agreed. A card being auto include does not make it ban worthy if it doesn't warp the format at all. Cards like low cost tutors, for example, completely change the format and make combo way better than it should be.
The reason they don't ban the best mana rocks is: Green. Green as a color identity is already too powerful to let it have a monopoly of the best ramping options.
@@Alessandro-mg9oh yeah, as well as other one mana ramp cards. And can easily have enough redundancy to ramp from turn one, consistently in a 99-singleton format. And if you go into other mana values,… even more ramp. The rest of the colors, don’t have that many options for ramping, only rocks. Ramp is such a powerful thing to do in the format to just have one color doing it consistently. The other colors need them to be able to catch up with green.
@@moralessanchezoscarelias6412 Sol Ring isn’t staying unbanned because of green. It’s because Wizards doesn’t want a precon (or in this case, all precons) to immediately be unplayable. However I do think that at least Sol Ring and Crypt are bad for the casual format, just like the cheap black tutors. I’m not gonna not play them because they are good (instead price would be why on just Crypt), but I wouldn’t revolt if I have to use Worn Powerstone and Letter Of Acceptance over Sol Ring and Arcane Signet.
Flash makes sense over Hulk because it was a cEDH-specific ban. The combo itself is not super popular outside of cEDH, and in casual commander, Hulk sees more play. So banning Flash makes the cEDH community happy while minimizing the impact on the rest of the format.
wanted to comment this, leaving protein hulk unbanned was a gift to casual players since they like to play it manually. Flash was getting degenerate with thassa's oracle making the combo more consistent and harder to stop. That's why people wanted to ban flash specifically since it wouldn't affect casual play.
I think insane combo cards like flash and tinker that wind up banned in legacy or restricted in vintage have a pretty solid argument for getting banned in commander because they represent play patterns that wizards doesn't want to be a part of their game as a whole even at high levels of play
Flash died for the sins of Thassa's Oracle, not because of Hulk. Turns out, flashing Thoracle was harder for your opponents to interact, and Hulk saw some play on lower power EDH games, so the RC banned the card that only saw play on cEDH.
Tinker is insanely too powerful, guys. Think about it...instant speed tutor that cheats mana cost in blue. It's an answer, a win con, and there is no comparison in any other color.
@@Someone-lg6di those aren't on the same level. Remember - Tinker costs 3 mana. Forgemaster is 5 mana plus needing 3 things to sac and you need to either wait a turn or grant it haste to activate. Planar bridge is 14 mana to do it all in 1 turn.
I don't believe in deck diversity bans. Imo, "deck diversity" as a balancing concept is something that should purely be moderated by your personal playgroup and not something imposed on everyone.
Emrakul is incredibly hard to interact with and it can be cheated out easily if it's in the deck. If it's in the command zone the game devolves into arch enemy just to stop it from getting on board
@@jeffnorris211 Ah the words of a person that has never been forced to sacrifice 6 permanents and have no answers to the monstrosity that is Emrakul. I find it cute when casual players think something super oppressive is fun, because one day they'll play against it and immediately go "what the fuck is this"
Flash is and will continue to be the problematic 2 mana instant enabler for all the LTB creatures they will print. Flash is the correct choice, because it will be broken with something else at some point.
@@Djewell314 Gaea's is better in mono green / triabal / creature decks... this is problem. Its the same level on "power" in correct deck. Both can easy add 5-10 mana ... and problem with Gaeas is that green is super easy to have it in play every game becose of so many tutors for lands.... In blue/artifacts decks - most of time, you dont have so many options for tutor for Tolarian. You would need to add Green on Black to do it... Thisis why in my opinon Greas is more broken then Academy - and still both are ladnds that winds game, and both shoud be banned. On top of that - if you want now comptetive deck with green - 90% of time, you need to spend yours months salary for 1 card...
I am going to have to hard disagree with most of your takes on your additional bans. 1. The argument that if a card is an auto-include it should be auto-banned is completely arbitrary. The only time this is appropriate is if it is a one-sided advantage like Lutri. 2. You cannot hold that an auto-include such as Arcane Signet should be bannable while at the same time complain that wizards needs to have better mana rocks, like you do in other videos. Arcane Signet is not a problem at all. It is a playable version of Commander's Sphere without the cantrip. 3. If someone plays turn one Sol Ring, they immediately become a target for the whole table. I'd say thats balance. Don't ban the card, just play more politically. Commander is meant to be political. 4. Banning tutors is asinine. They exist to make combo decks possible in EDH. Imagine trying to find a single combo piece out of 100 cards vs. drawing one of four copies of it from a 60 card deck. The tutors literally even the odds at the cost of card disadvantage. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these. Plus there are plenty of cards in the format that punish tutoring. Ob Nixilis, Opposition Agent, etc
Also, "I want the format to be as fun as possible." Literally wants to ban all my favorite cards which provide consistency in my favorite format. I'm glad your banlist isn't the banlist or I would probably not be playing EDH, despite playing since 2013.
So by wanting to ban the fast Mana rocks, you're essentially saying that you'd like green, which is already the strongest color due to its ability to ramp efficiently combined with the social contract's taboo on mass land destruction, to far and away dominate the format. The other colors, especially red and white, need those rocks to keep up.
I agree, people have been complaining about sol rings and Crypt for a long time just because they are autos and efficient but now talking about early rocks that color fix is just plain dumb. #LeaveTheManaRocksAlone
But you play sol ring and mana crypt in green desks too, because they are that good................ you're telling me you don't have sol ring and mana crypt in your green desks? I'll call you out on that one. has nothing to do with green being the best color. has to do with the power level of the card.
@@metalking837 but the worse off it is as a whole I have memories of multi hour commander games that just would not end And with how the power has shifted I can now sit down with my friends play a game for 30 minutes and it be a good time Slowing down EDH is not a good thing
@@sentientsickness If a game lasts several hours then the table is lacking better win cons. I see that in casual tables where attacking is minimal and there's a lack of combo wins due to being disliked.
@@metalking837 this was several years ago so 2017 ish not only were win cons worse, but non green ramp was much worse, and so was non blue interaction In general the better lands, tutors, and mana rocks allowed for things to speed up, most non cedh decks win between turn 10 and 20 and that's a good spot for the game Yes there are a couple more auto include cards, but outside of the internet, I've never once heard complaints about sol ring, or signets, or tutors It's mostly people nostalgic for a time that wasn't as good as they thing it was, and fans of channels run by those kind of players No offense to the Nerds they do some great content, but as an older player whose format has always been EDH I just don't see why people hate on the staples or the faster gameplay when most players and even the stats show that these aspects have been a positive for the formy
@@sentientsickness Personally I don't like the printing of staples, especially when they are designed with commander in mind. Cards like dockside and fierce guardianship are good examples. I do agree the pase of games have increased which I think is overall better for the format.
@@robertmonroe1883 Or Flash / Academy Rector / tutor some game-ending ultra expensive and powerful late-game enchantment into play. With flash gone, you could maybe unban the extra turn Emrakul.
@@kitbroughton3421 A turn 2 Braids can come from a 2 lands and a Dark Ritual. So Dark Ritual should be banned because it allowed Braids to come out on turn 2?
@@hiddenleaf414 Dark Ritual is not a permanent the braids player could sac in desperation. Its a higher investment than a soul ring or something similar.
I think y'all're underestimating Gifts Ungiven. I've never seen it resolve and the caster not win the game. If the deck is built properly, there are multiple combinations of four cards for which any choice one's opponent makes off Gifts will win one the game. It's another situation where the only thing that stops the win is countermagic, which is a skosh uncool outside CEDH.
I love gifts to death and still think it needs to stay banned. 4 cards is a lot and like you said, if the deck is built right it will win off of one search. But there is also the fact being that you don't even need to get 4 cards makes it even more powerful. Sometimes the issue with intuition is that the opponent chooses correctly and makes you jump through hoops to combo off. With gifts, you can just have 2 combo pieces put in the graveyard and win.
yeah, all you need is sevines reclamation lions eye diamond underworld breach and wheel of fortune. boom you win by filtering through your entire deck. if they give you a hand with sevine you bring back breach, If they don't give you sevine then you flashback sevine and grab breach. EZ
I was literally watching the original banlist episode yesterday, I wasn't done watching it, and when I tuned in this morning to watch it. The video was removed. Makes sense now.
When I use tutors I normally get w.e is needed to deal with a problem but sometimes I do use them to help my board state. So is the episode just "no ramp no auto include"? Look I understand wanting to see different decks but come-on. Sol ring is fine. It's a 4+ player game. If someone gets a early game sol ring u have 3+ other people to put them in check.
There are a couple of cards that you were considering un-banning, and I just wanted to point out a few things that you might have missed Erayo: hard locks the game, with several white cards that only let players cast one spell a turn. Flash: Arena Rector can also be flashed in, to go get omniscience. Gifts Ungiven: the trick here is to read the card carefully, if you only get 2 cards, both go to the graveyard, it can be used as a double entomb. Also there are several gifts piles that just win the game.
@@NitpickingNerds alot entomb is a tutor for graveyard decks my scion deck wins with just 1 creature in grave and mass revival or 2+. Scion mills bladewing then revive bladewing and scourge of vallas or terror of the peaks, instant win only pice commander doesnt tutor is the revival effect
In a format where you are incentivated to play 4-5 colors, cards that rewards you for playing monocolor a truly like it, and i would love to see more in other colors. Not only i would not ban cabal coffers, i would make card in that diection in monocolors that need a bit of help. Equivalents for monowhite (like emeria), or monored (like valakut), i think are healthy for the format. Incentivating not only playing the more colors the more card pool you have for your strategy. Also, cards that limit you 30 cards in your deckbuilding in exchange for a powerful effect are called build arounds, and are good and cool, without so many tutors surely are balanced.
In my opinion at least I think the difference between coffers and the other lands you mention is that coffers makes games feel extremely same-y. On the first couple of turns you tutor up coffers then play it and ramp out big mana threats. I think it hurts deck diversity and gameplay diversity
@@NitpickingNerds The monoblack comanders are the LEAST unique comanders( stats taken in the episode 104 EDHRECast). All monoblack deck have nearly the same cards, and thats another problem, i think mainly because black can do anithing, and has only restictions in paying life. I would ban Urborg before coffers, becuse it makes coffest busted (mana profitable with less lands), and can be used in multicolor decks, removing the deck restiction. Having said that, i would put Obliterate, Apocalipse, staic orb, stasis drecree of anihilation or demonic consultation wayyy before cabal coffers or urborg.
Urborg is the real problem, with out it Coffers is mono black only. I feel like spot removal for lands is a must in any deck anyways. I would ban urborg first
Coffers is the problem. One land shouldn’t ramp that much, and if it does, it should be green. It’s a build around specifically because it’s incredibly powerful. A better idea would be to ban some of the expensive lands that cover your mana while coming in untapped. Make multicolor decks more likely to have lands come in tapped and this slower and it will make mono decks faster.
@@yoyepo91 If you limit yourself to just one color and lose all the versatility of a pool of cards 5 times more wide, cards like cofffers balance that exchange. Think of it as cards like niv mizzet Parum, in exchange os a very restrictive mana cost, you get an overstated creature. If the price of deck building is really high, the rewards should be equivalent.
I really think the commander community can be reasonably separated into two groups. People who want to play good magic cards, and people who want to play mediocre magic cards. The problem being that the people who like playing good cards tend not to care what everyone else plays, and the people who want to play mediocre cards want everyone else to do so.
I think an issue with just taking a bat to all the top tier tutors is then you’ve got the colors that specialize in massive card draw being able to steam roll a little more. Also Black for example has a lot of second string tutors that would fill those spots quickly while White has no replacement comparable to enlightened tutor.
Another thing, the tutors enable jank combo decks to perform at a casual level. I play like 6 tutors in my Atogatog combo deck and it still unperformed at most tables.
I could do without Food Chain. There is a guy in my playgroup that always just wins with it in his Prosh deck and it is very anticlimactic and just a feels bads!
Uncounterable, flying 15/15 with Protection from Colored Spells and everytime it swings defending player must sacrifice 6 permanents. Nope, cant see how taking an extra turn and having a 15/15 uncounterable creature that has protection from colored spells can be broken in a commander format overrun with mana rocks, infinite mana loops and other ridiculous enchantments/artifacts to make emrakul invincible
Hey, I love your content but I wanted to clarify that Chaos Orb doesn't require that you rip it into pieces. I believe you're confusing it with Chaos Confetti. A lot of us used to run multiple Chaos Orbs in every deck back in 93/early 94 and it was probably the most powerful card in MtG at that point. Basically it's a three-colorless-mana artifact with "destroy between one and five target permanents" that you can recur (e.g. Archaeologist, Reconstruction, etc.). It was particularly devastating in land destruction decks of that era. The DCI banned it right away because of its power level and also for the ridiculous impact it had in tournament play, as people would literally tape their cards to the walls to nullify the effects of Chaos Orb. Realistically it should probably stay banned in EDH but it's still my all-time favorite card. Cheers.
The best artifact for tinker to fetch out isn't blightsteel, its memory jar. The decks that would run tinker are likely cheerio decks like Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain. As a Jhoira player, i guarantee you that tinker would be used either to fetch out memory jar if my hand is bad, aetherflux reservoir if my hand was good, or something like nev disk or o-stone if the board needed to be wiped.
I once had Cyclonic Rift into only one deck. A few months ago, the spike in me realized that this card was an auto include in all blue decks, so I put it in all my decks. Thanks to you, you made me remember why I only put it into my most competitive deck. I just removed it from every other blue decks and I feel better !
Wheel is more easily replaced though. Red has at least two other wheel effects which are arguably better and far less expensive. Magus is fired at instant speed, allowing you to mess with decks that try to set up their hands and Wheel of Fate gives you a couple turns to drop your hand and does it on your upkeep, giving you a hand of eight cards that turn. Even Memory Jar is less destructive on your wallet, and that is almost a strict upgrade. Blue's wheels, on the other hand, tend to be more expense or not actually draw seven cards and Twister resets graveyards. This makes Twister more difficult to replace (and it's replacements have a habit of getting banned).
the only argument i make for keeping sol ring in the format is that it can be a great top deck for someone struggling to hit enough land drops to stay competitive
@@Tracker947 not only that, but it goes in literally every deck. Nobody is missing out on playing it so I don’t see why it would be banned. Why ban something that helps other colors than green get their ramp going?
Flash got banned over hulk because flash protected death triggers in a really unintuitive way that can't be interacted with once it begins to resolve. And I personally think its interaction with the mana tripler scared the RC.
No, from a casual perspective yes it seems strong but no. Protean hulk is still a win con, if you are playing hulk, you will have a hulk win line (in cEDH). In more casual games it’s just a big value engine but flash hulking into a mana tripler is not the best thing you could do with it. It’s cool but not it.
I loved your take on Hulk and it’s great that both of you have very differing opinions. Great video as always. Few channels I will sit down and watch an hour long video. Keep up the good work and stay safe.
I was really looking forward to this video. I've been thinking a lot about the CMDR ban list recently and I appreciate hearing your guys opinions on it. However, I don't think command tower or arcane signet deserve a ban.
@@NitpickingNerds I believe they're really helpful for players who want to play multiple colors and can't get a hold of more expensive untapped lands to get good color fixing, they also don't break the game from a power level perspective like sol ring and mana crypt. So I see them as a positive in the format even if they do homogenize it.
Joe is 100% correct about Erayo, Beezy is 100% correct in pronouncing Protean Hulk (not Protein). You are both 100% correct about Sol Ring and Mana Crypt!
Commander should be open to all cards except those that absolutely break it. That is one of the main reasons commander is fun, its not bogged down by restrictions except for those that are self/group imposed.
The ban list altogether is fairly problematic, as LITERALLY anything one (or two, three, four...) card(s) can do, there is a bunch of other cards that do the same (or worse). Its hard to justify anything being banned with all the cards that aren't, and we certainly can't go back through and ban every card that can win games. Lots of slippery slope argument space here. I mean, I think a shit load of cards should be banned, but its hard to justify them in comparison to other cards sometimes.
a lot of card are banned as a representative for certain strategies the RC thinks are unfun. and they arent banning for powerlevel-reasons. thats not my opinion btw, just the reasoning behind the bans (or cards not being banned while others are)
@@dino-wer-kuh3498 I mean, yes, that's correct; but frankly, it is the power level of those strategies that is the core of the issue 9 times out of 10. Too OP = less fun ≤ ban hammer(?) (And if your/their statement was 100% true, land destruction would be banned outright, in all forms j/k lol)
@@workyoutube7798 yeah, the list is pretty arbitrary. thats the cost of banning on subjective feelings than objective powerlevel. but its a cost im willing to pay, bcs it keeps the nature of EDH casual at heart. i still disagree with a bunch of their choices though, but in the end im fine with it
For what it's worth, you only need one turn with panoptic mirror, you don't need to sorcery speed it and wait a turn. You can respond to the trigger on your upkeep by activating in response and putting the card under.
strong budget cards like sol ring, that feel realy good wehn you get it in your opening hand may be problematic but in a 4player game this is less of an issue since it encourages teamwork to catch up and politics are some of the most fun things about this game. mana crypt is worse since its less accessible. arcane signet and command tower on the other hand should definately stay. the most restricting thing about building decks on a budget is the manabase and those two cards help fix that a little. its two cards in 100 everyone runs but i dont think this is a problem when it comes to lands and mana rocks. those things mostely do the same thing and having those vs. a new cycle of duals or rocks doenst make much of a difference imo.
I play coalition victory in my sisay weatherlight deck. If I ever win with this card I'm gonna freak out, since it is a full flavour deck with each card referencing the weatherlight story. So no dual lands, no feches, not much ramp outside of the pieces of ramos, so I have to have one of each basic land and at least 3 creatures out to win with it. I just love it.
Banlist is such a hard topic. It's so hard to please everyone and keep it consistent with philosophy. I think Banlist should not be like a hard ban, but being a suggestion. If player have a cEDH deck he wouldn't play it against some budget player. Most of players sits down with friends, so rule 0 solves that part. If he(or she) is an asshole, you either don't play with him or play archenemy, whatever you're prefer.
@@NitpickingNerds yeah, I assume that probably won't work with cEDH, but there's always will be a top teir deck(s), so make different banlist is not an option, then there will be cEDH, some semi-competitive EDH and casual commander. So again, this is hard as hell to please everyone
Idea The primary reason Tutors are so strong is because the ones that were listed were essentially the cheapest CMC ones. In some cases, you can literally tutor up for a particular card and play it in the same turn. Black actually has a BUTT TON of tutors, just not 'efficient' tutors. There's Diabolic Tutor, Increasing Ambition, Wishclaw Talisman, Scheming Symmetry, Beseech the Queen, Everything and EVERYTHING with a TRANSMUTE COST. I mention black mana tutors first because they are the most efficient, allowing you to just grab a card and add it without showing what it is, putting it on top of library, or any of the other silly things some other tutors do. There's too many tutors to even mention honestly. The only thing that would actively stop the mass tutoring would be to simply cull the most efficient ones, and even then if you're doing that all you're doing is manually taking one step back from being "super strong" to just "versatile strong". If you ask me, the biggest thing is that I do not believe tutors should be able to be *Instant speed* while remaining anything less than 3 or 4 mana in CMC. Even then that's a huge benefit because you're just going to have someone use that instant-speed tutor to find a counterspell, or grab something from their deck at the end of someone else's turn. Maybe any instant-speed tutor should just be axed. Also, every card with an alt casting cost that essentially makes it "free" should be _banned._ Fite me 1v1 RL over this, that stuff is absolutely toxic for games and I do not carry them in decks outside of 9's and 10's.
Heh, hate Protean Hulk. It was the obvious ban when the Thassa's Oracle/Flash debacle was a thing. The card has always been a problem, and we could've been done with it for good. I agree with the banning of the top tier tutors for sure. If I remember correctly the reason Gifts Ungiven was banned is that it became an unwinnable situation every time it was cast. The player would search for their four win conditions, at instant speed, and it was game over. No matter how the piles were separated they were probably going to win. And as we know even if two cards get dumped into the graveyard that doesn't mean a whole lot these days. XD great video guys, and it was some nice insight (:
I love how an anecdote about events from the 90s, which inspired an UN card apparently made that the actual card ruling. You flip chaos orb, you drop falling star. Idk why apparently the "tear the card up" is apparently the cardtext. Neither should be banned because they're super goofy. Again I guess this goes with Rule 0.
Dexterity cards are bed for black border magic because the game should be playable by anyone who can read, regardless of their physical abilities. Dexterity cards unfairly penalize people with differently abled bodies.
@@NitpickingNerds I agree on most of what you guys are banning. But I think Sol Ring, tutors, fetchlands are a bit too far. People are welcome to introduce more variance in their playgroup should they choose to by excluding them. I enjoy having decks that have tutors as well as ones that don’t.
Coming from a more casual background: I think Arcane Signet is fine, I pretty much have my land slots locked around 35, 10 cards for permanent ramp (including mana rocks). If Arcane Signet is banned, I'll just stick another 2 mana mana rock - it helps decks with more colours, especially if the land base isn't the greatest. If you're in green, you're playing obligatory ramp cards anyway so nothing really changes here I'd probably say most of those 0 mana mana rocks would probably be considered for bans - other highroll related early game stuff being banned should slow the game down significantly Anyway, rant over - I agree with everything but the Arcane Signet, the high roll aspect isn't really too fun in general. Perhaps the "0 mana" counterspells are a place to visit too, then you spend less time looking at the blue player to see if you can play cards
I just think at some point the Arcane Signet / Command Tower cards hit a critical mass where in five years commander decks could have 5-7 auto-includes when I'd rather have the deck slots opened up since like you said every color has fairer replacements for them, but you'd have to choose what fits your deck best
@@NitpickingNerds id rather have the auto includes over more random cards that are strictly worse people can choose not to run the best cards. Forcing it on others just because you don't like best of cards is one of the worst ban reasons.
Top is fine, the issue is unexpected players using it. In my group the rule is know you’re next turn before your turn comes, unless something game changing happened right before you. Know your deck know your turns.
@@TheGoodchildOne No one expects a Force of will in a 5 color Sliver deck getting rid of Sliver Queen to pay for the cost as Overlord is the commander. Feeling anxious yet? ignore the fact that i can turn it into a Sliver with giving them a Hivestone and steal it with Overlord and from then on unless they blow up Hivestone any creature they have is mine note i would not have done that if i did not already have Bazaar trader and a Hivestone with fervor in my hand otherwise i can't give them the Hivestone to take their Blightsteel i mean my Blightsteel. Complicated combo i know but usually i steal their commanders with Hivestone find a way to get Hivestone back then go around the board taking the commanders, but who can resist a Blightsteel? or even putting a arrest on a Blightsteel till you can get the combo to add it to the Hive? I shall also turn their Mana crypt into a creature and take control of it also ignore that i am using a Sliver deck as a control deck. By the way if you don't know wat Hivestone does it turns all of the creatures you control into Slivers which used to be used as a counter for Sliver decks unless someone decides to use Overlord and take your newly created Slivers so you get the benefits but actually no its a trap as Overlord's control does not last till end of turn it last till the creature is dead. And one thing i would like to add both of Overlord's abilities are instant speed so say they try to supreme verdict us on their turn i could just take their Blightsteel in response even if they attack me or try to destroy the stone in response my Blightsteel, you stifle my ability? how cute in response i pay 3 my Blightsteel
Having played casual EDH games with competitive people, I 100% agree on the Tier 1 tutor bans. Every game they don't win right away feels like they're just letting it drag on out of pity because everyone else at the table spent less money on cards than they have. It's also the reason I built and Ob Nixilis, Unshackled deck. I am a horrible person in the name of fun.
I don't think anything except for like 5 cards in total should be banned. People only play if people are willing to play with you and the cards that you say should be banned aren't always used in awful ways I only like commander because there's like no cards band.
That's another way to go about it too, just say basically nothing is banned and let everyone lean on rule 0. Might trash cEDH though, but Sheldon and them have said they don't cater to cEDH hardly at all
I don't think that excuses their power and huge impact, though. If every color gets them it's kind of a wash anyway right? No color has similar replacements for ring or crypt :P
Honestly I feel like there should be two different banned lists, one for Cedh and the other for more casual play. Some of the cards on the banned list arent banned due to power level, but being a feels bad. Having 2 different lists could let deck diversity increase since you can ban a card in one list without touching it in the other. But of course, that would take a lot of testing and trial and error.
Sheldon won't do it, it's on someone else to create/maintain a competitive multi player format. One possible remedy is to create a suggested casual ban list then minimize the actual ban list. This will lead to too much confusion however.
What is your guys opinion on carpet of flowers? I feel like the card is insanely strong and at least in the conversation for ban-able cards. You are almost never at a table where no one is playing blue, especially as you go up in power. And once someone even has three islands its already insane for a 1 mana investment. And it never feels good to destroy since it was only a one mana play and can be recurred pretty easy by any regrowth like effect or even cards like sun titan if you ever get rid of it. I think the dumbest part is that you can play it in first main and get the mana in second main in the same turn. I've seen people cast it late game and just net 7+ mana from it. It just almost never feels dead, early or late. Unless of course you are at a table with no blue players.
As always when watching your videos I disagree with many of your points :-D Banning sol ring and command tower? Those are the poster boys of the whole format. When I started playing edh (theros), the main appeal to playing it was that you could do fun stuff that wasnt legal anywhere else - like playing necropotence eg. Banning coffers would really damage the power level of mono black decks, same with banning cyclonic rift for mono blue. They can compete now, but without them mono green with its access to every relevant effect in the game would be king by far. Tutors also find answers to some difficult situations in multiplayer games, which makes the dynamics more interesting imo. I really think that this whole ban stuff with some exceptions should be left to playgroups. Especially now as more people streamline their decks and they become closer to cedh.
I couldn't disagree more! Your telling me that if by banning one card, it "makes a color not compete now". If anything that tells you how powerful that card truly is. If you remove it from the format and now the color is done... You must be the player that plays sol ring/mana crypt in every deck. Be on the opposite side once and see how much fun you're having when a game immediately turns into a 1 v 3. When coffers comes down on the board and creates 10 mana and allows them to play their entire hand and more??? how is that fair magic? there is no down side to it. it's an auto include. and tutors make the format stale. Who wants to play the exact same game of magic every time? like they said in the video, you do the same thing every game. play the same cards every game. if i wanted to do that, I'd play standard. they also make games take longer because, like you stated, you can find answers to any threat.
@@JosephZiereis I was only talking about the mono colored decks in comparison to each other. I play sol ring in every deck, as every player that I know. Mana crypt in just some. Also I have been plenty of times in a 1v3 situation and vice versa, that's the beauty of edh, if you get too far ahead early, you take a risk like this. Tutors are ok if you don't overdo it. Answers are now more needed because some permanents/commanders are so powerful (chulane, k'rrik, korvold eg) that you have to deal with them immediately lest you die.
On the case of Biorhythm and Coalition Victory, the rules committee's stance on why they are banned is because they are very swingy cards that can win the game with, in biorhythm's case little setup, and, in Coalition Victory's case immediately with the right setup. Even if they are not broken, they lead to swingy and generally unfun games. I experimented with a no banlist/light banlist commander format with my friend, and when we played games where the unbanned cards are ones like Coalition Victory and Biorhythm, the games were very swingy and generally unfun.
Yeah it’s a little confusing, those don’t promote playing magic either. It’s tough because there’s so many cards like that. We definitely aren’t saying the RC is stupid or anything; they have a tough job
@@uphillwalrus5164 I can see what you mean, but have to disagree. With all the brought back/sevines rec. shenegians, mana crypts and vaults and moxen and 2 mana rocks... It is possible to consistently power her out T4/5..
Banning cards in this CASUAL format simply because of the price is a TERRIBLE idea for the health of the game. I see so many people screaming to ban all high roller cards simply for the price, for example, OG Duals. In my opinion, a healthy alternative to these cards would be proxies. Proxies 100 percent should be written into the rules of EDH as a whole. You are supposed to be playing against the player, not their wallet. As for the argument for banning top played mana rocks and all the best tutors, that is also a bit insane. Just because most people run those cards and view them as auto includes, does not make them ban worthy. I feel like if commander had the ban list that is discussed here. It would be the most drawn out and boring format ever.
@@NitpickingNerds yeah but he was in my grimgrin deck til they banned him it was a horde of zombies with a handful of vampires commanding them, all working for grisslebrand
I have a love/hate relationship for the bankist. I get why it exists. But stuff like flash and paradox engine I personally wish weren't banned because I didn’t play them in the ways they got banned for. But if I’m playing with a new group (or even an established group) they would most likely not let a house rule pass to play either of these.
Biorhythm is because of the prevalence of board wipes. After a wipe, if a player has a creature (indestructible, flashes in, death trigger, or just cheap) then they auto win with Biorhythm
Chaos Orb reminds me of winning Nationals at Redemption, a bible-based CCG almost as old as Magic...They had a card called Haman's Plot that had to be ripped up when used, so I brought a couple dozen to States and Nationals that year.
To Joe's point: Prophet bas been banned so long that I think we should unban it for like a month just so we can be reminded how awful it is. "But it's just Seedborn--"
Really like your guys banlist, especially the OP fetchlands and manacrypt which add $400 and 10 predetermined slots to every deck. I disagree with your assessment of protean hulk, you can do the same type of combo with pattern of rebirth for 3cmc less.
Serra Ascendant looks silly, but is actually the combat equivalent to a 1/1 flying lifelink in a 1v1 format, because you have 6 times (120 / 20) the life to get through. So yes it's way above rate compared to other creatures, but that's the kind of damage a creature needs to do to be playable as a french vanilla. And when you draw it mid/late it's often the worst card in your deck. Do people actually include it in decklists anymore?
I don't agree with the current banlist as it stands. A card should only be banned if it's format breaking (being powerful is not format breaking) and accessibility is already an issue anyway so I don't see the reason the moxen and lotus are banned.
Aside from the deck diversity issue where it gets played 24/7 in anything… Main gripe I have with cyclonic rift is the design, specifically I hate the overload cost. Imo, It would have been a more reasonable design if it was UUU4 or something along those lines. It’s just kinda dumb how it can just be jammed in any deck that runs the slightest sliver of blue. An effect like that should at the least require a solid commitment to blue mana.
The real issue with gifts is you essentially get to at instant speed ask your opponent to choose how they lose by tutoring for redundant versions of the same effect were their choice doesn’t actually matter. Intuition is only legal because of sorcery speed.
"Coalition Victory" should be unbanned and changed to work like the D&D party mechanic, so that a land / creature contributes only one basic land type / color at the same time, even if it's multicolered. So you need 5 lands and 5 creatures.
Transguild Courier and two Triomes to win the game for Coalition Victory. I guess it isn't that bad when you consider what kind of two-three card insta-infinite combos are out there.
Timetwister is not the cheapest draw seven that exists. In fact, it costs three times the mana of the cheapest. Contract from Below is one black mana to draw seven.
Staples are needed in a casual format. Banning cards like Sol Ring goes against the whole concept of EDH. Crypt and Cradle are different for availability reasons. 2-3 slots that are "auto includes" is actually what helps make the format accessible to new players. If you can't understand that, you're likely not going to enjoy this game to the extent that you could.
On Emrakul, "Protection from colored spells". Protection is active when on the battlefield. Which is why you can use 'castigate' to exile Emrakul from the hand. But such spells can not hit Emrakul when in the command zone, which means what is basically the only method of interacting with her pre-resolution is taken away. And since once she's resolved, Emrakul is basically one step short of unkillable . . . There is nothing 'fun' about her. And I play Stax, making people not have fun while playing Magic is my thing! Also permanents aren't spells once they're on the battlefield, so Emrakul isn't protected from say Banishing Light's ETB (this also means creatures can be put in front of her to block). But you're just gonna put her right back in the command zone, where she can't be interacted with with spells like the aforementioned castigate, and 17 colorless isn't that hard to pay in commander, so even then . . . like, I don't typically like ban lists, but Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is an absolute game warping card in all formats, and nigh impossible to interact with in Commander, she's 100% a reasonable ban.
Emrakul aeons torn is very easy to cast nowadays I participated In EDH events where this existed and there are a lot of ways to cheat cast it for free or little cost or making lots of mana fast.
So I'm working on this as I watch the video (should edit at the end but ideas might be a bit discordant) mostly going to cover areas I disagree with. I'll get it out of the way but I don't think cards should be banned for accessibility reasons. Cards like library, twister, and time walk are perfectly fine for the format. Cards like lotus and the mox aren't. Just allow proxies if you want to play with the cards or don't play them. Channel is good but I don't think it's too broken. The scenario you talk about requires a lot, like double mox and a good spell and hand and so on. Instead it just seems like a really good ritual in a color that doesn't really need the help cheating out big fatties. Is it good, yes, is it ban worthy, I don't think so. Erayo, Soratami Ascendant is good but I think she's best in mono blue as the commander where she can flip easily. But the decks that want to play her often tend to be in more colors. Could stay banned or unbanned I don't think she makes that much of a difference. Flash is absolutely the problem. It's similar to what you mentioned with grand abolisher, and is part of the issue that thassa's oracle still presents to the format, it can only be interacted with on the stack. This is because you sac protean hulk to the cost of flash and the death trigger can not be interacted with (apart from a stifle, another blue stack spell) and you win off of the pile. If you are not able to interact with the casting of flash, something that is only available to one color, then you just lose. This suck from a deck diversity perspective as a turn two extremely difficult to interact with end the game is poison to the format. I mean personally I think hulk should stay unbanned and oracle should be banned but that's from a more high power and competitive player so take it with a grain of salt. Gifts Ungiven is a card I want to play with but is vastly better than intuition in the amount of piles you can realistically muster. Probably fine being banned or unbanned. Iona is a garbage card and I don't know why anyone would play it much less want it banned. I want paradox engine unbanned for deck diversity in comp but as far as bans go this is completely reasonable. The format isn't and currently shouldn't be balanced for comp and this is dumb at lower levels so keep it banned. Roffelos is totatlly fine in the format. Good yes but we already have bloom tender and faeburrow elder and priest of titania and so on. Sundering titan is fine. Run diversified mana run diversified lands run interaction. Such a non-issue. I really really really really want to build golas tolarian storm but alas card is and should be banned. Upheaval is fine, just another big build around card like land destruction or joukloups. Maybe not fun to play against but not powerful enough to be banned. Yawgmoth is busted but I think its just a worse ad nausum in most scenarios (at high power) busted for lower stuff though should stay banned. Also I will be mad if necro gets banned fucking love that card. I'm not even gonna talk about what you want to get banned. Seems like I disagree almost completely across the board. Probably just a playgroup difference or a fundamental idea difference for what the format should be. Or it could just be the fact that the power we play at is different so things I see as a problem is completely removed from things you guys might see as a problem. I like having a small banlist that only controls the most powerful cards. The format is self regulating there is no reason to be banning cards like rocks or tutors.
Not to mention the ever present power creep (slow as it may be compared to other TCGs) of MTG in general. As someone who used to play Rofellos decks way back in the day for EDH he was always a problem child back then because of how easily you could replay him to the battlefield and just really hard to slow a player down. But nowadays If i had to chose between ramp commanders like Rofellos and Urza, Lord High Artificer I would build into Urza every time, and feel overall that hes a card that can do more in addition to ramping you like crazy. And yet one is banned the other is not.
I strongly disagree with gifts ungive being unbanned as well as Iona. Gifts allows you to grab any two combos, and Iona is a permanent that just shuts down one colour which can cripple a game
I would ban the extremely efficient tutors, the insanely fast mana rocks, the infinite single card draw engines, and mass land destruction. Some examples: Vampiric Tutor, Mana Crypt, Bolas’ Citadel, Armageddon… etc.
I would say that Chaos Orb, in my playgroup, is used as a colorless Vindicate. We just reworded it as "1, tap, Sacrifice Chaos Orb : Destroy target permanent." Has worked in our EDH and in my old Cube. Everyone's been fine with it so far.
Erayo states that when the 4th spell is cast, not just your spell... any spell counts, flip it... and then if you have an enchanment or a creature that says that you can only play one spell per turn... well you locked the game for your opponents. The thing is broken
I tend to consider any creature with defense 3 or less hard to argue a ban for. As if there aren't enough counter spells floating around, 3 or less D stat is open to any bolt, shock + a ping. Wipes that hit every creature for 2 to 3+. Or etb effects like mh2 Fury doing 4 dmg to anything.
Timetwister was not originally banned because it was worth waaaaay less than the rest of the P9. I've been buying pieces of Power for over 10 years now and Twister was less than a 100€ where the others were already in the 300€ range and Black Lotus was already over 750€ (all prices mentioned are for Unlimited in good condition, circa late 2011) And because the RC does not want to acknowledge that the philosophy of their banlist is also built because price/scarcity of certain cards they won't ban it. Because of they did, there would be constant outrage to ban duals, cradle, monolith and lots of other RL cards.
Accesibility isnt a ban factor, the rl cards like mox that have been banned have been banned due to the rc wanting to distinguish the format from the view that it is a alt vintage
Command Tower, Sol Ring, Jeweled Lotus, Arcane Signet. I don't think these cards need to be banned because they aren't problematic for games, especially since accessibility isn't really an issue for them (arguably excluding Lotus). However, I do agree that their status as "auto-includes" and their universal applicability to every deck in the format means that they erode diversity and were mistakes to create. I used to run Sol Ring, Command Tower, and Signet in every deck, but lately I've been taking them out of a lot of decks, and only including them when they feel like correct inclusions based on what the deck is doing or what the deck needs to succeed. I went from one of each in every deck to maybe one or two of each between all of my decks.
For panoptic mirror, if you imprint an extra turn spell onto it….. you get unlimited turns. That combo would be easy enough to do and seems very unfun to play against.
The reason Sol Ring and Mana Vault shouldn't be banned and aren't is because Green still has access to equitable ramp without those 2 cards needing to be in the deck. Any non-green deck loses out on tremendous staying power against burgeoning and exploration which are essentially the same thing as Sol Ring and Mana Vault; If not better.
Emrakul is oppressive. Easy way to find out, play it in your play group. Its easy to cheat out even without the extra turn. Its hard to kill. It has the terrible annihilator rule to a new level. It has evasion and protection. If this was on a 5/5 body for the same cost, it would still be powerful.
I think what really helps the format most is a healthy discussion about power level. I understand the format feeling static, but my play group has gotten around that with deck building challenges like removing thassas Oricle or infinite combos from our decks for a few weeks. After that our deck building improved, and the decks are much more diverse. I've also had many times when a cyclonic rift results in the table cheating, because it kept the game going.
I have emrakul in my animar deck and it just sits in my hand most of the time. When I do cast it I have yet to lose but is not the combo peice I'm looking for. Its a card to finish off your opponent and it does it super well. Its also 15 mana. You would have to ramp out 4 turns in a row to get to it. I think its fine solely on its mana cost.
I'm really not down for banning Command Tower. All of the other good fixing is expensive, so it's really important for making budget decks.
Would be nice if wizards would print better mana fixing lands more often and stop printing those shitty generic 2 color lands that enter tapped.
@@mitrimind1027 I agree why do I need ever land to be forced into a dual color deck or be stuck using basics
Agreed, I prefer it over almost any other land. It’s an auto include in every deck that’s not mono coloured
@@mitrimind1027 well there are some decent lands that enter tapped unless you have 2 or less lands or a swamp or something. I use these and they work
agreed. A card being auto include does not make it ban worthy if it doesn't warp the format at all. Cards like low cost tutors, for example, completely change the format and make combo way better than it should be.
Banning command tower would really hurt more budget players, other good lands are more expensive and hard to get.
Right they so stupid
@@turtleanton6539 I wasn’t saying that
@juter4397 I don’t think scarcity should always dictate a ban. In fact it almost never should unless power is also a issue.
Exactly! If we are banning cards for lack of accessibility, why would we ban a card that is accessible to budget players?
I think they should ban basic lands because they're auto includes in almost every deck, and that hurts deck diversity
And I don't know what they have against people having good mana, but like games are more fun when people actually get to cast their spells.
The reason they don't ban the best mana rocks is: Green. Green as a color identity is already too powerful to let it have a monopoly of the best ramping options.
??Green can play crypt and sol ring like any other color
@@Alessandro-mg9oh yeah, as well as other one mana ramp cards. And can easily have enough redundancy to ramp from turn one, consistently in a 99-singleton format. And if you go into other mana values,… even more ramp.
The rest of the colors, don’t have that many options for ramping, only rocks.
Ramp is such a powerful thing to do in the format to just have one color doing it consistently. The other colors need them to be able to catch up with green.
Mana ramp spells are too slow for green to play no one runs them in cedh. Azusa, oracle of muldaya, kodamas reach. Are too slow
@@brandonslade2134 elves and all other 1mv dorks and enchantments
@@moralessanchezoscarelias6412 Sol Ring isn’t staying unbanned because of green. It’s because Wizards doesn’t want a precon (or in this case, all precons) to immediately be unplayable.
However I do think that at least Sol Ring and Crypt are bad for the casual format, just like the cheap black tutors. I’m not gonna not play them because they are good (instead price would be why on just Crypt), but I wouldn’t revolt if I have to use Worn Powerstone and Letter Of Acceptance over Sol Ring and Arcane Signet.
Flash makes sense over Hulk because it was a cEDH-specific ban. The combo itself is not super popular outside of cEDH, and in casual commander, Hulk sees more play. So banning Flash makes the cEDH community happy while minimizing the impact on the rest of the format.
wanted to comment this, leaving protein hulk unbanned was a gift to casual players since they like to play it manually. Flash was getting degenerate with thassa's oracle making the combo more consistent and harder to stop. That's why people wanted to ban flash specifically since it wouldn't affect casual play.
Sushi hulk says hi
I think insane combo cards like flash and tinker that wind up banned in legacy or restricted in vintage have a pretty solid argument for getting banned in commander because they represent play patterns that wizards doesn't want to be a part of their game as a whole even at high levels of play
Flash died for the sins of Thassa's Oracle, not because of Hulk. Turns out, flashing Thoracle was harder for your opponents to interact, and Hulk saw some play on lower power EDH games, so the RC banned the card that only saw play on cEDH.
Tinker is insanely too powerful, guys. Think about it...instant speed tutor that cheats mana cost in blue. It's an answer, a win con, and there is no comparison in any other color.
Instant speed sac a token for any artifact is absurd.
There is equivalent but its alot more expensive, kuldotha forgemaster, planar bridge
@@Someone-lg6di those aren't on the same level. Remember - Tinker costs 3 mana. Forgemaster is 5 mana plus needing 3 things to sac and you need to either wait a turn or grant it haste to activate. Planar bridge is 14 mana to do it all in 1 turn.
Yeah we weren’t 100% sure on some of them I think we use the word maybe like a million times in this video 😂
@@NitpickingNerds fair enough, lol. I agree on a lot of your other ones though; Gaea's Cradle most particularly.
I don't believe in deck diversity bans. Imo, "deck diversity" as a balancing concept is something that should purely be moderated by your personal playgroup and not something imposed on everyone.
THANK YOU
Emrakul is incredibly hard to interact with and it can be cheated out easily if it's in the deck. If it's in the command zone the game devolves into arch enemy just to stop it from getting on board
That sounds fun. I’d be game for a playgroup to build an archenemy deck that people could take turns running.
Yeah my friend built the deck with ways to bounce emrakul and it just wasn't fun
Isn't single board wipe enough?
@@jeffnorris211 Ah the words of a person that has never been forced to sacrifice 6 permanents and have no answers to the monstrosity that is Emrakul. I find it cute when casual players think something super oppressive is fun, because one day they'll play against it and immediately go "what the fuck is this"
@@martinhrdlicka1004 the problem abot that is that u get an extra turn so emrakull will be able to atack so u will sac the 6 anyway
Flash /Academy Rector was a thing, too. T1 Omniscience is pretty good...
That is strong and something no considered in the video.
Good ole days sigh....
You can still t1 omniscience with a god hand lol.
Flash is and will continue to be the problematic 2 mana instant enabler for all the LTB creatures they will print. Flash is the correct choice, because it will be broken with something else at some point.
@@jahpal9275 that and the fact that flash has such as small fringe use outside of ltb effects that it's An easy ban.
I literally thought they called it the 99 because sol ring was an auto include
This is amazing
Tolarian academy BANNED
Gaea’s cradle PERFECTLY OKAY FOR THE FORMAT
Tolarian academy is better than cradle
@@Djewell314 by a mile
@@travishaggar1197 10 years ago it was by miles now it’s by inches still better but cradle is bonkers.
@@Djewell314 Gaea's is better in mono green / triabal / creature decks... this is problem. Its the same level on "power" in correct deck. Both can easy add 5-10 mana ... and problem with Gaeas is that green is super easy to have it in play every game becose of so many tutors for lands....
In blue/artifacts decks - most of time, you dont have so many options for tutor for Tolarian. You would need to add Green on Black to do it...
Thisis why in my opinon Greas is more broken then Academy - and still both are ladnds that winds game, and both shoud be banned. On top of that - if you want now comptetive deck with green - 90% of time, you need to spend yours months salary for 1 card...
It’s sooooo much bette
I am going to have to hard disagree with most of your takes on your additional bans.
1. The argument that if a card is an auto-include it should be auto-banned is completely arbitrary. The only time this is appropriate is if it is a one-sided advantage like Lutri.
2. You cannot hold that an auto-include such as Arcane Signet should be bannable while at the same time complain that wizards needs to have better mana rocks, like you do in other videos. Arcane Signet is not a problem at all. It is a playable version of Commander's Sphere without the cantrip.
3. If someone plays turn one Sol Ring, they immediately become a target for the whole table. I'd say thats balance. Don't ban the card, just play more politically. Commander is meant to be political.
4. Banning tutors is asinine. They exist to make combo decks possible in EDH. Imagine trying to find a single combo piece out of 100 cards vs. drawing one of four copies of it from a 60 card deck. The tutors literally even the odds at the cost of card disadvantage. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these. Plus there are plenty of cards in the format that punish tutoring. Ob Nixilis, Opposition Agent, etc
Also, "I want the format to be as fun as possible."
Literally wants to ban all my favorite cards which provide consistency in my favorite format. I'm glad your banlist isn't the banlist or I would probably not be playing EDH, despite playing since 2013.
So by wanting to ban the fast Mana rocks, you're essentially saying that you'd like green, which is already the strongest color due to its ability to ramp efficiently combined with the social contract's taboo on mass land destruction, to far and away dominate the format. The other colors, especially red and white, need those rocks to keep up.
I agree, people have been complaining about sol rings and Crypt for a long time just because they are autos and efficient but now talking about early rocks that color fix is just plain dumb. #LeaveTheManaRocksAlone
Black is actually the strongest single color. Green becomes the strongest when combined with another color.
@@Jackaroo. FALSEHOOD!
@@Jackaroo. except the best color is blue lmfao
But you play sol ring and mana crypt in green desks too, because they are that good................ you're telling me you don't have sol ring and mana crypt in your green desks? I'll call you out on that one. has nothing to do with green being the best color. has to do with the power level of the card.
Tinker is really busted, believe me... It was already insanly good back then in Standard. Imagine in EDH...
Yeah we were pretty iffy on it, just something we would consider (I think we mention that for most of the unbannings)
@@NitpickingNerds the way i think of it thinking how good Arcum Daggson is, and then check out Tinker and think
I feel like some of these are just "let's make the format slower, more casual, and harder for budget decks"
The overwhelming majority of the cards named were not budget friendly. The slower a format gets the friendlier it is to budget options.
@@metalking837 but the worse off it is as a whole
I have memories of multi hour commander games that just would not end
And with how the power has shifted I can now sit down with my friends play a game for 30 minutes and it be a good time
Slowing down EDH is not a good thing
@@sentientsickness If a game lasts several hours then the table is lacking better win cons. I see that in casual tables where attacking is minimal and there's a lack of combo wins due to being disliked.
@@metalking837 this was several years ago so 2017 ish not only were win cons worse, but non green ramp was much worse, and so was non blue interaction
In general the better lands, tutors, and mana rocks allowed for things to speed up, most non cedh decks win between turn 10 and 20 and that's a good spot for the game
Yes there are a couple more auto include cards, but outside of the internet, I've never once heard complaints about sol ring, or signets, or tutors
It's mostly people nostalgic for a time that wasn't as good as they thing it was, and fans of channels run by those kind of players
No offense to the Nerds they do some great content, but as an older player whose format has always been EDH
I just don't see why people hate on the staples or the faster gameplay when most players and even the stats show that these aspects have been a positive for the formy
@@sentientsickness Personally I don't like the printing of staples, especially when they are designed with commander in mind. Cards like dockside and fierce guardianship are good examples. I do agree the pase of games have increased which I think is overall better for the format.
We let a friend play Erayo once. The game just becomes so unfun when it flips.
Plus there are cards that exist that say "You can only play one spell per turn," which literally locks the game out.
the keyword here seems like once
If you have ever lost turn 0, you know why flash is banned.
@@robertmonroe1883 Or Flash / Academy Rector / tutor some game-ending ultra expensive and powerful late-game enchantment into play. With flash gone, you could maybe unban the extra turn Emrakul.
@@robertmonroe1883 The extra turn pushes it over the top and always makes it a prime target for cheating it into play.
Braids turn two is so hard for opponents to come back from speaking from experience playing against it
It’s a card that might be too unfun
Much like they mentioned in the video, the problem when you talk about Turn 2 Braids isn't actually braids, it's the fast mana.
Yeah braids would need to ruin games on average most of the time which I’m not sure about
@@kitbroughton3421 A turn 2 Braids can come from a 2 lands and a Dark Ritual. So Dark Ritual should be banned because it allowed Braids to come out on turn 2?
@@hiddenleaf414 Dark Ritual is not a permanent the braids player could sac in desperation. Its a higher investment than a soul ring or something similar.
I think y'all're underestimating Gifts Ungiven. I've never seen it resolve and the caster not win the game. If the deck is built properly, there are multiple combinations of four cards for which any choice one's opponent makes off Gifts will win one the game. It's another situation where the only thing that stops the win is countermagic, which is a skosh uncool outside CEDH.
I love gifts to death and still think it needs to stay banned. 4 cards is a lot and like you said, if the deck is built right it will win off of one search. But there is also the fact being that you don't even need to get 4 cards makes it even more powerful.
Sometimes the issue with intuition is that the opponent chooses correctly and makes you jump through hoops to combo off. With gifts, you can just have 2 combo pieces put in the graveyard and win.
yeah, all you need is sevines reclamation lions eye diamond underworld breach and wheel of fortune. boom you win by filtering through your entire deck. if they give you a hand with sevine you bring back breach, If they don't give you sevine then you flashback sevine and grab breach. EZ
A Ban List discussion? A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one!
Hope you enjoyed it!
I was literally watching the original banlist episode yesterday, I wasn't done watching it, and when I tuned in this morning to watch it. The video was removed.
Makes sense now.
I don't understand...what changed from yesterday?
NinjaWizardRalph we had to reupload do you an error
When I use tutors I normally get w.e is needed to deal with a problem but sometimes I do use them to help my board state. So is the episode just "no ramp no auto include"? Look I understand wanting to see different decks but come-on. Sol ring is fine. It's a 4+ player game. If someone gets a early game sol ring u have 3+ other people to put them in check.
There are a couple of cards that you were considering un-banning, and I just wanted to point out a few things that you might have missed
Erayo: hard locks the game, with several white cards that only let players cast one spell a turn.
Flash: Arena Rector can also be flashed in, to go get omniscience.
Gifts Ungiven: the trick here is to read the card carefully, if you only get 2 cards, both go to the graveyard, it can be used as a double entomb. Also there are several gifts piles that just win the game.
I agree with erayo. He's very easy to flip with blue and my friends always hated it when I played it
John Smith double entomb is not very good and what piles win the game? I don’t know if any.
@@NitpickingNerds alot entomb is a tutor for graveyard decks my scion deck wins with just 1 creature in grave and mass revival or 2+. Scion mills bladewing then revive bladewing and scourge of vallas or terror of the peaks, instant win only pice commander doesnt tutor is the revival effect
Someone that requires a lot of hoops
@@NitpickingNerds just vomander and a card that revives 2 creatures
In a format where you are incentivated to play 4-5 colors, cards that rewards you for playing monocolor a truly like it, and i would love to see more in other colors. Not only i would not ban cabal coffers, i would make card in that diection in monocolors that need a bit of help. Equivalents for monowhite (like emeria), or monored (like valakut), i think are healthy for the format. Incentivating not only playing the more colors the more card pool you have for your strategy. Also, cards that limit you 30 cards in your deckbuilding in exchange for a powerful effect are called build arounds, and are good and cool, without so many tutors surely are balanced.
In my opinion at least I think the difference between coffers and the other lands you mention is that coffers makes games feel extremely same-y. On the first couple of turns you tutor up coffers then play it and ramp out big mana threats. I think it hurts deck diversity and gameplay diversity
@@NitpickingNerds The monoblack comanders are the LEAST unique comanders( stats taken in the episode 104 EDHRECast). All monoblack deck have nearly the same cards, and thats another problem, i think mainly because black can do anithing, and has only restictions in paying life. I would ban Urborg before coffers, becuse it makes coffest busted (mana profitable with less lands), and can be used in multicolor decks, removing the deck restiction. Having said that, i would put Obliterate, Apocalipse, staic orb, stasis drecree of anihilation or demonic consultation wayyy before cabal coffers or urborg.
Urborg is the real problem, with out it Coffers is mono black only. I feel like spot removal for lands is a must in any deck anyways. I would ban urborg first
Coffers is the problem. One land shouldn’t ramp that much, and if it does, it should be green. It’s a build around specifically because it’s incredibly powerful. A better idea would be to ban some of the expensive lands that cover your mana while coming in untapped. Make multicolor decks more likely to have lands come in tapped and this slower and it will make mono decks faster.
@@yoyepo91 If you limit yourself to just one color and lose all the versatility of a pool of cards 5 times more wide, cards like cofffers balance that exchange. Think of it as cards like niv mizzet Parum, in exchange os a very restrictive mana cost, you get an overstated creature. If the price of deck building is really high, the rewards should be equivalent.
I really think the commander community can be reasonably separated into two groups. People who want to play good magic cards, and people who want to play mediocre magic cards. The problem being that the people who like playing good cards tend not to care what everyone else plays, and the people who want to play mediocre cards want everyone else to do so.
This is so true I'm surprised more haven't said this in the comments.
@@ahordeofpigz I think once you look at it from this perspective, all of the banned cards make sense as do most of the cards people suggest banning
I think an issue with just taking a bat to all the top tier tutors is then you’ve got the colors that specialize in massive card draw being able to steam roll a little more. Also Black for example has a lot of second string tutors that would fill those spots quickly while White has no replacement comparable to enlightened tutor.
Jo Ken the second string tutors just aren’t very good. We don’t need replacements for tutors we just need less tutors
Another thing, the tutors enable jank combo decks to perform at a casual level.
I play like 6 tutors in my Atogatog combo deck and it still unperformed at most tables.
Leovold slows down games, single-handedly ruins certain types of decks, and just makes the table groan. Not a good emissary if you ask me.
Top ten WORST emissaries 😂
@@NitpickingNerds He's top 5 for sure xD
I could do without Food Chain. There is a guy in my playgroup that always just wins with it in his Prosh deck and it is very anticlimactic and just a feels bads!
Uncounterable, flying 15/15 with Protection from Colored Spells and everytime it swings defending player must sacrifice 6 permanents. Nope, cant see how taking an extra turn and having a 15/15 uncounterable creature that has protection from colored spells can be broken in a commander format overrun with mana rocks, infinite mana loops and other ridiculous enchantments/artifacts to make emrakul invincible
nah they are right emrakul shoud be unban and command tower shoud be ban
@@joaoleite9250 while we're at it unban Iona and Prophet of Crufix oh and Upheaval those cards are counterable so theyd be better options than Emrakul
Infinite mana loops win without Emrakul
Hey, I love your content but I wanted to clarify that Chaos Orb doesn't require that you rip it into pieces. I believe you're confusing it with Chaos Confetti. A lot of us used to run multiple Chaos Orbs in every deck back in 93/early 94 and it was probably the most powerful card in MtG at that point. Basically it's a three-colorless-mana artifact with "destroy between one and five target permanents" that you can recur (e.g. Archaeologist, Reconstruction, etc.). It was particularly devastating in land destruction decks of that era. The DCI banned it right away because of its power level and also for the ridiculous impact it had in tournament play, as people would literally tape their cards to the walls to nullify the effects of Chaos Orb. Realistically it should probably stay banned in EDH but it's still my all-time favorite card. Cheers.
Haha people would tape their cards to walls?! I did NOT know that! 😂
The best artifact for tinker to fetch out isn't blightsteel, its memory jar. The decks that would run tinker are likely cheerio decks like Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain. As a Jhoira player, i guarantee you that tinker would be used either to fetch out memory jar if my hand is bad, aetherflux reservoir if my hand was good, or something like nev disk or o-stone if the board needed to be wiped.
best target by far for tinker is bolas's citadel
I once had Cyclonic Rift into only one deck. A few months ago, the spike in me realized that this card was an auto include in all blue decks, so I put it in all my decks. Thanks to you, you made me remember why I only put it into my most competitive deck. I just removed it from every other blue decks and I feel better !
"Twister is the cheapest draw 7 that exists" apparently wheel of fortune and windfall arn't cards
Yeah I thought it was weird wheel of fortune didn’t even get mentioned
Wheel is more easily replaced though. Red has at least two other wheel effects which are arguably better and far less expensive. Magus is fired at instant speed, allowing you to mess with decks that try to set up their hands and Wheel of Fate gives you a couple turns to drop your hand and does it on your upkeep, giving you a hand of eight cards that turn. Even Memory Jar is less destructive on your wallet, and that is almost a strict upgrade.
Blue's wheels, on the other hand, tend to be more expense or not actually draw seven cards and Twister resets graveyards. This makes Twister more difficult to replace (and it's replacements have a habit of getting banned).
You’re forgetting Contract from Below is cheaper than all of these 😈
the only argument i make for keeping sol ring in the format is that it can be a great top deck for someone struggling to hit enough land drops to stay competitive
It's cheap and accessible, leave it be.
@@Tracker947 not only that, but it goes in literally every deck. Nobody is missing out on playing it so I don’t see why it would be banned. Why ban something that helps other colors than green get their ramp going?
Flash got banned over hulk because flash protected death triggers in a really unintuitive way that can't be interacted with once it begins to resolve. And I personally think its interaction with the mana tripler scared the RC.
No, from a casual perspective yes it seems strong but no. Protean hulk is still a win con, if you are playing hulk, you will have a hulk win line (in cEDH). In more casual games it’s just a big value engine but flash hulking into a mana tripler is not the best thing you could do with it. It’s cool but not it.
I loved your take on Hulk and it’s great that both of you have very differing opinions. Great video as always. Few channels I will sit down and watch an hour long video. Keep up the good work and stay safe.
thelonelyfish0 thanks fish 🐠
I was really looking forward to this video. I've been thinking a lot about the CMDR ban list recently and I appreciate hearing your guys opinions on it. However, I don't think command tower or arcane signet deserve a ban.
I do strongly agree that sol ring and crypt's legality should be reevaluated. Especially as wotc prints more and more powerful cards into the format.
Where do you stand on the "auto-includes" like command tower and signet?
@@NitpickingNerds I believe they're really helpful for players who want to play multiple colors and can't get a hold of more expensive untapped lands to get good color fixing, they also don't break the game from a power level perspective like sol ring and mana crypt. So I see them as a positive in the format even if they do homogenize it.
Don't ban Command Tower until they print more affordable and playable duals and tris
@@sethswimmer6882 fair
Joe is 100% correct about Erayo, Beezy is 100% correct in pronouncing Protean Hulk (not Protein). You are both 100% correct about Sol Ring and Mana Crypt!
Pronunciation was always my strong suit 😂❤️
@@NitpickingNerds Protein Hulk would be an epic un-set card. Just a Timmy bodybuilder human
Commander should be open to all cards except those that absolutely break it. That is one of the main reasons commander is fun, its not bogged down by restrictions except for those that are self/group imposed.
The ban list altogether is fairly problematic, as LITERALLY anything one (or two, three, four...) card(s) can do, there is a bunch of other cards that do the same (or worse). Its hard to justify anything being banned with all the cards that aren't, and we certainly can't go back through and ban every card that can win games. Lots of slippery slope argument space here. I mean, I think a shit load of cards should be banned, but its hard to justify them in comparison to other cards sometimes.
a lot of card are banned as a representative for certain strategies the RC thinks are unfun. and they arent banning for powerlevel-reasons. thats not my opinion btw, just the reasoning behind the bans (or cards not being banned while others are)
@@dino-wer-kuh3498 I mean, yes, that's correct; but frankly, it is the power level of those strategies that is the core of the issue 9 times out of 10.
Too OP = less fun ≤ ban hammer(?)
(And if your/their statement was 100% true, land destruction would be banned outright, in all forms j/k lol)
@@workyoutube7798 yeah, the list is pretty arbitrary. thats the cost of banning on subjective feelings than objective powerlevel. but its a cost im willing to pay, bcs it keeps the nature of EDH casual at heart. i still disagree with a bunch of their choices though, but in the end im fine with it
@@dino-wer-kuh3498 Yeah, I'd agree with that for the most part.
When a card is so efficient that it prevents build diversity, it should be banned
For what it's worth, you only need one turn with panoptic mirror, you don't need to sorcery speed it and wait a turn. You can respond to the trigger on your upkeep by activating in response and putting the card under.
strong budget cards like sol ring, that feel realy good wehn you get it in your opening hand may be problematic but in a 4player game this is less of an issue since it encourages teamwork to catch up and politics are some of the most fun things about this game. mana crypt is worse since its less accessible.
arcane signet and command tower on the other hand should definately stay. the most restricting thing about building decks on a budget is the manabase and those two cards help fix that a little. its two cards in 100 everyone runs but i dont think this is a problem when it comes to lands and mana rocks. those things mostely do the same thing and having those vs. a new cycle of duals or rocks doenst make much of a difference imo.
I play coalition victory in my sisay weatherlight deck. If I ever win with this card I'm gonna freak out, since it is a full flavour deck with each card referencing the weatherlight story. So no dual lands, no feches, not much ramp outside of the pieces of ramos, so I have to have one of each basic land and at least 3 creatures out to win with it. I just love it.
Banlist is such a hard topic. It's so hard to please everyone and keep it consistent with philosophy. I think Banlist should not be like a hard ban, but being a suggestion. If player have a cEDH deck he wouldn't play it against some budget player. Most of players sits down with friends, so rule 0 solves that part. If he(or she) is an asshole, you either don't play with him or play archenemy, whatever you're prefer.
Yeah we have advocated for making cedh kind of it’s own format with a separate banlist but that wasn’t a very popular idea 😅
@@NitpickingNerds yeah, I assume that probably won't work with cEDH, but there's always will be a top teir deck(s), so make different banlist is not an option, then there will be cEDH, some semi-competitive EDH and casual commander. So again, this is hard as hell to please everyone
Idea
The primary reason Tutors are so strong is because the ones that were listed were essentially the cheapest CMC ones. In some cases, you can literally tutor up for a particular card and play it in the same turn.
Black actually has a BUTT TON of tutors, just not 'efficient' tutors. There's Diabolic Tutor, Increasing Ambition, Wishclaw Talisman, Scheming Symmetry, Beseech the Queen, Everything and EVERYTHING with a TRANSMUTE COST. I mention black mana tutors first because they are the most efficient, allowing you to just grab a card and add it without showing what it is, putting it on top of library, or any of the other silly things some other tutors do.
There's too many tutors to even mention honestly. The only thing that would actively stop the mass tutoring would be to simply cull the most efficient ones, and even then if you're doing that all you're doing is manually taking one step back from being "super strong" to just "versatile strong".
If you ask me, the biggest thing is that I do not believe tutors should be able to be *Instant speed* while remaining anything less than 3 or 4 mana in CMC. Even then that's a huge benefit because you're just going to have someone use that instant-speed tutor to find a counterspell, or grab something from their deck at the end of someone else's turn. Maybe any instant-speed tutor should just be axed.
Also, every card with an alt casting cost that essentially makes it "free" should be _banned._ Fite me 1v1 RL over this, that stuff is absolutely toxic for games and I do not carry them in decks outside of 9's and 10's.
Heh, hate Protean Hulk. It was the obvious ban when the Thassa's Oracle/Flash debacle was a thing. The card has always been a problem, and we could've been done with it for good. I agree with the banning of the top tier tutors for sure. If I remember correctly the reason Gifts Ungiven was banned is that it became an unwinnable situation every time it was cast. The player would search for their four win conditions, at instant speed, and it was game over. No matter how the piles were separated they were probably going to win. And as we know even if two cards get dumped into the graveyard that doesn't mean a whole lot these days. XD great video guys, and it was some nice insight (:
I love how an anecdote about events from the 90s, which inspired an UN card apparently made that the actual card ruling.
You flip chaos orb, you drop falling star.
Idk why apparently the "tear the card up" is apparently the cardtext. Neither should be banned because they're super goofy. Again I guess this goes with Rule 0.
Dexterity cards are bed for black border magic because the game should be playable by anyone who can read, regardless of their physical abilities. Dexterity cards unfairly penalize people with differently abled bodies.
People would tear the card into pieces so that it would touch more cards.
lets just say I'm glad you guys arent in charge of banning cards.
Dang what did we get wrong?
@@NitpickingNerds You didn't unban Rofellos :(
Oh no casuals are complaining about fast mana again... *yawn*
@@NitpickingNerds I agree on most of what you guys are banning. But I think Sol Ring, tutors, fetchlands are a bit too far. People are welcome to introduce more variance in their playgroup should they choose to by excluding them. I enjoy having decks that have tutors as well as ones that don’t.
Mike we discuss ever choice and explain our feelings and say we don’t know that we would ban all these just that we would consider it.
Coming from a more casual background:
I think Arcane Signet is fine, I pretty much have my land slots locked around 35, 10 cards for permanent ramp (including mana rocks). If Arcane Signet is banned, I'll just stick another 2 mana mana rock - it helps decks with more colours, especially if the land base isn't the greatest. If you're in green, you're playing obligatory ramp cards anyway so nothing really changes here
I'd probably say most of those 0 mana mana rocks would probably be considered for bans - other highroll related early game stuff being banned should slow the game down significantly
Anyway, rant over - I agree with everything but the Arcane Signet, the high roll aspect isn't really too fun in general. Perhaps the "0 mana" counterspells are a place to visit too, then you spend less time looking at the blue player to see if you can play cards
I just think at some point the Arcane Signet / Command Tower cards hit a critical mass where in five years commander decks could have 5-7 auto-includes when I'd rather have the deck slots opened up since like you said every color has fairer replacements for them, but you'd have to choose what fits your deck best
@@NitpickingNerds id rather have the auto includes over more random cards that are strictly worse people can choose not to run the best cards. Forcing it on others just because you don't like best of cards is one of the worst ban reasons.
Ratchetfan321 we like deck diversity which these cards do not promote at all. They are auto includes. We don’t like the way they impact the format.
This whole video is just you complaining about consistency in the format and a lack of understanding about different cards.
You say consistency they would sameyness
Top is fine, the issue is unexpected players using it. In my group the rule is know you’re next turn before your turn comes, unless something game changing happened right before you. Know your deck know your turns.
Turn 1, crypt, island, tinker, blightsteel
Force of will!
@@TheGoodchildOne i force of will your force of will
@@JohnnyYeTaecanUktena ooof, thats a good one
@@TheGoodchildOne No one expects a Force of will in a 5 color Sliver deck getting rid of Sliver Queen to pay for the cost as Overlord is the commander. Feeling anxious yet? ignore the fact that i can turn it into a Sliver with giving them a Hivestone and steal it with Overlord and from then on unless they blow up Hivestone any creature they have is mine note i would not have done that if i did not already have Bazaar trader and a Hivestone with fervor in my hand otherwise i can't give them the Hivestone to take their Blightsteel i mean my Blightsteel. Complicated combo i know but usually i steal their commanders with Hivestone find a way to get Hivestone back then go around the board taking the commanders, but who can resist a Blightsteel? or even putting a arrest on a Blightsteel till you can get the combo to add it to the Hive?
I shall also turn their Mana crypt into a creature and take control of it also ignore that i am using a Sliver deck as a control deck. By the way if you don't know wat Hivestone does it turns all of the creatures you control into Slivers which used to be used as a counter for Sliver decks unless someone decides to use Overlord and take your newly created Slivers so you get the benefits but actually no its a trap as Overlord's control does not last till end of turn it last till the creature is dead. And one thing i would like to add both of Overlord's abilities are instant speed so say they try to supreme verdict us on their turn i could just take their Blightsteel in response even if they attack me or try to destroy the stone in response my Blightsteel, you stifle my ability? how cute in response i pay 3 my Blightsteel
Serra Ascendant, auto ban card, don't understand why it wasn't banned at the start of this format...
Who plays and like playing against???
Having played casual EDH games with competitive people, I 100% agree on the Tier 1 tutor bans. Every game they don't win right away feels like they're just letting it drag on out of pity because everyone else at the table spent less money on cards than they have. It's also the reason I built and Ob Nixilis, Unshackled deck. I am a horrible person in the name of fun.
That sounds like some vigilante justice 😂
I don't think anything except for like 5 cards in total should be banned. People only play if people are willing to play with you and the cards that you say should be banned aren't always used in awful ways I only like commander because there's like no cards band.
That's another way to go about it too, just say basically nothing is banned and let everyone lean on rule 0. Might trash cEDH though, but Sheldon and them have said they don't cater to cEDH hardly at all
I'm glad y'all don't have a say in cards being banned.
Ring and Crypt allow mana ramp for other colors than green
I don't think that excuses their power and huge impact, though. If every color gets them it's kind of a wash anyway right? No color has similar replacements for ring or crypt :P
Honestly I feel like there should be two different banned lists, one for Cedh and the other for more casual play. Some of the cards on the banned list arent banned due to power level, but being a feels bad. Having 2 different lists could let deck diversity increase since you can ban a card in one list without touching it in the other. But of course, that would take a lot of testing and trial and error.
Ike Petro we fully support cEDH and EDH being separated
Sheldon won't do it, it's on someone else to create/maintain a competitive multi player format. One possible remedy is to create a suggested casual ban list then minimize the actual ban list. This will lead to too much confusion however.
@@damonlouis6536 as if rule 0 and the actual ban list do not do that already as it makes the ban list meaningless
The best way to deal with availability is proxies. It’s wotc’s problem that you’re not spending money on their game
"Six mana on turn 3"
Great. That's a turn after Kinnan has already won the game.
Unban Rofellos.
How is kinnan faster?
@@Mynamedoesntreallyfi it's not
If he’s faster than rofellos then get him outta here too 😂
What is your guys opinion on carpet of flowers? I feel like the card is insanely strong and at least in the conversation for ban-able cards. You are almost never at a table where no one is playing blue, especially as you go up in power. And once someone even has three islands its already insane for a 1 mana investment. And it never feels good to destroy since it was only a one mana play and can be recurred pretty easy by any regrowth like effect or even cards like sun titan if you ever get rid of it.
I think the dumbest part is that you can play it in first main and get the mana in second main in the same turn. I've seen people cast it late game and just net 7+ mana from it. It just almost never feels dead, early or late. Unless of course you are at a table with no blue players.
As always when watching your videos I disagree with many of your points :-D Banning sol ring and command tower? Those are the poster boys of the whole format. When I started playing edh (theros), the main appeal to playing it was that you could do fun stuff that wasnt legal anywhere else - like playing necropotence eg. Banning coffers would really damage the power level of mono black decks, same with banning cyclonic rift for mono blue. They can compete now, but without them mono green with its access to every relevant effect in the game would be king by far. Tutors also find answers to some difficult situations in multiplayer games, which makes the dynamics more interesting imo. I really think that this whole ban stuff with some exceptions should be left to playgroups. Especially now as more people streamline their decks and they become closer to cedh.
I couldn't disagree more! Your telling me that if by banning one card, it "makes a color not compete now". If anything that tells you how powerful that card truly is. If you remove it from the format and now the color is done... You must be the player that plays sol ring/mana crypt in every deck. Be on the opposite side once and see how much fun you're having when a game immediately turns into a 1 v 3. When coffers comes down on the board and creates 10 mana and allows them to play their entire hand and more??? how is that fair magic? there is no down side to it. it's an auto include. and tutors make the format stale. Who wants to play the exact same game of magic every time? like they said in the video, you do the same thing every game. play the same cards every game. if i wanted to do that, I'd play standard. they also make games take longer because, like you stated, you can find answers to any threat.
@@JosephZiereis I was only talking about the mono colored decks in comparison to each other. I play sol ring in every deck, as every player that I know. Mana crypt in just some. Also I have been plenty of times in a 1v3 situation and vice versa, that's the beauty of edh, if you get too far ahead early, you take a risk like this. Tutors are ok if you don't overdo it. Answers are now more needed because some permanents/commanders are so powerful (chulane, k'rrik, korvold eg) that you have to deal with them immediately lest you die.
On the case of Biorhythm and Coalition Victory, the rules committee's stance on why they are banned is because they are very swingy cards that can win the game with, in biorhythm's case little setup, and, in Coalition Victory's case immediately with the right setup. Even if they are not broken, they lead to swingy and generally unfun games. I experimented with a no banlist/light banlist commander format with my friend, and when we played games where the unbanned cards are ones like Coalition Victory and Biorhythm, the games were very swingy and generally unfun.
Braids and iona are banned but blood moon and stasis are a-ok lmao
Yeah it’s a little confusing, those don’t promote playing magic either. It’s tough because there’s so many cards like that. We definitely aren’t saying the RC is stupid or anything; they have a tough job
Consider them sitting in the CZ.. That is THE issue.
@@petrseghman4283 iona is 9 mana mono white. The game has ended by the time I get her out
@@uphillwalrus5164 I can see what you mean, but have to disagree. With all the brought back/sevines rec. shenegians, mana crypts and vaults and moxen and 2 mana rocks... It is possible to consistently power her out T4/5..
@@uphillwalrus5164 and still. 7/99 : 1/1 is just so much different.
Banning cards in this CASUAL format simply because of the price is a TERRIBLE idea for the health of the game.
I see so many people screaming to ban all high roller cards simply for the price, for example, OG Duals.
In my opinion, a healthy alternative to these cards would be proxies.
Proxies 100 percent should be written into the rules of EDH as a whole.
You are supposed to be playing against the player, not their wallet.
As for the argument for banning top played mana rocks and all the best tutors, that is also a bit insane.
Just because most people run those cards and view them as auto includes, does not make them ban worthy.
I feel like if commander had the ban list that is discussed here. It would be the most drawn out and boring format ever.
Unban grislebrand
I think he is pretty solidly stuck there forever
@@NitpickingNerds yeah but he was in my grimgrin deck til they banned him it was a horde of zombies with a handful of vampires commanding them, all working for grisslebrand
@@NitpickingNerds it was jank story telling
I have a love/hate relationship for the bankist. I get why it exists.
But stuff like flash and paradox engine I personally wish weren't banned because I didn’t play them in the ways they got banned for. But if I’m playing with a new group (or even an established group) they would most likely not let a house rule pass to play either of these.
Biorhythm is because of the prevalence of board wipes. After a wipe, if a player has a creature (indestructible, flashes in, death trigger, or just cheap) then they auto win with Biorhythm
Chaos Orb reminds me of winning Nationals at Redemption, a bible-based CCG almost as old as Magic...They had a card called Haman's Plot that had to be ripped up when used, so I brought a couple dozen to States and Nationals that year.
Good lord! Show us on the doll where artifact ramp hurt you
To Joe's point: Prophet bas been banned so long that I think we should unban it for like a month just so we can be reminded how awful it is.
"But it's just Seedborn--"
Not you prophet, get out! 😂
Really like your guys banlist, especially the OP fetchlands and manacrypt which add $400 and 10 predetermined slots to every deck. I disagree with your assessment of protean hulk, you can do the same type of combo with pattern of rebirth for 3cmc less.
Pattern of rebirth is not nearly as flexible, consistent, or unstoppable as hulk. No where near equivalent.
Serra Ascendant looks silly, but is actually the combat equivalent to a 1/1 flying lifelink in a 1v1 format, because you have 6 times (120 / 20) the life to get through.
So yes it's way above rate compared to other creatures, but that's the kind of damage a creature needs to do to be playable as a french vanilla.
And when you draw it mid/late it's often the worst card in your deck.
Do people actually include it in decklists anymore?
I don't agree with the current banlist as it stands. A card should only be banned if it's format breaking (being powerful is not format breaking) and accessibility is already an issue anyway so I don't see the reason the moxen and lotus are banned.
Aside from the deck diversity issue where it gets played 24/7 in anything… Main gripe I have with cyclonic rift is the design, specifically I hate the overload cost. Imo, It would have been a more reasonable design if it was UUU4 or something along those lines. It’s just kinda dumb how it can just be jammed in any deck that runs the slightest sliver of blue. An effect like that should at the least require a solid commitment to blue mana.
The real issue with gifts is you essentially get to at instant speed ask your opponent to choose how they lose by tutoring for redundant versions of the same effect were their choice doesn’t actually matter. Intuition is only legal because of sorcery speed.
Intuition is also an Instant
"Coalition Victory" should be unbanned and changed to work like the D&D party mechanic, so that a land / creature contributes only one basic land type / color at the same time, even if it's multicolered. So you need 5 lands and 5 creatures.
Transguild Courier and two Triomes to win the game for Coalition Victory. I guess it isn't that bad when you consider what kind of two-three card insta-infinite combos are out there.
Timetwister is not the cheapest draw seven that exists. In fact, it costs three times the mana of the cheapest. Contract from Below is one black mana to draw seven.
Staples are needed in a casual format. Banning cards like Sol Ring goes against the whole concept of EDH. Crypt and Cradle are different for availability reasons. 2-3 slots that are "auto includes" is actually what helps make the format accessible to new players. If you can't understand that, you're likely not going to enjoy this game to the extent that you could.
Would you ban any auto-includes if there were 10 cards like Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, or Command Tower?
On Emrakul, "Protection from colored spells".
Protection is active when on the battlefield. Which is why you can use 'castigate' to exile Emrakul from the hand. But such spells can not hit Emrakul when in the command zone, which means what is basically the only method of interacting with her pre-resolution is taken away. And since once she's resolved, Emrakul is basically one step short of unkillable . . .
There is nothing 'fun' about her. And I play Stax, making people not have fun while playing Magic is my thing!
Also permanents aren't spells once they're on the battlefield, so Emrakul isn't protected from say Banishing Light's ETB (this also means creatures can be put in front of her to block). But you're just gonna put her right back in the command zone, where she can't be interacted with with spells like the aforementioned castigate, and 17 colorless isn't that hard to pay in commander, so even then . . . like, I don't typically like ban lists, but Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is an absolute game warping card in all formats, and nigh impossible to interact with in Commander, she's 100% a reasonable ban.
Biorythm in many decks is absurdly strong unfairly so it's existence forced certain you must play this way type interaction.
Emrakul aeons torn is very easy to cast nowadays I participated In EDH events where this existed and there are a lot of ways to cheat cast it for free or little cost or making lots of mana fast.
So I'm working on this as I watch the video (should edit at the end but ideas might be a bit discordant) mostly going to cover areas I disagree with.
I'll get it out of the way but I don't think cards should be banned for accessibility reasons. Cards like library, twister, and time walk are perfectly fine for the format. Cards like lotus and the mox aren't. Just allow proxies if you want to play with the cards or don't play them.
Channel is good but I don't think it's too broken. The scenario you talk about requires a lot, like double mox and a good spell and hand and so on. Instead it just seems like a really good ritual in a color that doesn't really need the help cheating out big fatties. Is it good, yes, is it ban worthy, I don't think so.
Erayo, Soratami Ascendant is good but I think she's best in mono blue as the commander where she can flip easily. But the decks that want to play her often tend to be in more colors. Could stay banned or unbanned I don't think she makes that much of a difference.
Flash is absolutely the problem. It's similar to what you mentioned with grand abolisher, and is part of the issue that thassa's oracle still presents to the format, it can only be interacted with on the stack. This is because you sac protean hulk to the cost of flash and the death trigger can not be interacted with (apart from a stifle, another blue stack spell) and you win off of the pile. If you are not able to interact with the casting of flash, something that is only available to one color, then you just lose. This suck from a deck diversity perspective as a turn two extremely difficult to interact with end the game is poison to the format. I mean personally I think hulk should stay unbanned and oracle should be banned but that's from a more high power and competitive player so take it with a grain of salt.
Gifts Ungiven is a card I want to play with but is vastly better than intuition in the amount of piles you can realistically muster. Probably fine being banned or unbanned.
Iona is a garbage card and I don't know why anyone would play it much less want it banned.
I want paradox engine unbanned for deck diversity in comp but as far as bans go this is completely reasonable. The format isn't and currently shouldn't be balanced for comp and this is dumb at lower levels so keep it banned.
Roffelos is totatlly fine in the format. Good yes but we already have bloom tender and faeburrow elder and priest of titania and so on.
Sundering titan is fine. Run diversified mana run diversified lands run interaction. Such a non-issue.
I really really really really want to build golas tolarian storm but alas card is and should be banned.
Upheaval is fine, just another big build around card like land destruction or joukloups. Maybe not fun to play against but not powerful enough to be banned.
Yawgmoth is busted but I think its just a worse ad nausum in most scenarios (at high power) busted for lower stuff though should stay banned. Also I will be mad if necro gets banned fucking love that card.
I'm not even gonna talk about what you want to get banned. Seems like I disagree almost completely across the board. Probably just a playgroup difference or a fundamental idea difference for what the format should be. Or it could just be the fact that the power we play at is different so things I see as a problem is completely removed from things you guys might see as a problem. I like having a small banlist that only controls the most powerful cards. The format is self regulating there is no reason to be banning cards like rocks or tutors.
Not to mention the ever present power creep (slow as it may be compared to other TCGs) of MTG in general. As someone who used to play Rofellos decks way back in the day for EDH he was always a problem child back then because of how easily you could replay him to the battlefield and just really hard to slow a player down.
But nowadays If i had to chose between ramp commanders like Rofellos and Urza, Lord High Artificer I would build into Urza every time, and feel overall that hes a card that can do more in addition to ramping you like crazy. And yet one is banned the other is not.
Hey thanks for sharing your opinions we love reading about them!
I strongly disagree with gifts ungive being unbanned as well as Iona. Gifts allows you to grab any two combos, and Iona is a permanent that just shuts down one colour which can cripple a game
I would ban the extremely efficient tutors, the insanely fast mana rocks, the infinite single card draw engines, and mass land destruction. Some examples: Vampiric Tutor, Mana Crypt, Bolas’ Citadel, Armageddon… etc.
I would say that Chaos Orb, in my playgroup, is used as a colorless Vindicate. We just reworded it as "1, tap, Sacrifice Chaos Orb : Destroy target permanent."
Has worked in our EDH and in my old Cube. Everyone's been fine with it so far.
Erayo states that when the 4th spell is cast, not just your spell... any spell counts, flip it... and then if you have an enchanment or a creature that says that you can only play one spell per turn... well you locked the game for your opponents. The thing is broken
Timetwister isn’t banned because the rules committee each own several copies
I tend to consider any creature with defense 3 or less hard to argue a ban for. As if there aren't enough counter spells floating around, 3 or less D stat is open to any bolt, shock + a ping. Wipes that hit every creature for 2 to 3+. Or etb effects like mh2 Fury doing 4 dmg to anything.
Timetwister was not originally banned because it was worth waaaaay less than the rest of the P9. I've been buying pieces of Power for over 10 years now and Twister was less than a 100€ where the others were already in the 300€ range and Black Lotus was already over 750€ (all prices mentioned are for Unlimited in good condition, circa late 2011)
And because the RC does not want to acknowledge that the philosophy of their banlist is also built because price/scarcity of certain cards they won't ban it.
Because of they did, there would be constant outrage to ban duals, cradle, monolith and lots of other RL cards.
Accesibility isnt a ban factor, the rl cards like mox that have been banned have been banned due to the rc wanting to distinguish the format from the view that it is a alt vintage
Commander players are basically legacy players who don’t want to play 1v1… Should we have the same ban list (or stricter) as legacy?
Command Tower, Sol Ring, Jeweled Lotus, Arcane Signet. I don't think these cards need to be banned because they aren't problematic for games, especially since accessibility isn't really an issue for them (arguably excluding Lotus). However, I do agree that their status as "auto-includes" and their universal applicability to every deck in the format means that they erode diversity and were mistakes to create. I used to run Sol Ring, Command Tower, and Signet in every deck, but lately I've been taking them out of a lot of decks, and only including them when they feel like correct inclusions based on what the deck is doing or what the deck needs to succeed. I went from one of each in every deck to maybe one or two of each between all of my decks.
That is a great point
For panoptic mirror, if you imprint an extra turn spell onto it….. you get unlimited turns. That combo would be easy enough to do and seems very unfun to play against.
The reason Sol Ring and Mana Vault shouldn't be banned and aren't is because Green still has access to equitable ramp without those 2 cards needing to be in the deck. Any non-green deck loses out on tremendous staying power against burgeoning and exploration which are essentially the same thing as Sol Ring and Mana Vault; If not better.
Emrakul is oppressive. Easy way to find out, play it in your play group. Its easy to cheat out even without the extra turn. Its hard to kill. It has the terrible annihilator rule to a new level. It has evasion and protection. If this was on a 5/5 body for the same cost, it would still be powerful.
I think what really helps the format most is a healthy discussion about power level. I understand the format feeling static, but my play group has gotten around that with deck building challenges like removing thassas Oricle or infinite combos from our decks for a few weeks. After that our deck building improved, and the decks are much more diverse. I've also had many times when a cyclonic rift results in the table cheating, because it kept the game going.
I have emrakul in my animar deck and it just sits in my hand most of the time. When I do cast it I have yet to lose but is not the combo peice I'm looking for. Its a card to finish off your opponent and it does it super well. Its also 15 mana. You would have to ramp out 4 turns in a row to get to it. I think its fine solely on its mana cost.
I run kozi in mymanimar deck for antimill card and card draw
@@Someone-lg6di good idea. I gotta see what I'm gonna cut for it now
as a 5 colour player. arcane signet and command tower are a fucking godsend in place of the crazy expensive tri lands.