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.