Serra Ascendant is Broken in Commander 

I find this argument fascinating. I'll probably do a video about it, honestly, because this is used to excuse a TON of poor designs. It feels like Commander's equivalent to "it's a bad creature because it dies to removal."

@@HamHocks42 I actually think this is a well designed card. You can't really say this was poor design when it was released before they started making cards for EDH. This card was printed about a year before the format became official. Obviously it doesn't work as intended in commander, but that would be like saying lightning bolt is poor design because it doesn't work in this new format I made where you start at 3 life. I'm basing my assessment off my own experience and taking this card out of any decks I was running it in, because it alone isn't strong enough to deal with a 3v1, and if the rest of my deck is, I'm probably playing a deck that is too strong for the rest of the table. The card was just never worth it for how much hate it drew.

Poor design isn't exactly what I meant -- I should have chosen my words better in that comment. Thanks for challenging me. Your assessment is totally valid, but in a resource race like MTG, these cards that are disproportionately efficient can become unfair very quickly. The social dynamic absolutely helps keep them in check in ways other formats don't have, but I believe that argument is often used to deflect appropriate criticism. In reading your comments, I don't think that's necessarily what you're doin here so my musings don't apply. I appreciate your view on Serra Ascendant as a card. It's a solid take and the amount of heat you receive is absolutely a cost of playing it. I should have acknowledged that in the video.

I would argue that due to the fact that as soon as you gain any amount of life the game turns to 3 v 1 plus the sheer number of removal spells that exist in commander, while she is powerful she is not some all encompassing overpowered card.

@@kylelouthan4759 its not that there aren't ways to deal with the card the problem is that it creates an extremely skewed board state every time its played early. its not healthy for that individual game and its not healthy for the format overall, we don't want games to turn into 3v1s just because someone played a single one-drop spell their first turn. its the same thing with sol ring. while there are answers to it and the other players are going to likely gang up on the player who dropped it turn one that's not really the point. the problem is that it creates that situation every time it shows up turn one in the first place.

I hate this argument, because there are different tiers of play. Most EDH isn't cEDH because cEDH is rather expensive to get into, and not everyone likes playing the same 20+ cards in every deck. I'm not advocating for an official ban or anything because, again, different tiers of play, but on the other hand anyone who denies that a 1 mana 5/5 flying lifelink isn't fundamentally overloaded is smoking something. This is also represented in it's cost which averages around £15, not incredibly expensive but not cheap either. Just because you're playing a format where *everything* is overloaded does not mean that weaker cards cannot also be overloaded. There are some genuinely good arguments in favour of Serra Ascendant but 99% of the time all I see is idiots saying "git gud" like perfectly drawing into interaction is a skill, and "It dies to interaction" is always a terrible rebuttal that also happens to apply to almost all of the _actually_ banned creatures, and yet banned they were. In reality, Serra Ascendant IS broken, just only in lifegain synergy decks at specifically low power levels. The amount of value you're getting for the mana cost can be truly insane outside of a format where winning on turn 4 is an expected occurrence. This is why casual players constantly complain about Serra Ascendant while cEDH players consistently call it trash in response.

People do need to run more interaction tho...

exactly this is clearly nitpicking hard. This guy must have died to a serra ascendent one too many times in his own lgs ecosystem.

Slight nitpick, I mostly agree with this post but Serra's Ascendant DOES see play in WBx adnaus decks to pad your life total for deeper dives. It also has the added bonus of applying early pressure to OTHER adnaus decks from turn 1, helping to cut their dives short. It sees fringe play in bloodpod for this reason. Again I agree with your point that it's far from the most broken one-drop even in its own color, but it does definitely see play.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I don't disagree with anything you've said here. What I want people to do is be honest in rule zero conversations about the power level of cards included in their decks and I believe this one is very powerful and underrated. All the cards you list here are also busted and should be kept in mind when appraising a deck's strength. Also, the existence of other powerful cards doesn't make this card bad.

I actually haven't died to it often, but every time it's played, it felt like an unfair advantage so I wanted to call it out. EDH is full of unfair advantages, though, so it is what it is. I just wanted to start a conversation. Thanks for joining it.

"If Ascendant was really all that busted, it would be in cEDH lists, and it's not." You are wrong. It is often played in cEDH lists. In 4 turns you can beat someone so low that their mainphase Naus win isn't quarenteed, and you gain so much life in the process that you can make your own Naus more secure. In cEDH you beat down whoever is winning with it, and because everyone else also does the same, it does put them on a clock. It is the perfect Tymna beater, it blocks Kraum and it messes up your opponents gameplans. It's not among the best white cards, but it's good.

Sounds to me like you responded perfectly to the challenge they put on the board. Sorry to hear they were a poor sport about it. I can agree with this assessment.

Thanks for weighing in! I can totally see your point and you're right that the impact would be far more meaningful in a 1v1 scenario. I just believe it's worth a discussion given how it works. I've faced it a number of times and it always feels unfair in a way other cards don't. To be fair, Sol Ring has the same problem imo.

Ragavan is an absolutely terrible commander

@@Ry1147304 Maybe you just haven't figured out how to build a good deck around Ragavan. I've seen some very good decks built around him.

It’s not really useful in cedh. In cedh it’s more valuable to have combo pieces than just a big beat stick

I'm primarily a casual EDH player. I bet cEDH has more impactful options that combo for faster finishes than this.

Exactly. "Broken in casual pods, but not actually competitive in commander" isn't really saying that much. What bro meant to say was "Serra Ascendant is broken in the games of commander I play".

@@BingeThinker1814 It's saying exactly what it's trying to say. Not all EDH is cEDH.

Thanks for the engagement!

It's definitely a powerful hate piece and it changes the dynamic of the table far more than SA does, so I'm with you on that. I think most players understand, at this point, they need to be open if they're running stax and Magistrate absolutely qualifies.

​@@HamHocks42 it is just literally broken because whoever designed it clearly was not thinking about commander, unlike Sera Ascendent which was printed before commander was the most popular format and still the bastard format. Meanwhile Drannith Magistrate was printed when commander is the most popular mtg format. All Serra Ascendent is guilty of is being an old card that plays surprisngly well in a format it wasn't designed for, which guess what is basically every edh staple, apart from the ones that were specifically designed for the format (Command Tower, Arcanesignet, etc) lol

@@HamHocks42 To be fair you only see Drannith Magistrate, Borimir Waren of the Tower and Rule of Law come out when people get tired of the turn one/two cobos that allow for cheating out a bunch of bullshit because they can afford to spend 1500+ a commander deck. While most of us are causual players who don't have that kind of budget. I run Serra Ascendent and honeslty for the amount of hate it gets is very underpowered. It has no stax elements, no protection built in other than being pretty chunky for a turn one play, but in a formatt that starts you off with 40 life + the sheer amount of removal and interaction its not nearly devestating enough to call it broken especially when you compare them to other one drop cards like like Altar of the Brood, Mana crypts, Dark Rit, You can call it powerful sure, but not broken. On top of that as soon as people become aware that your running life gain it becomes a 3 v 1 format. For some reason gaining life is more despised than pretty much every stat besides land destruction. Yet at the same time people act like you stupid for even trying to with with a life gain strat. Its such a weird juxtposition.

lol it was created by judges who played and gambled for money after tournaments back in the 90’s…

Strange how an unofficial format gets more products made for it than any other and Professional Tournament players are discouraged.

It's not real because it isn't competitive?

does no one else understand this comment is sarcastic? lol

I'll take it! Thanks so much! :)

Esper Sentinel is a stronger card in a lot of cases, absolutely. I think both deserve to be treated as high-power cards when appraising deck strength.

One card doesn't determine a deck's power level. I never claimed it did.

Because EDH is a format where people play weak decks for fun. Serra's ascendant isn't broken at all. It's unplayable in cEDH. In multiplayer EDH, playing serra's ascendant can often just put you and the begrudging removal user behind while the others are off to the races. That's assuming best-case scenario of drawing it in your 99 card deck on t1. Without straight RNG, a 6/6 lifelink flier is good but not broken, even assuming you are entirely built around lifegain. People not even playing cEDH calling for card bans based on power are just uninformed. They don't understand that their deck is like 1% of the power of a cEDH deck, and it makes no sense to base bans off of their perception of what's good or bad.

@@sas911 glad there is some sense around here

This pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter. Casual EDH is basically a board game night with friends. The goal is for everyone to enjoy themselves, and that's most easily achieved if the decks played are at equivalent power level. I prefer fewer bans because the format self-regulates to a very healthy degree.

All Sol ring does is let mid to low power decks that would die to higher power decks actually stand a chance....why ban it then?

Sol ring is a problem becuase of how it affects low to mid power decks imo. It leads to uneven starts where one (or sometimes more) people get a MASSIVE head start (as fast mana allows for) and leads to more frustrating gameplay. Oddly, it’s accessible price actually enhances the problem since basically every deck runs it. Obviously the targeting of threat player is kind of of a self balancing mechanism, but that could be said of any overpowered card. It’s one of the cards I most want banned, alongside the admittedly semi long list of Dockside, Dranith Magistrate, Rhystic Study, Smothering Tithe, Necropotence, Jeweled Lotus, the commander free spells, and Thassa’s Oracle.

Honestly, if that point hadn't been beaten into the ground by every other EDH player with a mic, I would. That card is busted and is only "fair" because everyone has access to it. I would prefer gameplay if it was banned, but I know that'll never happen and it's not a hill I'm going to die on.

@@jackmcnally8706 you can always tell when someone hasn't played CEDH when they are calling for dockside to be banned. Dockside almost always scales with the power level of the table. In low to mid power games you are most likely never going to get more than 4 treasures on average out of him unless you are blinking somehow, but in high power cedh games is when you generate near infinite or sometimes infinite treasures because of the sheer amount of power artifacts have in CEDH. Trust me I havemultiple Docksides that i have cut from all my decks now because they just whiff way too hard at my lgs cause no one is playing CEDH. Dockside punishes fast mana players which (guess what) are just CEDH players the majority of the time.

@@jackmcnally8706 all banning sol ring would accomplish is letting mid to high power decks absolutely destroy every single other color than doesnt have access to viable ramping. Mid power and lower mardu decks would absolutely stand no chance against any mid power deck using green. Furthermore if sol ring is banned all that does is drive up the prices of mana crypt and so on (fast mana cards) because now they are that much more rare and impactful in a game of commander, which only widens the gap between fast mana decks and high-mid to lower power decks