Why is everyone in cEDH keep calling about 'ban' Flash thing?

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Dragoon
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Post by Dragoon » 4 years ago

Spleenface wrote:
4 years ago
Even if we count Fetches/Duals as substantially less deliberate than say, protean hulk, they still aren't exactly common, and even a fetch/shock manabase is hundreds of dollars in 5c. Add to that the fact that without more land searching, a fetch/shock manabase will require deliberate sequencing to consistently find your lands, I genuinely think that the number of existing decks into which you could just shove CV and have it work consistently is tiny.
EDH isn't about consistency (unlike cEDH and all its tutors). Most likely, people will just play CV as a side-wincon that will sometimes win out of nowhere. Just like a Worldfire in a Zo-Zu deck. The point is that those cards do not require any specific deckbuilding decision. You can just shove the card in, and you will sometimes win with it out of nowhere, almost completely ignoring what happened in the game before. That's it, and that's enough for it to be on the banlist.

I know it's probably not an easy thing to do but you really need to consider the EDH rules and banlist from a non-competitive, casual, social point of view. cEDH is a very small minority in this realm. While the RC tries its best to have the format welcome everyone, it still needs to take into account who the main target is.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

Dragoon wrote:
4 years ago
EDH isn't about consistency (unlike cEDH and all its tutors). Most likely, people will just play CV as a side-wincon that will sometimes win out of nowhere. Just like a Worldfire in a Zo-Zu deck. The point is that those cards do not require any specific deckbuilding decision. You can just shove the card in, and you will sometimes win with it out of nowhere, almost completely ignoring what happened in the game before. That's it, and that's enough for it to be on the banlist.

I know it's probably not an easy thing to do but you really need to consider the EDH rules and banlist from a non-competitive, casual, social point of view. cEDH is a very small minority in this realm. While the RC tries its best to have the format welcome everyone, it still needs to take into account who the main target is.
Even in casual there is a cost to drawing dead bricks. CV is a boat anchor most of the time. Every time I draw my cephalid illusionist in flash hulk it feels very bad.

Playing Zozu is a specific deckbuilding decision. And I really don't know why anyone is so mad about zozu winning a game occasionally with a combo card :P

There are absolutely deckbuilding concessions to all of these effects. biorhythm is going to be a complete and total dud without enough creatures and ways to get rid of other people's creatures -- to the point that drawing it instead of craterhoof behemoth that does both obviate other creatures and win the game is almost always bad.

prophet of kruphix is an example of a card that is so good that it goes in a huge variety of decks and *also* has a huge effect on the game that is often negative.

flash has way more in common with biorhythm than it does with prophet of kruphix. And that's a problem with the banlist consistency in my opinion.

I think it's really important to remember that losing the game is not an undesirable game state and "winning out of nowhere" is a really arbitrary metric to apply without some metagame dominance to back it up.

The main arguments I hear in this thread now are, that worldfire et al are banned because:
* win out of nowhere
* can sometimes flip the table without winning
* have no fair uses
* have minimal deckbuilding restrictions for the decks that play them

And the only distinguishing characteristic there is that they can sometimes flip the table without winning and you can argue about the degree of deckbuilding concessions. There're a lot of parallels.

The degree of deckbuilding restrictions for the cards to be actually good is something I think is extremely arguable, and the 'flip the table' stuff like jokulhaups is really hard to quantify.

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Post by Dragoon » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
Even in casual there is a cost to drawing dead bricks. CV is a boat anchor most of the time. Every time I draw my cephalid illusionist in flash hulk it feels very bad.

Playing Zozu is a specific deckbuilding decision. And I really don't know why anyone is so mad about zozu winning a game occasionally with a combo card :P

There are absolutely deckbuilding concessions to all of these effects. biorhythm is going to be a complete and total dud without enough creatures and ways to get rid of other people's creatures -- to the point that drawing it instead of craterhoof behemoth that does both obviate other creatures and win the game is almost always bad.

prophet of kruphix is an example of a card that is so good that it goes in a huge variety of decks and *also* has a huge effect on the game that is often negative.

flash has way more in common with biorhythm than it does with prophet of kruphix. And that's a problem with the banlist consistency in my opinion.

I think it's really important to remember that losing the game is not an undesirable game state and "winning out of nowhere" is a really arbitrary metric to apply without some metagame dominance to back it up.

The main arguments I hear in this thread now are, that worldfire et al are banned because:
* win out of nowhere
* can sometimes flip the table without winning
* have no fair uses
* have minimal deckbuilding restrictions for the decks that play them

And the only distinguishing characteristic there is that they can sometimes flip the table without winning and you can argue about the degree of deckbuilding concessions. There're a lot of parallels.

The degree of deckbuilding restrictions for the cards to be actually good is something I think is extremely arguable, and the 'flip the table' stuff like jokulhaups is really hard to quantify.
Again, that's a power-level based thinking, not a social, casual one ;)
I've seen countless EDH decks playing tons of cards that could be dead draws. We, on those forums, are already a minority of the people playing commander (Commander is the most played format, yes, but remember that kitchen table pile-of-cards magic is still number one). There's a whole bunch of people out there playing commander with piles of junk cards. The banlist is also aimed at those people. The banlist doesn't seek to prevent people from doing crazy stuff, it just wants people to enjoy their game and avoid it being accidentally ruined by problematic cards.

Craterhoof Behemoth is a Timmy card, certainly one of the most casual-oriented player profile. It's fun, it's splashy, it could end games, sure, but it does so in a flashy way, fitting of the EDH mentality. It can also be stopped by a variety of answers, the most common ones being counterspells and fog effects. Biorhythm isn't a Timmy card, it isn't flashy, it's just a feels bad card. You don't even need to get rid of all of your opponents' creatures if they end up at a low enough life total for you to kill them.

Also, about the matter of Flash, when I was talking about deckbuilding restrictions, I wasn't referring to the fact that the cards you end up putting in your deck are bad or useless on their own (someone mentioned Spellseeker), that's a power-level argument. I was referring to the fact that you consciously include a flash package in your deck in order to abuse flash. Which means you know you are trying to break the game, at which point the banlist isn't aimed at you anyway.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

Dragoon wrote:
4 years ago
Also, about the matter of Flash, when I was talking about deckbuilding restrictions, I wasn't referring to the fact that the cards you end up putting in your deck are bad or useless on their own (someone mentioned Spellseeker), that's a power-level argument. I was referring to the fact that you consciously include a flash package in your deck in order to abuse flash. Which means you know you are trying to break the game, at which point the banlist isn't aimed at you anyway.
The counterpoint is that you kind of need to have a way to win with those other cards as well. None of them win without some degree of setup.

I think if you're playing zozu worldfire and consistently plan to get to 12 mana in mono red you're probably trying to break the game.

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Post by ilovesaprolings » 4 years ago

Dragoon wrote:
4 years ago
Craterhoof Behemoth is a Timmy card, certainly one of the most casual-oriented player profile. It's fun, it's splashy, it could end games, sure, but it does so in a flashy way, fitting of the EDH mentality. It can also be stopped by a variety of answers, the most common ones being counterspells and fog effects.
Can i completely disagree and say that craterhoof is the perfect example of how even the timmiest of the concept can turn into a feel bad card?
Craterhoof is hard to interact with, requires very little board state and badly outclass anything that tries to do the same job.
I used to love craterhoof a lot and made me win many games, but after a while me and my friends got tired of seeing and playing him everywhere. We've housebanned it and since tha day i'm happy to play more obscure and less instant-win cards like pathbreaker ibex, thunderfoot baloth and end-raze forerunners

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Post by onering » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
Dragoon wrote:
4 years ago
EDH isn't about consistency (unlike cEDH and all its tutors). Most likely, people will just play CV as a side-wincon that will sometimes win out of nowhere. Just like a Worldfire in a Zo-Zu deck. The point is that those cards do not require any specific deckbuilding decision. You can just shove the card in, and you will sometimes win with it out of nowhere, almost completely ignoring what happened in the game before. That's it, and that's enough for it to be on the banlist.

I know it's probably not an easy thing to do but you really need to consider the EDH rules and banlist from a non-competitive, casual, social point of view. cEDH is a very small minority in this realm. While the RC tries its best to have the format welcome everyone, it still needs to take into account who the main target is.
Even in casual there is a cost to drawing dead bricks. CV is a boat anchor most of the time. Every time I draw my cephalid illusionist in flash hulk it feels very bad.

Playing Zozu is a specific deckbuilding decision. And I really don't know why anyone is so mad about zozu winning a game occasionally with a combo card :P

There are absolutely deckbuilding concessions to all of these effects. biorhythm is going to be a complete and total dud without enough creatures and ways to get rid of other people's creatures -- to the point that drawing it instead of craterhoof behemoth that does both obviate other creatures and win the game is almost always bad.

prophet of kruphix is an example of a card that is so good that it goes in a huge variety of decks and *also* has a huge effect on the game that is often negative.

flash has way more in common with biorhythm than it does with prophet of kruphix. And that's a problem with the banlist consistency in my opinion.

I think it's really important to remember that losing the game is not an undesirable game state and "winning out of nowhere" is a really arbitrary metric to apply without some metagame dominance to back it up.

The main arguments I hear in this thread now are, that worldfire et al are banned because:
* win out of nowhere
* can sometimes flip the table without winning
* have no fair uses
* have minimal deckbuilding restrictions for the decks that play them

And the only distinguishing characteristic there is that they can sometimes flip the table without winning and you can argue about the degree of deckbuilding concessions. There're a lot of parallels.

The degree of deckbuilding restrictions for the cards to be actually good is something I think is extremely arguable, and the 'flip the table' stuff like jokulhaups is really hard to quantify.

The more you talk about this the more clear it is that you don't actually understand why cards get banned in commander. I don't mean that as an attack. If you take those four arguments that you correctly identified and insist on evaluating them only individually, you've already missed the point. Not any single one of those is a reason for a card to be banned. The fact that all of those cards meet ALL of those characteristics is what gets them banned. It is because a card like Biorythm can just win out of nowhere, acts as a table flip when it resolves but doesn't win, has no fair or exciting uses, AND has practically no deckbuilding considerations is what gets it banned. Any green deck can throw it in and simply ruin the game by casting when they draw it. They either ruin the game because it wins anticlimactically out of nowhere, or the ruin the game because it just puts everyone at critical health and hands the game to whoever is best positioned to take advantage. If the player holds it until it wins them the game, it's still a one card I win button with an extremely limited response window. It's a single card that produces free wins randomly for any deck with G, and while it would suck in cEDH, in any meta where you can reach the Mana to cast it (which, because it's green, is anything but cEDH), its just %$#%$#%. The best case scenario for Biorythm is that nobody plays it because everyone realizes it makes for incredibly %$#% ends to games and does nothing else. Guess what? That's what banning it does.

Contrast this with Flash. Can Flash win out of nowhere? Yes! Are the minimal deckbuilding considerations for inclusion? No, not really. I mean, it can be a pretty good card in any blue deck with enough etb or ltb effects on creatures, sure, but there are considerations when trying to make it do something that wins out of nowhere. Really, it's Hulk and Boonweaver Giant and their packages, some of those cards are good on their own but some are just kind of eh. There are more dead draws with flash packages than with CV. I have plenty of blue decks where I could just throw in flash and have it be decent but non problematic, so yeah, you are committing to breaking the game if you have a deck that can do so with flash. This leads me into the next point, that Flash has numerous fair uses. Are those uses that popular? Not really, but they do see play and that's enough. It also cannot really just flip the table out of nowhere, you can make it do that as part of a 2 card combo sure, but then your not able to just table flip with it on its own and your also actively dedicated to that eventuality by dedicating more deck slots.

Could Flash end up getting banned? Sure, but it won't get banned for the same set of reasons Worldfire et Al are banned. I could see it only hitting the wins out of nowhere characteristic, but also, depending on how things develop, hitting intense early resource imbalance and creating a negative centralizing effect on the format. We see these in cEDH, as it functionally leads to a massive amount of Mana savings and card advantage via tutoring on early turns, and because of this the meta has evolved to be about preventing flash hulk in the early turns. If this pattern starts cropping up in casual, where suddenly we're seeing maybe not flash hulk but flash rector for Omnisciences or flash other rector for Ugins or Karns or some other pw that's oppressive early, we'd see the same criteria becoming true in casual, and it would get banned. And that ban would be due to hitting multiple characteristics that are problematic for the format, while being able to do that via multiple good cards. Rather, if just flash hulk becomes a problem in casual, I'd bet on hulk getting the ban because its easier to slot in and combos with everything (and was previously banned partly for those reasons).

The banlist is not a pinpoint tool but a holistic one, it requires a number of factors to come together to result in a ban, and the banned cards serve partially as signposts indicating what not to do if you want good games of commander. Jokulhaups can stay legal because Worldfire being banned tells people how not to play Jokulhaups. I've proselytized in the past about mld and what makes it ok and when it's toxic, but the short of it is when you use mld to lock in a winning board state, it's fine, it's a finishing move that required setup and feels like an earned win to most people. Firing off mld because you drew it, or because you're short on Mana and you want to reset everyone to 0, is %$#% and pisses people off. Card like Worldfire being banned help illustrate that.

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Post by onering » 4 years ago

MrMystery314 wrote:
4 years ago
On a somewhat related note, I've seen a few people (largely the ones against banning Flash) saying that the ban list isn't all-inclusive, but meant to provide suggestions on what other cards should be avoided. I'm curious how many groups that aren't perfectly capable of self-regulating through rule 0 rely on this inherent logic; I would imagine those that stick to an as-written philosophy regarding what's OK to play shrug their shoulders when they see cards like Armageddon and Torment of Hailfire legal and go ahead playing them, even if they're similar to cards on the ban list, just as they shrug their shoulders when apparently Sway of the Stars is too much in comparison to those cards. I just don't think many groups avoid mass-reset effects like Worldpurge and Warp World because similar cards are on the ban list, not because they don't like playing those cards anyway. Few will read the banlist having Sway of the Stars on it and think "I shouldn't play Warp World because it's part of the same philosophy the Rules Committee thinks should not be encouraged," not "I don't play Warp World because all my friends hate it, myself included". The astute groups who actually read banlist philosophy documents besides skimming the announcements, saying "Huh," and moving on, are most likely the ones that already have some sort of self-regulatory principles in place; I think relying on this tacit gentleman's agreement to somehow come through when the standard social contract wouldn't is an absurd notion coming mainly from those who are sufficiently in tune with the "official" EDH philosophy and can't think of a mindset otherwise. I am still largely of the opinion that groups can regulate themselves beyond a bare-bones ban list of "if you and your friends happen to have a bunch of spare Moxen laying around, by all means go ahead, but we don't want to put everyone not in that position at a disadvantage competitively or force them to tell people they can't play their prized expensive cards because we don't own any".

Established playgroups with socially well adjusted people absolutely can just ignore the banlist. What you described happens, frequently. The problem is that not everyone plays commander with just friends. From my experience, it does help you be able to point to the banlist and explain how it discourages certain play. Hell, even in established groups it helps make the conversation easier. I had a guy that built Hokori blow up all the lands, and it was atrocious. He got stuck on the idea that mld was legal and so he just needed to adjust the deck a bit to make it ok. The banlist helped the rest of us explain why the approach itself, blowing up lands without a plan, was the problem, by comparing it to cards like Worldfire. He adjusted the deck accordingly and while it was still rough, it was a lot better as a more focused stax deck that didn't just blow the lands and then twiddle it's thumbs (then he got bored with it).

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

onering wrote:
4 years ago
The more you talk about this the more clear it is that you don't actually understand why cards get banned in commander. I don't mean that as an attack. If you take those four arguments that you correctly identified and insist on evaluating them only individually, you've already missed the point. Not any single one of those is a reason for a card to be banned. The fact that all of those cards meet ALL of those characteristics is what gets
them banned.
I disagree with you about the extent they meet all of those criteria, vs. not understanding that the banlist attempts to look holistically. I think that, were these cards measured against the current criteria or even the previous iteration of criteria with the beautiful problematic casual omnipresence criteria, they would never be banned.

The difference between the years of 'problematic casual omnipresence' being the primary criteria gave us stuff like sylvan primordial, prophet of kruphix, leovold, emissary of trest and paradox engine. These bans were awesome and made a huge positive impact on commander. As opposed to these random jank cards that serve only to confuse the intent of the list.

The new gatekeeper criteria is:
The primary focus of the list is on cards which are problematic because of their extreme consistency, ubiquity, and/or ability to restrict others' opportunities.
By that criteria you would never see a worldfire banned. It's just not even in the Iona department.
onering wrote:
4 years ago
The banlist is not a pinpoint tool but a holistic one, it requires a number of factors to come together to result in a ban, and the banned cards serve partially as signposts indicating what not to do if you want good games of commander. Jokulhaups can stay legal because Worldfire being banned tells people how not to play Jokulhaups. I've proselytized in the past about mld and what makes it ok and when it's toxic, but the short of it is when you use mld to lock in a winning board state, it's fine, it's a finishing move that required setup and feels like an earned win to most people. Firing off mld because you drew it, or because you're short on Mana and you want to reset everyone to 0, is %$#% and pisses people off. Card like Worldfire being banned help illustrate that.
I 100% disagree with this logic - it's been addressed and rebutted thoroughly by others that nobody really looks at the banlist like that in practice. Decree and Obliterate are rare because 1) they're often not very good, 2) the social pressure to avoid them. While this purpose is *vaguely* hinted at in the philosophy document:
The ban list seeks to demonstrate which cards threaten the positive player experience at the core of the format or prevent players from reasonable self-expression
In practice, *no one* looks at the banlist this way, except perhaps the barest minority.

I feel the communication breakdown we're having is that you think I don't agree with you because I don't understand your points vs. just disagreeing with your points.

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Post by MrMystery314 » 4 years ago

The problem is that not everyone plays commander with just friends.
If I were playing with a pod of strangers under the assumption that nobody's out to ruin anyone's fun, the last thing I'd want to hear is someone preaching at me about format philosophy as the sole justification why cards I'm playing are legal but shouldn't be played. In a tournament setting, anyone who tried that argument would be laughed out of the room, and even in a casual setting (if a few of us had extra time after a draft or something and wanted to play), anyone who tried to preach about that would be outvoted unless their opinion was already shared by the majority. The vast majority of people avoid cards because they personally don't like playing them or playing against them, not because they violate some sort of philosophy. I'd wager that between most socially adept people, the philosophy argument is weaker with strangers if other people disagree, as you then sound like an elitist or a pure scrub. A good chunk of people, perhaps not the ones you personally play with if you tend to self-select toward similar-minded people, will say "it's not on the ban list, I'm not winning on turn 3, I only cast Armageddon when I know I'm going to win, what's the big deal?"; to them, it's no different from resolving any other card that wins the game, and citing a philosophy document they've never read before and have been perfectly happy not knowing about feels under-handed. It's the equivalent of playing a casual pick-up basketball game with friends and pulling out the NBA handbook when somebody elbows you by accident.
From my experience, it does help you be able to point to the banlist and explain how it discourages certain play.
I certainly agree, but I don't think it happens where people say "I was completely fine with playing Jokulhaups in my Superfriends deck before, but now that I see similar cards are banned, despite nobody having an issue with it before I'll bow out due to it violating the spirit of a format that's not a forced rule." Most of these decisions happen without any philosophy but whatever the group agrees on before the game, unless there's the implicit idea that "we didn't specify any restrictions, everyone play what they have and if there is a clear power disparity we'll sort it out for game two." EDH pods aren't generally formed by grabbing random people from a crowd and forcing to play at gunpoint under the threat of death if they don't spend 10 seconds establishing ground rules beforehand. Whether that's "infinites are boring, stax is boring, MLD is boring, do we all agree? OK, sure.," "Let's play 75% this game and do a round of cEDH afterward. Sounds great.," or something else, I'm not quite sure where the perception comes from that without an essay telling people what's not OK, people automatically drift toward 5-color "cards people hate". This isn't Lord of the Flies, it's a game.
I had a guy that built Hokori blow up all the lands, and it was atrocious. He got stuck on the idea that mld was legal and so he just needed to adjust the deck a bit to make it ok. The banlist helped the rest of us explain why the approach itself, blowing up lands without a plan, was the problem, by comparing it to cards like Worldfire.
This is certainly an interesting point, but I don't think any reference to the banlist is needed if it's made clear that the group is opposed to MLD, stax, or whatever else alone. This sort of discussion shouldn't need a philosophy behind it: if the group isn't cool with something, there's no point in grasping for straws and finding some higher motivation. We aren't a religious group quoting scripture, we're playing a game, and most people who are reasonably aware of the people around them will accept those compromises (like your Hokori example) with grace. If somehow you aren't able to explain why something is "wrong" in your view without citing the philosophy documents, especially if there's no general consensus, accept that you're the minority and deal with it, or go elsewhere and find like-minded people.

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Post by onering » 4 years ago

MrMystery314 wrote:
4 years ago
The problem is that not everyone plays commander with just friends.
If I were playing with a pod of strangers under the assumption that nobody's out to ruin anyone's fun, the last thing I'd want to hear is someone preaching at me about format philosophy as the sole justification why cards I'm playing are legal but shouldn't be played.
Not what I said, but its a nice strawman to knock down. I'll repeat myself because you chose to misrepresent my point: the banlist, and the philosophy behind it, provide a common baseline from which people can work from to create their own preferred experience. It is helpful when there is a disagreement over whether something should be allowed or not. Clearly, if someone says "I don't like mld because it makes the game unfun for me" and the reaction from the pod is "cool, no mld then" the banlist isn't relevant, rule 0 is working. If, on the other hand, Gary is known to cast Jokulhaups at times when it just derails the game, and doesn't want to take it out of the deck just because other people don't like it, he might be persuaded to play it a little less recklessly by comparing such plays to worldfire. Maybe it doesn't work and he just gets outvoted, but it gives an additional weight beyond a mere difference of opinion.
A good chunk of people, perhaps not the ones you personally play with if you tend to self-select toward similar-minded people, will say "it's not on the ban list, I'm not winning on turn 3, I only cast Armageddon when I know I'm going to win, what's the big deal?"; to them, it's no different from resolving any other card that wins the game, and citing a philosophy document they've never read before and have been perfectly happy not knowing about feels under-handed.
Hey buddy, if you actually took the time to read my posts, you'd have never posted this. Why? Well, first of all, I've said multiple times that is the way cards like Armageddon should be played. That's the sort of fair use that doesn't ruin games that keeps cards like that unbanned. Look, I'm already getting miffed that you're trying to act like any discussion that even broaches the topic of the banlist must come off as robotic and socially challenged, but your example is bizarre considering that you later take the time to respond to a story that specifically addresses this.
From my experience, it does help you be able to point to the banlist and explain how it discourages certain play.
I certainly agree, but I don't think it happens where people say "I was completely fine with playing Jokulhaups in my Superfriends deck before, but now that I see similar cards are banned, despite nobody having an issue with it before I'll bow out due to it violating the spirit of a format that's not a forced rule." Most of these decisions happen without any philosophy but whatever the group agrees on before the game, unless there's the implicit idea that "we didn't specify any restrictions, everyone play what they have and if there is a clear power disparity we'll sort it out for game two." EDH pods aren't generally formed by grabbing random people from a crowd and forcing to play at gunpoint under the threat of death if they don't spend 10 seconds establishing ground rules beforehand. Whether that's "infinites are boring, stax is boring, MLD is boring, do we all agree? OK, sure.," "Let's play 75% this game and do a round of cEDH afterward. Sounds great.," or something else, I'm not quite sure where the perception comes from that without an essay telling people what's not OK, people automatically drift toward 5-color "cards people hate". This isn't Lord of the Flies, it's a game.[/quote]

Again, rather than engage, you're spending most of your words trying to make my point of view look ridiculous. A less asinine tone would have warranted a more respectful response. Yeah, nobody will just decide not to play Jokulhaups because Worldfire is on the banlist, no %$#% buddy. That weak ass attempt to reduce my argument to absurdity in order to avoid addressing it maturely relies on just completely ignoring what I've said. I never said that a card like Worldfire being banned should make people think not to play Jokulhaups. On the contrary, I said that such a ban allows the RC to signal how not to play Jokulhaups why allowing the card to exist in the format and be played. Its not saying "don't play Jokulhaups", its saying "don't play Jokulhaups like Worldfire." Do you really think its a stretch that people might look at the ban list and rethink how they use a certain card?

As a side note, you keep using examples to refute my arguments without realizing that I've used those same examples to explain why I think those cards aren't banned.
I had a guy that built Hokori blow up all the lands, and it was atrocious. He got stuck on the idea that mld was legal and so he just needed to adjust the deck a bit to make it ok. The banlist helped the rest of us explain why the approach itself, blowing up lands without a plan, was the problem, by comparing it to cards like Worldfire.
This is certainly an interesting point, but I don't think any reference to the banlist is needed if it's made clear that the group is opposed to MLD, stax, or whatever else alone. This sort of discussion shouldn't need a philosophy behind it: if the group isn't cool with something, there's no point in grasping for straws and finding some higher motivation. We aren't a religious group quoting scripture, we're playing a game, and most people who are reasonably aware of the people around them will accept those compromises (like your Hokori example) with grace. If somehow you aren't able to explain why something is "wrong" in your view without citing the philosophy documents, especially if there's no general consensus, accept that you're the minority and deal with it, or go elsewhere and find like-minded people.
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Cool, you missed the point. We weren't telling him to change his deck, and we weren't using the ban list philosophy to convince him that mld is bad or whatever, because that's not what we were trying to do. We didn't want him to change his deck or remove the mld cards, we wanted him to reevaluate how he was playing them so that they accomplished something and didn't just derail games. If we said "we don't like mld, it ruins the game" he'd have taken them out. He'd have actually most likely dismantled the deck, because he was going to after the game that prompted the conversation since he hated it as much as everyone else. The hangup was that my playgroup is not opposed to mld, and he wasn't sure why the deck was playing out the way it was. The part of the conversation that touched on the banlist was just a couple sentences. I don't remember exactly what was said, but it was along the lines of "you know how some cards are banned because they just derail games? The way you play the mld in your deck is kind of like that. If you wait until you have a way to take advantage of it before playing it, it wouldn't be as bad. You should focus on figuring out how to make the deck close games." That led him to lean into the stax aspect and add a few more ways to find wincons, and to be smarter about how he played his land wipes. Again, I get it makes your argument seem easier if you say %$#% like "We aren't a religious group quoting scripture, we're playing a game, and most people who are reasonably aware of the people around them will accept those compromises (like your Hokori example) with grace", but when you set up absurd %$#% like that and ignore what people are actually saying you talk at people rather than with them. Because if you actually wanted to engage with my point, you'd have addressed why you disagree that the ban list and/or rules philosophy aren't helpful in helping someone understand why you are asking for change, or how saying something like "yeah, tutoring for narset then wheeling feels like Leovold, we don't like that" can be used as shorthand. But please, do continue to act like I'm going around handing out essays on banlist philosophy to pods.

onering
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Post by onering » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
onering wrote:
4 years ago
The more you talk about this the more clear it is that you don't actually understand why cards get banned in commander. I don't mean that as an attack. If you take those four arguments that you correctly identified and insist on evaluating them only individually, you've already missed the point. Not any single one of those is a reason for a card to be banned. The fact that all of those cards meet ALL of those characteristics is what gets
them banned.
I disagree with you about the extent they meet all of those criteria, vs. not understanding that the banlist attempts to look holistically. I think that, were these cards measured against the current criteria or even the previous iteration of criteria with the beautiful problematic casual omnipresence criteria, they would never be banned.

The difference between the years of 'problematic casual omnipresence' being the primary criteria gave us stuff like sylvan primordial, prophet of kruphix, leovold, emissary of trest and paradox engine. These bans were awesome and made a huge positive impact on commander. As opposed to these random jank cards that serve only to confuse the intent of the list.

The new gatekeeper criteria is:
The primary focus of the list is on cards which are problematic because of their extreme consistency, ubiquity, and/or ability to restrict others' opportunities.
By that criteria you would never see a worldfire banned. It's just not even in the Iona department.
• Cause severe resource imbalances
Allow players to win out of nowhere
• Prevent players from contributing to the game in a meaningful way.
• Cause other players to feel they must play certain cards, even though they are also problematic.
Are very difficult for other players to interact with, especially if doing so requires dedicated, narrow responses when deck-building.
• Interact poorly with the multiplayer nature of the format or the specific rules of Commander.
• Lead to repetitive game play.


I mean, its right there, from the same place you got your quote from, elaborating on what can get a card banned. I bolded the parts relevant to those cards.
onering wrote:
4 years ago
The banlist is not a pinpoint tool but a holistic one, it requires a number of factors to come together to result in a ban, and the banned cards serve partially as signposts indicating what not to do if you want good games of commander. Jokulhaups can stay legal because Worldfire being banned tells people how not to play Jokulhaups. I've proselytized in the past about mld and what makes it ok and when it's toxic, but the short of it is when you use mld to lock in a winning board state, it's fine, it's a finishing move that required setup and feels like an earned win to most people. Firing off mld because you drew it, or because you're short on Mana and you want to reset everyone to 0, is %$#% and pisses people off. Card like Worldfire being banned help illustrate that.
I 100% disagree with this logic - it's been addressed and rebutted thoroughly by others that nobody really looks at the banlist like that in practice. Decree and Obliterate are rare because 1) they're often not very good, 2) the social pressure to avoid them. While this purpose is *vaguely* hinted at in the philosophy document:
The ban list seeks to demonstrate which cards threaten the positive player experience at the core of the format or prevent players from reasonable self-expression
In practice, *no one* looks at the banlist this way, except perhaps the barest minority.

I feel the communication breakdown we're having is that you think I don't agree with you because I don't understand your points vs. just disagreeing with your points.
[/quote]

There's disagreeing with points and then there's ignoring them. You've mostly done the former, but there were a couple of times where you just ignored a point I made and made a counter argument that relied on ignoring a point I made.

I understand disagreeing that people actually use the banlist like that, but to argue that it isn't part of the intention takes it a step further. That's where I say you don't really understand the philosophy behind it. Maybe that isn't entirely correct and you just disagree with that philosophy, but that doesn't change that it is the stated philosophy and that ultimately informs how the RC chooses to ban cards. There's a difference between arguing that the philosophy needs a new update, that the banlist doesn't in practice fulfill the intended role of providing guidelines, and thus the RC should abandon that part of the philosophy and just treat the banlist like a straight binary "its legal or its not" banlist like the ones for tournament formats, and another to say that is what they ARE doing. When I read your comments, it seems like you are saying that these cards wouldn't be banned under how you think the banlist should operate, not based on how it does, or at least based on how the RC says it does. Your points on why they shouldn't be banned are compelling, but require a different outlook on the part of the RC on what makes a card banworthy. An outright change in philosophy along the lines of the one that led them to start unbanning combo pieces that were banned at the outset, the commitment to simply not chasing combo boogeymen (which incidentally argues against banning flash). Were the RC to change their philosophy to make being heavily played an absolute requirement for banning, rather than just a criteria that raises the odds, then I'd agree that none of the Worldfire style cards would be banned. If the outlook on "preventing others from contributing in a meaningful way" changes to exclude the sort of game invalidating cards effects like Worldfire (and I could see this under the argument that the game has gone on for 8 turns, people have had a chance to contribute, this clause only really applies to early game lockouts now) then they would probably be unbanned. Hell, if they just decided that being able to float mana for your commander as a followup were no longer considered interacting poorly with the format, then they might be unbanned. But those changes haven't come, so I see no reason why they wouldn't continue to treat those cards the same way they always have. On the same note, IF they unban those cards it will be in conjunction with a change to the philosophy or even after a change to the philosophy (judging by how they went about unbanning combo pieces).

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

onering wrote:
4 years ago

• Cause severe resource imbalances
Allow players to win out of nowhere
• Prevent players from contributing to the game in a meaningful way.
• Cause other players to feel they must play certain cards, even though they are also problematic.
Are very difficult for other players to interact with, especially if doing so requires dedicated, narrow responses when deck-building.
• Interact poorly with the multiplayer nature of the format or the specific rules of Commander.
• Lead to repetitive game play.


I mean, its right there, from the same place you got your quote from, elaborating on what can get a card banned. I bolded the parts relevant to those cards.
So it has some of those. We disagree about the extent of them. I'll do this like the oldendays.

* The extent to which these cards let you win "out of nowhere" is much lower than many other cards, probably not even cracking the top 30 on efficient winconditions. So I think the extent of that is quite low. Maybe a 3/10 for coalition victory, 4/10 for worldfire, 5/10 for biorhythm, 2/10 for panoptic mirror, 4/10 for sway of the stars.

* Prevent players from contributing to the game -- none of these cards get more than a 1 or 2 out of 10 for this. They all are mid to late game things that happen super late and cost a ton of mana.

* Interactability - There are plenty of answers for these cards; more than many other cards. Counterspells, killing someone before they get 12 mana, interacting with whatever they're doing to get 12 mana, having previously stolen their commander, etc. Plenty of non-narrow methods of dealing with them. Panoptic mirror is a 1/10 for interactability, worldfire a 5, biorhythm a 3 or 4, sway a 4 maybe at most. The odds of one person of 3 having a counterspell is reasonable not even counting the other options (e.g. cyclonic rift to beat biorhythm).

* Interact poorly with commander - we've established that worldfire is the worst offender at what, like a 3/10 because it lets you wipe the board then cast your commander? We've got things like serra ascendant that are 1 mana 6/6 flying lifelinkers, mystic remora that is almost strictly better than ancestral recall in commander, and so on that are the 7-8/10s in this category, and trade secrets that's the obvious 10/10. Worldfire isn't even int he same ballpark.

Remember the old days when we'd line up the criteria and do a score for each category? These cards are 0/10s in a bunch of categories and under 5/10 in most of the rest.

I prefer leaning on the summary criteria as a kind of gatekeeper though, as if it doesn't trip something in there it's probably not even worth a second thought. Much like all of these cards.

onering wrote:
4 years ago

There's disagreeing with points and then there's ignoring them. You've mostly done the former, but there were a couple of times where you just ignored a point I made and made a counter argument that relied on ignoring a point I made.
I disagree with how you are assessing these cards on the banlist criteria full stop. I completely understand your arguments. I just disagree and I think my reasons are pretty well founded.

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