN isn't in play yet as a permanent, it's countered or it resolves. If it resolves it comes into play and you received priority again immediately as the active player. If there are permanents in play that trigger abilities due to RN etb-ing, those go on the stack immediately; you are given priority first again after this happens as you are the active player, however obviously you can't activate RN until the stack has emptied. While that specific situation would create opportunities for opponents to interact with RN with permanent based removal, it's also the active player misplaying RN badly, and so I'd point you back to my statement that the player using RN has to mess up for opponents to be able to interact with it outside of counterspells or making them discard it. When playing RN correctly, it enters play with an empty stack and the active player is given priority. They activate RN before anything else and because returning it to hand is part of the cost, it's in hand before the ability is on the stack and opponents are given priority. This is the same reason you can't destroy a Planeswalker before the active player uses one if its abilities after just casting it; you as the opponent do not have priority once the walker is in play until something else happens. Finally, like I also already said: Yes, it's broken and there are a lot of broken things in the format. However, "It's not as good as ThOracle+Tainted Pact/Demonic Consultation there for it's fine" really isn't a good rationale because literally every other thing is justified by that logic. Secondly, cEDH and purely power based concerns are not the foundation of the B&R list for EDH, which I feel like has been said so many times at this point that not having internalized it is a *choice* to be willfully ignorant of the guiding principles of the format and the rationales for how it is constructed and maintained and I've been over that sort of self-serving willful not-knowing for awhile now, and it always comes off as bad faith and intellectually dishonest. I think it's pretty obvious the only reason there are things comparably or more broken than cards like RN that are legal in EDH is *because* bans are not on the basis/merit of power level and competitive play, and that if it was, those cards being pointed to as reasons why RN isn't as powerful as things you could technically play....would also be banned. So it's pretty circular and self-serving argumentation. Lastly, and I say this is all due emphasis, *it's broken in ways that reduce player agency for all players at the table; is boring and repetitive; and rewards incredibly simplistic, unchallenging card design that requires little play-skill to execute correctly, with cheap value and power.
@@marcoameri9271 It's not just about whether you're winning the game on the spot or not; it's how you go about winning. It becomes the best thing for you to do most of the time with your mana, and even if it's not the only thing you do, it's a lot of what you do. So it means the player using RN is now mostly just casting the same spell over and over in a repetitive value grind that none of the opponents can interact with. It's similar to putting the table in a *soft* Stasis lock that either doesn't effect you, or you can play through some how. Are there better ways to win the game? Definitely, but Stasis lock not being the most powerful thing you can do isn't the point, it's that you've created a really shitty, slow, boring game to be a part of and you did it likely using just Stasis and one other card, so it's not even an interesting or complicate interaction.
Imo, board wipes can be incredibly interesting for the table. Unfortunately, many people only ever see it/use it as a means stop someone's ramp rather than making decks that take advantage of those wipes with more synergy.
Ante was basically removed because concerns were brought up that it was basically gambling (sort of like recent Secret Lairs) and would see legal challenges (which I also hope Secret Lairs see with their recent random super premium card inserts driving folks to gamble on them)
I love that “Banned as Commander” but legal in the 99 is too complex…
But the game is literally Magic: The Gathering with 30 years of mechanics.
It's specifically too complex for MTGO. That ancient game has no way of differentiating between 'commander' and '99'.
My issue with the “too complex” argument is how the rules committee seems to be the only ones that are incapable of reading. The same ones that thought it would be easier to explain to people state based actions when a commander dies rather than just tell players “if your commander would die, you can put it back into the command zone instead” because actual members on the committee didn’t know how the rules of the game worked.
@@endersblade Existing is too complex for MTGO. What an awful UI experience that program is.
Yeah I think that argument is totally ridiculous, considering grist is allowed to be your commander, even though the way that the rules about what can be your commander are worded would suggest that it can't.
@@HomeCookinMTGgrist when is not on the board is a legendary creature i dont see where is the problem whith a legendary creature being your commander
I think another historical aspect about the banlist philosophy that gets underdiscussed is system bias, that systems cannot escape the biases of its creators, as well as recency bias. The EDH format and its banlist was formulated by a group of legacy grinders and judges at a time when magic was transitioning from having the bulk of power situated in instants and sorceries to having actually impactful creatures that dominated the metagame. The more recent staple creatures like primetime were seen as more "problematic" than cards like bribery (5 mana, cheat out any creature from an opponents deck) or expropriate because good creatures were the new "boat-rockers" while busted spells were just the status quo that everyone just kind of excepted. IMO, I think its an issue that the collective answer to the clone & steal format that saw primeval titan banned was "just don't play creatures worth stealing".
Super interesting point that I haven't seen brought up before. Thank you for this.
I guess it gets harder and harder to know on which side of the pendulum to land.
With the Doctor Who decks bringing 10 or mote new very playable clones to the format over night, it gets to the point that the theft and clone effects can't be policed - only the resulting dominating creatures.
If coalition victory should remain banned because its getting easier to cast, then Thassa's oracle and demonic consultation should be banned because you can cast it turn 1, 2, or 3.
Yea you can but people aren’t playing thoracle in a super casual deck, people would absolutely run coalition in most casual 5c decks
Yeah comparing coalition victory to thassa's oracle it's a universe of difference. Oracle is played in many formats, but the only way you could play coalition victory in legacy or vintage is if you combo it with dream halls conflux or something. Oracle could be banned in EDH easily, but coalition victory should have been unbanned long ago even with biomes and such the creature requirement is easy to interact with for many decks causing it to fizzle out.
Even with leyline of the guildpact, coalition victory is more reasonable of a win than Thoracle.
@@Gleebusaz But there are jerkbags going to casual games and playing Thorical. "But there is prize, thus must win" SOme meta's and LGS have that one guy you can't avoid outside of punching them. and punching people over a card game is a bad look
@@SoloWing88 they are playing 100% correctly if I paid to play and there is a price on the line you should play at 100% maximum efficiency
My problem is that for every card that "should be banned" there are 100 others that meet the same criteria. (Reposting this as a comment I made on another video elsewhere )
The biggest problem with the ban list right now is that it doesn't consistently apply the same logic and reasoning as to why cards are or aren't on the ban list. It instead is supposed to serve as "a guidepost of cards and types of cards to avoid" when no one uses it that way. Every person I have met solely treats it as "a list of cards I can not put in my EDH deck".
Either every card on the banlist for being "too oppressive/strong or leading to unfun play patterns" should come off the banlist, OR dozens should go on.
Mana Crypt, Dockside, Rhystic Study, Necropotence, Ancient Tomb, The One Ring, Orcish Bowmasters, Smothering tithe, the Fierce Guardianship, Akroma's Will. (And more)
I would argue that all of those, and other Commander Super Staples, are so strong that regardless of deck archetype, any deck that can run them should. The only reason people don't run them more often tends to be cost. So, either we should ban those and others on the virtue of "format diversity/power level" or unban a whole lot of cards and explicitly state "Power level and card selection is solely self-policed by players".
On the topic of "unfun play patterns" the same thing applies, Leovold, Primeval Titan, Syvlan Primordial, Iona, Sway of the Stars all should be unbanned, OR we need to add 100 more cards like Warp World, Possibility Storm, Ravages of War, Hive Mind, to the list for also leading to "unfun play patterns".
In Summary: the problem with what is and isn't banned, is not the fact that specific cards are or aren't on the banlist. It's that there truly isn't a consistent philosophy that is applied consistently.
I agree for the most part, but I think there really is no need for a lot of extremely high power cards to be banned. players are very good at self policing, and I think most people underestimate that
@@crppledizzle9374they never argued they should be banned, only showed the fault in the rethoric of the RC
@@crppledizzle9374
Right and I don't disagree, but if that's the best choice, a lot of cards on the ban list should come off it.
@@crppledizzle9374 in private playgroups, maybe. And even then I have my doubts judging by the plethora of posts on the EDH subreddit concerning playgroup issues. But then we don't all play with private playgroups and have no basis for self policing beyond this banlist. We cannot even agree on basic terminology most of the time, and you want us to sit down and potentially re-write the banlist before each game? So what do you do when you run into someone running Mana Crypt in every deck and you want it banned? Hope they brought a sideboard? It's simply not realistic.
Agree. With the general power creep and WotC designing for the format even casual games have become so much more efficient that a fair part of the ban list isn't all that critical any more.
My issue is they don’t follow their own criteria. And with the recent ‘explanations’ it’s even more clear the ban list is just some made up feel like whatever list.
They banned 8 of the power 9 because more of ‘optics’ that expensive cards shouldn’t prohibit you from playing. Time twister is legal in the format somehow, but upheaval bad!
Timetwister was a about as expensive as mana drain for awhile
Twister has better alternatives according to RC which is why its not banned. Imagine a card that costs a lot but it has better alternatives so it doesn't matter as much
I genuinely don't know why people get so twisted up on this topic when Commander is a made up feel like whatever format. Like yeah, you hit the nail on the head, that's what it is.
Also Timetwister is not even a good card in EDH. Wheels as a whole are really only good if you're doing something degenerate with them, and in that situation losing your graveyard is a downside.
Timetwister is a genuinely bad card in commander. It was powerful when they put it in the nine, but now it's not.
They expect pods to create their own banlists to play how they want but there should be a banlist for just playing games with strangers or pods who don't want to bother creating their own, instead of this thing where everyone has to tune their deck to a certain power level with people they want to play with because it's a 'casual' format
People don’t NEED to make decks of a similar power level, they just naturally do it. You can only play so much of a game that you keep losing, especially if the same 1-2 people keep winning, and it feels worse if it’s consistently a blowout. That’s where power level balancing comes in, people fix up their decks to be within a comfortable range to compete.
Now I don’t agree with using “My deck is a 7” as the way to describe a deck, as a 7 can mean anything depending on their normal playgroup. Instead give a concise description of the deck, including the consistent win turn. If your deck relies on surprising your opponent to win, it’s probably not fit for a social format.
"people should make their own banlists" ignores two big problems: it's a lot of effort, especially for new-ish players that don't know every card, and it inevitably causes arguments.
I got my friends who have played a lot of magic to build decks and play like 2 games of commander. None of us had any experience in what cards were legal but that we should not play. Thus the games were miserable and all 3 of them basically refuse to give it another try.
I have a better handle on things now, but I needed to absorb like 30 hours of commander content to get the gist of it and use it to guide my and my son's deckbuilding so we can at least enjoy it together.
You should be able to look at the official rules for the format, and then try out the format, and have a fun experience just by following the rules. There are a ton of really cool things about Commander, but by this metric it fails so incredibly hard. It can just be a dice roll whether you have a fun experience your first time or not in an uninitiated group.
And I still have yet to hear a compelling argument why the baseline policy of "rule zero to ban what you want" in any way works better than "rule zero to unban what you want". In established groups they are functionally the same, but in new or random groups it is a world of difference.
If you're playing any sport or game casually you're going to get absolutely obliterated every now and then. Skill gap exists, equipment and gear budget disparity exists. As someone who's in both communities it's always amused me how whiny "casual players" are about losing a casual game where they didn't have a whole committee meeting to decide the power level first
That's the only reason there is a banlist and rules to begin with, so that there is a baseline.
A nitpick, but the term "stax" didn't originate with the card Smokestack. The term was derived from a deck in the very early days of the format called The $4,000 Solution. It was a heavy resource denial deck that ran very expensive pieces like Tabernacle, Nether Void, The Abyss, Chains Of Mephistopheles, etc. A common abbreviation for the deck's name on Magic forums was "$T4KS". This abbreviation morphed into STAKS, then eventually, stax.
I thought it was because the deck plays "Symmetrical Tax" effects, AKA Stax
the term "stax" originates from that deck's name, yes, but the reason why the deck is called that is because it played smokestack.
@@elitemagikarp4822correct.
Why do magic players hate giving things normal names?
They even use nonsense words instead of just saying what colors they use. So every deck name is like "bogos fish and chips" or "sarnezia megatron"
@@ENCHANTMEN_ it's literally a deck named after a card that's in the deck
I am of the opinion that the Companion mechanic should simply be declared to be not functional in Commander, just as Wishes have been. The cards are fine, the Companion mechanic itself is the issue, and it's painfully obvious since even WotC admitted it was a mistake and issued emergency errata.
Stupid companions also gave us Drannith magistrate as a side effect 😢
They literally made the companion mechanic legal and then proceeded to ban 20% (Yorion) of companions in the same announcement, it was wild.
Wishes not being playable was a shit idea.
and you are free to rule-zero them into your games, that's part of the joy of Commander.
@@najoheuer You can do this with any game. It's not exclusive to Commander. I would have preferred rules that make sense followed by rule 0 than what we have now.
Personally I do hate the commander banlist because it just doesn't make sense.
Signpost bans: If the goal is to just point out signpost cards for what you probably shouldn't play then print a recommended list because that's the same amount of effect which is none. The people who care about how their opponents feel were already not playing those cards and the people who don't care are going to find the next best version of the effect and still be a complete git.
Accessibility bans/the power 9: Again if the goal was keeping the format accessible then many cards have crossed the line into that range of too expensive for anyone who isn't Scrooge Mcduck with his vault of gold. If they don't believe that logic is a good reason to ban cards then take the power 9 and the other old junk off the banlist. If they do think it's a good reason plenty of cards need to be added to that list or proxies need to be publicly accepted as legal in commander at the very minimum for those cards.
Power bans/unfun bans: If the goal is to ban out powerful/unfun game effects there are lots of additional cards that need to be added to the list if not then a few powerful effects could be removed from that list.
Like I'm for a banlist that actually bans out unfun, excessively powerful, and excessively expensive cards. But that's not what we have. We have a banlist that just picks out a few of each of those and throws them onto a token banlist that doesn't really moderate the format. If you want a suggestions list then make a suggestions list and people will figure out how to play "kitchen table magic" in a fair enough way amongst friends. A banlist is really for playing with strangers imo.
Just in case you didn't know: Timetwister is not banned in commander.
@@patterofheads256 I am aware however Time Walk, Ancestral Recall, the Moxen, and Black Lotus are not. And if the argument is that accessibility is not justification for banning. And neither is power since power can be managed with pregame discussions and rule zero. Then there is no logical reason those cards should be banned.
As I said I do support banning those cards and other excessively powerful/expensive/poor play experience cards but I'm pointing out that the logic provided by the rules committee is inconsistent.
@gnomersy1087 nah I get you, I just took "the power 9 is banned" Literally.
I also don't think library of Alexandria should be banned and I think it's insane that mishra's workshop isn't... not that I've ever played with people who could afford either lol.
Well luckily for you Commander doesn't have a banned list.
I fully admit I love playing Troll Decks...but I also don't care about actually winning. I just want to enjoy the game and make it a whole lot more difficult than it should be. I want annoying to deal with constant pressure over "wait til I draw my game ending combo the whole deck is built around!".
The problem with Lutri is not what it does but what it is. It is essentially saying that red/blue decks start the game with an extra card in hand. But my boy needs to be freed for the 99
The 99 or the command zone would be fine I think
In the companion zone, Lutri would be essentially more required and ubiquitous than Sol Ring
I don't think I've talked to anyone that thinks the Lutri shouldn't be legal in the 99 or as the commander. Whenever I've played games against people who ask the table if its okay if they have a Lutri in their deck but not as a companion everyone is always totally fine with it.
@@as95ms98 But it would be nice to not have to ask. Just in case there's a person that says no.
@@as95ms98 Yeh I think they just want the banlist to be as concise and consistent and easy to understand as possible, and they're theoretically only sacrificing a few things to maintain that (Lutri in the 99, or braids/rofellos)
I always like to remind people that prior to Ikoria Commander explicitly disallowed any kind of sideboard and it was WotC that insisted on carving out an exception for Companions even though you still couldn’t make most of them work anyway. It was a bad call and they should simply undo it and free Lutri.
11:28 - Trivia time! "Stax" was actually born from the 2003 $T4KS Vintage deck, known as "The Four Thousand Dollar Solution". That original deck ran eight of the Power Nine alongside four copies of Smokestack.
Wow, that's clever
It's always confused me that Library of Alexandria is banned but Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale is still legal it makes no sense if were going off of price
And Mishra's Workshop too. I run it in my artifact deck and get eye rolls every time I drop it lol
@@endersbladeI always forget Shops is actually legal. Pretty insane honestly lol
I mean they didn’t ban all of the power 9, so other cards like that surprise you?
@Morphling92 yes...they literally did...unless you mean "did"
Edit: You're right. I honestly always forget that timetwister is a part of the power nine, and Library is the unofficial 10th slot
@@sambrown9475 Timetwister is power 9 and is legal in commander
Not many people know this, but the initial name for the "Stax" deck in Vintage was not derived from the card Smokestack, but rather it was the acronym "$T4KS," which stood for "The Four Thousand Dollar Solution."
At the time of its creation, the Boogeyman decks of the format included Gro-A-Tog, a spell-heavy aggro-control deck that usually won off the back of Psychatog, and Long.dec, more commonly known nowadays as Storm. Stax had a favorable matchup against both of these decks, and it cost approximately $4000 to build at the time.
This is probably a longshot, but I've been doing a fair bit of research on early-magic vintage and there's a lot less information out there on the 90's and early 2000's than there is about more modern metagames. Were you around for that time, or was there somewhere you read about stuff like this?
Yeah, saying that the banlist is basically for casual, to avoid degen games... but every game of higher lvls of play, not even cedh, is won through degen combos. Banlist does nothing, its just house rules
Ban list keeps prime time from being there....
Say you think infinite combos are ‘Degen’ without saying infinite combos are ‘degen’
@LadleLoverDS i use combos, i dont use turn 3 combos that are uninteractive. One is degen, the other isnt
@syndicate5357 prime time isn't busted, not anymore. It's just strong, and if people ran land destruction, it is very easily interacted with
@@LadleLoverDSdo you think you have it?
Recurring Nightmare is really hard to remove if the person playing it understands priority. Since returning it to hand is part of the cost and you have priority when the stack is empty, it's gonna be hard to remove unless the recurring nightmare player misplays and plays another spell before activating it
Still you can remove everything else required for it to work.
There are plenty of cards that require instant speed interaction to stop. Like, you need a counterspell or you just lose. I think recnight would be just fine in the current state of the format. Along with most of the bans. Powercreep is real and things that were scary 15 years ago are just 'meh' nowadays.
@@jgroen5545 "it's not a problem if you play blue"
@@Its109TheGamer you miss my point. There are plenty of really good or game winning cards you can only interact with when they are on the stack (some of which require a lot less or even no setup at all, contrary to this). Why single this one out for a ban?
@@jgroen5545 I singled it out because PK undervalued why it was banned in the first place. I would like it unbanned as well, but we both know that's not gonna happen
tbh when you described your "Orc army" card and said it shows you fighting "back the forces of darkness", the flavor and lore police almost kicked down my door. youre representing the Orc army which infact fights for the darkness and are enemies to the light.
Vince is fighting the orc army
The Power 9 and entire reserved list need to be reprinted. Screw speculators and people who only have the cards to make money off them. Also reprints don't fuck over older card value. Anyone claiming that it would, is only holding the cards for money reasons not to actually play with them.
i do think cards banned for political reasons like invoke prejudice should be mechanically reprinted under different names/art. the mechanics of invoke prejudice are just good
@@dbldekr nah i want to make my opponents suffer.
Honestly of those banned for this reason Invoke is the only one that's actually any good.
@@toctheyounger Crusade has actually seen some decent play in mono white decks. I was actually looking to grab one for a rebels tribal deck since its a cheap way to buff some really mediocre creatures. Its basically just the white version of bad moon
@@aidanquiett668 fair, but now that flowering of the white tree exists there isn't really a reason to play it.
@@toctheyounger true. stuff like cleanse feels like a pr stunt rather than actual cultural sensitivity
I’ve lost to Tolarian Academy decks on turn 1. I’ve never lost to a Gaea’s Cradle deck before turn 3.
Very fair.
I wish academy was unbanned. It's so broken
Cradle should still be ban I agree it's quite op as well
Counterpoint about coalition victory: it is quite likely that any instant speed interaction will nullify the effect. As you need both all land types and all colors among creatures you control.
There are some exceptions but for it to "win out of nowhere" I think it would have to be kinda fragile when cast. For instance, you could cast it on turn five with a Jodah, Archmage Eternal using that new leyline from MKM that you started the game with. However, an opponent wouldn't only need a counterspell to interact they could use any number of permanent removal cards that are popular to play. I still think coalition victory would be a fine unban
All colors among creatures no less, can't have multiple planeswalkers out to fulfill the requirement it has to be creatures. Definitely should be legal still since while not every deck plays countermagic basically every deck can run creature removal. Can compare it to something like ad nauseam that is legal and ad nauseam does just win on resolution without needing to jump through all the hoops of coalition victory.
Definitely agree. I think the new leyline is very questionable for coalition, may make it a touch too consistent, but I think that an 8 mana sorcery that has multiple points of interaction and otherwise does nothing is totally fine. I'd rather someone play this card and win the game then Cyclonic and have all us replay our last 2 turns.
Cyclonic can be fine. It's a one sided board wipe that can be used to take out at least one player, if not all, when played right, and at the very least will give the caster huge advantage. But "balanced" board wipes? That's just a pain@@eewweeppkk
@@Rc1136Darman1 I'd rather have a card that literally wins the game for somebody because they met a certain goal than have wasted the last 20 minutes of the game and the next 10 minutes of the game playing the same thing.
Prophet of Kruphix was very much a "does it stick? ok, cool, I'm winning on either the next person's turn or one turn after"
Honestly though, an instant win is better than the alternative. Im not going to win because i didnt build optimally (or just built poorly) but i still gotta remind everyone that im untapping and can flash in creatures
It wasn't really an instant win tho, it was more like a free Time Walk on every opponents upkeep, so long as the creatures you played kept drawing you more cards, you would just accrue a massive amount of value and do it by playing the game on other people's turns, which was annoying.
LOL My first commander deck, Ezuri Price of Progress, had to immediately remove Prophet of Kruphix because they just banned it, the card was fine it saved people financially on buying a Teferi and Seedborn Muse for the same effect.
Classic argument: Dies to Doomblade ;p
@@mr.mammuthusafricanavus8299 It doesn't exactly die to doomblade... maybe if you play it out into open removal mana... but if they have to wait to untap to deal with it, then you immediately get your value.
Meanwhile I just cut it from one of my Modern decks because it's just not that good... 😂
Balance is banned for the wrong reason. When it's played properly, Balance doesn't make the game 'equal': you can just play a lot of artifacts, or strong creatures. The reason Balance should be banned, is because it doesn't exile itself on resolution, which means it can be abused very easily.
The same should apply to all non-exiling Time Warp effects
i kind of wish they did renamed reprints with new art for some of the cards like Invoke Prejudice just so these old bits of card design aren't lost forever
I agree. It's a cool card that should still get to see some play.
Sadly, that's not possible. IP is on the Reserved List, so it can't be actually or functionally reprinted.
@@ospero7681well technically the card doesnt exist anymore
Yeah I agree
Cuz some of them have interesting effects
@@noehonegger4624 down the memory hole it goes.
My reason for being 'fine' with Coalation Victory (13:09) is that, at best, it a 3 card combo (Commander, lay-line, and spell), for at best 8 mana in one turn (Can easily be 13 if you need to cast commander, or even 18 if you need the layline), that has to resolve with all three cards going off without a hitch . Meanwhile there plenty of 2 card combo with less interactions that cost way less that are legal in Commander. The classic Demonic Consultation + Thassa's Oracle combo require at least one of your opponents to have a counter spell, otherwise you win instantly for a black and two blue. You cant even kill Thassa in this combo, since it an ETB, where you can easily kill the creature on the board that allowing Coalation victory.
Yeah best you can do is stifle the triggered ability of oracle, but how many people are running stifle effects in EDH not many. I think you meant to say a black and 2 blue too since consult is B and oracle UU.
@@dark_rit Thanks for noticing the incorrect mana. I fix it on the og post.
Turn 3 Win with Coalition Victory: Leyline of the Guildpact, Bloom Tender, Any 3 Lands, Coalition Victory. There are ways to even speed it up beyond that. Plus there is an abundance of redundancies for basically every component that still set up rather consistent/easy turn 5 or 6 wins. Prismatic Omen, Dryad of the Illysian Grove, Nylea's Presence as redundancies for the "All Basic Land Types" condition (not to mention that even fetching 2 Tri-lands easily provides all 5 Basic Land Types). Then there is stuff like Fallaji Wayfarer and Transguild Courier that make getting a permanent of all colors easy. We have tutors like Beseech the Mirror that can put Leyline of the Guildpact directly into play for the Bargain. Bloom Tender's mana acceleration has redundancies with Faeburrow Elder and to a lesser extent with Jegantha the Wellspring in the command zone. They are also now a bunch of free counterspells with Force of Will, Force of Negation, Pact of Negation, Fierce Guardianship. There are also a bunch of good/viable tutors now.
Like, if you actually wanted to build that deck, it is SO EASY to accomplish now. Arguably dozens of times easier than when Coalition Victory was banned. Sure, there are other combos can win just as quickly, but few of them have so many points of redundancy and so little opportunity cost to add into a deck. Plus, if someone blocks the combo, you don't straight up lose the game on a countered Coalition Victory like you would with a Stifled Thassa's Oracle + Demonic Consultation combo. You can just Eternal Witness or regrowth (or the dozens of other cards that do the same thing) to get back the pieces. You can even just play a completely standard 5 color good stuff strategy that tries to win by spamming card value with how pushed multi-colored card design has been within the last decard, and it all would be viable within the deck because cards like Dryad of the Illysian Grove, Leyline of the Guildpact, Bloom Tender, Fallaji Wayfarer, etc are just good cards in their own right so you aren't just playing random jank, with Coalition Victory being a random "Do I win?" button inside the deck.
It just requires so little effort to make it viable inside of a 5 color deck. Many of the cards that make it work best are just cards you are likely to want to be playing in a 5 color deck anyways. The addition of Coalition Victory just makes those decks have a top deck that can just instantly win the game sometimes without them even needing to do anything particularly special. You will often just naturally have the board state that meets the conditions for Coalition Victory so it becomes a 1 card "combo" off the top of your deck.
Edit - Forgot that Coalition Victory requires creatures of all colors, so it would also need something like Fallaji Wayfarer or Transguild Courier. I suppose that makes it slightly slower and easier to disrupt, but my point still largely stands that it could just be put into certain 5 color decks as a "I drew this card and just instantly won" sort of thing, because there are 5 color decks that will just naturally have a board state with all basic land types and creatures of all colors even with only 3-4 lands in play and 2-3 creatures in play. And at that point it is just a 1 card "Win the game" if the table goes shields down not expecting you to top deck it.
@Morkins324 the problem with that is that coalition victory is not the only oops i win in the format there are plenty of 2 card infinites in commander where one of the pieces is a commander (Heliod sun crowned+ Walking ballista being a big one) where the other piece basically becomes an i win button
Splinter twin is easier to win with than coalition victory.
Tarmogoyf was never the best green creature. It was, however, the best BLUE creature for a very long time.
My favorite part about goyf is that it was played in like every color combo. Bant Countertop Goyf, Simic Next Level Blue, The Rock, Abzan Pod, Domain Zoo, RUG Delver, Temur Tarmo Twin, 4c Death Shadow, Abzan Midrange, Naya Midrange, Sultai Traverse the Ulvenwald, and so many more
@@janmelantu7490 as a new player, youre speaking chinese to me.
Is upheaval not the “signpost” banned card for MLD
so i had a thought, whats worse: someone casting sway of the stars or someone casting worldfire?
not arguing the ban on Sway, im just curious if an unbanned card thats sorta similar to sway has the same vibe around the table.
Sway of the Stars.
At least with Worldfire the only thing I need to do as the caster is setup some method so each of my opponent's on their turn takes 1 damage. Like an easy way you can seal a game with Worldfire is Chandra Awakened Inferno. As she creates an emblem for each opponent that deals 1 damage to them at the beginning of their turn. But there is other methods to do that, like if your commander is Zurgo Bellstrker and you floated 10 mana, you could cast Worldfire then cast Zurgo who is a 2/2 for R.
With Sway of the Stars you would need to do that but for 7 life for each opponent. Its like if you armageddon the board, but you don't have a way to end the game.
Mass land destruction shouldn't ever be banned. It's the one thing keeping green and land decks in check.
Interestingly stax as a name came about because in leetspeak when vintage, then called type 1, made a stax deck the acronym made for it was $T4KS or The 4K solution as that's how much it cost roughly at the time to build the deck back when power 9, workshops, etc. were far more affordable than they are now. That was also the time that moxen and such were banned in EDH when a mox jet and such from unlimited ran a few hundred at most with the cheapest being emerald if memory serves though now revised dual lands cost more on average than jewelry back then.
They should ban all of the reserved list cards by default.
So how long until roaming throne is banned?
I too am sick to death having the Lutri conversation. Also im glad you came around on Coalition Victory....I had a casual extended deck with a long time ago and it was literally the least satisfying win that ive ever had in magic.
Vince: yeah I didn't get much sleep last night. Anyways I think Karakas would be fine in commander. I feel like he's overlooking that Karakas removes an opponents commander, every turn, for free.
Nope. I think that's fine. Wasteland the Karakas, or play without a Commander. :)
Damn, I respect that take. I do agree that even in a casual setting land destruction should be more common.@@PleasantKenobi
Personally the bigger reason i see with karakas i bounce my etb commander every turn for free
You're making me play umbris every turn without paying or adding to commander tax? ok then.
Prime Time is my favorite card of all time. My group let's me rule 0 one in my mazes end deck every once in a while. Love my dude! Great video!
Would love Rofellos coming off. Seems silly that its on there with some of the other stuff I've seen.
yeah, I think it would be strong, but for example Kinnan is probably stronger.
@@juliand.1147Kinnan is strong, but all Rofellos cares is that you make landdrops and it's probably a deck with only forests. Having 6 mana on turn 3 consistently because it would be your commander is pretty damn strong and if you add in ways to play more lands it can get sillier still. If it was only played as a card in the 99 yeah not too strong and certainly worse than sol ring, but sol ring has deserved to be banned forever.
@@dark_rit I can see that Rofellos is stronger when you don't tune the 99, as making use of his ability is easier. On the other hand almost all Kinnan decks include very many ramp pieces that work with Kinnan. I think that such a tuned Kinnan deck is stonger than Rofellos by a good margin. Firstly because Kinnan has draw in the form of the activated ability. Secondly because Kinnan has blue, thereby counters and just more options for cards.
Also yes Sol Ring and Mana Crypt totally should be banned.
@@juliand.1147 As someone who did play with Rofellos when he was a commander, he was very strong for his day. Also your not factoring in one of the things about Rofellos. He is budget friendly and would more likely be played over Kinnan by casual players. You can realistically build a good Rofellos deck for easily under a $100, and that is not factoring the price of Rofellos himself or the forests.
Plus since commander is a casual format, the player of a tuned Kinnan deck would be very likely asked to tune down their deck or swap to a different deck. Rofellos is that but on a budget.
As once you reach about 6 lands, you can cast most spells with Rofellos that are 12 mana or less. Like if you cast a rampant growth on turn 2, you can bring down a Blightsteel Colossus on turn 5 with Rofellos, assuming you made each of your mana drops.
EDH should have restricted banlist for commanders like dual commander.
Rofellos is fine in the 99 but very broken as a commander.
I didn't know a reverse soul patch existed but man you pull it off well
I feel like Dockside, Bowmaster, and The One Ring have the same play pattern as Primeval Titan.. people trying to steal, clone, copy the trigger, reanimate etc.
True the main difference is that each of these cards is providing a massive amount of equity for wotc right now so they won't ban them anytime soon
Put 'em on the list, but remove the list for cedh
@@Hakaze See. I like this idea. I think cedh needs its own list, 'cause the differences between casual play and cedh are so great that they're practically completely different formats.
The One ring is dangerous. I've killed myself with it before😂
@@Sona_Buvelleyou can make a separate banlist and say it's for cEDH, but that doesn't mean cEDH players will use it. Pretty much all cEDH players have said they would ignore any attempt to separate the format and just follow whatever the main banlist is. Because cEDH isn't a format, anymore than tournament Modern and kitchen table Modern are different formats, it's just playing the format in a competitively optimal way.
The very-real thing you're describing where the real ban list isn't the ban list but rather some vague and inconsistent idea of what's obnoxious is one of the things that made it so hard to get into commander for me (despite many attempts ~10 years ago as casual Magic was shifting to 100% commander). I've barely played Magic since then and not entirely sure why I watched this video but I found it very validating!
My long time friend has recently built OG avacyn and Armageddon is a main stay. Is it rough? Absolutely, do we grin and bear it? For the most part 🤷♂️. He really only plays it with me and a couple of other buddies to save others from the feels bad. It seems to have been working so far for him and it really makes us work for it.
I don't think Armageddon is a very good example to use in the context of PK's video. People don't not play Armageddon because it's toxic, they don't play it because it's not particularly good in Commander. The classic Armageddon play pattern of "rush cards out on turns 1-3 then make it so no one can respond" simply isn't a viable strategy in EDH. Nevermind that Armageddon doesn't have enough redundant cards to make this strategy effective. Your friend's deck seems like a totally reasonable case, and isn't that gross precisely because it a) will win the game in short order, and b) requires a lot more setup.
The actually toxic example I would use that matches PK's point would be Ruination, which actually is a disgusting card that isn't played more for social reasons.
I'm from the future! In Sept 2024, the banlist will be a VERY touchy issue......just trust me
personally, an 8 mana sorcery wincon is perfectly fine. they unbanned wildfires a ways back, unban the others
Thanks Vince. I play Obliterate and Jokulhaups. I hope you're at my table
i will say part of the issue with recurring nightmare is that it is a bitch and a half to actually interact with because bouncing it is a part of the cost to activate the ability,
Most EDH players don't actually understand how the rules work so they don't get why Nightmare is banned lol.
I mean, Sensei's Divining Top is similarly agitating to interact with - and it is easily one of the most irritating cards to play against because of how it creates exponentially more decision points in a game.
@MadMage86 the thing with top is that in most decks top is just annoying rather than an overpowered card. Top does have powerful synergies but Recurring nightmare does more for more decks because almost every black deck would love that kind of effect to be able to repeatedly get value creatures and fatties back from the yard. In effect Recurring nightmare can help close the game by itself top is outside of combos mostly just time consuming
You can still remove everything else required for it to work.
@@spearhead2054 which unless it is mass exile they can just get back as soon as they have a creature. in order to deal with a recurring nightmare you need to destroy or exile all creatures hope none of them leave tokens and then destroy nightmare ore rip it from their hand after they bounce it.
To start I love you and highly enjoy watching your content. I was watching the video and my wife was listening and asked why I was watching Winnie the Pooh talk about mtg and now I can’t not hear it. No hate just thought it was funny and wanted to share
I have a 5C Matters deck with Ramos, Dragon Engine as a commander. Coalition Victory would be so incredibly easy to win with and anti-climactic in my Ramos deck that I wouldn't want to put it in even if it WAS legal. The card would be unbelievably lame in 5C commander decks.
You say incredibly easy but it's an 8 mana sorcery that can be interacted with by somebody killing a creature that has a color you need or simply countering it. Color identity doesn't do anything for it so not even Ramos helps get the condition. A swords on your only red pip or any counterspell and you've blown most of your turn doing nothing.
I think Commander should just ban the Companion mechanic and allow Lutri back as a legal card.
Even partner commanders still count towards your 100, and companions should too.
Man I’d love a functional reprint of Invoke prejudice. New art and change of name.
Just play the original. The fact that it`s banned from official play doesn`t mean it`s banned in your casual play. The sjw-bans which Invoke was part of didn`t make sense for half the cards anyway. I`m totally on board with not printing stuff like Invoke nowadays but it`s simply a piece of it`s time that in terms of functionality inside the MtG-context is still only represented on 2 cards total the other beeing Nethervoid
@@zirilan3398exactly. Banning "jihad" and "crusade" just for the words... is absolutely ridiculous.
Stop hiring "sensitivity readers"
@@zirilan3398 No, they all make a lot of sense as to why they're banned
@@zirilan3398 alright boys, here is the racist
@@Duskstone89 so why isn`t Hellfire on he list as well?
Great video Vince, if you were on the rules comity for a day and you could ban one card and un ban another what would you pick?
4 and 5 colour commanders/decks are fine in my eyes i feel like part of the distain is that the commanders that fit in those colours are too common (except for partners which kind of gets around what i said with a massive combination of potential 2+2 colour pairings) breya, saskia and yidris are the only commanders in their 4 colour pairings which is boring because you know the exact game plan that deck is going for turn 1.
Plenty of 5 colour options. oodles of 3 colour options. 9, 4 colour options
An 8 mana green sorcery that just kills people is like, a turn 3 win condition.
This was an excellent walkthrough. I see so many people hating on the banlist without understanding the rationalizations behind most of the entries (and omissions). Nearly all of your reasoning was exactly how I understand it. And glad to see some love for Gifts, I'd love to see that off the banlist for LftL setups.
I will say that I don't think Tabernacle is a problem, since you mentioned it a couple times. I do own one so I guess I'm biased, but I also own a library and I think library makes way more sense to keep banned. Library can go into a TON of decks, basically every control deck I've ever built would want it, and that create a P2W situation. Tabernacle is a great card, but it's also pretty niche by comparison, plus it's mechanically stax, which people rarely play unless they're playing cEDH or nearly so. So it only creates bad P2W vibes for people who are largely outside the target audience of the banlist, and only for certain decks.
The deck was named $T4KS, an acronym for "The Four Thousand Dollar Solution" - not after smokestack
I've never heard that before
@@Noobgamer0325 it's knowledge from the dim and distant past
@@Noobgamer0325that’s cause he’s wrong. Literally never heard a soul say this in my life.
@@ryanbolson23 just google it before saying someone is wrong.. the top results when i googled "origin of stax mtg" say it's $T4KS but multiple results further down point to the card Smokestack as the origin of the name. conclusion is either explanation can be correct depending on who you ask.
Vince! Hope you come to Las Vegas October 25-27 this year! Definitely gonna be a blast!
The commander play list is a joke. What is and more importantly, what isn’t ban is laughingly inconsistent. So my playgroup just doesn’t follow it.
We kinda just throw random jank and bulk into a deck and grind a few games when we aren’t playing legacy or modern. It’s an amazing time when you play commander how it’s suppose to be played. Causally, with random bulk you have lying around. When WOTC started to monetize and capitalize on commander is when I stopped playing it as much. It really is ruining the format and to a certain extent the game.
Braids! Now THAT is my Jam. I had all the Book Packs from back then. 7 Boosters and the Novel for the Cycle. Chainer, Laqautus's Champion, Braids, and Kamahl were my most prized cards.
I agree regarding the instant wins, I had felidar guardian in my Oloro life gain deck resolved it once then took it out as it took all the fun out of playing EDH
It's not an instant win
It literally has to sit around for a turn
Ante cards were banned not because they don't work anymore, but because WOTC realize it classified the game legally as gambling. WOTC didn't want to get into legal trouble for stuff like allowing underage gambling.
For some reason ante was a popular thing in a lot of games in the early 90s. Pogs had ante rules where you kept the ones you flipped. Marbles is an older version of it. The problem is that the kids who were playing the game didn't like losing their stuff and it caused a lot of problems on the playground. A lot of schools banned playing pogs for that reason. It's bad optics that kids are getting into fights at school because of your game.
As for invoke prejudice, i just like the card effect, if ur gona ban it, give me a new one, don't care the card is banned, i don't want the unique effect banned. Blue tax card are amazing and i love them, racism sucks and i don't love it, it shouldn't be that hard to find a middle ground, but somehow it is
Proxy one with art that isn't the KKK. *shrug*
@@PleasantKenobi Chad move
Sometimes it’s better to let things go than to try and save a stinker.
There are at least 100 better blue cards to pick from so far. Maybe more.
@PleasantKenobi that would be cool if the card name itself wasn't banned. The impotence isn't on me. It's on wotc and and the rules committee
@alexandercastleberry480 the only thing that is a stinker is the name and art. Wotc has the power to print new cards with new art. I'm litterally asking wotc to print a card, that i would buy, that already exists. How am i the irrational one
I forgot about how I wanted Golos in my cube but it was always a little too expensive. Now it's down to about a dollar. Thanks for the reminder Kenobi!
There really are cards that SHOULD be on the banlist, but aren’t because of…dumb reasons. Meanwhile some cards are on the banlist when they shouldn’t be 😂 Though I may be biased for my Pirates
You can have hullbreacher but then I'm gonna play mine and cast wheel of fortune
I think the biggest problem with the Commander banlist is that there's only one. EDH and cEDH have grown into such wildly different formats that they need to be treated as such, and the ban list for both being unified doesn't support that.
There's also a number of cards on the ban list that weren't banned for the reasons addressed in the video. For example, Golos' ban was pushed as being because he was the "generic 5 color commander" and was being seen too much. Now we're just seeing people grab Kenrith and put him at the helm of the same decks. I think there's an argument for Golos remaining banned, though I'm personally not convinced by it and think he should be removed.
Honestly, I think the bigger problem with EDH is Rule 0. It's a crutch that gets relied on far too often, especially in response to some very valid points that should actually be addressed by the RC.
Edh and Cedh should have seperate banlists
I agree, that would fix a lot of problems, but I can also see it causing new ones. It would be a fun thought experiment to start with and see how people feel about it before setting anything in stone
I also agree with you there
cEDH is just EDH played to the most of a decks potential. If you ban EDH cards, you ban cEDH cards.
cEDH isn't a format, it's a philosophy of play. It follows the rules of Commander, but with an agreement between all the players to play as competitively as possible.
So it will always share the same ban list.
Myself and most CEDH players disagree with the idea of having separate ban lists for one reason. If you separate the formats you’ll actually be left with three formats, CEDH, casual EDH and the competitive version of casual EDH. Competitive EDH is built on the idea of playing EDH at the highest power level.
We don’t think of it as a separate format, just going into a game of commander with the expectation of everyone playing through most powerful decks possible. If there was a separate banlist people would still want to play the “casual” banlist at the highest level, at what point would you need to split it into a third banlist?
My Chulane deck wants Limited Resources so bad. If i could have one card of the banned list I'd be sweating between that and Leovold back as my commander.
I insist Emrakul is not too good. In most respects, it's the same as Ulamog; Annihlator 6 is not that different than Annihlator 4 when there's a 30% increase in cost, their body size is proportional to their mana value, they both blank a certain amount of removal with a bit of overlap on stuff they blank (Blasphemous Act) and stuff they don't (Cyclonic Rift, Farewell), they both cost about triple what it would cost to get their cast trigger from a sorcery with the same effect, what, are we banning her for *flying?*
Yes, I get the extra turn is functionally haste (and gets even nastier if you have an outside haste source) but you spent 15 bloody mana for her, you'd damn well expect to get value out of such an investment. And if you cheat her, as laid out above, she's not that much better than Ulamog.
The banlist is a fossil. It's worried about stuff like Coalition Victory and Biorhythm when Thassa's Oracle and Demonic Consultation is a valid two card 3 mana line. And since they unbanned Worldfire, a card that grinds my teeth for turning the game into super sudden death, I've been beating the drum to let me play the biggest, dumbest idiot in Magic to try and win with good old fashion fisticuffs. Some people in my group tried to argue that it opens up infinite turn lines from bouncing the Emmy but come on as if they don't already just recur time warp with less resources.
Break her free from the moon already. Also give me Recurring Nightmare you cowards.
I'd even argue that as a commander, both Kozileks are so much better it's not even close.
@@scaredycat3146Great Distortion is the best colorless commander
nah. She's still too good because she effectively is an instant wincon. There are so many ways of bouncing her to your hand and consistently casting her each turn that you win the game simply by playing her. No player should threaten to win the game simply by playing their commander in a casual game. And your point about rift or farewell is moot because if the person casts her, someone cyc rift it, they just play it on their extra turn. And farewell is a sorcery so good luck having a turn when the person who plays emrakul takes infinite turns.
@TheLeftistOwl There are *way* easier ways to take infinite extra turns. And if you're casting Cyclonic Rift on the turn she's being played with a stocked extra turn, that's a skill issue. Also consider playing Gerrad's Hourglass Pendant if you're having trouble with infinite turn opponents, there's better counterplay available now than from the 8 month window she was legal to the point she was banned.
There are a ton of on-sight commanders in this game, and most of them don't cost 15 mana.
@@TheLeftistOwl There are shitloads of better commanders for winning the game on the spot, you're 15 years too late for Emrakul to be a busted card in the CZ, lmao.
I dont agree with the invoke prejudice example. The whole idea of the card that its a prejudice card. The artwork perfectly captures the Essence of it. To me, its just another example of policing speach. And we can see where it leads to, that modern cards cant show a bit of skin on women, but show men half naked.
Its the hypicricy that gets me.
You are incredibly uneducated then.
The card was made by a literal nazi (self proclaimed) and had a nazi dogwhistle as it's internal id all while being named that, depicting the kkk and having an effect that makes a colour worse.
Also magic still shows plenty of skin on women, but why would it matter unless you only see women as objects, and a shit ton of guys are completely clothed.
There is no policing of speech happening, it's just people not wanting to deal with racists, misogynist and any other kind of bigot.
Also you spelt hypocrisy wrong, you also clearly don't know what hypocrisy means as the thing you described would be a double standard
There shouldn't be a banlist at this point, there's already enough degen 2 card combos running around. If someone can play a card that is problematic for the whole table and 3 other people combined can't deal with it then maybe they should run more interaction.
Should ante cards be banned? What about Lutri? No banlist is not a viable situation, but I agree that it ought to be more limited than it is
@@bingus2464 Lutri never should've been banned and I don't care about ante cards, if someone is doing degen stuff now with the current banlist i'm just picking up my stuff after and finding a different pod. Ante cards being banned or unbanned doesn't change that.
You are missing the point, lutri isnt banned because it is "degenerate" same with ante, they are banned cards because they fundamentally do not work with the rules of the format. I agree that things shouldn't be banned for power, but Magic is a very complex game with a long history that cannot be consolidated into a single format, thus the banlist must exist.
I think you are missing my point and we should just stop talking to each other because it will just result in a shit flinging contest, have a nice day.@@bingus2464
I mean, lutri works perfectly fine in the rules. Just So happens to work out to an auto-include, but nothing in the rules prevents it from being playable. Ante is different as "playing for ante" doesnt exist and/or is literally illegal
I still miss playing "mono black Golos", just playing board wipes and sacrifices while I use him to find Cabal Coffers and Urborg. I did have Cascading Cataracts and Crystal Quarry too so I could start trying to rip big with his activated ability.
I wish they would ban Demonic Consultation.
Then people would just play Tainted Pact. They already play Tainted Pact Lol Plus, banning Consultation doesn't answer the other degenerate ways to empty your library. Wouldn't banning Thassa's Oracle be better?
@@Sona_Buvelle Yeah, Tainted Pact is pretty broken too. The other ways at least take more mana or set up, though.
@@Bloody-Butterfly I mean, in a high-power or cedh game, the extra 1 or 2 mana usually doesn't matter. I will concede that outside of U/B, ya usually need more cards to pull it off. They gotta work harder for the same ender.
Side note: I hope no one is actyally playing Oracle Consultation at casual tables, 'cause that's just scummy af. We can all agree on that Lol
I would still argue that if we were gonna ban any part of that combo, just ban the Oracle. Ya know? I think it's cleaner that way.
I'ma be real, I never played during the "Banned as Commander" days of the list. We should still bring it back.
23:00 4 color decks sound cool on paper, but with all the mana fixing that's available, it really does just allow you to play all the best staples in every color for no real downside. Especially now with 4+ color commanders being stronger than they used to be (which is to say they used to be almost unplayable)
I think it improves game variety to play mono and dual colored decks. I don't hate 4+ color decks though, they're cool, but they need a particularly unique theme to not just be "every staple in the format.deck"
I agree - selecting 1-3 colors makes for some decisions on what abilities your deck wants to have access to and what ones it's choosing to forego. If I play Green/Red I'm going to have access to all of green's mana ramp and its card draw effects, and I'll have red's direct damage and burn, but I won't have the kind of hard removal generally reserved for white and black. That's a choice, and I get advantages in simplicity (and cheapness) of mana base while someone going for more colors will have to make sacrifices in the reliability of their mana and probably their wallet.
4+ color getting easier just kind of means decks get to do whatever they want, and it's for this reason that I never ever want to see Golos come off the ban list. That card ramps and can color-fix just for showing up, and doesn't even cost colored mana to do it. One could build Golos as a two-color deck in (say) Dimir colors, and run Cascading Cataracts (which you tutor for) to give you the five colors to use his ability, and that's that. Maybe you splash a third color a little.
One other underrated thing about the otter is the fact companions go into your hand. I have a deck that converts hand size/ card draw into damage. If i could always guarantee a way to get a +1 card in my hand, and i dont have to change anything about my deck to be able to do this? Would be so insane
About Ionna: I used to build my decks with colorless options to remove her. Her being there got me think harder about my deck comp
the talk about Lutri / companion in commander I didn't realize that it didn't count towards your 100 cards. I was under the impression kinda like partners you have your companion + commander and then 98 card deck. As for Lutri itself, I think its a fun design and I would prefer running Lutri over Dualcaster Mage in one of my decks and copy shit.
I don't think it's so much about having an extra card in your deck, as it's about having an extra card essentially in your hand from the start of the game.
Bear in mind, Lutri requires him being cast to copy a spell, Dualcaster doesn't.
Companion goes against the design philosophy of Commander. Commander is supposed to be exactly 100 singleton cards with 1-2 legendary creatures representing the color identity of the rest of the deck. Companions are a 101st card that adds an extra deck building restriction to use them as the 101st card. Lutri's rule was to conveniently for Commander and was blanket banned from commander, meanwhile the U/W Bird whose rule is to have 20 extra cards in the deck is specifically banned as a companion (it can still be the commander or in the 99).
Justice for Lutri, banned as companion is the status they deserve
Interesting that your video on this topic released the same day as the Eternal Glory podcast discussed it.
The EDH Ban List is just cards that /can/ do well in Timmy-level playgroups, but would either be slow/clunky in higher-level play.
Or, in the case of Flash, just being as degenerate as ThOracle/Demonic Consul in cEDH - a completely different format that deserves a separate ban list.
Cards like Crusade and Invoke Prejudice aren't problems. I would run Crusade solely because I like the Elspeth Dual Deck art. Just rename most of those cards and make some new art. Invoke Prej is just a really good stax piece.
More interaction with insurection than Coalition victory? Any removal spell at instant speed can stop Coalition victory from winning depending on what creatures they have in play. Qlot of decks have sac outlets, but ALOT more have at least some interaction.
Commander didn't become the largest of MTG formats by restsricting what players can do. The freedom is what has allowed the format to cultivate such a wide base, it's a format for anyone. Old cards, new cards, powerful cards, silly cards and whatever cards you have lying around even if that card is an Armageddon.
When I heard about commander I was immediately drawn to the Legacy approach to what cards were allowed. If there was an extensive ban list, babysitting people, in an unsancitoned, non-competitive format I probably wouldn't have ever bothered building my first deck.
I think the allowed freedom and rule 0 for what we don't like is easier than banning things some players don't enjoy. It's a lot easier to say "We don't like mass land destruction" as a group than for a player to argue "I should be able to play X card" when it's on the ban list.
I think it would help to have a LCG banlist (for all LCGs, not those weird one-off lists for each store) that can be used a shorthand for games where you don’t want to spend an hour doing rule 0.
Then we could simplify rule 0 when playing commander with strangers to be “anything not on the LCG banlist is allowed” and then only spend time before game pre-clearing cards that are on that banlist.
Power level and deck budget just ends up being a huge shitshow unless you have a regular playgroup.
Also, to reiterate, I think unlike the normal banlist, this banlist would be much more flexible and include all cards which a reasonable person might object to. The intention here is to identify those risky cards (Thoracle, cheap tutors, MLD, Mana Crypt, etc.) so we can have a discussion about those specific cards and ignore the rest.
@@Dyllon2012
I think it's better left alone. Ban Mana Crypt? Sol Ring is arguably a significantly better card, ban that too?
Ban Thoracle but leave in Chain of Smog and Witherbloom? 2 cards, 4 mana that can easily win the game.
What about every other 2 card easy to assemble win con?
We don't have laws that say "you can't say rude things to other people". The people playing these cards know exactly what they are doing. No one has accidently put a thoracle/demonic consultation in their deck. Have some self control if you want people to want play with you.
Maybe I'm giving MTG players too much credit, maybe they are incapable self control and completely lack understanding of social contracts but I've never seen anyone tutor for a combo and then win and go "Oh I didn't know that curb stomping your precons was bad taste"
Fun story before Saharazad (pardon spelling) was added to the ban list I played it in a Jeskai “Comunism” deck (Hive Mind group hug) that ran a bunch of wish effects and spell copy effects for the sole reason to pull off the “longest” game of EDH of all time.
The idea of the deck was to get Hive Mind into play copy it ad many times as I could (I think I got to like 5) cast Shaharazad with a players can only cast at sorcery speed effect so the only spell to copy was Shasha, and then to in the sub games cast the wishes to pull the cards from the main game and do it all again, I think we got to 4 layers deep before we called it, needless to say I never did the math on it but I think that I could have kept a loop going by going up a layer and going back down, so the game would eventually end.
I disassembled the deck immediately afterwards but I did do it that one time, and I bought everyone pizza as an apology.
Super late to this but from the perspective of cedh gifts makes a big difference compared to intuition, you can assemble an underworld breach win combo with just gifts, with intuition you need to have 1 of the 4 combo pieces in hand. (Underworld Breach, Brain Freeze, Lion's Eye Diamond and Sevinne's Reclamation, regardless of which 2 of these 4 get sent to the graveyard if you have enough mana and a handful of other cards in your graveyard you can assemble a win) This may seem a bit specific but Breach combos are some of the most reliable ways to win for some of the best decks in the format.
Karakas is only banned because it can bounce your opponent's cards . If it was just a mono-white Sanctum of Eternity it would be fine.
Library of Alexandria is such a non-issue card. We literally have come to modern day with Biblioplex where for an extra 2 mana, you can either draw a card when at zero or seven cards in hand OR you can you put that card in your graveyard. Which Biblioplex does not see a lot of play.
Limited Resources is just a card that interacts horribly with multiplayer. It was always a problem when it was unbanned.
I love Prime Time, but yeah it was very abusable.
Prophet of Kruphix was very strong. You could actually wiggle out of stax locks with it as you were now breaking parity.
Oh hey Rofellos. I used to play him when he was legal. He was very strong as you could very easily ramp into ever bigger threats with him. Like a Darksteel Colossus by turn 6 with not even a single ramp spell being cast or a single mana rock, sooner if you did.
Sway of the Stars is like Worldfire adjacent. but the difference was it was easier to setup a play that let you kill off the table with Worldfire. While for Sway of the Stars you would need to be able to do 7 damage to each player as a follow-up.
I ran Sylvan Primordial. It was such a backbreaking card. Every deck that had green ran it when it was legal. It was Prime Time of its day.
Also I agree the banlist needs more cards on it, not less. If its meant to be a casual format, the power ceiling should be lowered, not kept the way it is.
library of alexandria is deceptively good. 2 mana is infinitely more than 0. it would be like comparing gitaxian probe to some 2 mana draw a card spell. its hard to explain how powerful it is because its been banned like forever so the majority of people havent seen it played, but its rough.
Karakas is banned because it can go in any deck and find uses. Bouncing opponents' stuff is just the floor "fair" use of it. If unbanned this scarce card would skyrocket in price while homogenizing the format.
Coalition Victory is weaker as printed than your suggested end step trigger. Coalition Victory checks on resolution once, were as your version would check on end step presumably multiple times. As you alternatively suggested, an upkeep trigger would be weaker, however, as you'd paint a big flag that says "Kill me."
Kinda agree about 4 color decks in constructed, but I do love them in draft because you really have to work for it!
I have one of the banned-for-sensitivity cards that got reprinted in a precon with new art, specifically the Elspeth vs Tezzeret version of Crusade. Other than it being a 2 mana anthem, I don't see what's wrong with that specific version and have permission to rule zero it into my monowhite soldiers.
I have no such objections about not being allowed to use my Tolarian Academy in Esper.
That one needs a functional reprint. They banned the OG so they don't have to worry about people playing 2 or 8 of the same thing.
@@data_abortTo be fair, instrad of a functional reprint there have been a few cards that are just better. Honor of the Pure is a less restrictive casting cost and is one sided. The more recent Flowering of the White Tree is also just better.
@@someguy1ification That's fair. I dunno why people want to play it. I have heard people say that they do or did tho.
Not in favor of rule 0 - not everyone is articulate enough to complain about degenerate play strategies, but some of them that have a community consensus on should ultimately see the ban hammer.
I think that the biggest role the banlist has in commander is to act as an additional safety valve to the self-policing present in the format.
I was always surprised that the first Vorinclex is not on the list, but on the other hand I never saw it in play.
The banlist is basically the RC saying to the community - "that's rude, you shouldn't do it to other players" in cases when it's not apparent.
IMO fastbond is banned because of crucible + strip mine, coming from a Lord Windgrace player, my record is 6 strip mines in a turn
That's a reasonable point. I guess my mind went to the "I'm having fun" not the "your not having fun". I feel ashamed haha. :p
I absolutely, unequivocally, disagree with the banning of Crusade.
There are 21 other cards with some variation of "Crusade" or "Crusader" in their names, it makes zero sense to ban that SPECIFIC card then leave the rest.
To an extent, I agree. The Tez vs Elsepth Crusade is perfectly fine for example.
One of my favorite troll decks that I played in 60 card casual games had a soft lock of Erayo and Arcane Laboratory. There's a reason why it shouldn't be in EDH. Yes, you can play around it, but boy is it an annoying card if it flips.
Woah woah, we just gonna gloss over the "Karakas would be fine"? That's a take that I want to see some more discourse on, cus that's wild imo
My rational, in short, is this: Fuck Your Commander.
@@PleasantKenobi Lol fair. But I'd still want to see a video or short going into more. Or at least see what Magic Twitter has to say.
@@PleasantKenobisquare up Vince
@@PleasantKenobi
You also advocated for shortening game times. Karakas being unbanned would absolutely make them longer. White is a VERY popular color in EDH, so you'd see it often and in numbers. Imagine not just having to recast your commanders, but also having to resolve all those triggers over and over again. Just one early game Karakas could potentially add 5 minutes to a game timer.And that's the "fair" usage. Imagine some one actually abusing Karakas to flicker their stuffs. And untapping it. Multiple. Times.
Taking a shot for Suris mentioning Meteor Golem
Wait wrong channel
Conspiracies are banned in legacy and vintage, it’s not that they just aren’t legal
Also important to remember, part of why Iona was banned was Painter's Servant being unbanned
Something that a lot of people forget is that Companion counts as sideboard, and sideboard only exists in Commander now just for Companion. Which nobody seems to talk about. That's why I kept making quips about the Rules Committee being bribed by WotC.
Balance+ Zuran orb+ mana rocks was the old school trick that control decks used.
How is Yawgmoth's Bargain banned, but Necropotence isn't? 😅 I mean, I get that the whole"only get your cards at your end step" powers it dien significantly, but still...
It changes everything though, like unless you had access to flash, the maximum amount of cards necro lets you hold at any point of time is 7. It might be a good 7, but is it as good as 30 from ad naus or 40 from peer into the abyss??
Yawg's Bargain is the signpost card for things like Necropotence and Ad Nauseam. You aren't really supposed to play those cards. I guess Griselbrand too, but it had to be banned because people still played it in low power metas.
great stuff, I haven't even seen some of those cards before! gifts ungiven banned seems reasonable given the options it can get
6:12 That "2009" mouth edit is gonna haunt my dreams into my retirement home.
Recurring Nightmare is also banned because it's almost impossible to interact with at all because the player retains priority after it enters the battlefield and returning it to your hand is part of the cost of the ability. Basically the only way to remove recurring nightmare as a problem is to counter spell it or remove it with a instant/ability *if* the player controlling it messes up and passes priority with it still in play. The rules committee has been pretty clear that they don't like cards that are extremely non-interactive in ways that railroad the lines of play of the person playing the card or reduce opponent agency and participation. It's not just that it's pretty broken, it's that RN is broken in ways that are ultimately *unfun* and it is powerful in ways that extremely *uninteresting* and rewards players with far to power for how simple it is.
I also think it's not that hard to actually win the game with it. Creating a massive army is not that hard, but you can also pay three mana to loop to extremely strong enter the battlefield or leave the battlefield abilities that only take a couple of triggers to kill the table. Looping Kokusho and gray merchant would create an game win very quickly just off the top of my head; and it wouldn't be that hard to create an infinite mana loop with it either.
So just imagine someone being able to generate an infinite mana loop using a card that you cannot interact with outside of counterspells.
Rules committee does not seem to know that by oracle text the activation cost is at sorcery speed, so you can't keep priority and activate it, the stack has to be empty. Card can be responded.
Surely it can create a huge amount of infinite loops (only during your turn), but there are so many of them in the format.
@@marcoameri9271 Not how that works. The activation is at sorcery speed (and it always has been), but once the Nightmare resolves, no one gets priority before the Nightmare's controller gets to do something else. If they're smart, that "something else" will be to activate the Nightmare's ability, and since returning it to your hand is part of the *cost* of that ability, not its resolution, it will be safely tucked away in its owner's hand by the time anyone else gets to do anything.
@@ospero7681 oh Yes absolutely, didn't thought about the fact that when it resolves stack is empty. I was thinking that maybe with a little self control and in a lower power deck, maybe the card isn't a win on the spot card. With an infinite mana combo there are also a huge amount of ways to end the game
@@marcoameri9271 Actually, you don't seem to know how priority works, how costs vs abilities work, or what exactly I said was. So I'll break it down for you:
That's both not how gaining, retaining, or passing priority works in relation to *casting a permanent spell*. You case the spell, it's on the stack, you pass priority to opponents in turn order. They respond to the spell in some way or they don't, but RN isn't in play yet as a permanent, it's countered or it resolves. If it resolves it comes into play and you received priority again immediately as the active player. If there are permanents in play that trigger abilities due to RN etb-ing, those go on the stack immediately; you are given priority first again after this happens as you are the active player, however obviously you can't activate RN until the stack has emptied. While that specific situation would create opportunities for opponents to interact with RN with permanent based removal, it's also the active player misplaying RN badly, and so I'd point you back to my statement that the player using RN has to mess up for opponents to be able to interact with it outside of counterspells or making them discard it.
When playing RN correctly, it enters play with an empty stack and the active player is given priority. They activate RN before anything else and because returning it to hand is part of the cost, it's in hand before the ability is on the stack and opponents are given priority. This is the same reason you can't destroy a Planeswalker before the active player uses one if its abilities after just casting it; you as the opponent do not have priority once the walker is in play until something else happens.
Finally, like I also already said:
Yes, it's broken and there are a lot of broken things in the format. However, "It's not as good as ThOracle+Tainted Pact/Demonic Consultation there for it's fine" really isn't a good rationale because literally every other thing is justified by that logic. Secondly, cEDH and purely power based concerns are not the foundation of the B&R list for EDH, which I feel like has been said so many times at this point that not having internalized it is a *choice* to be willfully ignorant of the guiding principles of the format and the rationales for how it is constructed and maintained and I've been over that sort of self-serving willful not-knowing for awhile now, and it always comes off as bad faith and intellectually dishonest. I think it's pretty obvious the only reason there are things comparably or more broken than cards like RN that are legal in EDH is *because* bans are not on the basis/merit of power level and competitive play, and that if it was, those cards being pointed to as reasons why RN isn't as powerful as things you could technically play....would also be banned. So it's pretty circular and self-serving argumentation. Lastly, and I say this is all due emphasis, *it's broken in ways that reduce player agency for all players at the table; is boring and repetitive; and rewards incredibly simplistic, unchallenging card design that requires little play-skill to execute correctly, with cheap value and power.
@@marcoameri9271 It's not just about whether you're winning the game on the spot or not; it's how you go about winning. It becomes the best thing for you to do most of the time with your mana, and even if it's not the only thing you do, it's a lot of what you do. So it means the player using RN is now mostly just casting the same spell over and over in a repetitive value grind that none of the opponents can interact with. It's similar to putting the table in a *soft* Stasis lock that either doesn't effect you, or you can play through some how. Are there better ways to win the game? Definitely, but Stasis lock not being the most powerful thing you can do isn't the point, it's that you've created a really shitty, slow, boring game to be a part of and you did it likely using just Stasis and one other card, so it's not even an interesting or complicate interaction.
Imo, board wipes can be incredibly interesting for the table.
Unfortunately, many people only ever see it/use it as a means stop someone's ramp rather than making decks that take advantage of those wipes with more synergy.
Ante was basically removed because concerns were brought up that it was basically gambling (sort of like recent Secret Lairs) and would see legal challenges (which I also hope Secret Lairs see with their recent random super premium card inserts driving folks to gamble on them)