Legacy mtg it's self has the exact same card pool. Minus the ban list they took the time to create. It's no more impossible than that, it's just difficult as he said.
A banned list should contain cards that are too powerful and warp the game around them. A card can be format defining, stuff like Dockside Extortionist are very powerful in cEDH, but they are also very much format defining win-options and the format adapts around them ; if anything, there are a handful of cards that give red some powerful cards, as much of the red cards are just way too weak in a 4 player format. Balancing the banned list makes only really sense in a cEDH environment, as here you have tournament results, very many statistics for each cards win%, people have discord servers for every single Commander in cEDH and discuss every card if its making the deck better or not. cEDH is the format you want to aim to "Balance", its essentially Legacy in powerlevel and adds the multiplayer aspect into it. Casual Commander needs no banned list, as people ban all kinds of cards, for budget reasons, or they simply dont want to play against them, Casual is not a way to balance anything, as all the outrages powerful cards are legal, but if someone dares to play them, people will jump on a hate-train against that person. Some people just outright dont want Combos, others hate mass removal like Farewell, others hate the "chaos" cards that are essentially as casual as it gets, everyone hates some cards that are on their "personal" imaginary banned list. So yes, Casual Commander is IMPOSSIBLE to balance for everyone, and the cards they currently have on the banned list are just a tiny slice of cards they personally disliked playing against, while other people might be totally fine with them.
@@yugioh395 The big difference is that Yugioh strictly (at least to my knowledge is a 1-on-1 game. This makes it a lot easier to balance. See Duel Commander, for instance. The multiplayer nature of regular EDH however makes this nigh-on impossible. To make a physics parallel, it's like a 2 body problem (relatively simple) vs. a 3 or 4 body problem (impossible to model predictively, due to chaos theory).
@@xxhellspawnedxx I don’t think the multiplayer nature is a major concern for bannings, outside of specific problem cards like rhystic study and mystic remora that are broken because of multiple opponents. Ultimately, I still think it comes down to removing the cards that are too powerful that they warp the entire format. Having multiple opponents doesn’t make that “[nearly] impossible”, as you say.
To be real, banning or not banning based on the secondary market value shouldn't be up for consideration. If the card isn't healthy, it isn't healthy, and people will be upset regardless. They should be taking a more aggressive stance when it comes to ban announcements, because "we are looking at this card" for three years straight isn't really doing anything, when other cards were aggressively pulled from the pool.
What's sad is we just rarely see anything come off the banlist. Like it would be nice to see certain cards come off, but once a card gets on the banlist it's really hard to have it come off which is why I am so against banning cards in commander.
Personally, I would hate to see Drannith Magistrate banned. With all of the Urzas and Korvolds and Miiryms etc. going around, there are so many commanders that just can't be allowed to resolve or else the game will end. Forcing opponents whose decks are carried by kill-on-sight commanders to devote removal to something before getting free value is perfectly healthy, unless those commanders are also banned.
@@priinceoftiimeor how about instead of banning everything good you and your playgroup start running a significant amount of cheap interaction and learn that none of these are actually ban worthy.
I have a few notes here. About keeping the format not-competitive: It's a confusing use of words. Every format is competitive, in the sense of people competing to win, to one degree or another. You can't have a player on player game not be competitive, in the general sense. You may aim to do other stuff on the way there, but winning is the default end goal of every deck. In context however, Competitive means "a format that is played at (big/official) tournaments with mothership price support" - A grand prix format, or whatever passes for grand prix's these days. Casual, by contrast, is a lack of that official tournament support from Wizards. Banning every cEDH powerhouse won't change the nature of competitive play either, it will just move the competitive threshold down, and increase the interface between cEDH and casual decks. Competitive, in the nonspecific sense, is a mindset, first and foremost, and you can't ban that. Between any two cards, there will always be a better and a worse card. And forcing cEDH closer to casual EDH by banning its wincons and engines will only result in more friction between the competitive and casual sides of the format as they're forced closer to one another. About Dockside and Rhystic Study: The opponents have a fair bit of control over their efficacy, by not playing with reckless abandon and overcommiting to the board. We're not goldfishing when we play against other people, and people should keep that in mind. Pay your taxes and don't litter the battlefield with a thousand toys, and both of these cards are less of a problem. By comparison, opponents have very little agency in how efficient Primetime is (and boy howdy, is it efficient, as anyone who has played a no banlist game will attest to!). About "Too few bans": Banning things just to ban them, to shake things up, or whatever other inane reason one could dream up, is destructive to the format and to the players. Banning, in general, only efficiently helps alleviate one situation: One where a strategy has become so ubiquitous that nothing else even compares and no one else plays anything but that thing. Breakfast Hulk before the ban of Flash, and Caw Blade in standard back in 2011, are both great examples of this. And ubiquity to that level breaks another tenet of the commander ideals, that of creativity. Not much creativity going on when 75% of players play virtually the same overwhelmingly powerful deck. I suppose we can expand that definition to "things that warp the format", in keeping with previous bans. When too much of the format becomes about either playing Dockside, or stealing your opponents' Docksides, the way that it was with both Primetime and Prophet of Kruphix, I'd say you have a case. As it stands, that isn't the case though. There's no crystalized meta where a strong majority of decks has entire sections of the deck dedicated to "Dockside Management". The lack of bans might just be a sign that the format is at a healthy point right now. It's worth considering.
In commander you gotta make sure the colors are balanced. dockside's not getting banned for the simple reason that red needs the hep. the two best colors are blue and black, quickly followed by white then red then green. If dockside is banned, the entire color of red would be in shambles, as no other red card even gets close.
Banning Drannith Magistrate will make decks that instantly win the game as soon as they resolve their commander (atraxa unifier etc) much harder to interact with if you don't have blue in color identity.
I would appreciate that since they dont ban anything a detailed explanation on every card that they were told to consider banning and why they chose not to. Right now its such a radio silence.
You mention reddit having control over the banlist being a disaster, which I agree with. I am respectfully wondering what separates you from the average or a random redditor? What makes your ideas better? You seem to not like mass land destruction, but it is an integral win condition in many land recursion decks such as Lord Windgrace.
Funny how I've never seen most of the cards on the saltiest list in a game with my playgroup.... almost like the banned list isn't as important as your playgroup.
It makes me sad that so many people want stax pieces to be banned out of the format… I understand you don’t like playing against them, but people like myself enjoy stax as a strategy. And it can’t be banned for power level reasons (proof: stax in cEDH is not in a good place)
Unfortunately people don’t like playing against stax because it actually keeps them from playing. Just because stax isn’t good now in cEDH, doesn’t mean it won’t be again
@@shekki3192 Yeah this is mostly my take as well. I love playing against stax because it feels like a big puzzle of when to find the right moment to remove the stax piece, if at all. But yeah if you don't play removal, then you don't have any agency after stax pieces come down. But if you play removal, it really doesn't matter that much
Also, friendly reminder to people that your opponent's stax piece may be increasing your chances of winning, even if it weakens a portion of your deck. Everything is relative
They should unban cards, not ban them. When looking at bans, you have to have a unified criteria for bans. If the reason is cost, then what is the price range? Every set has cards that are over 20 bucks, so does that mean those cards are automatically banned? Availability of cards how many reprints does a card need to not be ban worthy? RL cards do they all get banned. If so, then those bans only hurt people who have supported the game from early on or have been able to acquire the cards through their own hard work. I.e I got my first dual land Taiga in 2015 and put it on a payment plan at my local game store. So, there are ways to get RL cards. The newer cards like dockside or deflecting swat were and still are available in Commander precons support the game and local stores by buying those products. Drannith Magistrate was in Ikoria, and I opened several of those in packs. No matter how you look at it, it costs to play magic. You just have to change your perspective on how you approach the game.
Still hoping we get bans for cedh. Want to see underworld breach, thassa, and dockside go. Or if we could get a separate banlist for cedh, that'd be nice
Unban everything, rule zero in your group if you have a problem with any card, let us who love playing with powerful cards and don't mind losing to powerful cards do so, and stay out of our way.
Yeah I'd be playing whack-a-mole with the ban hammer. I've been playing commander for 12 years now and when I was younger I had almost a dozen copies of cyclonic rift and rhystic study cause I put them in every blue deck. Same with necropotence. I also had plenty of fun with dockside when he came out and smothering tithe when it came out. But I would ban every one of them. I would even ban Sol ring. The thing all these cards have in common is that they go in every single deck irrespective of the commander or the strategy. These cards that just win games on their own, are boring, repetitive, uninteresting, swingy and ultimately unfun.
i just wish they were consistent on bans. example they have cards like coalition victory banned but things like thoracle combo are ok which is way easier to pull off and can go into way more decks. but no coalition victory is to much of a easy win boogey man somehow. another example is tolarion academy is banned with this reasoning "Tolarian Academy’s power is tied to the abundance and ease of access to cheap artifacts in the earliest stages of the game. This often creates two or more colored mana on turn one, and continues to scale throughout the game with no downside or additional ‘costs’ at untap." you can apply that very same reasoning to Gaea's cradle yet its not banned. thats my main issue with the rules of the format is how inconsistent they are wins bans. they will ban 1 card because x but all the other cards that are arguably just as bad if not worse for the format they just shrug at.
I think the difference between the academy and geas cradle is ok. There are a lot of busted 0 cmc artifacts that can fit in every deck. While for 0 cmc creatures they have thopter
@notapplicable6985 there's more then just that there's memnite the different kobolds that cost zero. Ya there's less option for zero mana creatures but it's strength is just as high if not more so.
@@cread13 I think it is ultra strong, but all the zero mana artifacts are way better than the 0 mana creatures. Since the zero mana artifacts include the non-banned moxes and the one 0 mana soul ring, blanking on the name currently. Potentially giving an easy 6 mana on turn 3, while the creatures have summoning sickness at least
Under ideal circumstances, all cards on the reserve list, any card over 30$ for a non foil single in less than mint condition, and any card in more than 30% of decks at a given major event, would get banned. This would solve most issues players have, it would also make the format much harder to navigate. There also need to be some general rule changes. Rule 0 is an excuse not an enabler, it let's the RC do nothing and let them get away with it. Commander is now a vanity money format. It's not really different from playing a gacha or mmo tbh. And the banlist and new product incentivise that.
There is no way you can make Commander more fun or accessible by banning Dranith Magistrate or any of the large amount of salty stax cards like it. The idea that this is a viable play style is baked way too much into the game as a whole. I wish when people onboard their friends and family to Magic they would tell them "there any many ways to play Magic and strategies that can lead to victory, one that can be particularly tricky to deal with as a new player is called stax another one relies on attacking your mana base." Proceed to explain how to deal with them (have interaction, build resilience into your deck, etc.) and that occassionally you are just going to have a game where you do not get to do your thing. That's part of playing Magic. There are wonderfull games where all players have a massive blowout and someone just happens to win in the end and then there are games which are dominated by one player who prevents everyone else from doing anything and then they win. If you play with friends and family and this happens a lot, tell them and they will likely mix up their style. If you are playing with strangers, be prepared that this will happen more often. Accept that this is a game where a viable strategy is to prevent you from deploying yours.
The thing is, thats kinda weird for Magic, usually you get to at least *start* to do your thing. Now, Yugioh, on the other hand, is all about trying to hard stop your opponent.
I would only ban Thassa's oracle, the other cards don't win by themselves, even a dockside is not that big of a deal and puts a big target on your head
cradle isn't all that powerful it doesn't even go in most competitive decks in green. but every blue and every red deck gets a thassa and a dockside. the top level cedh decks are entirely built around those cards(blue farm). it would change cedh for the better if they were gone. rhystic is on the edge you can survive without it (jenson, smurf farm) and still win but both those decks and all others will always have a thassa and a dockside. In addition I would argue Rhystic is a very social card as it literally forces you to interact with other players verbally and if you don't have great social graces its prolly gonna annoy the other plays into targeting you. "Do you pay the one?" has become a sort of joke even.
I've literally never seen a cedh list with green in it that doesn't have cradle. The upside of tapping for 2 heavily outweighs the downside of getting hosed by moon.
@@franslair2199 ok so maybe kinnan runs it right? what's it really doing for kinnan? getting it some mana advantage? ya cradle is very good but look at dockside and thassa's literally blue farm is built around these two cards and is one of the most common decks played in the format. Cradle isn't warping the format those two cards are. I am not obligated to run a color because of it. in fact most top tier cedh decks don't even run green but they have to run grixis colors.
@@zenivinez it's strictly superior to a forest if you have more than one creature in play and no blood moon, that's enough. Gaea's cradle is so expensive because it automatically goes in every green commander deck and not running it makes your green deck worse. Green being down in cedh is largely because of a few busted, multiformat breaking cards like orcish bowmasters. Dockside scales with your table, thassa's oracle is what's meta-warping.
i was gonna say no, we dont need that, but im not Sure if at this rate they will just print a powercrept Version of Primetime to sell commander precons, sad
My only issue is orcish bowmasters. Its just too easy. 2 mana to eventually kill every small creature and make a massive creature. How is that fair for two mana and at instant speed haha
You can rule zero it, however the reason most people follow the rules committee is because in general they make decent choices in bans I like levold but if I’m being honest his lock was too much
I know a guy who runs Earl of Squirrel from Unstable in his chatterfang deck and just let's everyone know its in the deck prior to the match and replaces it with a forest if anyone says they don't want him using it that game. You can always just check if your playgroup is cool with you running a certain banned card you really like, almost like a house unban.
What they're doing is the right thing. Instead of banning everything under the sun, they allow the players to curate their own via rule 0. It's whether or not anybody is willing to play with your house rules is the question
Christ you people need to stop bitching about the ban list. Dockside and the ring are staying in edh. The RC needs to just stay in the background until they’re replaced by a better group anyway.
Rules committee is simply dogshit, as the banned list is basically a bunch of cards that make no sense, even by their own standards, there are cards far more problematic. And with the idea that Commander shouldnt be competitive, it goes directly against cEDH. Casual players dont need the banned list at all, as the decks are bad in powerlevel anyway, people put imaginary cards on their imaginary banned list, for all kinds of reasons, budget, "fun" as everyone has a different idea of what "fun" means, and some people dont want to play against any form of Mass removal, or get pissed if their Commander gets removed, these people are not compatible with the rules of the game, as they make their own up. If anything they SHOULD make a proper cEDH aspect of the format and clearly draw a line between the competitive and the casual aspect. Their document is a total waste of time and resources. Nobody reads it, nobody cares for what is written anyway, it has no meaning, if people want to play some casual rounds nobody cares of anything of it. The only way Commander is played where the banned list is REALLY enforced is cEDH , which is ironic given Commander wants to be that "totally casual" format.
If i cram my deck with 6 mana fatties i don't get to say mana drain should be banned, i have to change how my deck functions. If i cram my deck with artifacts i dont get to demand dockside be banned. There are bans we need out there, but talking about dockside as much as ppl do is missing the real issues in the format
I feel like any of those super salty cards that have prohibitively expensive price tags deserve to be banned. Things like Dockside which are mandatory in every deck that can run red is a great example. I don't think Rhystic Study is in the same ballpark because of how it's a much lower impact compared to 2 mana for 5-10 treasures that can be blinked/looped etc. Sheoldred should be banned in all 60 card formats, let alone EDH. I would love to see Edgar Markov banned as well, because it's a very degenerate card on its own. Most of the saltiest cards over $25 should be seriously considered based on scarcity and power of effect. Cyclonic Rift should NOT be banned as it's one of those salty cards that has a definite purpose to be in the format and shouldn't be removed. But there are a handful that really do have just so much power and value inherit in them that they shouldn't be flying under the radar for free for so long.
I'd ban quite a number of cards. Demonic Consultation (Bc Thassa Oracle), Food Chain (Bc Etali Commander insta-win via mill), Any card that says "When you gain life, opponent loses that much life." (Bc of easy infinite formed by the vice-versa type effects, which there are many/Gain life causing opponent loss while at the same time their loss causing your gain.), Dockside Extortionist should have never been created, and even though I now own one, wouldn't mind a ban still to save the game (2 mana treasure vomit) which brings me to another style of card to ban (Any of the dumb "You win the game" cards that only require one to possess 10 treasure tokens, or the other one that requires 9 copies of a permanent with the same name, which can also be treasure tokens.), Ad Nauseam to stifle combo search further, Prismatic Bridge (Bc why should you be able to play an enchantment as a commander and which out free win-con threats each turn while keeping mana open to use counterspells and removal, which is mostly what the deck consists of in order to hit the only few big creatures they own within the deck.)... Our entire group in the local game store consists of these types of decks. I've just had people complain that I "Slow play" apparently according to the store owner, yet they probably only perceive it as this bc I'm the only one playing a non-combo deck in many pods where I'm actually playing a casual Rin & Seri creature token deck vs others who are something like two Thassa combo decks + Etali Food Chain usually, so my turns are a bit longer than "I remove this + tutor", "Board wipe guuuys!", or "I would like to combo, okay, I counterspell your counterspell, and then the counterspell countering that counterspell". Ad Nauseam goes off from one of them, and someone is winning next turn with Thassa + 0-1 mana counterspell frenzies as the Thassa builders empty their hand to see who's the one getting it off. I play the big fat things that aren't worth the mana they cost, such as Rin & Seri itself, and even with mana down, I've still got cards like Flawless Maneuver and Deflecting Swat as backups so that I can actually attempt to compete against these decks. I can retarget removal, waste counterspells, protect my army, and slowly try to build for combat. I've not yet to this day lost via combat, except someone who played their entire deck with a combo and whipped craterhoof + haste enable, and then of course the one person who plays the smooth brain Slivers deck that continuously cascades into Sliver after Sliver which can usually regenerate each other thanks to a Sliver than can grant all of them this ability. If I wanted to win, then I'd play some dumb deck like they do, yet they get toxic about me playing Jetmir or Beastmaster's Ascension ftw, yet were defensive about running a 1 card win combo (Food Chain) with their commander. "It's not right to criticize decks that people like to play, because we don't tell you how to have fun." I think the problem is people caring so much about the win that they cannot admit that something is unfun. Why are AT LEAST 4 people playing Thassa Consultation + tutors, and AT LEAST 3 people playing Etali??? It's not because they're the most fun, it's because they're the most likely to have an unstoppable win-con. In my white/red/green, I cannot do anything about Etali resolving usually, except maybe if I have something to instantly remove food chain, which is highly unlikely, because trying to exile Etali, then in response he sacks it to Food Chain, gets the mana to recast it, and the ETB trigger to cast everything in our decks for free continues. Usually the only way it wins, is by Food Chain appearing, and uncommonly via combat pressures. Yet to see it happen, let alone them even be in a position to attack. It's usually 3 steps; they ramp, tutor if needed, combo for win, and never have need for attacks. I want to PLAY MTG, not watch someone Turn 3-4 win before I can have more than a couple of nonland permanents down. Our last run the previous week, I was lucky to win, bc someone was threatening win on turn 3 with 50 damage to all opponents, sacrificing much of his life total to do so which reduced cost of some spell by X equal to life he paid. Luckily in this case someone was able to flash in Orcish Bowmasters and somehow cause him to lose some life and make the spell fizzle so that the remaining 3 can play the game.
I do prefer to get creative and play decks that others do not frequent, and cards players do not normally think about ever utilizing. It's annoying that the combo deck users want to suggest that simply trying to play unique decks automatically qualifies as a slow play deck. I've had a couple of them state something like, one I overheard, and one directly to my face as well when I asked about the similar playstyles of some in the room that "They can't stand when a game lasts more than an hour and runs past turn 5, and they need something to end the game so it doesn't go on for too long." Then one went about his story how he used to play at big tournaments and decided he could only run burn decks because otherwise he wouldn't be able to get to have restroom breaks. These people are not interested in playing. They just want to get their store credit and take off, which is complete BS in my eyes.
Thassa's Oracle should be unprinted. WotC should rebuy every single copy of this abomination, even the counterfeits, remove it from Oracle, pretend it has never existed and threaten to sue everyone who should mention it or put it in archives, such as Scryfall and decklist sites. Every tournament that featured a single copy of such cards in any deck or sideboard, even 0-X records, should be considered not even null and void, but simply non-events. Maybe even Pro Tours should have the same fate if someone registered even a single copy of it, regardless of record or actual qualification. The same should happen to Orcish Bowmasters.
Hard disagree with the ban on 'I win' effects. Annoying? Sure. But it's also telegraphed really hard. You can see it coming. Food Chain combos are definitely worthy of a ban though.
