If You HAD to Ban or Unban a Card...? | EDHRECast 301 

Smothering Tithe should probably not trigger off the first card your draw each turn. If it punished people for drawing extra, and left more room for casual decks, it would regulate itself better.

As an unban Primtime player, Dana's argument actually convinced me why it would be a problem. Petition to add a votable"WEEEEEEEE" tag to cards on EDHRec alongside their salt score.

Personally, i really think that the "self regulation" arguments really conflict with who the ban list is for. If the ban list is truly for random people at an LGS, then why take the chance that the one person might not have self regulated and built a MLD deck, or put drannith in, or iona etc. Its immensely easier to have the play groups allow these self regulation cards with a rule 0, than to expect people to willfully choose not to run them against random strangers. People dont tend to have self control. Id rather see an extensive ban list that the play groups who know each other can selectively take cards off of, then let the LGS experience be thrown to the wolves.

I don’t think Dockside is banning itself, at least not in my LGS. People are playing and flickering that in all their “casual” decks.

Dockside is the modern day prime time.... once ine hits playt, if it did not just win on the spot,the entire game becomes about the Dockside... all this from a 2 yes that is TWO mana spell!

Regarding Dana's point on Prime Time - he is SPOT on. Why is Rhystic Study acceptable in casual games? There is no reason. No deck "needs" Rhystic, but it shows up in so many decks

Banning Sol Ring sure would be a bold move for the reason you mentioned, but at the same time, I feel like the issue you listed with Manacrypt are so much more present with the Ring, because of its ubiquity. And it's just that it's also part of lower power pods too, it even feels like a bigger problem there aswell.

The thing about restraint in EDH is that people don't have it when it comes to value. Many of the cards that are slam dunked into places they probably shouldn't be are ones that give more resources. Thats why people don't jam Protean Hulk like they would Prime Time, Hulk is a wincon, and in EDH people like to win in particular ways. The road to get to their weird wincon, people aren't so picky about, despite ramp and card draw being two of the strongest things in a game of Magic. I've seen so many Docksides at casual tables, and thats not even a card people like. Prime Time would actually be everywhere, in every green deck.

Primetime was banned in the goodstuff era. It took advantage of the social contract by putting you so far ahead on lands, which was hard for your opponent to interact with. Now the format has sped up and I feel like the decks are so synergistic it is less of a problem. I think EDHRECast episode 251 pretty much makes the case for a lot of cards from this era to be unbanned :D

Companion just needs to not function in Commander. It's the only "from outside of the game" mechanic allowed from some reason, and I hate that inconsistency. If Companion is gonna be allowed to have a "Companion Zone", why wouldn't "wish" cards be allowed a "Wish Zone"? Just ditch both fully and remove the headache.

My own personal "challenge the stats" that I discovered is Arterial Alchemy in Chishiro, The Shattered Blade, which isn't even on his EDHREC page. It's an enchantment that creates a blood token for each opponent when it enters the battlefield and it makes all blood tokens you control equipments, so 3 equipment blood tokens means 3 spirit tokens from Chishiro, or more if you already have Doubling Season or Parallel Lives on board.

I think Dana actually hit a hidden point that the RC uses to ban cards (or not ban) about the "Weeeeee" factor. Prophet of Kruphix was banned because people couldn't regulate themselves. Its also probably a big reason why some of the more egregious offenders people want banned is because out in the wild it is regulated. Which mean that your playgroup is letting problems thrive.

Mirror Entity is also funny on Delney decks because if you really need a good generic creature with a triggered ability that isn't necessarily 2 or less power, you can make it a 2/2 so you get a double trigger on it

I would honestly love to see a return of banned as commander and unban all the cards that are just problematic as a commander

Super hyped for your takes on this. Looking forward to seeing how we agree and/or disagree. Always an interesting topic.

The only card I would consider banning is Gaea's cradle, for the sake of consistency. Both Tolarian Academy and Serra's Sanctum being banned but GC not feels like it sends mixed messages. In terms of power even, I'd argue that Serra's Sanctum is the less powerful of the three. Why should it be banned if GC isn't ? Moreover, Library of Alexandria's reason for being banned is it's price, and I don't see why that wouldn't apply to the cradle too.

Mirror entity is even crazier in that Delney deck. You can play your super big creatures with cool effects and set their power to 2, swing, then pump them back up!

15 minutes of buildup only for Matt's first point to be "Dockside isn't banned, Demonic Tutor allows you to tutor, and Apex Devastator is splashy so I don't know why this card that jams all three of these effects into a single card that's also harder to interact with is banned." 😂 Great episode, guys. I love how you kept it respectful and saw each other's points of view.

My friend and I 3-0'ed our WAR two-headed sealed in great part thanks to Bond of Discipline. It instantly became a card I love and keep an eye on!

Coalition Victory being banned while Thoracle exists in the format is absurd. For my choices, I'd unban Library of Alexandria (if Timetwister and Tabernacle are still legal, I don't see why price is really a concern here). Keeping at or near 7 isn't as easy as it used to be, and draw spells have become much more powerful over the years. Which leads into my ban: Rhystic Study. Rhystic is just too good for the cost, and introduces unfun tax play patterns where you know you're all losing, but you keep struggling against it anyway.

I see a lot of Drannith Magistrate in casual metas.

Regarding Sway of the Stars - if it hadn't been banned when i started playing EDH back in 2009, my first deck would have been Jhoira of the Ghitu. I had a 60 card deck that ran four of her, and I'd suspend a few beaters (Greater Gargadon, Deep-Sea Kraken, etc.) plus Sway of the Stars. Then I'd stack the suspend so the game was wiped/reset to 7 life before letting a beater enter with haste. However, it was banned, so I started with teysa, Orzhov Scion instead.

As a game designer, I'm always intrigued in the creation of counterplay options for example, what would you do if there was a 4 CMC colourless mana rock that while it was on the battlefield no mana abilities on any artifact with 2 CMC or lower could be activated? Treasures, frozen. Mana Crypt and Sol Ring, paused. Your Worn Powerstone would still work and the land focussed players would be fine. The dockside player still has vandal blast to stop you but it would force a little more back and forth. Adding more tools is always the healthiest IMO but this has mostly just been a shower thought I felt posting.

I would never accept a Mana Crypt ban without also banning Sol Ring.

The reason Dockside Extortionist won't get banned is that, like Opposition Agent and Hullbreacher, the RC/CAG thought it would be used to curb high power decks without affecting lower power strategies. Any time you talk about the problem, you'll be told "but that's cEDH, that's different". The only solution is to wreck them with it or have the cards escape into the wilds of casual play. Notice how Hullbreacher's ban emphasized the offensive wheeling.

The rules committee recently updated the ban list with official reasons for each card's banning. Interesting that the power 9 were banned, not because of power, but because of how expensive they were.

In terms of unbanning, I’m of the mind that the way Commander is structured doesn’t lend well to a banlist, but if I’m only unbanning one thing, I’d say Flash. CEDH has moved past some of the stuff Flash Hulk was doing since the ban, and otherwise it’s not very harmful in casual. In terms of what to ban, Farewell. It has all the downsides of things like Sway of the Stars or Cyclonic Rift without the benefits they have of opening up a line to win.

I think if you banned iona itd still be put in angel decks. With the cost people would see it as a finisher to kill at least one player, which isnt as good as winning a game, but it also stalls for you a bit if youre waiting for like an akromas will or something.

When I've seen worldfire, it's been pretty wild, and I love the sudden race the game becomes. But I love chaos plays.

I still don’t know why the rules committee has not banned storm crow!

"It's not Arena, we can't just buff or nerf cards willy-nilly like that" You say that, but that's exactly what they did to Training Grounds with its Aftermath reprint. They clearly didn't feel like programming Arena to retain the card's original functionality (discounting creatures' activated abilities by "up to" 2 mana - now we don't have a choice and it's always 2) so they just changed how it functions in paper - and you know it's for Arena functionality because none of the other "up to" discounters have been changed, plus one of the reasons Suspend was changed to a May cast was for Arena programming. Sure, it's technically a barely relevant change, but they literally just printed Dynaheir within the year before that change, and she cares a lot about that "up to" clause. The old promise of "we'll never make functional erratas" has been broken, so who knows what changes we'll see down the road.

For me, i really dont see good reason for sylvan primordial ban. Its 8 mana creature, thats point where haymakers should generally be. If someone can repeatably blink it, he's already winning. Its not that much different from Terestodon or woodfall primus. The bad use case is same for all of them, someone just repeat blink them to blow up all lands, which is not fun but its more of a corner case that is already lond of self regulated by "land destruction is bad" social contract. Prime time ia worse for 2 reason mentioned in episode. 1) its repeatative on its own without shaeningans involved. 2) Its toolbax full of basically uninteractable goodstuff. Big mana from coffers, darkdepth for beating, field of dead for go wide, strip mine for resource denial, bojuka bog or scavanger geound for GY, valakut for removal or direct damage. So many option, and in most cases its against social contract to interact with them.

I think if we're willing to suffer Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy to exist in the format, it's probably fine to unban Rofellos.

I am a little surprised that Tirgrid lasted long enough to self regulate. As much as i loathe that card it did regulate. At least near me, one person has a competitive tirgrid and then everyone else played it once or twice got their jollies and moved on

Banning Demonic Consulation & Tainted Pact To start off, I think Thoracle in a mono blue devotion deck is rad and a nice alt wincon and by itself is a decent card. It's just the cards that you MUST play in order to make it broken create an issue. Both of these cards check a minimum of 2 boxes on the ban rules list. Plus they have the added problem that they are not being used for their originally designed purpose. If you want to search for a card play literally any and all of the modern tutors. These cards are only played because Thoracle exists and only because they can remove your whole library. If we also want to reference the secondary market, it has also taken what should be a bulk box card and turned each of them into $15 cards. That is my hot take, leave Thoracle alone, ban the dumb cards that you are forced to play. Thank you.

of the interesting banned as commander discussion, is it crazy to say griselbrand would probably be powerful but fine if you had to cast it from the command zone, but is wayyyy too strong when you can somewhat easily cheat its casting cost

also one of the difference between primetime utility and hulk is that hulk get creatures and primetime gets lands and its frowned upon to destroy lands. So it feels like if you get 2 toolbox land its way more then if you get 2 toolbox creatures (sure hulk can combo off but you can still try and interact with most of it ), imagine if a hulk player said "ill get these creatures but don't touch them"

Tergrid is my answer to a CEDH table. i would not play that deck against normal ppl, unless they did break a deal!

Was wondering if someone would say Iona 😂 I genuinely do not think there’s a single positive for taking it off the ban list

If you play just if your friends at home, the banlist those not matter then, just talk with your friend if Golos is okey or if you should ban Sol ring. The ban list is more or less just for when you are goin to a new place with new people, So all of you are building your deck with the same possibility and same rules. SO if your play group HATE Sol ring ban it, but dont get angry/Sad when you are not playing with your friends and you see a sol ring........

For Challenge the Stats, I think Bond of Discipline is a great card but I expect is frequently replaced by better cards such as Akroma’s Will. It’s a good budget option though…

As one of those people with an angel deck, banning Iona sucked only cause it was 20 bucks when I picked it up and at the time my deck was much more prisony because of the angels available at the time and i leaned as hard as i could into the flavor of the named angels. Now i honestly don't think I could put her back in, it's doubly worse cause my angel deck is a 5 color deck, and I've tried to squish down my curve as much as possible and it still doesn't get running till like turn 5. On the point of it being an only option to run when it was banned, there were I think 12 or 13 (maybe?) angels at mana value of 3 or less, and the only not really bad ones were Jenara Asura of War (still in my angel deck) and Resolute Angel (one I traded a Sliver Overloard to my wifey for. She has a sliver deck, I don't intend to build one), and a lot of the 4 Mana Value angels weren't that good either. It was a steep drop off in playability when going from a 5 to less. To give an idea of how bad those options were, one was a 3 mana 3/3 that would give your oppnent(s?) A free 3/3, there was no pool of cards, only a thimble

I stopped playing mono coloured decks at my lgs untill Iona was banned. I can came across it 3 times. each time, i was playing mono decks and my colour was chosen each time. It left a bad taste in my mouth. 25:58

Prime time argument is simple: dies to removal. First if you’re not running removal, what are doing? And second you’re smartly holding that removal for when something “big” happens. Apex Devastator is a cast trigger so no matter what they’re getting the cascade. There are also a ridiculous amount of big splashing green cards: great henge, vaultborn tryrant, avenger of zendikar are 3 more without thinking. Use removal and use it wisely. To me the prime time argument is not just about the “weeee” factor that was talked about. Because if you’re playing smart you’re saving removal for that “weeeee” moment. If prime time happens, the table LET it happen

If I were to take a serious look at this I think rather than looking at specific cards I'd prefer to look at implementation. This being a 100 card singleton format I feel fine with unbanning all cards and creating a banned as commander list (there use to be one but it was removed for simplicity). I'd then entertain the banning of non-lands that produce mana that cost 0 and 1 as well as tutors that cost 3 or less. I think that does a better job of dealing with the most problematic things given that every set, which we see a new one every other week, provides new busted cards. If we are banning things because they are too powerful well there are lots of too powerful cards. I made new Etali and by turn 6 had 5 permanents from each opponent and myself. Then did the same thing in 3 other games. Took the deck apart but it was enabled by tutors and fast mana as are many things.

Smothering tithe for sure could go. Rystic study as well. I like to think if it costs one more mana, especially a pip, would you still play it? For both of these i would say yes. That addition would make them much more reasonable though.

I have learned how to play commander (and kinda magic in general) in my LGS against the cashier who played a very high power Tergrid deck (he claimed it was cedh). I lost like 50+ games and won once. In a duel with a creature with a creature recon it was definitely futile against him but he was still fun to hang out with, he helped upgrade my deck and of course taught me how to play. So in my case Tergrid carries a lot of mixed feelings with her because damn I felt like I can't do anything, but I learned a lot, had fun and that one win even though it was insane rng at work felt so good

I used to be pro unbending Iona, until I realized how commonly we were getting "create non-legendary token copy" cards nowadays. Turboing out 5 Ionas sounds super cancer, and I don't want it.

Flash was banned because it was a menace in cedh and not played in casual. Imo thassas oracle who came out when flash was banned should be looked at. Casual has other cards like labman and jace from war of the spark, but thoracle is a menace in cedh and i dont see casual decks running it at all

I'd rather cards be errata'd than banned but it leads to a slippery slope of what cards deserve one, so I'll leave my thoughts and status vote. I know many would say CycRift, but I love that card as a mono blue answer to indestructible/hexproof boards. Vote: stay unbanned Primetime is so iconic, but make it add the lands to your hand or at most cultivate style where one hits the field and the other goes to hand. (Even searching two basics is too good since it happens on attack trigger as well) Vote: stay banned Tergrid is the kind of card that needs to be a once per turn trigger, and if that's still too much, only if it happened on your turn. Vote: stay unbanned, but social contract Dockside Extortionist is Primetime on crack. Even if it made one for each player with an arti/ench, it'd be good, so put it at 2R and we'd be solid. Vote: banned

I had quite a lot of problems with cedh cards staying unbanned. Most of the games I had with strangers ended with one guy bringing a cedh deck with 3000 dollars worth of fast mana. I understand that some people enjoy playing poker with magic cards, but it really has to be a separate format since it's a completely different and some of it keeps bleeding into normal games. Maybe it's a regional thing, since in Italy people are particularly sweaty about games, and FNMs and casual events are full of people who come intentionally to pub stomp. I feel like having a gun available as an option for a knife fight, even if discouraged by the community, let's people to act in bad faith. A big contributing factor is that other formats are by default competitive, and going to a casual modern event, you expect people to bring meta deck or brews based around meta, while EDH is casual and we expect to meet people with medium level of power, sometimes even precons and junk combos.

Re: Iona There are many mechanics that lock entire player(s) out of the game. Forced sacrifice, STAX, Original Vorinclex, pillowforts, discard, exile, solitaire loops, graveyard hate... I've sat through many, many, many EDH games where I was unable to play for many turns, until another player removed the problem, and I came back into the game with a full hand and plenty of mana. The difference is that Iona literally reads as 'can't' where other mechanics, the 'can't' is merely subtext.

This is me realizing that Primeval Titan allowed you to grab two NONBASIC lands.... jesus. I agreed with the ban back then assuming it only grabbed basics. Today, grabbing basics at that rate isnt that scary, but grabbing any lands at all... yeah thats still bannable.

I've bever been prouder to be from Boston. I now need a Sol Ring Fenway Park alter.

If a colorless similar costed (arguably easier to cast and can be stuffed into any deck that generates alot of mana) creature like void winnower which makes 1/2 the game unplayable for the entire table is unbanned, then iona only picking on a single color is fine. Rule zero can adjust for mono color decks.

I was thinking last night about the ban list, and did come to the conclusion that while there's a lot of stuff about it that should change, they do occasionally nail it, like with banning Golos, which for my money is the worst card ever printed for EDH.

I think having common sense and deceny is the most important thing rather than ban lists, there are gross cards that aren't banned that you should know better than to run in lower power decks.

I think Sway is actually the most fair of the reset cards, shuffling back instead of exiling and giving people a fresh hand gives people a decent chance to rebuild if the sway player can't win right there, and if they win right there then it's a 10+ mana win combo which is not great in a format with much more efficient wincons. Worldfire rips everything away and gives nothing back, and if the worldfire player can't win that turn then it's basically a topdecking gambling disaster the rest of the game. I think Golos, Rofellos, Braids, and Emrakul can 100% come off if banned as commander, and might be fine coming off entirely. I don't think they do anything in the CZ that's uniquely powerful, and in the 99 they'd just be another card in a wide pool of powerful but not staple cards.

Smothering Tithe and Rhystic Study and anything like them. Edit - And Sol Ring.

What i've heard about Prime Time is that it's really game warping. as soon as it hits the field it becomes EVERYONES main plan. you clone it, steal it, reanimate it, and whatever else you can possible do to get the value for yourself.

If you and your playgroup were to do a one-off no bans Commander night, I'm curious what spicy banned cards would you play with?

As a landfall player, I fully endorse Primetime staying on the banlist. Given the fact that you can already do obnoxious things without the titan

For me, the card to ban is an easy decision. Cyclonic Rift. It is a beautiful card, just a bit too good in every direction. It hits mana rocks, enchantments, creatures, tokens, all at instant speed with no friendly fire. It isn't a target effect, so it hits through hexproof, shroud and ward. It never has a weak moment. If you are behind you get several turns to catch up, it breaks deadlocks, it snowballs advantages. You can see it coming, and do very little to stop it. Without a counterspell or mass flicker, you're toast. It is leagues ahead of all similar mass removal spells.

I have a deck with coalition victory in it ONLY because it's from the 60 card Turing complete deck. I do let others know and the conditions that I play it are if 1): everyone agrees that it's a dire situation and I have the condition to cast it or 2): the deck does what the deck is suppose to do. If the other players don't agree to that then I play a different deck.

As someone who has played Edh since 2011, I can tell you Primeval Titan would still be a problem if it came back. I would love nothing more than to resolve a Primeval titan in a Cedh pod, search up Gaea's Cradle and maybe Nykthos for a massive boost. I played Paradox Sisay until it was banned, one of my favorite decks of all time. The only real tangible fixes I can think of is to either add a "Basic Land" rider on Primetime's ability; or to remove the ETB altogether. Anyways I understand the things I would like to see and play are definitely not in the best interest of the game as a whole. Magic keeps adding new problems to solve. While they may learn lessons for now, they often slip and designs like MH2 Evoke Elementals and Bowmasters show up.

i actually look forward to hearing the dad jokes for the upcoming episode, i appreciate the humor from the edhrec crew

One of my all-time favorite card is Recurring Nightmare and I still fail to see how it's broken in the format. At least more than other cards or to the point where it won't fall under self-regulated cuts. Yeah, it's ability is confusing at first but at the same time very educational to new players how timings and targeting work in Magic. Also it requires setup and the other player can see what's happening and react to it in more than one window. And it is a 25 years old and on the Reserved List so you wouldn't run into it that often to begin with.

So I guess we're not even going to acknowledge Thassa's Oracle?

First of all: Nice video. Now, I would love if CEDH have his own ban list and separate treatment than the regular EDH, because the spirit, the motivations and the intentions are different. That will be fair for both kind of players, like it's in French Commander, for example. And finally, taking one of the most important values of Commander/EDH: this is a format of everyone; why the committee don't ban the reserved list? Magic said that they not gonna reprint those cards, and many of them acquired a ridiculous price, making them impossible for most of the players (specially new). But some old school players (like myself), has them because we were playing for soooo long. And for me, that feels very unfair and gives me the "pay per win" feeling sometimes (like when someone plays a Gaia's Cradle or Mana Crypt).

51:33 I either run drannith as my only stax piece in a deck or I run it in my cEDH stax deck. I currently only have drannith in one deck and it is my Ellivere stax cEDH deck.

If Iona was unbanned and I had a copy of it I would definitely throw a copy of it in my Kaalia deck. That being said I have a lot of angels in that deck that are also hate pieces so it wouldnt stand out; like chancellor of the annex, drana and linvala, liesa shroud of dusk, and serras emissary.

The cards I would consider banning are the mass chaos exchange everything like Scrambleverse and Thieves' Auction. Are they competitive cards? No but they just mix everyone's cards together in a needless mess which probably should only be done with good friends.

I Appreciate the baseball references Dana.

Thassas oracle is more bannable than dockside

If I were gonna unban anything, it would honestly just be Panoptic Mirror. Card was banned in the very first list, where test games were played as 2 player games where each player had 100 life (og rules were 200 life split evenly amongst the players) and Shahrazad was legal. It was banned because imprinting Shahrazad was a nightmare. The argument these days is "ohhh infinite turns ohhhh armageddon" but there's way easier ways to get infinite turns than investing like 10+ mana into PM, and if you try to imprint something degenerate like Armageddon the mirror extremely isn't making it all the way to your next upkeep. Players have so many more ways to deal with it these days that it isn't really an issue anymore. Also Banned As Commander should totally come back.

I'd like to unban Big Emmie, it's not fair that she was banned for (essentially) power level, 'people use her as a pub stomp Commander' means a lot less when you can do better stuff faster, and arguably with more consistency (especially since Colourless is pretty bad at drawing cards consistently/early). I have an Eldrazi deck, but it's a Gruul deck because I wanted better ramp options, and I also wanted other perks from Gruul. It's a janky deck, but it can still steal wins because it can use Green ramp. The card I'd ban is a bit of a tough call, I'm not sure if I'd still say we need to ban Opposition Agent (I still don't like it at 3 mana and think it's more toxic as a random card than Hullbreacher was), I'd love to see less fast mana but more people are already coming to that conclusion (you used to see almost no decks without Sol Ring, now you see them here and there), Dockside is still pretty toxic I guess? My problems with it are that it's very easy for it to be mana positive, and since it's on a body it's comically easy to abuse it as a Ritual. It was a design mistake to print the best Ritual ever as a creature, but in practice people don't mind it in cEDH, and many people insist it's not a problem in Casual (I partly disagree, but you can run There and Back Again to make a heap of treasures to work with, and Smaug combos with a LOT of cards as well), so I'm not sure if Dockside 'needs' to go. I think Thoracle is a strong enough win con that it's on the edge, but I think it ultimately 'is fine' in that it's relatively easy to interact with, and is tough to do at instant speed (compared to Flash Hulk for example, where you could Flash only to have someone else Flash on top, and a 3rd person Flash on top of them, the reason it had to go wasn't just it's power level, it was that it was an incredibly annoying win con because it ate up lots of cards in your deck and was objectively the best thing you could be doing at the same time. This meant it warped the meta immensely, until cEDH became openly less fun. As 'samey' as cEDH feels now, it used to be worse before Flash was banned. In contrast their are a ton of win cons out there that are all 'viable', so many it's hard to count, and people play tons of them and sometimes beat Thoracle. The fastest decks in the format for the record don't use Thoracle, they are Rakdos Turbo decks, thus Thoracle is a fine addition to the meta. I wouldn't mind seeing Rift or Rhystic Study banned, neither uses enough U pips to be fair, and both are game-warping and can easily generate toxic game states.

I think basing bans off historic context isn't great reasoning because new cards come out to support old cards or make old strats weaker. Also it doesnt take into account speed of games. Back in the day turn 1 mana crypt was good but didnt get you into game ending positions. But high powered games turn 1 crypt is so much better of a position

I must be in the minority of people who feel the banlist is pretty dang good and that the RC has done a great job. Commander isnt just cedh and casual its myriad different styles due to a vast card pool. Its precon v precon Its battlecruiser Its not quite cedh salty meaness Its jank I love the variety of games and decks the format encourages. Pubstomping is rude and should be discouraged, but bans will not solve this. I can bring my Marwyn the nurturer list to a casual table and clean house with an early umbral mantle or staff off dom. Ive won with a 1 land hand with my elf ball list. Its very very fast. Ive beaten a tuned Urza deck more than once, and i dont see umbral mantle being anywhere close to banworthy. Furthering sometimes i enjoy spiky rudeboi games. Ive played inna game where i got hit by Armageddon twice and fought through it with decent draw and a burgeoning, it was a fantastic memorable game. I post to a Mindslaver lock, but we all brought strong decks. I mean one person played GAAIV and became an instant frenemy before the game started. Banning cards because you dont like them or the games isnt the same. Edh isnt just one (or two formats) its so many. My least favorite card in all of Magic is Humility, but i dont want it banned. Pubstomping will happen even if there are a hundred bans. We need to work on creating a culture around the games we seek. Banning isnt the answer to this. Communication is. And since i started years and years ago i think the communication around games has improved. My LGS has taken several paths to improve gameplay and reduce pubstomping.

Major "old man yells at the banlist" vibe from the thumbnail, btw :D

Iona at this point is basically only a Reanimator/Sneak Attack card at this point in commander. Games are getting so much more faster that natural 8 drops aren't really playable anymore.

Dockside Extorsionist does not get self-regulated, the only reason why it's not played in every single red deck is unfortunately only because of it's price 😢

Cyclonic rift is a card I play in all my blue decks and I always hold it in my hand instead of playing it because it doesn’t feel fun to cast

Damn the self control on not mentioning Rhystic once.

I really think Emrakul is the monster under the bed for a lot of players because catch all and cheap removal doesn’t work. You need a board wipe, or unconventional ETB removal. And god forbid people play any removal that isn’t Beast Within or Swords to Plowshares.

If you think Bond of Discipline is fine, those angel decks could also run Subjugator Angel.

So I know Tergrid as commander SUUUUUCKS, but what about her in the 99? I was considering her in my Davros deck for instance.

I didn't even know Iona was banned! I don't play her because she's too ... oppressive in a targetted way.

If anyone happens to be running Garruk's Uprising just for the 3 mana trample buff I point you to a spell costed 1 less that will fill the same role: Primal Rage

There is one small petition that i would to be banned and thats Mirrym Sentential Wyrm and thats only because i have personally never seen the player that resolved one loose. I also understand thats a bad argument because "play more removal" or there are plenty of commanders that if they get to untap with you will likely loose (looking at you Niv Mizzit). But there is something that feels back breaking about copying creatures with some of the best text boxes in the game.

I think you'd be surprised how many anonymous players would (and do) run the shut off effects. The ban list is for anonymous play, and for regulating cEDH. I think nbanning is fine and playgroups can always Rule 0 them IN.

I still think that allowing the companion mechanic to work in commander (other previous "outside the game" mechanics did not work within the edh rules) was not "worth the squeeze".

Golos was banned because he was "The better version of whatever you be doing for your commander"? This seems like something I want a more in depth explanation for. Because now I wonder why Korvold is not banned for the same reason. Or kenrith. or...

Tergrid is even a may, too bad it wasn't forced to take control of whats discarded and sacrificed. Would be interesting to tech against them.

I think that Library of Alexandria and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn should be unbanned. Commander has changed a lot since they were originally banned. I think these cards have an effect that is too weak in the case of Library or an effect that is good, but way to expensively costed for that effect; in the case of Emrakul; both very safe unbans in my book.

I think only some cards have a time when they were egregious and no longer. But Sol Ring and Dockside are NOT that. They still cause extremely swingy games. Price is also no object, if many people are now more welcoming of proxies. So Sol Ring and Mana Crypt should go together if one does.

I wouldn't necessarily campaign to have Cyclonic Rift banned, but I would be pretty happy to see it go. It's not a problem when it's used to close out games, but I find more often than not that it extends games to a tiring degree.

Prime time is disgusting and absolutely more powerful than the 10 mana cascade x 4. Being able to tutor your two card combo for one card is just insane.

Prime time is just so fun to play and won't win the game by just triggering his ability once. Protean Hulk can and will often win the game with just one trigger and is considered not casual for that reason alone.

I dont agree iona would not self regulate. I might be bias because it was a heavily played card in my local area but it ruined commander so much having it around.

I like the Dad jokes, but then again I liked the opening song bars they used to do on Command Zone too?