I'm biased, Sol Ring is one of if not my favourite card in the game, it's original art is one of my favourite pieces. BUT the real reason Sol Ring is my favourite card is because I was once playing a game of commander with my mono-blue Arcanis the Omnipotent deck in a pod with a guy I really didn't like very much (lot of reasons, but he was my friend's boyfriend and didn't treat her very well, split sealed boxes with her and then took the chase rares, that kind of dude). Nothing about my opening hand was particularly notable, other than that I had an Annul. So I played land go. It came around to his turn, and he got this incredibly smug look on his face, played a land, then chuckled to himself and played a Sol Ring. He immediately tried to pass the turn, I said "hold on, I have a response." And hit him with the Annul. He quit on the spot because he's a child.
good move: "piss off those who piss ON the others" (you can apply that "metaphor" in way too many ways ...) Also, Defabricate is a good friend of yours
the looks I get at card shops when I explain that sol ring isn’t worth the slot in half of the decks I run makes it’s continued existence in the format worth it to me. im glad other people are experiencing that highest of highs
I feel as though you’re wrong about Sol Ring not being as good in higher power commander decks. More powerful cards and gameplans get even stronger when deployed a couple of turns earlier, making it much harder for the table to naturally beat them through teaming up. Cards like Chulane and Korvold are massive value engines, mainly checked by their mana costs. Take away that, and you get games where your plan to pressure them before their value engine goes haywire is impossible.
Yeah, if youre punching up with a weaker deck in the pod and the strongest deck gets a sol ring, arguing that the stronger deck can't use it doesn't make any sense. It just makes it hopeless. If anything, the weaker deck doesn't need the attention sol ring brings and might get snuffed out early by the stronger deck's removal.
Yeah, it's kind of a known thing that fast mana allows powerful decks to snowball out of control. Something that just doesn't happen with weaker ones. And playing an early game sol ring puts a target on you no matter what (assuming opponents aren't super knowledgeable about your deck). And a strong deck can weather that much better than a weaker one.
I think that they're arguing that in a low power vs high power deck situation, if the low power deck opens sol ring it opens up some chances to win, while if the strong deck opens it it'd have won anyway and it doesn't impact the outcome that much. Besides that I absolutely agree that sol ring is just a straight up boost to any deck it is put in, generic options will always benefit the strongest contenders while weaker decks will just also get outpaced by the same generic options because they can't capitalize on them as much.
I'd think sol ring would actually be better in a strong deck, right? If their card quality is better, more mana is generally better. The weak deck uses the extra mana to cast a bear. The strong deck uses the extra mana to play a card that gives them an extra turn. I'm a noob tho so this is just feels.
It's fair to ask. Let me see if I can explain. The biggest boost in power doesn't come from the Sol Ring, it comes from the difference between the base cards you get in the precons and the best cards in the whole 30 years of sets. Anybody could have the luck to draw Sol Ring in their openers in a pod of four precons, but those decks aren't powering out Rhystic Study or an optimally selected commander.
Trinket Mage mentioned! I still dislike Sol Ring, and refuse to include it in any deck I build for a variety of reasons. I don't find arguments for it very compelling honestly, except the "mascot card" one, which even then I don't think matters that much.
Never seen a turn 1 Ring being punished, everyone Just durdles in the early game and attacking a player twice is already considered rude, everyone is on "spreading the love" mode
I agree that the precon argument is pretty weak. Maybe we'd see a rule similar to when a card was banned from a challenger deck: unmodified precons are always legal, but if changes are made, banned cards must be removed. It's friendly to new players and the decks are designed to be upgraded. The bigger pro-Sol Ring argument in my mind is it's 85% inclusion rate. For people with a lot of decks, it may take a lot of time to evaluate what the best substitutions are and if that has any knock on effects. Then there is going to be a mad race to obtain all of these replacements. Despite the sheer number of Sol Rings running around, it's still a $1 card. The sudden burst in demand is going to drive up prices for other forms of ramp. I only have 1 deck without Sol Ring, a Flubs landfall deck where Exploration type of effects are going to give me more mana and triggers. I probably have a few other decks where some careful analysis would show that something else would be better.
@@joedoe7572 I think we're both right, it just comes down to a matter of degrees. "Replace your Sol Rings with basics; you probably aren't running enough basics anyway" might be a good rule of thumb for many players. Others might remember agonizing over their last cut and just add that back. But I still think most people will see it as losing the best piece of ramp in their deck and want to replace it (like we saw Mana Vault's price jump when Mana Crypt was banned).
i think the main takeaway is always just to consider each card in the context of your deck, and not in a vacuum. lots of people include useless cards in their deck and don’t place enough weight on the value of an individual card slot. the same kinds of people that put sol ring in every deck probably do the same thing with reliquary tower.
The "archenemy" argument is silly. Both because it can be easy to get around by just, sandbagging your Sol Ring for a turn or two which often gets around the politics, but mainly because it applies to so many cards in commander, on and off the banlist. Why ban Mana Crypt in the first place when it has an even more fearsome reputation than Sol Ring? Why ban Lutri when it's the equivalent of putting a "I'm a tryhard" sign in your companion zone?
@@vilelucaLiterally just let people play the card. Don't allow it to be a companion. That is against the RC thinking, they think we're all morons, but simply any blue/red deck having access to 1 more card in their 99 isn't going to make or break the game
My biggest issue with Sol Ring is the DEGREE to which it is an outlier in power. If it cost 2 mana, or tapped for 1 colorless, it would still be a really solid card in a lot of cases, but as is, the closest equivalents are distinctly outclassed unless your deck specifically doesn't "need" it. Worn Powerstone also taps for 2, and that's a 3 drop that enters play tapped. Palladium Myr is the same but with summoning sickness. Otherwise you're looking at 4 drops or higher. A bunch of mana dorks cost 1, and while granted most of those tap for colored, they're also largely limited to green. Omen Hawker is 1 blue and gives 2 mana, but that can only be used on abilities. AND they have summoning sickness.
Reminds me of Animar CEDH decks, they rarely tend to run Sol Ring because they rarely ever actually want it, cost reduction commander that costs 3 colored mana is much better served by moxes and spirit guides than by the ring. I don't think these exceptions take away from the power of the card of course, but it's a card that people expect to see at this point and usually gets enough arch enemy buzz to balance out, so ultimately the points in the video are good. I'm essentially ban list neutral at this point anyways, I don't especially care what is or isn't banned, I just intentionally build all my decks towards a set power level and if that power level is lower then I'll exclude CEDH cards like Sol Ring anyways. Makes for more balanced playgroups and lets me use more silly underpowered cards
So...my playgroup banned Sol Ring about 4 years ago, and games got a lot better. Have you tried playing at tables with no Sol Ring? I recommend giving it a shot. I was skeptical, but quickly found I was having more fun. As far as the archenemy effect goes...I have mixed thoughts. When I first started commander with precons, yeah, the archenemy effect could keep Sol Ring in check. But as I played at stronger tables (not even close to cEDH tables, still very much battlecruiser magic--no infinite combos, no thoracle wins) decks got more resilient, and able to just win 3v1 with a big head start. For an example of a more resilient deck that would show up at a slightly higher power table: Marchessa, the Black Rose, for example, you give that deck a huge head start, and it's going to build up +1/+1 counters on all of its creatures so they will revive after dying, and it's gonna have a sac outlet in case you have a swords to plowshares. You have a pretty small window before removal stops working. If there's no removal for a couple turns after a Sol Ring start a deck like Marchessa can comfortably win a 3v1 from that position. I have seen it happen (not sure it was specifically Marchessa, but it was a commander like that having a turn 1 Sol Ring which spurred this table to ban Sol Ring). But also, at higher power tables you also start seeing more cards like Heroic Intervention and Teferi's Protection and Swan Song--these are the kind of cards that can also let the archenemy stay ahead. Mechanics like monarch and initiative encourage everyone being attacked, not just the archenemy. At higher power tables you start seeing cards like Kardur, Doomscourge, which undermine "gang up on the archenemy" attempts. And then maybe they flicker Kardur Doomscuourge again next turn. Just...so many ways for a player with a big head start to win even while archenemy. As for your reasons for cutting Sol Ring sometimes--I think the only really valid reason is just giving yourself a deckbuilding handicap. If you want to give yourself a deckbuilding handicap, great, I love deckbuilding handicaps. I've built terrible commander decks just to be funny before. I built a deck where every single card (except the commander) had the domain keyword. That deck was really bad, but I've won with it! But in terms of Sol Ring not powering up certain decks...I think it absolutely would power up those decks substantially if those decks were built right. If you're ever in a situation where it's late in the game, your hand is empty, and you topdeck a sol ring as your entire turn...that sounds like a sign that your deck doesn't have enough card draw; a deck with more draw wouldn't be on an empty hand in the first place. I get that a lot of precons are built that way, I've played those precons, and had that "Sol Ring is my whole turn" experience. But precons typically don't run enough card draw. In a well-built deck I generally find it's the reverse--Sol Ring helps you dig deeper into your deck, cause it produces mana which you can spend to draw more cards.
I will sometimes get no sol ring tables by happenstance and sure its fine and all not having to play around it, but ultimately though- and this is more personal and not widely applicable so i didn't give it much thought in the making of this video- but my perception is very warped. I get the luxury of not taking commander games very "seriously" if someone snowballs a sol ring into an early game lead and crushes and eventually gets a win from it I just am good to shuffle up and go again. I am lucky enough to be able to experience magic in a lot of different ways, especially through MTGO. When I cube or play limited or constructed 60 card formats that's where I really get to flex some competitive muscles. For me, commander was never that tool, it was more a creative space i could run some jank synergy decks and try and win with them in an environment where opponents also made the same deckbuilding concessions to enable the strategies they wanted to see, the same way people might jam mario party or something. I tend to be a lot more lax about the bans, don't feel much salt outside of someone actively being deceitful or whatever (nongameplay related issues), etc because of this. I wanted to focus on more concrete reasons which are in the video. Just because I personally do enjoy when those pop off games occur, even from an opposing side doesn't mean all players do of course. I can absolutely see how if you get the high sol ring night of variance and you play magic once a week that can be frustrating. Its simply a matter of lenses I think in this situation, should we be catering bans to me (the person who plays a lot of magic) or to someone who gets to play magic 1/week and who can get that unlucky end of the curve where sol ring appears every night and makes for some nongames. Its an interesting thought thinking about who the ban list should serve. Though this tangent your comment put me on about evaluating my lens is all interesting and stuff, I wanna dive into some more of your points here! Yeah there are certainly decks that can keep the heat of them even after becoming archenemy but I think what is being neglected is that ideally when one deck is scaled up to a higher power to protect itself, the other 3 players ideally will be matched up in kind. Stony silence/null rod, culling rituals, etc. The competition will match the sol ring player. As for sol ring cutting only valid reason being handicap. Yes I *somewhat* agree, I cut sol ring like I said, not because sol ring WOULDN'T make the deck better (almost any deck would be better with a sol ring in it), but because they are decks where I already had a synergistic early mana acceleration engine in them where the impact would be felt the least. Though I still stand behind it not being good in lurrus/pharika because of the mana costs in the deck. It was more highlighting the point that a lot of players I've seen have already been self-policing on sol ring and not running it unless it was synergistic/they had not better option. Also, I do stand by the fact that sol ring just doesn't belong in certain decks (besides the obvious keruga companion, etc, i mentioned) would love to talk more on that point. As for the draw argument, sol ring still taking up one of those draws is still drawback. Now peer into the abyss etc, different story, but sol ring can still brick card advantage too. Would love to hear back, thanks for the great comment! Edit: also twitter totally just recommended your account out of the blue today in the little sidebar so when i was on the morning doomscroll I saw you and was like "wait,, she commented on my video LOL let me get on that response."
@@33elk I suspect the twitter recommendation came because we were talking on twitter before this. I responded to your thread, you said "I have thoughts, video coming soon", and I checked your twitter a few days later to find the video. --- On people self-policing Sol Ring out of their deck because they don't like stomping with a turn 1 Sol Ring--I will say, generally at my regular table if we find out that multiple members of the group are already self-policing the same card by not running it, that's usually a pretty good sign that the card is a good candidate for a rule 0 ban. This might be specific to my group, but usually the people who do the most prolific self-policing are already not the people bringing the highest power decks to the pod, so rule 0ing those cards levels out the playing field of the pod a bit. (And I say this as often the culprit, the person who brings something a little stronger than I should. These rules are partially to police me). --- As for not minding a quick stomp of a game--we like short games. There's nothing wrong with short games. Some decks have all offense and no defense, and we play those decks if someone is like "I need to go soon". We also have at least one ban that was made because the card slowed down games too much (it wasn't too powerful, we just wanted faster games). The main thing we target with power level bans are single cards that somewhat consistently make someone win 3v1. Where they can completely ignore table politics. We want people to play at least a little bit of table politics. Convince at least one player to target someone else, or let them live one more turn, and use that mistake to win. Turn 1 Sol Ring starts were leading to an unusual number of games where no table politics was needed. --- On "just use cards that destroy/turn off Sol Ring" let me preface this section by saying: of course you should put removal in your deck, we regularly encourage new players to run more removal. But...do you know how many artifact hate cards you need to run to have a 60% chance of having a piece of artifact hate on turn 1? Eleven cards worth of artifact hate. That's...a lot of artifact hate. Like a fifth of your deck not counting lands and ramp cards. Like...yeah, you could run 11 pieces of cheap artifact hate, but objectively you are making a pretty janky deck at that point just to police the table. Also..."dies to removal"--I feel like some things die harder than others. Even if Sol Ring dies on turn 2, they probably already got like...dark ritual level value out of the card. At a casual table it's still good to blow up or turn off Sol Ring--you probably stop a snowball win, but it's not like the Sol Ring player is really punished--they still basically got a dark ritual.
I personally find between sol ring and mana crypt the crypt to actually be the more exciting card. Even at its most generic there is with the crypt the exciting question of whether or not the player will take damage. Not to mention that the card gets even better in a coinflip deck or lifeloss deck where you can take advantage of the down side. Sol Ring is a card you cast and then it just sits there doing nothing.
Have you ever seen a deck with massively costed activated abilities? In my Atla Palani deck I'm starting considering wether to put the Sol Ring since Atla Palani, Yisa, Trostani Selesnya's Voice, Orthion, Bramble Sovereign and Rhys do require a ton of mana
@@marcoottina654Decks like that definitely benefit from a Sol Ring. But for people that need lots of fixing, or lands specifically, Sol Ring is kinda bad, kinda not really, but you get me lol
In my part of the world, the average sol ring hovers between 2 and 3 dollars CAD. Given that I tend to build more budget decks, around 50 dollars CAD or about 30-ish USD, sol ring basically never makes the cut for me. I always would rather spend my money on something a little more fun or synergistic with my money. I think out of the 4 EDH decks I own, only one has sol ring, and more than likely I didn't even need it.
This is a great explanation of Sol Ring's place in EDH. I find myself agreeing with everything you said! I wouldn't be heartbroken if it were to go, but I don't hate it either. I really like your point that it increases variance, because that's my favorite aspect of Commander! I had taken Sol Ring out of my Daxos the Returned deck way back when because it was just so intensive on colored pips, but that deck is long gone now. Nowadays, the only decks I can think about cutting it from would be Florian or Halana and Alena, but both kinda want a big amounts of mana for non-commander spells or for recasting. Perhaps Grismold would be a good candidate? I'm trying to make it my high-power deck, so fast mana would be nice but it doesn't really need more than 3-4 mana to win, most of that in colored pips, too...
I don't agree with the idea that sol ring benefits low-power decks more than it does high-power decks. A sol ring can turn a turn 2 into a turn 4 or 5. For a low power deck, that means getting a solid value engine online or a haymaker. For a high power deck, that can mean anything from reanimating an eldrazi titan, to tutoring for a missing combo piece and playing it on the same turn, all the way up to Ad Nauseam. You've changed my mind on the precon thing, though. I totally agree with you.
Very cool and nuanced video! I really appreciate the shoutout to the "explosive starts shouldn't be nonexistant, they should just be rare" part of the discussion around why Sol Ring stays legal, because I feel like that's an aspect that many people talking about Mana Crypt v. Sol Ring wrt to the bannings conveniently ignore, even though it's brought up in the ban article itself.
I agree, except that sol ring is an auto include UNLESS you have very specific low to the ground/pip specific spells. My feather the redeemed deck doesn’t run sol ring bc it needs a lot of r/w pips. Same for my Willowdusk deck. It needs pips more than colorless. And it ruins my curve and order of 1 drops into 2, into commander play and turn 4 plays. I run in that one “Once upon a time” instead to get the “free” turn 0 selection of land or dork that i need for my plays.
Having seen your Ayara list on Moxfield and then hearing it mentioned here again has me hoping and excited whether you are covering her in a video at some point in the future or see you write a primer for her.
I still think it should be banned (except in unmodified precons which could use some extra power). Even the RC admits it should be banned by their criteria, but isn't banning it because it's iconic. They cite occasional explosive starts as exciting, but I'd argue it generates the opposite. You can play your big things sooner, but you either snowball out of control or get severely punished by the rest of the table, neither of which are particularly exciting. There is no positive interactions going on; it's either inflicting misery on the opponents or having it inflicted upon you. The only upside is that if you quickly beat the opponents, you can move on to the next game, where Sol Ring hopefully doesn't show up as early. I've also seen this "it helps the weak decks more than the strong decks" argument before, but it just doesn't hold up since that is ignoring how efficiently they use their resources and how that small advantage grows rapidly. Sure, weak decks can get a lot out of it due to often having a bad curve, but strong decks can utilize it significantly better. It's comparable to a crutch, and while the weak may use it to stand up, the strong use it as a club. I do agree that even though it is legal, it shouldn't be jammed into every deck.
For me the occasional explosive start is definitely exciting. I for example still remember the game knights round where Cassius Marsh ramped out a turn 3 Ugin (with sol ring and grim monolith) and I do enjoy occasional archenemy situations as well, no matter on what side I am. I don't want to see this every game, but if Sol Ring is pretty much the only fast mana played at the table and the overall powerlevel is not too high, then that also does not happen too often. Another example that comes to mind where an explosive start was hilarious is me getting milled out by turn 4 with Phenax and consuming abberation. It never happened before and never happened again in our playgroup and was thus a funny, unique and unforgettable experience. I do also agree though, that it shouldn't be in every deck and it is exciting for me to find reasons not to put it into decks.
What you mentioned with Ayara and Phyrika was exactly my thought process when I built Eriette of the Charmed Apple. I initially had Sol Ring in the deck because at that point in time I was still auto-including it, but then I took it out because my deck isn't fast at all (by design), and it doesn't benefit from explosive early plays really at all. Even if I turn 1 a Sol Ring and play Eriette on turn two, that really doesn't help me much at all, so I cut the card.
This video actually persuaded me that Sol Ring should have been banned instead of those other cards. Because if the reasoning for the ban was to merely mitigate explosive starts while not eradicate them entirely, then banning Sol Ring would have been more effective at doing this. And just imagine how much less rage there would have been from all the people who's hundreds of dollars of cards suddenly have no value. I'm starting to see now that the RC may have made a mistake. That said there is one point in this video that I 100% agree with, which is that it doesn't really matter much that Sol Ring is in all the precons. It wouldn't even be the first time a precon has banned cards in it, or accidentally has two copies of a card. Even challenger decks have been affected by this and you're officially allowed to use them despite not being a casual format.
A couple points. 1. Mana Crypt allows for MORE explosive starts and enables things that Sol Ring Doesn't. Land, Crypt, Rhystic Study for example 2. Banning Sol Ring instead of Crypt, while possibly more effective overall, all but screams "Explosive starts are ok....but only if you're made of money." Not a good look. That said, they REALLY should have banned BOTH. 3. While I do sympathize with anyone who lost value on this.... it's a TCG NOT a 401K. Your cards suddenly losing value is an unfortunate hazard of the hobby. If not a banning, they'll be powercrept, or the meta will shift, or SOMETHING will happen to cause cards to fall out of favor (such as Stax and MLD being generally considered as distasteful in 'casual' EDH).
The problem I see with banning Sol Ring over Mana Crypt is that this signals to players that if you want powerful cards you have to pay lots of money for them. Let's say 90% of decks get better by putting a Mana Crypt or Sol Ring in them and many people have seen one or the other in games already since even Mana Crypt is in half a million decks on edhrec, then people might get the need to buy a 250$ card which should be absurd in a casual format. By leaving Sol Ring in, everybody can have access to a super powerful card, even if your deck is fairly budget.
A lot of people myself included consider ancestral recall to be one of the weaker of the power 9. My top 10 cards in magic would probably be something like: Sol Ring, Crypt, Time Walk, Lotus, Moxes (RWBUG), Ancestral Card quality is just so high nowadays that getting tempo first is more strong than getting value.
@@33elk Sol Ring costing mana and tapping for colorless makes it fairly niche in Vintage. Ancestral Recall is also insane with Moxes, Lotus and other free spells.
For one of my decks, Arixmethes, being able to turbo out my commander on turn 2 would be incredibly strong. And with Exploration, Mana Crypt and such, it would have been easy (if expensive) to build a deck that aims for 4 mana turn 2. But I opted for a different restriction that makes the deck much more flexible. My deck has enough ramp to reliably play Arixmethes on turn 3 every game and every ramp spell isn't allowed to be a dead card lategame. Either the mana dorks transform into a threat (like werebear) or they cantrip (like growth spiral). This also means the deck has room for cards like opt and strong taplands.
I kind of feel like from a design standpoint, any card thats in 95%-99% of decks, it probably should be banned. Not from a "its too good" stance but more of a "this whole format is allegedly about fun, consistency and creativity, so an auto include card which breaks at least two of these tenets is bad for the format"
@@wedgearyxsaber well, if you are not willing to spend *at least* 10€ for each single non-basic land (and you'll use like 20+ non-basics), then Command Tower is a good alternative
@@marcoottina654 I'll concede that lands are too damn expensive, not fun to utilize (they're the veggies of a deck. For the price you paid, you don't feel happy or enthralled when they're utilized) and are generally the bane of any deck created that's 2 or more colors and wanting to be cost-effective. So yeah, command tower does circumvent some of that cost
Kinda popped over from seeing you in collab content with TM and Snail, and honestly you hit on a point that I've been arguing since this ban hit that no one else seems to be touching on. The big reason outside of the one the RC gave for keeping Sol Ring is that comparatively speaking, it's VERY limited in terms of what it can do on early plays. Crypt being 0 cost and lotus giving you access to colored mana allowed for turn 1 4 drop commanders before other players even had mana on board. Yea sure turn 2 urza is scary, how about turn 1 urza with a lotus, or a turn 1 rhystic study? Sol ring on the other hand uses your only source of color for the turn, limiting you to playing only colorless spells with the mana it gives you, meaning the acceleration you get from it really only beneficial to an artifact deck, or if you luck into a 2 drop mana rock also being in your opening hand (which drops the odds of these explosive starts people complain about Sol Ring giving even more). It's really something people very often overlook when discussing Sol Ring, they just see the typical potential "sol ring signet" turn 1 accelerant and... that's it.... because when you think about it in your average deck, well, that really is the only turn 1 sol ring play to actually use the mana the turn you play it in most decks.
I do have two commanders that dont run the ring. First is my Niv Mizzet Reborn/Jegantha deck. Since I'm running 50 guild cards that are mostly 2 sometimes 3 mana and 40 lands, I have something around 20 generic pips altogether in the deck, so Sol ring would literally do nothing except to pay for commander tax. The other is my mono green Greensleeves "Force of Nature" deck, where I run everything to be as in sync with nature as possible. That includes "No artifacts" bc artifacts are manmade. And I have to say, Greensleeves is probably my favorite deck ever. Just pure honest ramp all day long :D
I've taken Sol Ring out of most of my decks because they either couldn't handle the heat drawn from accelerating early (and trying to fix the other side of this issue was just turning them into the average "template" with staple interactions) or it was not worth it in any turn after 3-- color intensive decks that struggled to benefit from the colorless ritual, decks that relied on mass nonland removal and/or decks reliant on mid/late top deck quality. The last one to ditch it was Teysa Karlov, and it was deliberately to slow it down: while it has the aristocratic/reanimator combo finishers you'd expect, it's just very resilient, between interaction and token generation, so it felt more fun to (put to test and) make use of that resilience.
I recently built a ms bumbleflower deck. I don't run sol ring in it because A. The commander requires 3 pips of different coloured mana and B. The majority of the deck is between 1-3 mana. The highest costing card is a single 5 mana Torrential gearhulk and part of me has been wondering if i should sub that out anyway (gonna give it fhe deck more games first)
i don't include sol ring in any of my decks. i'm slow at making decks, to get to a final 100 cards list, so i'm also not making that many decks and i didn't find myself to decide to add it in one of them, yet, and thanks this video i will think about it.
One time I was playing the Omo precon and I had an opening hand with sol ring, and an arcane signet. But despite my big mana turn 1, it kinda did not matter much because a bunch of players got a sol ring at the hell table (a commander game with too many players) so it kinda got balanced by that.
4:03 That's not really true, if you draw sol ring in a good deck you just win before anyone else can do anything. Whereas in a bad deck, the other 3 players still have a reasonable amount of time to politic around it or draw removal
Most of my primary green decks don't have sol ring because they ramp easily. Colors with less ramp option have a mana package that's at least, wayfarer's bauble, sol ring and arcane signet with the remaining rocks depending on the colors with correspondent signets and rocks that synergizes with the theme of the deck.
I recently took sol ring out of all of my decks. I was assembling a set of rules for what what kinds of cards were too good to be included in my decks (this is a really good method to keep casual decks casual). After thinking about it, I simply could not justify keeping it. It broke like 4 of the rules I had given myself.
Sol ring, oh sol ring I started cutting it from every deck except my high power deck. Its okay if one player gets a sol ring start. But when there are 2 players with a t1 sol ring, the other two players are just bystanders and may as well not play at all. I came to the conclusion that consistent ramp on specific turns is where i want to be headed. This way the deck feels more reliable to me and the table, and that benefits me much more overall
I play Marrow-Gnawer as Commander and 30 Relentless Rats + ThrummingStone in the 99. The rest of the deck besides lands is just good black stuff. So while solring does help to cast them the 1 remaining generic mana is awkward with the 1BB casting cost on a 3rd of the deck. So i Don't run it, I play Jet medallion instead since it makes all my rats cast for just BB. Getting a Relentless Rat out on turn 2 with 2 swamps and sol ring and then playing marrow knawer out on turn three IS good. But usually the single generic mana goes to waste, and the cost reduction from medallion out preforms sol ring in the mid to late game.
I think the amount of casual decks meaningfully improved by Sol Ring, ignoring outliers like artifact decks or infinites in need of a budget mana positive rock, is a lot lower than the numbers suggest, and I daresay the prevalence of ramp as well. Ramp is very rare to see as an archetype in competitive Magic, and only becomes relevant when it’s a ritual (Storm), a combo (Amulet Titan), or something has gone terribly wrong in the new release (Omnath Yurion Moneypile). Even cEDH doesn’t need much more than the ritual rocks plus Sol, maybe some of the green ramp, but the idea of every deck requiring upwards of 8 copies of ramp spells is absurd when you step back and look at it. We have card draw engines permanently available half the time, and sometimes even free mulligans, and even commanders that ramp as part of what they do, but people will still put 10 mana rocks into a monored Aggro deck on reflex. You probably can cut Sol Ring for any card that sparks joy in you and be happier for it, provided you’re not trying to cast Koma or something
Any deck where I suspect my commander will be repeatedly sent back to the command zone gets a sol ring. Every other deck I run prefers fixing or cost reduction.
My opinions require to much effort to flesh out fully as they settle on both sides. So all I’ll say is my Galaxy Foil Sol Ring keeps climbing so PLEASE DONT BAN IT PLEASE, it’s now worth at least 2 jeweled lotuses.
All good but i found out i prefer playing commander "on curve". That puts a deckbuilding emphasis on finding good 1-2-3 drops that can compete with the big boys at the table. I took all ramp artifacts out of my favourite decks and made some changes. And it's working wonderfully! 😁 Means i get on board pretty early, and i have to work my way around the big greedy plays my opponents do, while really feeling the original magic "as garfield intended". More cards and less ramp also means i get more synergy, or combat presence, overall its fantastic and you should try it.
As long as Sol Ring stays around, Ingot Chewer stays in my Ilharg deck. Along with vandalblast and shattering spree. It's the only mana denial that even the most casual players seem fine with, and I'm a freak who likes mana denial in aggressive decks.
Sol Ring costing a dollar because of its isane availability is huge point in its favor imo. You don't have to throw down the price of a new video game digital deluxe edition (or twice as much, Mana Crypt) to be able to access it and playing around it is only really daunting if the Sol Ring player ALSO has, by design and/or luck, oppressive hand to go with it.
My group bans a lot of the fast mana like Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Lotus and Mana Vault. It isn't really missed at all in our games. The logic the RC provided for NOT banning Sol Ring is entirely inconsistent with their reason for banning Mana Crypt and Lotus, so if they're going to ban those then Sol Ring needs to go too imo.
before i started this video i thought sol ring should be banned. but then i looked at the newest commander B&R and now i dont think its so bad actually. thanks for changing my opinion 👍
It’s probably fine. It does indeed not really help you when you open with what seems like a perfectly reasonable hand with Sol Ring into Arcane Signet and then flood out the rest of the game.
I no longer put sol ring in any of my decks. Even my artifact decks. It's just a principle thing for me. I prefer to play without fast mana and I include sol ring in that.
I stopped putting sol ring in my decks because it’s a card I don’t enjoy. I think it’s pretty rare when the ring hasn’t just made the game worse either because someone shoots off crazy ahead and snowballs out of control or their hand was terrible but had the ring and they sit there doing nothing the entire game.
so i currently have 8 commander decks made and half of them don't use sol ring due to the structure of the deck. Two of them are very heavily Creature based decks. I play Sidisi, Brood Tyrant self mill and i play 50 Creatures. Karametra, God of the Harvest i run 56 Creatures. both would rather run a mana dork then any kind of artifact mana. the deck i have that can abuse Sol ring the most is my Brago, King Eternal. Just for the fact i can use my commander to untap it every turn making it tap for 4 mana on each turn.
I see game pieces as game pieces. Quite tautological, yes, but it _precisely_ means that there are no staples: Sol Ring is a cheap artifact that produces mana, so I'll run in artifact-themed deck that benefits from casting 0 (or "N but cost reduced to 0") spells like my storm-like artifact-based Gnostro or my WUR artifact deck; alternatively I'll run it in a very heavily costed spells and/or activated abilities deck, where I0m always hungry for mana. Everywhere else, it's a wasted card that produces alòmost useless mana
Okay, gotta say, the list is probably 1) Pre-nerf Lurrus 2) Black Lotus Then you have Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, Sol Ring, and Mana Crypt, in some order.
I took sol ring out of all my decks that include green. Land destruction being rare, I'd rather just ramp for lands than run artifacts. Other decks I'll often sandbag a sol ring unless I have a perfect hand, to avoid the early leader heat.
Ultimately we agree that Sol Ring shouldn't get banned (even if we won't really miss it if it does get hit), but I'm going to heavily pushback against it being unimportant that it makes so many precons unplayable. A precon should be playable right out of the box. That's the whole point. With production lead times, telling every new player to just go find an extra land before you play so they can just take out Sol Rings for the next year or so is going to look extremely bad on the format and accessibility. We saw how bad that went with Chishiro, the Shattered Blade's precon. It's a very real and negative impact, and a completely different beast from having a card banned that was a one time include in 5 year old deck that's no longer produced.
Personally I think Sol Ring should stay for the simple reason that it is iconic. It has been one of the main staples for as long as Commander has been a thing, and to remove it would erase some of the history and soul of the format. I have kinda similar feelings about Mana Crypt, I don't think it should have been banned (but I respect their reasoning and decision). If Sol Ring was printed today? Ban it. If Dockside was printed in Antiquities? I would probably argue for it to stay.
I used to play with a friend group who played proxy friendly decks, and we ended up banning Sol Ring in our group. I've since taken that logic and have been playing on more... proxy friendly areas (xmage and cockatrice)... and i actually have been keeping to my friend group's ban list as an easy way to limit the power of my decks. And from my experience, i actually disagree a lot here on these points I feel like the point about there being an archenemy is often over simplified. A lot of decks I see can absolutely 3v1 opponents if they get a massive head start. And it's not uncommon for the player who is the archenemy and not used to getting this attention or didn't have the best of hands to get frustrated that they're getting teamed on I also am not really convinced of the arguments of cutting Sol Ring. No offense, but i feel like there's probably a difference in who's deck building in this case where the ability to cut Sol Ring seems meaningful. Like, I think for most deck builders, a deck that does or doesn't cut Sol Ring isn't going to seem as important to say, the amount of UA-camrs trying to create new brews to show off. So the benefits imo of allowing players to talk about cutting the card just don't overweigh the negatives Sol Ribg has elsewhere. And the sort of deck building uniqueness I've had in my decks from cutting Sol Ring just hasn't been nearly as impactful as changing various synergy pieces or whatever Like, I would imagine that most people still put Sol Ring into decks that don't need them or don't benefit much from it just because those minor percentage points are more important to them than being able to state that they're deck doesn't contain such and such card. It's why we can even argue about jank theme decks including Sol Ring
1) the argument that sol ring helps the weaker decks participate against the stronger decks is rather naïve. one could equally say that the stronger deck had just as much a chance of running away from the reach of the weaker deck because it has sol ring. The card as a whole doesn't help any deck more than another based solely on power level. they are both gaining the power at the same time. in fact one could argue the opposite is more likely to happen. the stronger deck is more likely to take the game away at a rate the weaker deck will struggle to catch up to. Seeing as how the stronger deck is more likely to have more efficient mana curves than the weaker deck. 2) also to touch one the point you said briefly, that commander is about variance. I couldn't agree more. however sol ring is the antithesis of this philosophy. I've had many discussions about how sol ring adds literally nothing interesting to the game, other than the power you gain. sol ring can fit into any deck, unless there is a very specific reason to not run it (a companion or something similar). even decks that hate on artifacts can still run it for the chance their deck draws it and boosts ahead, or uses it to catch up. however, as I said the card offers nothing more. with sol ring, the format is effectively 1 commander, 1 sol ring, and 98 cards. if we are staying true tot he idea that casual commander/edh is all about expression in a deck, building a deck with your own style, then this card only eats up a slot. a slot that could be used for literally any other card that could make your deck different from the next. whether you personally don't like to run decks with sol ring every time is rather irrelevant to the question of if it should be in the format. I understand it is an opinion, and therefore your right have. however, it doesn't change the fact it goes in nearly every deck without question. I personally don't run it, bc I feel it should be banned. a group of players and i agreed to remove it (and mana crypt) for these, among other, reasons. but again, whether I run it personally, is irrelevant to the conversation as a whole. some have tried to make the argument that command tower is the same, but that's false. no person of their right mind would run command tower in a mono deck, unless there was a very specific reason to do so. granted arcane signet could be argued the same as sol ring, and I'm in fact willing to hear those arguments. sol ring however is a card that will not hinder, but power up, nearly every deck (excluding fringe cases as stated earlier). i find the format would be much more interesting if it were instead 1 commander, and 99 cards.
I agree at least marginally with all of your takes on this one, but as for the intro, there's no way sol ring and mana crypt beat out black lotus and ancestral recall as the best cards ever
@@KeganKirby ehhh, depends. Pack 1 pick 1 in a cube I’m probably taking sol ring over lotus. I think mana is better than draw the more efficient threats become.
I got a bit of flack for not playing sol ring in some of my decks for the same reason as you (I had an ayara deck that didnt run it as well). The critique was basicly that sol ring makes every deck better, as in if you are playing mind stone or any other efficient rock that produces colorless you should probably be playing sol ring first. The guy making the argument is a bit of a spike and I think sol ring is worse for the spikey players because it's so cheap and comes in precons so there is no reason not to run it in most decks and they feel trapped by it. I still dont run sol ring in some decks, and I usually prefer synergy-pieces like a manadork (if playing creature heavy with draw based on creatures like guardian project) an explore/growth effect (for decks that care about lands) or even another more synergistic manarock (I seem to run liquimetal torque more than other players since it as a lot of removal synergy).
Honestly I don't think Sol Ring should be banned, but then I don't think any of the other cards (except Nadu) should've been banned recently. I think putting Sol Ring on a pedestal and saying it gets a pass because it's iconic and "defies the laws of physics" makes the RC's decision seem like unobjectively biased at best and insider trading at worst. Also their comment saying that they didn't sell off any copies of the cards they banned comes off as dismissive.
I LOVE not including sol ring in decks. Idk why but it does make me feel better. I don't run it in skull briar or zacama even though it would probably make the decks better. I do run it in my Raff deck because it's already playing mana rovks and sol ring is simply better most of the time.
Sol ring eshoukd be banned especially if you baan mana crypt and other fast mana. It's annoying when someone getting solring in his starting hand and others don't have ways to match this free mana
By the rules commitee's own logic for banning the other fast mana pieces, Sol Ring SHOULD have been banned, it was a mistake to that it wasn't banned with the moxen initially. Sure 1 in 99 means that it'll be in less opening hands but the games that start out with a player starting with it are WARPED and let a lot of otherwise similar power level decks have random games where someone gets so far ahead that they essentially won on the first turn.
If you can say that sol ring shouldn't actually go in nearly every deck that plays lands, then my reason for thinking it should go is disproven. I just want to optimize 100 card decks rather than 99+sol ring. I am dubious that it's not just becoming more common to self ban it though. Are there any cedh decks that don't run sol ring?
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I love your recurring mention of pharika. It really brings all your content full circle and that’s why YOURE THE ELK THE ELLLLKKKKK
I'm biased, Sol Ring is one of if not my favourite card in the game, it's original art is one of my favourite pieces.
BUT the real reason Sol Ring is my favourite card is because I was once playing a game of commander with my mono-blue Arcanis the Omnipotent deck in a pod with a guy I really didn't like very much (lot of reasons, but he was my friend's boyfriend and didn't treat her very well, split sealed boxes with her and then took the chase rares, that kind of dude). Nothing about my opening hand was particularly notable, other than that I had an Annul. So I played land go. It came around to his turn, and he got this incredibly smug look on his face, played a land, then chuckled to himself and played a Sol Ring. He immediately tried to pass the turn, I said "hold on, I have a response." And hit him with the Annul.
He quit on the spot because he's a child.
Lmfao good job. I run Mental Misstep for this exact reason
good move: "piss off those who piss ON the others"
(you can apply that "metaphor" in way too many ways ...)
Also, Defabricate is a good friend of yours
the looks I get at card shops when I explain that sol ring isn’t worth the slot in half of the decks I run makes it’s continued existence in the format worth it to me. im glad other people are experiencing that highest of highs
I feel as though you’re wrong about Sol Ring not being as good in higher power commander decks. More powerful cards and gameplans get even stronger when deployed a couple of turns earlier, making it much harder for the table to naturally beat them through teaming up. Cards like Chulane and Korvold are massive value engines, mainly checked by their mana costs. Take away that, and you get games where your plan to pressure them before their value engine goes haywire is impossible.
Exactly. It’s not like higher power decks wouldn’t be able to get the same, if not greater, benefit from it.
Yeah, if youre punching up with a weaker deck in the pod and the strongest deck gets a sol ring, arguing that the stronger deck can't use it doesn't make any sense. It just makes it hopeless. If anything, the weaker deck doesn't need the attention sol ring brings and might get snuffed out early by the stronger deck's removal.
Yeah, it's kind of a known thing that fast mana allows powerful decks to snowball out of control. Something that just doesn't happen with weaker ones. And playing an early game sol ring puts a target on you no matter what (assuming opponents aren't super knowledgeable about your deck). And a strong deck can weather that much better than a weaker one.
I think that they're arguing that in a low power vs high power deck situation, if the low power deck opens sol ring it opens up some chances to win, while if the strong deck opens it it'd have won anyway and it doesn't impact the outcome that much.
Besides that I absolutely agree that sol ring is just a straight up boost to any deck it is put in, generic options will always benefit the strongest contenders while weaker decks will just also get outpaced by the same generic options because they can't capitalize on them as much.
@@IronpeckerSol Ring is almost pointless in Animar or most Izzet spellslinger decks unless you’re playing cEDH.
who is up rn ringing their sol
I'd think sol ring would actually be better in a strong deck, right? If their card quality is better, more mana is generally better. The weak deck uses the extra mana to cast a bear. The strong deck uses the extra mana to play a card that gives them an extra turn. I'm a noob tho so this is just feels.
It's fair to ask. Let me see if I can explain.
The biggest boost in power doesn't come from the Sol Ring, it comes from the difference between the base cards you get in the precons and the best cards in the whole 30 years of sets. Anybody could have the luck to draw Sol Ring in their openers in a pod of four precons, but those decks aren't powering out Rhystic Study or an optimally selected commander.
Trinket Mage mentioned!
I still dislike Sol Ring, and refuse to include it in any deck I build for a variety of reasons. I don't find arguments for it very compelling honestly, except the "mascot card" one, which even then I don't think matters that much.
Never seen a turn 1 Ring being punished, everyone Just durdles in the early game and attacking a player twice is already considered rude, everyone is on "spreading the love" mode
I agree that the precon argument is pretty weak. Maybe we'd see a rule similar to when a card was banned from a challenger deck: unmodified precons are always legal, but if changes are made, banned cards must be removed. It's friendly to new players and the decks are designed to be upgraded.
The bigger pro-Sol Ring argument in my mind is it's 85% inclusion rate. For people with a lot of decks, it may take a lot of time to evaluate what the best substitutions are and if that has any knock on effects. Then there is going to be a mad race to obtain all of these replacements. Despite the sheer number of Sol Rings running around, it's still a $1 card. The sudden burst in demand is going to drive up prices for other forms of ramp.
I only have 1 deck without Sol Ring, a Flubs landfall deck where Exploration type of effects are going to give me more mana and triggers. I probably have a few other decks where some careful analysis would show that something else would be better.
I don't actually think most Sol Rings would be replaced with ramp. I think they were mostly be replaced with a land
@@joedoe7572 I think we're both right, it just comes down to a matter of degrees. "Replace your Sol Rings with basics; you probably aren't running enough basics anyway" might be a good rule of thumb for many players. Others might remember agonizing over their last cut and just add that back. But I still think most people will see it as losing the best piece of ramp in their deck and want to replace it (like we saw Mana Vault's price jump when Mana Crypt was banned).
i think the main takeaway is always just to consider each card in the context of your deck, and not in a vacuum. lots of people include useless cards in their deck and don’t place enough weight on the value of an individual card slot. the same kinds of people that put sol ring in every deck probably do the same thing with reliquary tower.
The "archenemy" argument is silly. Both because it can be easy to get around by just, sandbagging your Sol Ring for a turn or two which often gets around the politics, but mainly because it applies to so many cards in commander, on and off the banlist. Why ban Mana Crypt in the first place when it has an even more fearsome reputation than Sol Ring? Why ban Lutri when it's the equivalent of putting a "I'm a tryhard" sign in your companion zone?
Also, The archenemy argument, if it was valid, could be used to justify literally any other card being legal.
Free my boi Lutri he did nothing wrong.
At least make him legal as commander
@@vilelucaLiterally just let people play the card. Don't allow it to be a companion. That is against the RC thinking, they think we're all morons, but simply any blue/red deck having access to 1 more card in their 99 isn't going to make or break the game
@@vileluca They jailed our boy for thought-crimes, before he was even allowed to do a regular crime.
The bans were a mistake that the rules committee refuses to admit they’ve made.
I did the mistake once to play a land -> Sol Ring -> Arcane Signet and I was eliminated first. I also learned to run some removal for artifacts.
My biggest issue with Sol Ring is the DEGREE to which it is an outlier in power. If it cost 2 mana, or tapped for 1 colorless, it would still be a really solid card in a lot of cases, but as is, the closest equivalents are distinctly outclassed unless your deck specifically doesn't "need" it.
Worn Powerstone also taps for 2, and that's a 3 drop that enters play tapped. Palladium Myr is the same but with summoning sickness. Otherwise you're looking at 4 drops or higher.
A bunch of mana dorks cost 1, and while granted most of those tap for colored, they're also largely limited to green. Omen Hawker is 1 blue and gives 2 mana, but that can only be used on abilities. AND they have summoning sickness.
Some would say it's the 10-th "Power 10"
Reminds me of Animar CEDH decks, they rarely tend to run Sol Ring because they rarely ever actually want it, cost reduction commander that costs 3 colored mana is much better served by moxes and spirit guides than by the ring. I don't think these exceptions take away from the power of the card of course, but it's a card that people expect to see at this point and usually gets enough arch enemy buzz to balance out, so ultimately the points in the video are good. I'm essentially ban list neutral at this point anyways, I don't especially care what is or isn't banned, I just intentionally build all my decks towards a set power level and if that power level is lower then I'll exclude CEDH cards like Sol Ring anyways. Makes for more balanced playgroups and lets me use more silly underpowered cards
So...my playgroup banned Sol Ring about 4 years ago, and games got a lot better. Have you tried playing at tables with no Sol Ring? I recommend giving it a shot. I was skeptical, but quickly found I was having more fun.
As far as the archenemy effect goes...I have mixed thoughts. When I first started commander with precons, yeah, the archenemy effect could keep Sol Ring in check. But as I played at stronger tables (not even close to cEDH tables, still very much battlecruiser magic--no infinite combos, no thoracle wins) decks got more resilient, and able to just win 3v1 with a big head start.
For an example of a more resilient deck that would show up at a slightly higher power table: Marchessa, the Black Rose, for example, you give that deck a huge head start, and it's going to build up +1/+1 counters on all of its creatures so they will revive after dying, and it's gonna have a sac outlet in case you have a swords to plowshares. You have a pretty small window before removal stops working. If there's no removal for a couple turns after a Sol Ring start a deck like Marchessa can comfortably win a 3v1 from that position. I have seen it happen (not sure it was specifically Marchessa, but it was a commander like that having a turn 1 Sol Ring which spurred this table to ban Sol Ring). But also, at higher power tables you also start seeing more cards like Heroic Intervention and Teferi's Protection and Swan Song--these are the kind of cards that can also let the archenemy stay ahead. Mechanics like monarch and initiative encourage everyone being attacked, not just the archenemy. At higher power tables you start seeing cards like Kardur, Doomscourge, which undermine "gang up on the archenemy" attempts. And then maybe they flicker Kardur Doomscuourge again next turn. Just...so many ways for a player with a big head start to win even while archenemy.
As for your reasons for cutting Sol Ring sometimes--I think the only really valid reason is just giving yourself a deckbuilding handicap. If you want to give yourself a deckbuilding handicap, great, I love deckbuilding handicaps. I've built terrible commander decks just to be funny before. I built a deck where every single card (except the commander) had the domain keyword. That deck was really bad, but I've won with it!
But in terms of Sol Ring not powering up certain decks...I think it absolutely would power up those decks substantially if those decks were built right. If you're ever in a situation where it's late in the game, your hand is empty, and you topdeck a sol ring as your entire turn...that sounds like a sign that your deck doesn't have enough card draw; a deck with more draw wouldn't be on an empty hand in the first place. I get that a lot of precons are built that way, I've played those precons, and had that "Sol Ring is my whole turn" experience. But precons typically don't run enough card draw. In a well-built deck I generally find it's the reverse--Sol Ring helps you dig deeper into your deck, cause it produces mana which you can spend to draw more cards.
I will sometimes get no sol ring tables by happenstance and sure its fine and all not having to play around it, but ultimately though- and this is more personal and not widely applicable so i didn't give it much thought in the making of this video- but my perception is very warped. I get the luxury of not taking commander games very "seriously" if someone snowballs a sol ring into an early game lead and crushes and eventually gets a win from it I just am good to shuffle up and go again. I am lucky enough to be able to experience magic in a lot of different ways, especially through MTGO. When I cube or play limited or constructed 60 card formats that's where I really get to flex some competitive muscles. For me, commander was never that tool, it was more a creative space i could run some jank synergy decks and try and win with them in an environment where opponents also made the same deckbuilding concessions to enable the strategies they wanted to see, the same way people might jam mario party or something. I tend to be a lot more lax about the bans, don't feel much salt outside of someone actively being deceitful or whatever (nongameplay related issues), etc because of this. I wanted to focus on more concrete reasons which are in the video. Just because I personally do enjoy when those pop off games occur, even from an opposing side doesn't mean all players do of course. I can absolutely see how if you get the high sol ring night of variance and you play magic once a week that can be frustrating. Its simply a matter of lenses I think in this situation, should we be catering bans to me (the person who plays a lot of magic) or to someone who gets to play magic 1/week and who can get that unlucky end of the curve where sol ring appears every night and makes for some nongames. Its an interesting thought thinking about who the ban list should serve. Though this tangent your comment put me on about evaluating my lens is all interesting and stuff, I wanna dive into some more of your points here!
Yeah there are certainly decks that can keep the heat of them even after becoming archenemy but I think what is being neglected is that ideally when one deck is scaled up to a higher power to protect itself, the other 3 players ideally will be matched up in kind. Stony silence/null rod, culling rituals, etc. The competition will match the sol ring player.
As for sol ring cutting only valid reason being handicap. Yes I *somewhat* agree, I cut sol ring like I said, not because sol ring WOULDN'T make the deck better (almost any deck would be better with a sol ring in it), but because they are decks where I already had a synergistic early mana acceleration engine in them where the impact would be felt the least. Though I still stand behind it not being good in lurrus/pharika because of the mana costs in the deck. It was more highlighting the point that a lot of players I've seen have already been self-policing on sol ring and not running it unless it was synergistic/they had not better option. Also, I do stand by the fact that sol ring just doesn't belong in certain decks (besides the obvious keruga companion, etc, i mentioned) would love to talk more on that point.
As for the draw argument, sol ring still taking up one of those draws is still drawback. Now peer into the abyss etc, different story, but sol ring can still brick card advantage too.
Would love to hear back, thanks for the great comment!
Edit: also twitter totally just recommended your account out of the blue today in the little sidebar so when i was on the morning doomscroll I saw you and was like "wait,, she commented on my video LOL let me get on that response."
@@33elk I suspect the twitter recommendation came because we were talking on twitter before this. I responded to your thread, you said "I have thoughts, video coming soon", and I checked your twitter a few days later to find the video.
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On people self-policing Sol Ring out of their deck because they don't like stomping with a turn 1 Sol Ring--I will say, generally at my regular table if we find out that multiple members of the group are already self-policing the same card by not running it, that's usually a pretty good sign that the card is a good candidate for a rule 0 ban.
This might be specific to my group, but usually the people who do the most prolific self-policing are already not the people bringing the highest power decks to the pod, so rule 0ing those cards levels out the playing field of the pod a bit.
(And I say this as often the culprit, the person who brings something a little stronger than I should. These rules are partially to police me).
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As for not minding a quick stomp of a game--we like short games. There's nothing wrong with short games. Some decks have all offense and no defense, and we play those decks if someone is like "I need to go soon". We also have at least one ban that was made because the card slowed down games too much (it wasn't too powerful, we just wanted faster games).
The main thing we target with power level bans are single cards that somewhat consistently make someone win 3v1. Where they can completely ignore table politics. We want people to play at least a little bit of table politics. Convince at least one player to target someone else, or let them live one more turn, and use that mistake to win.
Turn 1 Sol Ring starts were leading to an unusual number of games where no table politics was needed.
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On "just use cards that destroy/turn off Sol Ring" let me preface this section by saying: of course you should put removal in your deck, we regularly encourage new players to run more removal.
But...do you know how many artifact hate cards you need to run to have a 60% chance of having a piece of artifact hate on turn 1? Eleven cards worth of artifact hate. That's...a lot of artifact hate. Like a fifth of your deck not counting lands and ramp cards.
Like...yeah, you could run 11 pieces of cheap artifact hate, but objectively you are making a pretty janky deck at that point just to police the table.
Also..."dies to removal"--I feel like some things die harder than others. Even if Sol Ring dies on turn 2, they probably already got like...dark ritual level value out of the card. At a casual table it's still good to blow up or turn off Sol Ring--you probably stop a snowball win, but it's not like the Sol Ring player is really punished--they still basically got a dark ritual.
I personally find between sol ring and mana crypt the crypt to actually be the more exciting card. Even at its most generic there is with the crypt the exciting question of whether or not the player will take damage. Not to mention that the card gets even better in a coinflip deck or lifeloss deck where you can take advantage of the down side. Sol Ring is a card you cast and then it just sits there doing nothing.
Have you ever seen a deck with massively costed activated abilities?
In my Atla Palani deck I'm starting considering wether to put the Sol Ring since Atla Palani, Yisa, Trostani Selesnya's Voice, Orthion, Bramble Sovereign and Rhys do require a ton of mana
@@marcoottina654Decks like that definitely benefit from a Sol Ring. But for people that need lots of fixing, or lands specifically, Sol Ring is kinda bad, kinda not really, but you get me lol
In my part of the world, the average sol ring hovers between 2 and 3 dollars CAD. Given that I tend to build more budget decks, around 50 dollars CAD or about 30-ish USD, sol ring basically never makes the cut for me.
I always would rather spend my money on something a little more fun or synergistic with my money. I think out of the 4 EDH decks I own, only one has sol ring, and more than likely I didn't even need it.
This is a great explanation of Sol Ring's place in EDH. I find myself agreeing with everything you said! I wouldn't be heartbroken if it were to go, but I don't hate it either. I really like your point that it increases variance, because that's my favorite aspect of Commander!
I had taken Sol Ring out of my Daxos the Returned deck way back when because it was just so intensive on colored pips, but that deck is long gone now. Nowadays, the only decks I can think about cutting it from would be Florian or Halana and Alena, but both kinda want a big amounts of mana for non-commander spells or for recasting.
Perhaps Grismold would be a good candidate? I'm trying to make it my high-power deck, so fast mana would be nice but it doesn't really need more than 3-4 mana to win, most of that in colored pips, too...
I don't agree with the idea that sol ring benefits low-power decks more than it does high-power decks. A sol ring can turn a turn 2 into a turn 4 or 5. For a low power deck, that means getting a solid value engine online or a haymaker. For a high power deck, that can mean anything from reanimating an eldrazi titan, to tutoring for a missing combo piece and playing it on the same turn, all the way up to Ad Nauseam.
You've changed my mind on the precon thing, though. I totally agree with you.
Very cool and nuanced video!
I really appreciate the shoutout to the "explosive starts shouldn't be nonexistant, they should just be rare" part of the discussion around why Sol Ring stays legal, because I feel like that's an aspect that many people talking about Mana Crypt v. Sol Ring wrt to the bannings conveniently ignore, even though it's brought up in the ban article itself.
I agree, except that sol ring is an auto include UNLESS you have very specific low to the ground/pip specific spells.
My feather the redeemed deck doesn’t run sol ring bc it needs a lot of r/w pips. Same for my Willowdusk deck. It needs pips more than colorless. And it ruins my curve and order of 1 drops into 2, into commander play and turn 4 plays. I run in that one “Once upon a time” instead to get the “free” turn 0 selection of land or dork that i need for my plays.
Having seen your Ayara list on Moxfield and then hearing it mentioned here again has me hoping and excited whether you are covering her in a video at some point in the future or see you write a primer for her.
Let's go new Elk upload! Today is a good day
I still think it should be banned (except in unmodified precons which could use some extra power). Even the RC admits it should be banned by their criteria, but isn't banning it because it's iconic. They cite occasional explosive starts as exciting, but I'd argue it generates the opposite. You can play your big things sooner, but you either snowball out of control or get severely punished by the rest of the table, neither of which are particularly exciting. There is no positive interactions going on; it's either inflicting misery on the opponents or having it inflicted upon you. The only upside is that if you quickly beat the opponents, you can move on to the next game, where Sol Ring hopefully doesn't show up as early.
I've also seen this "it helps the weak decks more than the strong decks" argument before, but it just doesn't hold up since that is ignoring how efficiently they use their resources and how that small advantage grows rapidly. Sure, weak decks can get a lot out of it due to often having a bad curve, but strong decks can utilize it significantly better. It's comparable to a crutch, and while the weak may use it to stand up, the strong use it as a club.
I do agree that even though it is legal, it shouldn't be jammed into every deck.
For me the occasional explosive start is definitely exciting. I for example still remember the game knights round where Cassius Marsh ramped out a turn 3 Ugin (with sol ring and grim monolith) and I do enjoy occasional archenemy situations as well, no matter on what side I am. I don't want to see this every game, but if Sol Ring is pretty much the only fast mana played at the table and the overall powerlevel is not too high, then that also does not happen too often.
Another example that comes to mind where an explosive start was hilarious is me getting milled out by turn 4 with Phenax and consuming abberation. It never happened before and never happened again in our playgroup and was thus a funny, unique and unforgettable experience.
I do also agree though, that it shouldn't be in every deck and it is exciting for me to find reasons not to put it into decks.
What you mentioned with Ayara and Phyrika was exactly my thought process when I built Eriette of the Charmed Apple. I initially had Sol Ring in the deck because at that point in time I was still auto-including it, but then I took it out because my deck isn't fast at all (by design), and it doesn't benefit from explosive early plays really at all. Even if I turn 1 a Sol Ring and play Eriette on turn two, that really doesn't help me much at all, so I cut the card.
The bad hand with a sol ring on it, truly a classic edh moment xD
This video actually persuaded me that Sol Ring should have been banned instead of those other cards. Because if the reasoning for the ban was to merely mitigate explosive starts while not eradicate them entirely, then banning Sol Ring would have been more effective at doing this. And just imagine how much less rage there would have been from all the people who's hundreds of dollars of cards suddenly have no value. I'm starting to see now that the RC may have made a mistake.
That said there is one point in this video that I 100% agree with, which is that it doesn't really matter much that Sol Ring is in all the precons. It wouldn't even be the first time a precon has banned cards in it, or accidentally has two copies of a card. Even challenger decks have been affected by this and you're officially allowed to use them despite not being a casual format.
A couple points.
1. Mana Crypt allows for MORE explosive starts and enables things that Sol Ring Doesn't.
Land, Crypt, Rhystic Study for example
2. Banning Sol Ring instead of Crypt, while possibly more effective overall, all but screams "Explosive starts are ok....but only if you're made of money." Not a good look. That said, they REALLY should have banned BOTH.
3. While I do sympathize with anyone who lost value on this.... it's a TCG NOT a 401K. Your cards suddenly losing value is an unfortunate hazard of the hobby. If not a banning, they'll be powercrept, or the meta will shift, or SOMETHING will happen to cause cards to fall out of favor (such as Stax and MLD being generally considered as distasteful in 'casual' EDH).
The problem I see with banning Sol Ring over Mana Crypt is that this signals to players that if you want powerful cards you have to pay lots of money for them. Let's say 90% of decks get better by putting a Mana Crypt or Sol Ring in them and many people have seen one or the other in games already since even Mana Crypt is in half a million decks on edhrec, then people might get the need to buy a 250$ card which should be absurd in a casual format.
By leaving Sol Ring in, everybody can have access to a super powerful card, even if your deck is fairly budget.
When you showed the 3 powerful cards, I expected Ancestral recall to be in there, probably instead of time walk.
A lot of people myself included consider ancestral recall to be one of the weaker of the power 9. My top 10 cards in magic would probably be something like: Sol Ring, Crypt, Time Walk, Lotus, Moxes (RWBUG), Ancestral
Card quality is just so high nowadays that getting tempo first is more strong than getting value.
@@33elk Sol Ring costing mana and tapping for colorless makes it fairly niche in Vintage.
Ancestral Recall is also insane with Moxes, Lotus and other free spells.
@@tinyprinceso Ancestral Recall mainly gets its power from being surrounded with a cast of other insanely powerful cards, not from itself
For one of my decks, Arixmethes, being able to turbo out my commander on turn 2 would be incredibly strong. And with Exploration, Mana Crypt and such, it would have been easy (if expensive) to build a deck that aims for 4 mana turn 2.
But I opted for a different restriction that makes the deck much more flexible. My deck has enough ramp to reliably play Arixmethes on turn 3 every game and every ramp spell isn't allowed to be a dead card lategame. Either the mana dorks transform into a threat (like werebear) or they cantrip (like growth spiral). This also means the deck has room for cards like opt and strong taplands.
I kind of feel like from a design standpoint, any card thats in 95%-99% of decks, it probably should be banned. Not from a "its too good" stance but more of a "this whole format is allegedly about fun, consistency and creativity, so an auto include card which breaks at least two of these tenets is bad for the format"
Edh isn't a commander + 99 cards. it's a commander + 97 card with arcane signet and sol ring (and to some degree people will say 96 and command tower)
@@wedgearyxsaber well, if you are not willing to spend *at least* 10€ for each single non-basic land (and you'll use like 20+ non-basics), then Command Tower is a good alternative
@@marcoottina654 I'll concede that lands are too damn expensive, not fun to utilize (they're the veggies of a deck. For the price you paid, you don't feel happy or enthralled when they're utilized) and are generally the bane of any deck created that's 2 or more colors and wanting to be cost-effective.
So yeah, command tower does circumvent some of that cost
Counterpoint: it would be very funny
Kinda popped over from seeing you in collab content with TM and Snail, and honestly you hit on a point that I've been arguing since this ban hit that no one else seems to be touching on. The big reason outside of the one the RC gave for keeping Sol Ring is that comparatively speaking, it's VERY limited in terms of what it can do on early plays. Crypt being 0 cost and lotus giving you access to colored mana allowed for turn 1 4 drop commanders before other players even had mana on board. Yea sure turn 2 urza is scary, how about turn 1 urza with a lotus, or a turn 1 rhystic study? Sol ring on the other hand uses your only source of color for the turn, limiting you to playing only colorless spells with the mana it gives you, meaning the acceleration you get from it really only beneficial to an artifact deck, or if you luck into a 2 drop mana rock also being in your opening hand (which drops the odds of these explosive starts people complain about Sol Ring giving even more). It's really something people very often overlook when discussing Sol Ring, they just see the typical potential "sol ring signet" turn 1 accelerant and... that's it.... because when you think about it in your average deck, well, that really is the only turn 1 sol ring play to actually use the mana the turn you play it in most decks.
I do have two commanders that dont run the ring. First is my Niv Mizzet Reborn/Jegantha deck. Since I'm running 50 guild cards that are mostly 2 sometimes 3 mana and 40 lands, I have something around 20 generic pips altogether in the deck, so Sol ring would literally do nothing except to pay for commander tax.
The other is my mono green Greensleeves "Force of Nature" deck, where I run everything to be as in sync with nature as possible. That includes "No artifacts" bc artifacts are manmade. And I have to say, Greensleeves is probably my favorite deck ever. Just pure honest ramp all day long :D
I've taken Sol Ring out of most of my decks because they either couldn't handle the heat drawn from accelerating early (and trying to fix the other side of this issue was just turning them into the average "template" with staple interactions) or it was not worth it in any turn after 3-- color intensive decks that struggled to benefit from the colorless ritual, decks that relied on mass nonland removal and/or decks reliant on mid/late top deck quality. The last one to ditch it was Teysa Karlov, and it was deliberately to slow it down: while it has the aristocratic/reanimator combo finishers you'd expect, it's just very resilient, between interaction and token generation, so it felt more fun to (put to test and) make use of that resilience.
I recently built a ms bumbleflower deck. I don't run sol ring in it because A. The commander requires 3 pips of different coloured mana and B. The majority of the deck is between 1-3 mana. The highest costing card is a single 5 mana Torrential gearhulk and part of me has been wondering if i should sub that out anyway (gonna give it fhe deck more games first)
i don't include sol ring in any of my decks. i'm slow at making decks, to get to a final 100 cards list, so i'm also not making that many decks and i didn't find myself to decide to add it in one of them, yet, and thanks this video i will think about it.
I hope to watch you flourish. I mean this wholeheartedly.
One time I was playing the Omo precon and I had an opening hand with sol ring, and an arcane signet. But despite my big mana turn 1, it kinda did not matter much because a bunch of players got a sol ring at the hell table (a commander game with too many players) so it kinda got balanced by that.
4:03 That's not really true, if you draw sol ring in a good deck you just win before anyone else can do anything. Whereas in a bad deck, the other 3 players still have a reasonable amount of time to politic around it or draw removal
Most of my primary green decks don't have sol ring because they ramp easily. Colors with less ramp option have a mana package that's at least, wayfarer's bauble, sol ring and arcane signet with the remaining rocks depending on the colors with correspondent signets and rocks that synergizes with the theme of the deck.
I recently took sol ring out of all of my decks. I was assembling a set of rules for what what kinds of cards were too good to be included in my decks (this is a really good method to keep casual decks casual). After thinking about it, I simply could not justify keeping it. It broke like 4 of the rules I had given myself.
Sol ring, oh sol ring
I started cutting it from every deck except my high power deck.
Its okay if one player gets a sol ring start. But when there are 2 players with a t1 sol ring, the other two players are just bystanders and may as well not play at all. I came to the conclusion that consistent ramp on specific turns is where i want to be headed. This way the deck feels more reliable to me and the table, and that benefits me much more overall
I play Marrow-Gnawer as Commander and 30 Relentless Rats + ThrummingStone in the 99. The rest of the deck besides lands is just good black stuff. So while solring does help to cast them the 1 remaining generic mana is awkward with the 1BB casting cost on a 3rd of the deck. So i Don't run it, I play Jet medallion instead since it makes all my rats cast for just BB. Getting a Relentless Rat out on turn 2 with 2 swamps and sol ring and then playing marrow knawer out on turn three IS good. But usually the single generic mana goes to waste, and the cost reduction from medallion out preforms sol ring in the mid to late game.
I think the amount of casual decks meaningfully improved by Sol Ring, ignoring outliers like artifact decks or infinites in need of a budget mana positive rock, is a lot lower than the numbers suggest, and I daresay the prevalence of ramp as well. Ramp is very rare to see as an archetype in competitive Magic, and only becomes relevant when it’s a ritual (Storm), a combo (Amulet Titan), or something has gone terribly wrong in the new release (Omnath Yurion Moneypile). Even cEDH doesn’t need much more than the ritual rocks plus Sol, maybe some of the green ramp, but the idea of every deck requiring upwards of 8 copies of ramp spells is absurd when you step back and look at it. We have card draw engines permanently available half the time, and sometimes even free mulligans, and even commanders that ramp as part of what they do, but people will still put 10 mana rocks into a monored Aggro deck on reflex.
You probably can cut Sol Ring for any card that sparks joy in you and be happier for it, provided you’re not trying to cast Koma or something
👏🏻 Great video Elk person, great video 👏🏻
Strongest card? Black lotus.
Its up there! Though in the lens of cube i could see taking sol ring or crypt over it if it wasn’t p1p1.
Any deck where I suspect my commander will be repeatedly sent back to the command zone gets a sol ring. Every other deck I run prefers fixing or cost reduction.
My opinions require to much effort to flesh out fully as they settle on both sides. So all I’ll say is my Galaxy Foil Sol Ring keeps climbing so PLEASE DONT BAN IT PLEASE, it’s now worth at least 2 jeweled lotuses.
I don’t include sol ring in my Freyalise deck because green doesn’t need help
great take actually, i dropped it from tayam (where i have a 3 mana or less restriction) for exactly that reason
All good but i found out i prefer playing commander "on curve". That puts a deckbuilding emphasis on finding good 1-2-3 drops that can compete with the big boys at the table. I took all ramp artifacts out of my favourite decks and made some changes. And it's working wonderfully! 😁 Means i get on board pretty early, and i have to work my way around the big greedy plays my opponents do, while really feeling the original magic "as garfield intended". More cards and less ramp also means i get more synergy, or combat presence, overall its fantastic and you should try it.
As long as Sol Ring stays around, Ingot Chewer stays in my Ilharg deck. Along with vandalblast and shattering spree. It's the only mana denial that even the most casual players seem fine with, and I'm a freak who likes mana denial in aggressive decks.
I'm surprised you didn't even mention the reason given on the official ban statement (for not banning sol ring): its too iconic to ban
Sol Ring costing a dollar because of its isane availability is huge point in its favor imo. You don't have to throw down the price of a new video game digital deluxe edition (or twice as much, Mana Crypt) to be able to access it and playing around it is only really daunting if the Sol Ring player ALSO has, by design and/or luck, oppressive hand to go with it.
My group bans a lot of the fast mana like Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Lotus and Mana Vault. It isn't really missed at all in our games. The logic the RC provided for NOT banning Sol Ring is entirely inconsistent with their reason for banning Mana Crypt and Lotus, so if they're going to ban those then Sol Ring needs to go too imo.
before i started this video i thought sol ring should be banned. but then i looked at the newest commander B&R and now i dont think its so bad actually. thanks for changing my opinion 👍
It’s probably fine. It does indeed not really help you when you open with what seems like a perfectly reasonable hand with Sol Ring into Arcane Signet and then flood out the rest of the game.
I no longer put sol ring in any of my decks. Even my artifact decks. It's just a principle thing for me. I prefer to play without fast mana and I include sol ring in that.
I stopped putting sol ring in my decks because it’s a card I don’t enjoy. I think it’s pretty rare when the ring hasn’t just made the game worse either because someone shoots off crazy ahead and snowballs out of control or their hand was terrible but had the ring and they sit there doing nothing the entire game.
so i currently have 8 commander decks made and half of them don't use sol ring due to the structure of the deck. Two of them are very heavily Creature based decks. I play Sidisi, Brood Tyrant self mill and i play 50 Creatures. Karametra, God of the Harvest i run 56 Creatures. both would rather run a mana dork then any kind of artifact mana. the deck i have that can abuse Sol ring the most is my Brago, King Eternal. Just for the fact i can use my commander to untap it every turn making it tap for 4 mana on each turn.
I see game pieces as game pieces. Quite tautological, yes, but it _precisely_ means that there are no staples: Sol Ring is a cheap artifact that produces mana, so I'll run in artifact-themed deck that benefits from casting 0 (or "N but cost reduced to 0") spells like my storm-like artifact-based Gnostro or my WUR artifact deck; alternatively I'll run it in a very heavily costed spells and/or activated abilities deck, where I0m always hungry for mana.
Everywhere else, it's a wasted card that produces alòmost useless mana
Okay, gotta say, the list is probably
1) Pre-nerf Lurrus
2) Black Lotus
Then you have Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, Sol Ring, and Mana Crypt, in some order.
Ancestral recall is easily worse than moxen sorry to say
I took sol ring out of all my decks that include green. Land destruction being rare, I'd rather just ramp for lands than run artifacts.
Other decks I'll often sandbag a sol ring unless I have a perfect hand, to avoid the early leader heat.
Ultimately we agree that Sol Ring shouldn't get banned (even if we won't really miss it if it does get hit), but I'm going to heavily pushback against it being unimportant that it makes so many precons unplayable. A precon should be playable right out of the box. That's the whole point. With production lead times, telling every new player to just go find an extra land before you play so they can just take out Sol Rings for the next year or so is going to look extremely bad on the format and accessibility. We saw how bad that went with Chishiro, the Shattered Blade's precon. It's a very real and negative impact, and a completely different beast from having a card banned that was a one time include in 5 year old deck that's no longer produced.
Personally I think Sol Ring should stay for the simple reason that it is iconic. It has been one of the main staples for as long as Commander has been a thing, and to remove it would erase some of the history and soul of the format. I have kinda similar feelings about Mana Crypt, I don't think it should have been banned (but I respect their reasoning and decision).
If Sol Ring was printed today? Ban it. If Dockside was printed in Antiquities? I would probably argue for it to stay.
i dont run sol ring in my tatsunari deck, because i want all my ramp to be enchantments
I used to play with a friend group who played proxy friendly decks, and we ended up banning Sol Ring in our group. I've since taken that logic and have been playing on more... proxy friendly areas (xmage and cockatrice)... and i actually have been keeping to my friend group's ban list as an easy way to limit the power of my decks. And from my experience, i actually disagree a lot here on these points
I feel like the point about there being an archenemy is often over simplified. A lot of decks I see can absolutely 3v1 opponents if they get a massive head start. And it's not uncommon for the player who is the archenemy and not used to getting this attention or didn't have the best of hands to get frustrated that they're getting teamed on
I also am not really convinced of the arguments of cutting Sol Ring. No offense, but i feel like there's probably a difference in who's deck building in this case where the ability to cut Sol Ring seems meaningful. Like, I think for most deck builders, a deck that does or doesn't cut Sol Ring isn't going to seem as important to say, the amount of UA-camrs trying to create new brews to show off. So the benefits imo of allowing players to talk about cutting the card just don't overweigh the negatives Sol Ribg has elsewhere. And the sort of deck building uniqueness I've had in my decks from cutting Sol Ring just hasn't been nearly as impactful as changing various synergy pieces or whatever
Like, I would imagine that most people still put Sol Ring into decks that don't need them or don't benefit much from it just because those minor percentage points are more important to them than being able to state that they're deck doesn't contain such and such card. It's why we can even argue about jank theme decks including Sol Ring
1) the argument that sol ring helps the weaker decks participate against the stronger decks is rather naïve. one could equally say that the stronger deck had just as much a chance of running away from the reach of the weaker deck because it has sol ring. The card as a whole doesn't help any deck more than another based solely on power level. they are both gaining the power at the same time. in fact one could argue the opposite is more likely to happen. the stronger deck is more likely to take the game away at a rate the weaker deck will struggle to catch up to. Seeing as how the stronger deck is more likely to have more efficient mana curves than the weaker deck.
2) also to touch one the point you said briefly, that commander is about variance. I couldn't agree more. however sol ring is the antithesis of this philosophy. I've had many discussions about how sol ring adds literally nothing interesting to the game, other than the power you gain. sol ring can fit into any deck, unless there is a very specific reason to not run it (a companion or something similar). even decks that hate on artifacts can still run it for the chance their deck draws it and boosts ahead, or uses it to catch up. however, as I said the card offers nothing more. with sol ring, the format is effectively 1 commander, 1 sol ring, and 98 cards. if we are staying true tot he idea that casual commander/edh is all about expression in a deck, building a deck with your own style, then this card only eats up a slot. a slot that could be used for literally any other card that could make your deck different from the next. whether you personally don't like to run decks with sol ring every time is rather irrelevant to the question of if it should be in the format. I understand it is an opinion, and therefore your right have. however, it doesn't change the fact it goes in nearly every deck without question. I personally don't run it, bc I feel it should be banned. a group of players and i agreed to remove it (and mana crypt) for these, among other, reasons. but again, whether I run it personally, is irrelevant to the conversation as a whole. some have tried to make the argument that command tower is the same, but that's false. no person of their right mind would run command tower in a mono deck, unless there was a very specific reason to do so. granted arcane signet could be argued the same as sol ring, and I'm in fact willing to hear those arguments. sol ring however is a card that will not hinder, but power up, nearly every deck (excluding fringe cases as stated earlier). i find the format would be much more interesting if it were instead 1 commander, and 99 cards.
I agree at least marginally with all of your takes on this one, but as for the intro, there's no way sol ring and mana crypt beat out black lotus and ancestral recall as the best cards ever
@@KeganKirby ehhh, depends. Pack 1 pick 1 in a cube I’m probably taking sol ring over lotus.
I think mana is better than draw the more efficient threats become.
I don't run sol ring in my mono green 6 deck
I got a bit of flack for not playing sol ring in some of my decks for the same reason as you (I had an ayara deck that didnt run it as well). The critique was basicly that sol ring makes every deck better, as in if you are playing mind stone or any other efficient rock that produces colorless you should probably be playing sol ring first. The guy making the argument is a bit of a spike and I think sol ring is worse for the spikey players because it's so cheap and comes in precons so there is no reason not to run it in most decks and they feel trapped by it.
I still dont run sol ring in some decks, and I usually prefer synergy-pieces like a manadork (if playing creature heavy with draw based on creatures like guardian project) an explore/growth effect (for decks that care about lands) or even another more synergistic manarock (I seem to run liquimetal torque more than other players since it as a lot of removal synergy).
Honestly I don't think Sol Ring should be banned, but then I don't think any of the other cards (except Nadu) should've been banned recently. I think putting Sol Ring on a pedestal and saying it gets a pass because it's iconic and "defies the laws of physics" makes the RC's decision seem like unobjectively biased at best and insider trading at worst. Also their comment saying that they didn't sell off any copies of the cards they banned comes off as dismissive.
Commander ban twist: sol ring is ONLY legal in unmodified pre-cons.
That's what all precons are like. The Sevinne precon is still legal as is
I LOVE not including sol ring in decks. Idk why but it does make me feel better. I don't run it in skull briar or zacama even though it would probably make the decks better. I do run it in my Raff deck because it's already playing mana rovks and sol ring is simply better most of the time.
Yeah but if they ban Sol Ring I can make a table out of all mine and how cool would that be?
I don’t think i have solring in any of the decks i own. I never really liked any of the artworks except maybe the original.
Sol ring eshoukd be banned especially if you baan mana crypt and other fast mana. It's annoying when someone getting solring in his starting hand and others don't have ways to match this free mana
To be honest this video got the same energy as yugioh players saying that pot of greed should be unbanned
By the rules commitee's own logic for banning the other fast mana pieces, Sol Ring SHOULD have been banned, it was a mistake to that it wasn't banned with the moxen initially. Sure 1 in 99 means that it'll be in less opening hands but the games that start out with a player starting with it are WARPED and let a lot of otherwise similar power level decks have random games where someone gets so far ahead that they essentially won on the first turn.
If a single sol ring is why you lost, you were outclassed in decks or in skills from the get go.
ALL positive mana rocks should be banned :P unless it costs another card in hand (like imprint)
If you can say that sol ring shouldn't actually go in nearly every deck that plays lands, then my reason for thinking it should go is disproven. I just want to optimize 100 card decks rather than 99+sol ring. I am dubious that it's not just becoming more common to self ban it though. Are there any cedh decks that don't run sol ring?
"likely to get 1 of 3 answers" *doesn't show black lotus or ancestral recall* yeah okay buddy
Ancestral recall is definitely the worst piece of power nowadays hate to break it to you. Lotus is top 4 for sure.
Yes it should all Mana Positive Mana rocks should be banned along with generic tutors, and RL cards.
Real talk they need to just recon and reprint it, make it 3 mana, boom there balanced
Anyone else play mtg here?
Only Fortnite secret lair but yes
@@AntonioBaker-q4o based
5
I agree that Sol Ring shouldn't be banned... along with Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus, and Dockside Extortionist.
why play sol ring? how desperate are you to beat your friends in a CASUAL format?
Sol ring can't be banned because it would make a hundred precon commander decks illegal off the shelf. No way wizards can allow that
Bruh. He literally debunked that argument in the video.