Let's Talk About The Commander Banned List 

It's specifically too complex for MTGO. That ancient game has no way of differentiating between 'commander' and '99'.

My issue with the “too complex” argument is how the rules committee seems to be the only ones that are incapable of reading. The same ones that thought it would be easier to explain to people state based actions when a commander dies rather than just tell players “if your commander would die, you can put it back into the command zone instead” because actual members on the committee didn’t know how the rules of the game worked.

@@endersblade Existing is too complex for MTGO. What an awful UI experience that program is.

Yeah I think that argument is totally ridiculous, considering grist is allowed to be your commander, even though the way that the rules about what can be your commander are worded would suggest that it can't.

​@@HomeCookinMTGgrist when is not on the board is a legendary creature i dont see where is the problem whith a legendary creature being your commander

Yea you can but people aren’t playing thoracle in a super casual deck, people would absolutely run coalition in most casual 5c decks

Yeah comparing coalition victory to thassa's oracle it's a universe of difference. Oracle is played in many formats, but the only way you could play coalition victory in legacy or vintage is if you combo it with dream halls conflux or something. Oracle could be banned in EDH easily, but coalition victory should have been unbanned long ago even with biomes and such the creature requirement is easy to interact with for many decks causing it to fizzle out.

Even with leyline of the guildpact, coalition victory is more reasonable of a win than Thoracle.

@@N3VVZ0M But there are jerkbags going to casual games and playing Thorical. "But there is prize, thus must win" SOme meta's and LGS have that one guy you can't avoid outside of punching them. and punching people over a card game is a bad look

@@SoloWing88 they are playing 100% correctly if I paid to play and there is a price on the line you should play at 100% maximum efficiency

I agree for the most part, but I think there really is no need for a lot of extremely high power cards to be banned. players are very good at self policing, and I think most people underestimate that

@@crppledizzle9374they never argued they should be banned, only showed the fault in the rethoric of the RC

@@crppledizzle9374 Right and I don't disagree, but if that's the best choice, a lot of cards on the ban list should come off it.

@@crppledizzle9374 in private playgroups, maybe. And even then I have my doubts judging by the plethora of posts on the EDH subreddit concerning playgroup issues. But then we don't all play with private playgroups and have no basis for self policing beyond this banlist. We cannot even agree on basic terminology most of the time, and you want us to sit down and potentially re-write the banlist before each game? So what do you do when you run into someone running Mana Crypt in every deck and you want it banned? Hope they brought a sideboard? It's simply not realistic.

Agree. With the general power creep and WotC designing for the format even casual games have become so much more efficient that a fair part of the ban list isn't all that critical any more.

Stupid companions also gave us Drannith magistrate as a side effect 😢

They literally made the companion mechanic legal and then proceeded to ban 20% (Yorion) of companions in the same announcement, it was wild.

Wishes not being playable was a shit idea.

and you are free to rule-zero them into your games, that's part of the joy of Commander.

@@najoheuer You can do this with any game. It's not exclusive to Commander. I would have preferred rules that make sense followed by rule 0 than what we have now.

Timetwister was a about as expensive as mana drain for awhile

Twister has better alternatives according to RC which is why its not banned. Imagine a card that costs a lot but it has better alternatives so it doesn't matter as much

I genuinely don't know why people get so twisted up on this topic when Commander is a made up feel like whatever format. Like yeah, you hit the nail on the head, that's what it is. Also Timetwister is not even a good card in EDH. Wheels as a whole are really only good if you're doing something degenerate with them, and in that situation losing your graveyard is a downside.

Timetwister is a genuinely bad card in commander. It was powerful when they put it in the nine, but now it's not.

Super interesting point that I haven't seen brought up before. Thank you for this. I guess it gets harder and harder to know on which side of the pendulum to land. With the Doctor Who decks bringing 10 or mote new very playable clones to the format over night, it gets to the point that the theft and clone effects can't be policed - only the resulting dominating creatures.

The 99 or the command zone would be fine I think In the companion zone, Lutri would be essentially more required and ubiquitous than Sol Ring

I don't think I've talked to anyone that thinks the Lutri shouldn't be legal in the 99 or as the commander. Whenever I've played games against people who ask the table if its okay if they have a Lutri in their deck but not as a companion everyone is always totally fine with it.

​@@as95ms98 But it would be nice to not have to ask. Just in case there's a person that says no.

@@as95ms98 Yeh I think they just want the banlist to be as concise and consistent and easy to understand as possible, and they're theoretically only sacrificing a few things to maintain that (Lutri in the 99, or braids/rofellos)

I always like to remind people that prior to Ikoria Commander explicitly disallowed any kind of sideboard and it was WotC that insisted on carving out an exception for Companions even though you still couldn’t make most of them work anyway. It was a bad call and they should simply undo it and free Lutri.

People don’t NEED to make decks of a similar power level, they just naturally do it. You can only play so much of a game that you keep losing, especially if the same 1-2 people keep winning, and it feels worse if it’s consistently a blowout. That’s where power level balancing comes in, people fix up their decks to be within a comfortable range to compete. Now I don’t agree with using “My deck is a 7” as the way to describe a deck, as a 7 can mean anything depending on their normal playgroup. Instead give a concise description of the deck, including the consistent win turn. If your deck relies on surprising your opponent to win, it’s probably not fit for a social format.

"people should make their own banlists" ignores two big problems: it's a lot of effort, especially for new-ish players that don't know every card, and it inevitably causes arguments.

I got my friends who have played a lot of magic to build decks and play like 2 games of commander. None of us had any experience in what cards were legal but that we should not play. Thus the games were miserable and all 3 of them basically refuse to give it another try. I have a better handle on things now, but I needed to absorb like 30 hours of commander content to get the gist of it and use it to guide my and my son's deckbuilding so we can at least enjoy it together. You should be able to look at the official rules for the format, and then try out the format, and have a fun experience just by following the rules. There are a ton of really cool things about Commander, but by this metric it fails so incredibly hard. It can just be a dice roll whether you have a fun experience your first time or not in an uninitiated group. And I still have yet to hear a compelling argument why the baseline policy of "rule zero to ban what you want" in any way works better than "rule zero to unban what you want". In established groups they are functionally the same, but in new or random groups it is a world of difference.

If you're playing any sport or game casually you're going to get absolutely obliterated every now and then. Skill gap exists, equipment and gear budget disparity exists. As someone who's in both communities it's always amused me how whiny "casual players" are about losing a casual game where they didn't have a whole committee meeting to decide the power level first

That's the only reason there is a banlist and rules to begin with, so that there is a baseline.

Just in case you didn't know: Timetwister is not banned in commander.

@@patterofheads256 I am aware however Time Walk, Ancestral Recall, the Moxen, and Black Lotus are not. And if the argument is that accessibility is not justification for banning. And neither is power since power can be managed with pregame discussions and rule zero. Then there is no logical reason those cards should be banned. As I said I do support banning those cards and other excessively powerful/expensive/poor play experience cards but I'm pointing out that the logic provided by the rules committee is inconsistent.

@gnomersy1087 nah I get you, I just took "the power 9 is banned" Literally. I also don't think library of Alexandria should be banned and I think it's insane that mishra's workshop isn't... not that I've ever played with people who could afford either lol.

Well luckily for you Commander doesn't have a banned list.

This is probably a longshot, but I've been doing a fair bit of research on early-magic vintage and there's a lot less information out there on the 90's and early 2000's than there is about more modern metagames. Were you around for that time, or was there somewhere you read about stuff like this?

And Mishra's Workshop too. I run it in my artifact deck and get eye rolls every time I drop it lol

​@@endersbladeI always forget Shops is actually legal. Pretty insane honestly lol

I mean they didn’t ban all of the power 9, so other cards like that surprise you?

@Morphling92 yes...they literally did...unless you mean "did" Edit: You're right. I honestly always forget that timetwister is a part of the power nine, and Library is the unofficial 10th slot

@@sambrown9475 Timetwister is power 9 and is legal in commander

Ban list keeps prime time from being there....

Say you think infinite combos are ‘Degen’ without saying infinite combos are ‘degen’

@LadleLoverDS i use combos, i dont use turn 3 combos that are uninteractive. One is degen, the other isnt

@syndicate5357 prime time isn't busted, not anymore. It's just strong, and if people ran land destruction, it is very easily interacted with

@@LadleLoverDSdo you think you have it?

Vince is fighting the orc army

Still you can remove everything else required for it to work.

There are plenty of cards that require instant speed interaction to stop. Like, you need a counterspell or you just lose. I think recnight would be just fine in the current state of the format. Along with most of the bans. Powercreep is real and things that were scary 15 years ago are just 'meh' nowadays.

@@jgroen5545 "it's not a problem if you play blue"

@@Its109TheGamer you miss my point. There are plenty of really good or game winning cards you can only interact with when they are on the stack (some of which require a lot less or even no setup at all, contrary to this). Why single this one out for a ban?

@@jgroen5545 I singled it out because PK undervalued why it was banned in the first place. I would like it unbanned as well, but we both know that's not gonna happen

Very fair.

I wish academy was unbanned. It's so broken

Honestly though, an instant win is better than the alternative. Im not going to win because i didnt build optimally (or just built poorly) but i still gotta remind everyone that im untapping and can flash in creatures

It wasn't really an instant win tho, it was more like a free Time Walk on every opponents upkeep, so long as the creatures you played kept drawing you more cards, you would just accrue a massive amount of value and do it by playing the game on other people's turns, which was annoying.

LOL My first commander deck, Ezuri Price of Progress, had to immediately remove Prophet of Kruphix because they just banned it, the card was fine it saved people financially on buying a Teferi and Seedborn Muse for the same effect. Classic argument: Dies to Doomblade ;p

​@@mr.mammuthusafricanavus8299 It doesn't exactly die to doomblade... maybe if you play it out into open removal mana... but if they have to wait to untap to deal with it, then you immediately get your value.

Meanwhile I just cut it from one of my Modern decks because it's just not that good... 😂

All colors among creatures no less, can't have multiple planeswalkers out to fulfill the requirement it has to be creatures. Definitely should be legal still since while not every deck plays countermagic basically every deck can run creature removal. Can compare it to something like ad nauseam that is legal and ad nauseam does just win on resolution without needing to jump through all the hoops of coalition victory.

Definitely agree. I think the new leyline is very questionable for coalition, may make it a touch too consistent, but I think that an 8 mana sorcery that has multiple points of interaction and otherwise does nothing is totally fine. I'd rather someone play this card and win the game then Cyclonic and have all us replay our last 2 turns.

Cyclonic can be fine. It's a one sided board wipe that can be used to take out at least one player, if not all, when played right, and at the very least will give the caster huge advantage. But "balanced" board wipes? That's just a pain@@eewweeppkk

@@Rc1136Darman1 I'd rather have a card that literally wins the game for somebody because they met a certain goal than have wasted the last 20 minutes of the game and the next 10 minutes of the game playing the same thing.

I don't think anyone's upset about never having to face off against Invoke Prejudice.

@@dbldekr nah i want to make my opponents suffer.

I guess you'll just have to make due with Nether Void

Honestly of those banned for this reason Invoke is the only one that's actually any good.

@@toctheyounger Crusade has actually seen some decent play in mono white decks. I was actually looking to grab one for a rebels tribal deck since its a cheap way to buff some really mediocre creatures. Its basically just the white version of bad moon

Nope. I think that's fine. Wasteland the Karakas, or play without a Commander. :)

Damn, I respect that take. I do agree that even in a casual setting land destruction should be more common.@@PleasantKenobi

Personally the bigger reason i see with karakas i bounce my etb commander every turn for free

You're making me play umbris every turn without paying or adding to commander tax? ok then.

I agree. It's a cool card that should still get to see some play.

Sadly, that's not possible. IP is on the Reserved List, so it can't be actually or functionally reprinted.

@@ospero7681well technically the card doesnt exist anymore

Yeah I agree Cuz some of them have interesting effects

@@noehonegger4624 down the memory hole it goes.

Yeah best you can do is stifle the triggered ability of oracle, but how many people are running stifle effects in EDH not many. I think you meant to say a black and 2 blue too since consult is B and oracle UU.

@@dstreetz91 Thanks for noticing the incorrect mana. I fix it on the og post.

Turn 3 Win with Coalition Victory: Leyline of the Guildpact, Bloom Tender, Any 3 Lands, Coalition Victory. There are ways to even speed it up beyond that. Plus there is an abundance of redundancies for basically every component that still set up rather consistent/easy turn 5 or 6 wins. Prismatic Omen, Dryad of the Illysian Grove, Nylea's Presence as redundancies for the "All Basic Land Types" condition (not to mention that even fetching 2 Tri-lands easily provides all 5 Basic Land Types). Then there is stuff like Fallaji Wayfarer and Transguild Courier that make getting a permanent of all colors easy. We have tutors like Beseech the Mirror that can put Leyline of the Guildpact directly into play for the Bargain. Bloom Tender's mana acceleration has redundancies with Faeburrow Elder and to a lesser extent with Jegantha the Wellspring in the command zone. They are also now a bunch of free counterspells with Force of Will, Force of Negation, Pact of Negation, Fierce Guardianship. There are also a bunch of good/viable tutors now. Like, if you actually wanted to build that deck, it is SO EASY to accomplish now. Arguably dozens of times easier than when Coalition Victory was banned. Sure, there are other combos can win just as quickly, but few of them have so many points of redundancy and so little opportunity cost to add into a deck. Plus, if someone blocks the combo, you don't straight up lose the game on a countered Coalition Victory like you would with a Stifled Thassa's Oracle + Demonic Consultation combo. You can just Eternal Witness or regrowth (or the dozens of other cards that do the same thing) to get back the pieces. You can even just play a completely standard 5 color good stuff strategy that tries to win by spamming card value with how pushed multi-colored card design has been within the last decard, and it all would be viable within the deck because cards like Dryad of the Illysian Grove, Leyline of the Guildpact, Bloom Tender, Fallaji Wayfarer, etc are just good cards in their own right so you aren't just playing random jank, with Coalition Victory being a random "Do I win?" button inside the deck. It just requires so little effort to make it viable inside of a 5 color deck. Many of the cards that make it work best are just cards you are likely to want to be playing in a 5 color deck anyways. The addition of Coalition Victory just makes those decks have a top deck that can just instantly win the game sometimes without them even needing to do anything particularly special. You will often just naturally have the board state that meets the conditions for Coalition Victory so it becomes a 1 card "combo" off the top of your deck. Edit - Forgot that Coalition Victory requires creatures of all colors, so it would also need something like Fallaji Wayfarer or Transguild Courier. I suppose that makes it slightly slower and easier to disrupt, but my point still largely stands that it could just be put into certain 5 color decks as a "I drew this card and just instantly won" sort of thing, because there are 5 color decks that will just naturally have a board state with all basic land types and creatures of all colors even with only 3-4 lands in play and 2-3 creatures in play. And at that point it is just a 1 card "Win the game" if the table goes shields down not expecting you to top deck it.

@Morkins324 the problem with that is that coalition victory is not the only oops i win in the format there are plenty of 2 card infinites in commander where one of the pieces is a commander (Heliod sun crowned+ Walking ballista being a big one) where the other piece basically becomes an i win button

Splinter twin is easier to win with than coalition victory.

Sway of the Stars. At least with Worldfire the only thing I need to do as the caster is setup some method so each of my opponent's on their turn takes 1 damage. Like an easy way you can seal a game with Worldfire is Chandra Awakened Inferno. As she creates an emblem for each opponent that deals 1 damage to them at the beginning of their turn. But there is other methods to do that, like if your commander is Zurgo Bellstrker and you floated 10 mana, you could cast Worldfire then cast Zurgo who is a 2/2 for R. With Sway of the Stars you would need to do that but for 7 life for each opponent. Its like if you armageddon the board, but you don't have a way to end the game.

My favorite part about goyf is that it was played in like every color combo. Bant Countertop Goyf, Simic Next Level Blue, The Rock, Abzan Pod, Domain Zoo, RUG Delver, Temur Tarmo Twin, 4c Death Shadow, Abzan Midrange, Naya Midrange, Sultai Traverse the Ulvenwald, and so many more

The same should apply to all non-exiling Time Warp effects

True the main difference is that each of these cards is providing a massive amount of equity for wotc right now so they won't ban them anytime soon

Put 'em on the list, but remove the list for cedh

@@Hakaze See. I like this idea. I think cedh needs its own list, 'cause the differences between casual play and cedh are so great that they're practically completely different formats.

The One ring is dangerous. I've killed myself with it before😂

@@Sona_Buvelleyou can make a separate banlist and say it's for cEDH, but that doesn't mean cEDH players will use it. Pretty much all cEDH players have said they would ignore any attempt to separate the format and just follow whatever the main banlist is. Because cEDH isn't a format, anymore than tournament Modern and kitchen table Modern are different formats, it's just playing the format in a competitively optimal way.

yeah, I think it would be strong, but for example Kinnan is probably stronger.

@@juliand.1147Kinnan is strong, but all Rofellos cares is that you make landdrops and it's probably a deck with only forests. Having 6 mana on turn 3 consistently because it would be your commander is pretty damn strong and if you add in ways to play more lands it can get sillier still. If it was only played as a card in the 99 yeah not too strong and certainly worse than sol ring, but sol ring has deserved to be banned forever.

@@dstreetz91 I can see that Rofellos is stronger when you don't tune the 99, as making use of his ability is easier. On the other hand almost all Kinnan decks include very many ramp pieces that work with Kinnan. I think that such a tuned Kinnan deck is stonger than Rofellos by a good margin. Firstly because Kinnan has draw in the form of the activated ability. Secondly because Kinnan has blue, thereby counters and just more options for cards. Also yes Sol Ring and Mana Crypt totally should be banned.

@@juliand.1147 As someone who did play with Rofellos when he was a commander, he was very strong for his day. Also your not factoring in one of the things about Rofellos. He is budget friendly and would more likely be played over Kinnan by casual players. You can realistically build a good Rofellos deck for easily under a $100, and that is not factoring the price of Rofellos himself or the forests. Plus since commander is a casual format, the player of a tuned Kinnan deck would be very likely asked to tune down their deck or swap to a different deck. Rofellos is that but on a budget. As once you reach about 6 lands, you can cast most spells with Rofellos that are 12 mana or less. Like if you cast a rampant growth on turn 2, you can bring down a Blightsteel Colossus on turn 5 with Rofellos, assuming you made each of your mana drops.

EDH should have restricted banlist for commanders like dual commander. Rofellos is fine in the 99 but very broken as a commander.

I agree - selecting 1-3 colors makes for some decisions on what abilities your deck wants to have access to and what ones it's choosing to forego. If I play Green/Red I'm going to have access to all of green's mana ramp and its card draw effects, and I'll have red's direct damage and burn, but I won't have the kind of hard removal generally reserved for white and black. That's a choice, and I get advantages in simplicity (and cheapness) of mana base while someone going for more colors will have to make sacrifices in the reliability of their mana and probably their wallet. 4+ color getting easier just kind of means decks get to do whatever they want, and it's for this reason that I never ever want to see Golos come off the ban list. That card ramps and can color-fix just for showing up, and doesn't even cost colored mana to do it. One could build Golos as a two-color deck in (say) Dimir colors, and run Cascading Cataracts (which you tutor for) to give you the five colors to use his ability, and that's that. Maybe you splash a third color a little.

Just play the original. The fact that it`s banned from official play doesn`t mean it`s banned in your casual play. The sjw-bans which Invoke was part of didn`t make sense for half the cards anyway. I`m totally on board with not printing stuff like Invoke nowadays but it`s simply a piece of it`s time that in terms of functionality inside the MtG-context is still only represented on 2 cards total the other beeing Nethervoid

​@@zirilan3398exactly. Banning "jihad" and "crusade" just for the words... is absolutely ridiculous. Stop hiring "sensitivity readers"

@@zirilan3398 No, they all make a lot of sense as to why they're banned

@@zirilan3398 alright boys, here is the racist

@@Duskstone89 so why isn`t Hellfire on he list as well?

I've never heard that before

@@Noobgamer0325 it's knowledge from the dim and distant past

@@Noobgamer0325that’s cause he’s wrong. Literally never heard a soul say this in my life.

@@ryanbolson23 just google it before saying someone is wrong.. the top results when i googled "origin of stax mtg" say it's $T4KS but multiple results further down point to the card Smokestack as the origin of the name. conclusion is either explanation can be correct depending on who you ask.

I don't think Armageddon is a very good example to use in the context of PK's video. People don't not play Armageddon because it's toxic, they don't play it because it's not particularly good in Commander. The classic Armageddon play pattern of "rush cards out on turns 1-3 then make it so no one can respond" simply isn't a viable strategy in EDH. Nevermind that Armageddon doesn't have enough redundant cards to make this strategy effective. Your friend's deck seems like a totally reasonable case, and isn't that gross precisely because it a) will win the game in short order, and b) requires a lot more setup. The actually toxic example I would use that matches PK's point would be Ruination, which actually is a disgusting card that isn't played more for social reasons.

Most EDH players don't actually understand how the rules work so they don't get why Nightmare is banned lol.

I mean, Sensei's Divining Top is similarly agitating to interact with - and it is easily one of the most irritating cards to play against because of how it creates exponentially more decision points in a game.

@MadMage86 the thing with top is that in most decks top is just annoying rather than an overpowered card. Top does have powerful synergies but Recurring nightmare does more for more decks because almost every black deck would love that kind of effect to be able to repeatedly get value creatures and fatties back from the yard. In effect Recurring nightmare can help close the game by itself top is outside of combos mostly just time consuming

You can still remove everything else required for it to work.

@@spearhead2054 which unless it is mass exile they can just get back as soon as they have a creature. in order to deal with a recurring nightmare you need to destroy or exile all creatures hope none of them leave tokens and then destroy nightmare ore rip it from their hand after they bounce it.

I don't think it's so much about having an extra card in your deck, as it's about having an extra card essentially in your hand from the start of the game.

Bear in mind, Lutri requires him being cast to copy a spell, Dualcaster doesn't. Companion goes against the design philosophy of Commander. Commander is supposed to be exactly 100 singleton cards with 1-2 legendary creatures representing the color identity of the rest of the deck. Companions are a 101st card that adds an extra deck building restriction to use them as the 101st card. Lutri's rule was to conveniently for Commander and was blanket banned from commander, meanwhile the U/W Bird whose rule is to have 20 extra cards in the deck is specifically banned as a companion (it can still be the commander or in the 99).

It's not an instant win It literally has to sit around for a turn

You can have hullbreacher but then I'm gonna play mine and cast wheel of fortune

Proxy one with art that isn't the KKK. *shrug*

​@@PleasantKenobi Chad move

Sometimes it’s better to let things go than to try and save a stinker. There are at least 100 better blue cards to pick from so far. Maybe more.

@PleasantKenobi that would be cool if the card name itself wasn't banned. The impotence isn't on me. It's on wotc and and the rules committee

@alexandercastleberry480 the only thing that is a stinker is the name and art. Wotc has the power to print new cards with new art. I'm litterally asking wotc to print a card, that i would buy, that already exists. How am i the irrational one

I'd even argue that as a commander, both Kozileks are so much better it's not even close.

​@@scaredycat3146Great Distortion is the best colorless commander

nah. She's still too good because she effectively is an instant wincon. There are so many ways of bouncing her to your hand and consistently casting her each turn that you win the game simply by playing her. No player should threaten to win the game simply by playing their commander in a casual game. And your point about rift or farewell is moot because if the person casts her, someone cyc rift it, they just play it on their extra turn. And farewell is a sorcery so good luck having a turn when the person who plays emrakul takes infinite turns.

@TheLeftistOwl There are *way* easier ways to take infinite extra turns. And if you're casting Cyclonic Rift on the turn she's being played with a stocked extra turn, that's a skill issue. Also consider playing Gerrad's Hourglass Pendant if you're having trouble with infinite turn opponents, there's better counterplay available now than from the 8 month window she was legal to the point she was banned. There are a ton of on-sight commanders in this game, and most of them don't cost 15 mana.

​@@TheLeftistOwl There are shitloads of better commanders for winning the game on the spot, you're 15 years too late for Emrakul to be a busted card in the CZ, lmao.

Should ante cards be banned? What about Lutri? No banlist is not a viable situation, but I agree that it ought to be more limited than it is

@@bingus2464 Lutri never should've been banned and I don't care about ante cards, if someone is doing degen stuff now with the current banlist i'm just picking up my stuff after and finding a different pod. Ante cards being banned or unbanned doesn't change that.

You are missing the point, lutri isnt banned because it is "degenerate" same with ante, they are banned cards because they fundamentally do not work with the rules of the format. I agree that things shouldn't be banned for power, but Magic is a very complex game with a long history that cannot be consolidated into a single format, thus the banlist must exist.

I think you are missing my point and we should just stop talking to each other because it will just result in a shit flinging contest, have a nice day.@@bingus2464

I mean, lutri works perfectly fine in the rules. Just So happens to work out to an auto-include, but nothing in the rules prevents it from being playable. Ante is different as "playing for ante" doesnt exist and/or is literally illegal

Then people would just play Tainted Pact. They already play Tainted Pact Lol Plus, banning Consultation doesn't answer the other degenerate ways to empty your library. Wouldn't banning Thassa's Oracle be better?

@@Sona_Buvelle Yeah, Tainted Pact is pretty broken too. The other ways at least take more mana or set up, though.

@@Bloody-Butterfly I mean, in a high-power or cedh game, the extra 1 or 2 mana usually doesn't matter. I will concede that outside of U/B, ya usually need more cards to pull it off. They gotta work harder for the same ender. Side note: I hope no one is actyally playing Oracle Consultation at casual tables, 'cause that's just scummy af. We can all agree on that Lol I would still argue that if we were gonna ban any part of that combo, just ban the Oracle. Ya know? I think it's cleaner that way.

I agree, that would fix a lot of problems, but I can also see it causing new ones. It would be a fun thought experiment to start with and see how people feel about it before setting anything in stone

I also agree with you there

cEDH is just EDH played to the most of a decks potential. If you ban EDH cards, you ban cEDH cards.

cEDH isn't a format, it's a philosophy of play. It follows the rules of Commander, but with an agreement between all the players to play as competitively as possible. So it will always share the same ban list.

Myself and most CEDH players disagree with the idea of having separate ban lists for one reason. If you separate the formats you’ll actually be left with three formats, CEDH, casual EDH and the competitive version of casual EDH. Competitive EDH is built on the idea of playing EDH at the highest power level. We don’t think of it as a separate format, just going into a game of commander with the expectation of everyone playing through most powerful decks possible. If there was a separate banlist people would still want to play the “casual” banlist at the highest level, at what point would you need to split it into a third banlist?

Also I agree the banlist needs more cards on it, not less. If its meant to be a casual format, the power ceiling should be lowered, not kept the way it is.

library of alexandria is deceptively good. 2 mana is infinitely more than 0. it would be like comparing gitaxian probe to some 2 mana draw a card spell. its hard to explain how powerful it is because its been banned like forever so the majority of people havent seen it played, but its rough.

Karakas is banned because it can go in any deck and find uses. Bouncing opponents' stuff is just the floor "fair" use of it. If unbanned this scarce card would skyrocket in price while homogenizing the format.

but you can't recast Smokestack after sacrificing it to its own ability like you can Braids (admittedly, with a two mana surcharge each time). When the edh banlist had a distinction for "banned as commander", that's what Braids was. She was fine in the 99. When they decided that they didn't want to continue that distinction, Braids was a casualty.

I agree @@someguy1ification , but a card that was banned because it was "too powerful as a commander", does not send much of a message about what the RC's opinion is on playing stax at all.

That one needs a functional reprint. They banned the OG so they don't have to worry about people playing 2 or 8 of the same thing.

​@@data_abortTo be fair, instrad of a functional reprint there have been a few cards that are just better. Honor of the Pure is a less restrictive casting cost and is one sided. The more recent Flowering of the White Tree is also just better.

@@someguy1ification That's fair. I dunno why people want to play it. I have heard people say that they do or did tho.

My rational, in short, is this: Fuck Your Commander.

​@@PleasantKenobi Lol fair. But I'd still want to see a video or short going into more. Or at least see what Magic Twitter has to say.

​@@PleasantKenobisquare up Vince

@@PleasantKenobi You also advocated for shortening game times. Karakas being unbanned would absolutely make them longer. White is a VERY popular color in EDH, so you'd see it often and in numbers. Imagine not just having to recast your commanders, but also having to resolve all those triggers over and over again. Just one early game Karakas could potentially add 5 minutes to a game timer.And that's the "fair" usage. Imagine some one actually abusing Karakas to flicker their stuffs. And untapping it. Multiple. Times.

"dies to removal" is not an agument for if a card should be banned or not. Hands run dry. Protection exists. And worst of all, Hullbreacher makes it extremely hard to actually GET YOUR REMOVAL!

No.

As an outsider fuck nooo cradle is strong academy is absolutly bonkers

Not just that but there's tons of ways to cast it for free and instantly win, example, clone [Hidetsugu and Kairi]

All the box toppers use that set symbol. It's so they're not modern legal

It changes everything though, like unless you had access to flash, the maximum amount of cards necro lets you hold at any point of time is 7. It might be a good 7, but is it as good as 30 from ad naus or 40 from peer into the abyss??

In most circumstances you can very much see it coming.