Ban List Update - Flash Banned

[cryogen]

Quoting a laundry list of logical fallacies to make MTGNexus users seem like cave trolls hiding in their den, occasionally venturing outside to steal a goat to savagely rip apart with their bare teeth, isn't doing much to help your argument. You're quite correct, honestly, but your delivery is off.

I would never eat a goat. Steal one, maybe, but only for the fluffy hop hops.

[papa_funk]

The problem with this whole argument is the assumption that cEDH occupies some end-of-history paradigm that all EDH players are slowly moving towards.

Because they are. The only ones who don't are contrarians who actively move against the grain. Even a casual player is just simply tuning their deck to make its function better. They don't immediately make the distinction of Casual Vs Compeitive because its just a natural thing to do in every other format of magic. Its only viewed as a sin in EDH.

This is actually incorrect. The *vast* majority of Magic players are not actively trying to move towards cEDH. Most players see Magic as a fun outlet, a game where they can get together and sling spells with their friends. Cards get added to their decks because they get opened in packs and look cool. cEDH is moving away from them faster than they're approaching

There's nothing wrong with wanting to improve, but it isn't the motivation for a heck of a lot of people out there. I will again post this article here, as it does a better job of explaining it all than I ever could: https://adjameson.wordpress.com/2018/12 ... -at-large/

Note also that most other formats don't make a distinction between casual and competitive because the casual scene in them is virtually nonexistent. Commander tapping into the (enormous) casual audience was a big deal.

[DirkGently]

I think most people don't realize that almost all arguments will align to a fallacy. I'd go so far as to say any argument that is the least but subjective will sniff of a fallacy if you look hard enough.

Fundamentally most fallacies have a "this is okay if you're not exaggerating the likelihood or effect" qualifier, e.g. lots of slopes are slippery and lots of consequences are bad and sometimes a person's authority or motives are relevant.

While that's true (especially since we're generally arguing matters of opinion, speculation, and/or things which the vast majority of us have no way to get a statistically significant amount of evidence about), I don't think any of the fallacies he regurgitated are applicable in any way to the text he was quoting.

And it's just my opinion, but I think taking a congratulatory victory lap in the form of a gif of Zorro "fending off all those nasty fallacies" is pretty

[illakunsaa]

The problem with this whole argument is the assumption that cEDH occupies some end-of-history paradigm that all EDH players are slowly moving towards.

Because they are. The only ones who don't are contrarians who actively move against the grain. Even a casual player is just simply tuning their deck to make its function better. They don't immediately make the distinction of Casual Vs Compeitive because its just a natural thing to do in every other format of magic. Its only viewed as a sin in EDH.

This is actually incorrect. The *vast* majority of Magic players are not actively trying to move towards cEDH. Most players see Magic as a fun outlet, a game where they can get together and sling spells with their friends. Cards get added to their decks because they get opened in packs and look cool. cEDH is moving away from them faster than they're approaching

I'm not really sure. I started playing mtg in 2012 and my flgs's edh scene was mostly janky decks and that one table (4 people) that mostly played cedh. Now almost every regular player has a cedh deck and casual decks have become much more tuned. There is this one guy who didn't want to buy a second Rogue's Passage to save money now owns a Mana Crypt.

The longer you play more you accumulate cards and eventually you get the good ones. Cedh also suppose peak power level wise so it can't really go anywhere while casual can go up.

[Sinis]

I think they should be treated with less seriousness (and maybe more respect).

If they are treated with less seriousness, I don't think you get to say you can treat them with more respect as you don't think they should be treated seriously.

You're right, I meant more 'kindness'. But, maybe that's wasted on the drivebys here.

The problem with this whole argument is the assumption that cEDH occupies some end-of-history paradigm that all EDH players are slowly moving towards.

Because they are. The only ones who don't are contrarians who actively move against the grain.

Full stop, you're painting every casual player with the same brush. I know you can't possibly imagine someone enjoying a game that's different from what you enjoy, but it is the case, and they're not "contrarian" because of it.

The rest of your post can't reasonably be addressed given the premises you're starting from, and you're exactly the kind of person from the cEDH demographic that breeds the kind of resentment and 'get out of my format' attitude the vast majority of EDH players seem to have for people playing EDH competitively.

Also, brush up on your logic, and maybe consider another point of view. Time and again, casuals say "play how you want, but we aren't necessarily going to adapt the rules to suit your very specific needs", but here you're basically claiming casuals are 'backwards cEDH players' and that presumably forms a justification for cEDH to be given primacy from a policy standpoint...

Edit: I'll try to be kinder, but it's not being made easy.

[Sinis]

The longer you play more you accumulate cards and eventually you get the good ones. Cedh also suppose peak power level wise so it can't really go anywhere while casual can go up.

Emphasis mine.

This isn't related to wanting to play competitively at all. For EDH, my collection is essentially as complete as you could want, including many big ticket items like Timetwister, Imperial Seal, Mana Crypt etc. @bobthefunny can back me up, he's seen it.

I can build any cEDH deck in paper, which is more than I can say for most of the proxy-using cEDH player base.

And yet, here I am, playing Tana the Bloodsower/Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa saprolings, or "Chandra Tribal" complete with Chandra playmat. bobthefunny can back me up on that, too.

More than that, there are many people who play casually, despite having even better collections than mine. This point could not be more patently false.

[pokken]

Note also that most other formats don't make a distinction between casual and competitive because the casual scene in them is virtually nonexistent. Commander tapping into the (enormous) casual audience was a big deal.

This is a point I have made before that fell on deaf ears in the CEDH reddit (surprise?) - I guess I'm just an old curmudgeonly contrarian

Literally every other format is managed almost entirely with competitive balance or sometimes deck or archetype diversity (which are closely related to balance). It's probably the single thing that makes commander stand out.

I will note that I frequent everywhere MTG is discussed and both of the major commander reddits grossly underestimate how many people are simply slinging cardboard and don't really analyze it that much.

We are the minority out here on the internets spending a couple hours a week discussing this stuff.

[onering]

That's not a no true Scotsman fallacy drusus. He said that the ban was targeted at a subset of the playerbase, which it absolutely was. We know this because Sheldon describes arriving at this ban by consulting with cEDH players for a year. His argument is more like saying Highlanders are different than Lowlanders, not a no true Scotsman.

And if cEDH is the canary in the coal mine, it's a really crappy canary. Prime Time, Sylvan, Paradox Engine, and Prophet were all completely non problematic in cEDH, and PE was actually beneficial to that meta. All of them were hurting casual, though PE less so. Meanwhile, the last card I remember cEDH being really up in arms about and predicting a ban of was hermit druid. That's pretty laughable now. So in terms of identifying problem cards and trends that will one day plague casual, cEDH is not a reliable source.

And that's because casual is not moving to a cEDH endgame. It's moved away from battlecruiser, but it's moved to other archetypes and theme decks that won't ever be viable in cEDH. The draw of the format for most players is the ability to play cool commanders and niche cards that otherwise sit in binders, to explore themes and cool interactions, and big splashy spells. cEDH just doesn't provide this experience. It's always going to draw a minority of players because only a minority are looking for the experience it provides. And even among cEDH players, many also play casual, because they also want that experience and don't get it in cEDH.

[pokken]

As a classic appeal to authority I wouldn't mind if talking about fallacies was at least soft-banned on the internet if you didn't have credentials

A high percentage of fallacy accusations are in fact fallacious, in that they attempt to shift the burden of proof - using the accusation of fallacy as a substitute for engaging the argument.

[Sinis]

There's nothing wrong with wanting to improve, but it isn't the motivation for a heck of a lot of people out there. I will again post this article here, as it does a better job of explaining it all than I ever could: https://adjameson.wordpress.com/2018/12 ... -at-large/

If there was a required reading list for playing Magic, this article would be on it.

[onering]

As a classic appeal to authority I wouldn't mind if talking about fallacies was at least soft-banned on the internet if you didn't have credentials

A high percentage of fallacy accusations are in fact fallacious, in that they attempt to shift the burden of proof - using the accusation of fallacy as a substitute for engaging the argument.

But if we soft banned fallacies, how would illogical people make a pretense to logic by shouting fallacies they don't understand like arcane incantations to protect them from arguments they can't rebut? Are they supposed to just resort to calling people dookie brains?

I bet you didn't consider THAT slippery slope into ad hominim attacks, did you Pokken?

[Rumpy5897]

This immortal cardboard crack comes to mind with regards to the guy who graduated from Rogue's Passage to Mana Crypt:



It's natural that prolonged enfranchisement breeds this sort of arsenal. I remember putting together my first deck, I spent a couple weeks scouring the internet for bargains of a few key cards. I found my subsequent main cardboard vendor because he had a super cheap Ensnaring Bridge for sale. With time, barriers fell. Three Visits, Scrubland, eventually (Italian) Chains of Mephistopheles. It's normal to start small and get bigger with time.

I can kind of see where one would get the argument that cEDH is the end station for all EDH. There has been a pretty big push for optimising decks in the last few years, but this is a complex phenomenon to dissect. First and foremost, we're the tryhards, we're the ones who hit up the internet to discuss cardboard. That said, if you cross that threshold, it's a lot easier these days to get something sensible together, even with relatively minimal experience. You can pop open EDHREC and piece something functional together for a given commander in a matter of minutes. This alone makes a gigantic difference, I remember cobbling my first list together by scouring a few lists for my commander of choice on Sally for things I liked. There's a plethora of content out there emphasising deck improvement these days, the importance of ramp and draw. Plus you just get better at all this with time, you get a reasonable gut feeling of what is needed to make a deck work and flesh out the innards accordingly.

However, this angle misses something huge - self-expression. I do try to build the best decks I can, but I do so around legends I find cool. I'm not hugely interested in netdecking cEDH when I can try to grease up the most badass take on something like Daxos the Returned or Patron of the Orochi. Deck building is a gigantic part of the format's appeal to me, you're quite likely to find me tinkering with my builds in their threads (which I really like for their nice causal ordering, allowing for chronicling years of developments along with discussion - this is why I'm here rather than reddit or wherever). However, years of development, both to me as a builder and to the discussed format resources at large, mean that my concoctions are likely to start purring quicker and more consistently.

[Airi]

Move on from the fallacy arguments, folks. This is not a formal debate thread, and we've gotten fairly off topic.

[MrMystery314]

Here's perhaps a more interesting thread on the EDH subreddit, and somewhat unique in that Sheldon responded:

The purpose of this thread is not to continue ragging on Toby Elliott and the Rules Committee, but I will start with an anecdote that includes him, because it's relevant to where I'm going.

Yesterday I was able to catch about an hour and a half of Olivia Gobert-Hicks's stream, which featured various EDH community members and luminaries. The game I watched featured Jim from the Spike Feeders, cryogen, Toby, and a fourth person whose name I'm afraid I forget. Now, the points I want to stress are that this game looked both a) super fun and b) super casual.

Like I've been playing EDH for eight years now, both with friends and at my LGS, and I've never participated in such a casual game. Like, I don't know if I've ever seen an MTG Muddstah game that was this casual. Like, "it's-turn-11-and-nobody-has-played-a-counterspell-or-a-boardwipe" casual.

Jim was rocking his ultra casual Kangee meme deck, which seems to be all about shapeshifters and weird synergies. The dude whose name I didn't catch was playing super fair Boros. cryogen was playing super fair Karador and didn't mulligan a bad hand. And Toby, finally, was playing his Niv-Mizzet Reborn deck featuring zero counterspells, zero cards that aren't a "hit" for Niv — no signets, no Rampant Growth, etc. — and Allure of the Unknown.

I have to underscore again that this game looked super fun. Toby's and Jim's decks, in particular, seemed really thematic and unique. It actually made me want to build a really low powered, thematic deck, something I haven't ever really done.

It's also true that these decks would have been absolutely annihilated by a typical Josh Lee Kwai or Kyle Hill deck. Every deck except cryogen's looked like it would have seriously struggled against one of the "tuned" budget decks Mitch builds on the Commander's Quarters.

I bring this up because of a consistently irritating and I think insidious way in which community members continue to talk about competitive EDH — and it's not just the Rules Committee. Just today, I heard both JLK — who sits on the Commander Advisory Group (CAG) — and the EDHRECast refer to cEDH as "their format" and refer to those who play at the most competitive level as "them" and "they." People who do so will also often then take the next step of speculating as to the very small percentage of players who play at this level — "3% to 5%" was Josh's guess — as opposed to the "vast majority" of players who play "casual," there by reinforcing a binary: competitive players vs. casual players.

Ironically, in doing so they overlook the generally useful (though insufficient) distinctions they themselves promote with respect to power rankings. For me, it really begs the question, why is the whole ocean of decks below the power level of competitive Gitrog or Meta Pod or Consultation Kess referred to as "casual" and everybody else is "them"?

EDH is the format we all play. EDH is the format we all love. Because EDH is awesome.

It's awesome when you're jamming your "chair tribal" deck against my "Kev Walker tribal" deck.

It's awesome when you're jamming your slightly upgraded precon against my slightly upgraded precon.

It's awesome when you're jamming your budget deck with tons of deckbuilding constraints — no MLD, no stax, no infinite loops — against my budget deck with tons of deckbuilding constraints.

It's awesome when you're jamming your optimized Meren deck against my optimized Breya deck.

And it's awesome when you're smashing your Najeela tempo deck against my Opus Thief.

It's slightly less awesome when you roll over my slightly upgraded precon with your optimized Meren deck, but hey — miscommunication happens to the best of us.

In addition, it bears repeating that a lot of people enjoy playing EDH at the most competitive level and at other levels. And even among people who only play at one particular level, a lot of them consume content from a different power level. (I, for instance, have never played a game above what most people would call an "8", but I love love love Playing With Power, Play to Win, etc.)

cEDH is not "their format", it is a particular way of thinking about the format we all play and love. Or — if you want to insist that it is, in some crucial way, a different format — then it is one format among at least several different and distinct "EDH formats." Because you casting Solemnity into Decree of Silence sure ain't the same "format" as me trying to cast a Star of Extinction into Broodhatch Nantuko. And you restricting yourself only to cards painted by Rebecca Guay sure ain't the same "format" as me restricting myself to only modern border cards.

And by the way, if you're playing zero pet cards, zero lands that ETB tapped, and your response to most new cards you see is some variation on "not good enough," "not powerful enough," or "not efficient enough" well then buddy — I encourage you to consult the definition of "casual" in the OED.

The only lesson here is that EDH — like Magic itself — is many things to many people; and sometimes many things to the same person in the same day. And that's awesome! The space to brew at wildly different power levels, with wildly different kinds of games in mind — and over 20,000 different cards — is a large part of what brings us to this one format.

And props to the RC, by the way. Approximately nobody wants zero changes to the current banlist — whether in the form of bannings or unbannings — which makes their job one I do not envy in the slightest. But they definitely made the right call here, and they continue to do an overall great job of shepherding this format we all love.

One love.

Sheldon's response from somewhere deep within the thread (I imagine many downvoted it simply because of the author):

I concede that in the (now increasingly-distant) past, I have fanned the flames of the "us vs. them" inferno. I've now become an advocate for recognizing and supporting the format's subculture(s). That's why I formed a discussion group with some cEDH leaders last year to address where we collectively were and where we're going. Their input and advice was instrumental in getting to the Flash ban.

If I can, I'll clear up a few things. I do not hate cEDH/fully optimized Commander, nor the people who play it. Some folks may have developed that belief from previously inflammatory rhetoric (to which I've copped) coupled with a few continual philosophical beliefs.

The primary among these is that turning Commander into a competitive format is both contrary to its philosophy and bad for its long-term health. If you feel personally attacked by this, you're missing the message. It's not a message that "cEDH is bad," it's the message that changing the focus of the format to the competitive end both isn't what we're doing and if we were to do so, we believe it would be destructive to what we've built. Commander is intentionally a respite from competitive Magic, and here's where some of the friction lies.

One of the goals of cEDH/fully optimized Commander is consistent with the goals of tournament Magic (win in a fast/efficient fashion), even if you're not playing in a tournament. The decks you'd find at the mythical EDH World Championship are indistinguishable from the decks you'll find in a highest-power game in someone's basement. cEDH, even played with beer and pretzels, is inextricably linked to the tournament environment. It's not our intention to craft the banned list to suit competitive balance (you can read more on that in the philosophy document), which means we're also not crafting it to suit the non-tournament cEDH game, since they look a great deal like each other. Again, this doesn't mean we hate what you're doing, it means that we're doing this other thing. We're not doing it to alienate anyone, we're doing it because that's what we set out to do.

So what's the upshot here? It means that we're going to continue to focus on the things that made Commander popular in the first place. One of the primary messages is "here's a baseline, but deviation from that baseline is just fine with us, so long as you get everyone's agreement." Importantly in the context of this particular discussion, it also means that we're going to recognize that the core demographic isn't the only demographic. Recognition of a subculture doesn't have to be the kind of othering that some people have accused us of--it can also be acknowledgement and validation. As I said very recently in a discussion with those cEDH leaders, you can't very well have multiculturalism without multiple cultures.

The more cynical have read our message as "we've thrown you a bone, now shut up." I see it more as "we may have set you at a distance in the past, and are trying to bridge that gap." We cannot build that bridge without understanding where the divide is. We're not going to close the gap from a technical end (balance for competitive play), but we're going to do it from the social (the way you play is part of our multiculturalism).

There is no "us vs. them" here, because they are us.

Even though this doesn't pertain to Flash directly, I thought it was an interesting read and still relevant because the debate here has shifted toward to whether cEDH players are part of the same community as the EDH group at large. Thoughts?

[Sinis]

Thoughts?

I see this from casuals a lot.

I want to reiterate something I've said, and seen said in casual circles ad nauseam: The format welcomes everyone, play how you want.

As far as I can recall, I have never met a single casual player who would deny that cEDH players are playing EDH. The 'c' is lower case for a very good reason. I have met vanishingly few who would even say "cEDH players are doing it wrong".

On the other side of the coin, the vast majority of people from the cEDH demographic I have met have said that the format needs to change better suit competitive play (it doesn't), that (in this very thread) casuals are just incomplete competitive players, and a broad brush of other stereotypes about casual players (especially from reddit/twitter/facebook) including but not limited to "just get better at the game if you're losing", "you would have more fun with higher power levels" and "casuals are a heap of whiners afflicted with cognitive dissonance whose goals within the format cannot be operationalized".

I don't know who cast the first stone, but I don't think anyone here is denying that we play the same format. But, "they are us", or "we are them", or "Casuals need cEDH and cEDH players need casuals"? Yeah, no.

The exact letter of the rules is about the last common sign post for most demographics within the format, and after that, it wildly diverges. I'm not even saying that's a bad thing; diversity is a very good thing. But, I think saying "we all play EDH" while true in fact is definitely not true in spirit once you consider the divergence in the approach to the format, how we play, how we derive our fun, or pretty much everything except the framework of "we all happen to be playing EDH". It is like a common ground you can apply to a homeless man and Jeff Bezos: They're both alive, but that common measure is all but meaningless with respect to the rest of their day-to-day life.

I don't consider this a bad thing. I just want the format to retain what it started as (at least for me): An easily accessible framework intended to be an alternative to competitive magic and as rules-light as possible. There is exactly one identifiable demographic among EDH players pushing to change that, and I would say that is where exactly 100% of my enmity comes from.

[onering]

My thoughts are the same as before, that cEDH is a subset of EDH. It is real EDH and the players are real EDH players. It is, and the Reddit poster somehow missed this, different from other subsets of EDH in that it is focused on optimization and winning efficiently in a way that is more related to tournament magic than the rest of edh. Like the rest of edh, cEDH players are seeking a fun experience, but their fun experience they are looking for while playing cEDH is highly competitive, highly tuned decks in a competitive meta where every deckbuilding choice is judged in a single axis, is it the most efficient and effective at helping me win in this slot? There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, but it cannot be denied that this is fundamentally different from the rest of the format.

What the Reddit poster also misses is that there are other subsets of EDH that are just as different from the rest of edh as cEDH, and some that are even more different. Tiny leaders is a subset that is more different than the rest of the format. Archenemy and planechase edh games and the players who like them are more different than cEDH. Those are all different on different angles than cEDH is, primarily on differing rules. There are also subsets that differ, like cEDH, with edh generally in terms of philosophy. Super casual that house bans fast Mana and tutors is as removed from edh as a whole as cEDH is. No combo edh as well. Any playgroup that adopts restrictive house bans is, and any playgroup that allows unsets is.

All of those subsets, like cEDH, deviate from baseline edh, and for all of them, cEDH included, that's fine, because rule 0 makes it explicit that you and your group can fiddle with the rules and set expectations to get what you want out of the format. That said, there are a few things that set cEDH apart from these other subsets. The first, and most important thing is that cEDH players are a self identified group that is more organized, more vocal, and likely more numerous than any one of these other subsets. The act of creating cEDH subreddits, threads, events, conversations, and generally making it a discreet and prominent thing within edh has the obvious effect of making it easily identified as a subgroup that differs from the norm. It is an inevitable result of striving to make the sub community more visible and more connected to each other, that this subset will be more easily identified as differing from the norm. Another thing that sets cEDH apart from other subgroups is that they are by far the most vocal subgroup, and too many of them (Reddit) have acted like assholes to anyone who disagrees with them, including to other cEDH players. This extreme minority makes the whole subset look bad through their actions, especially amongst people who don't interact with the polite and reasonable majority of cEDH players (the good guys are always less outspoken than the assholes). Setting aside the bad pr from jerks, some of the things that the cEDH community pushes for run counter to the purpose of commander and what most commander players want, specifically tournaments and changing the way the RC bans cards to focus on competitive balance and cater to them over everyone else. The tournaments can easily coexist with casual, but they'll always have issues because edh is not designed to be a tournament friendly format. Trying to change edh to make it more tournament friendly puts a lot of people off, because doing so would be putting the desires of the minority over the desires of the majority, and it becomes even worse when you consider that edh is the only casual focused format, while all other formats are almost entirely competitive. This causes people to get very defensive. When people see the absolute garbage and vitriol posted in cEDH centric forums and reddits, they feel like they are under attack by a vocal and unrepresentative minority. What too many people don't realize is that those people are not even representative of cEDH players as a whole, and will never get their way. Broadside attacks against cEDH and Casual are problematic, but it goes both ways. More words are spilled by cEDH extremists attacking casual players and minimizing the value of casual than the other way around.

There are also many ways in which the cEDH community is treated the same as other subgroups that don't get recognized by people like that Reddit poster. He recognizes that the best games are when people are playing similarly powered decks, but he seems to think that only cEDH gets separated out based on this. This isn't true at all. When people set up a low power game and someone brings a fairly tuned 75 percent deck, that guy is going to get a friendly "dude, wtf?" That's as certain as if he brought Kess Consultation. In both cases, he's bringing a clearly overpowered deck that doesn't belong at the table. If someone brings a medium power theme deck to a pre con challenge, it's going to be the same deal. If someone bring ezuri elves to "oddball tribal", same deal. The burden tends to fall on the person bringing the more powerful deck. It's not really fair, but it's just a result of the fact that bringing a deck that is clearly too powerful for the table is far more damaging to the game than bringing a deck that is far too weak. If someone sits down at a 75 percent table with a precon, it's a mild annoyance at most because they are barely a factor, while if someone brings a 75 percent deck to a precon table he's going to dominate the game. I think that for people who exclusively play cEDH this is a hard concept to grasp, because they are only ever on the giving end of the beating. 75 percent players understand better because they are as likely to give as to receive, they can understand why a jank table doesn't want them dropping in with their 75 percent deck because they don't like it when someone comes to their 75 percent table with a cEDH deck. The closest thing cEDH tables have is some guy sitting down with something clearly underpowered and then targeting one dude and helping kingmake. The most vocal cEDH persecution complex players also seem to forget or not notice that when people from other subgroups speak up and make demands for bans to cater to them, they typically get laughed off. There are some vocal super casual players that want, in addition to all fast Mana and tutors being banned, a slew of strong cards that make them hurt in the feels, and nobody takes them seriously. 75 percenters are more vocal and a common request is fast Mana and tutors bans, along with some key powerful cards like Rift and Hoof. The RC treats these requests with the same approach as cEDH requests, but since 75 percenters don't have the same sort of shared group identity as cEDH players they don't see this as being ignored or the RC hating 75 percent edh. The strong self identified group identity among exclusive cEDH players is a two edged sword, because it is what has enable the subformat to flourish despite edh being pretty badly set up for it, but it has also caused the subformat to be more distinctive and detached from the format at large.

The key is that cEDH is part of EDH, but just a part, and a fairly small one. I'd guess the number is much larger than many others here because I define a cEDH player as anyone who plays cEDH at all, and a committed cEDH player as someone who plays somewhat regularly. Even then, most people have never played cEDH, and even many committed players may not self identify as cEDH because they play casual more. The players that do not play any subset exclusively tend to have a better handle on all this because they understand the different perspectives better than players who are exclusively cEDH or casual (which is itself multiple subsets). It's not a binary relationship though, some cEDH players are also casual players, and even exclusive cEDH players are part of EDH, but they are also different. That's how subsets work. That means their needs and preferences have to be taken into account, but they can't be given special treatment, and they can expect their needs and preferences to take priority or drive decisions and more than the super casual crowd or 75ers can. What I see that most drives division is the entitled subset of cEDH players that DO expect that.

[Sinis]

I agree with everything you wrote, except this:

What too many people don't realize is that those people are not even representative of cEDH players as a whole, and will never get their way.

They did get what they wanted. They got Flash banned. The RC consulted with some "cEDH players they trust" (that's the verbage in the press) and banned Flash. Realistically, would it have ever been a consideration without the perpetual noise, forum drivebys, users with a name like @sheldonshouldretire, and a death threat or two from those caustic few? My guess is no.

[pokken]

I agree with everything you wrote, except this:

What too many people don't realize is that those people are not even representative of cEDH players as a whole, and will never get their way.

They did get what they wanted. They got Flash banned. The RC consulted with some "cEDH players they trust" (that's the verbage in the press) and banned Flash. Realistically, would it have ever been a consideration without the perpetual noise, forum drivebys, users with a name like sheldonshouldretire, and a death threat or two from those caustic few? My guess is no.

The vocal minority he's talking about has a far more extreme view than "please ban flash this once."

The common view of the extremist folks is "RC must go and be replaced by a group focused on competitive play quality."

[Couver]

Thoughts?

I see this from casuals a lot.

I want to reiterate something I've said, and seen said in casual circles ad nauseam: The format welcomes everyone, play how you want.

As far as I can recall, I have never met a single casual player who would deny that cEDH players are playing EDH. The 'c' is lower case for a very good reason. I have met vanishingly few who would even say "cEDH players are doing it wrong".

On the other side of the coin, the vast majority of people from the cEDH demographic I have met have said that the format needs to change better suit competitive play (it doesn't), that (in this very thread) casuals are just incomplete competitive players, and a broad brush of other stereotypes about casual players (especially from reddit/twitter/facebook) including but not limited to "just get better at the game if you're losing", "you would have more fun with higher power levels" and "casuals are a heap of whiners afflicted with cognitive dissonance whose goals within the format cannot be operationalized".

I don't know who cast the first stone, but I don't think anyone here is denying that we play the same format. But, "they are us", or "we are them", or "Casuals need cEDH and cEDH players need casuals"? Yeah, no.

The exact letter of the rules is about the last common sign post for most demographics within the format, and after that, it wildly diverges. I'm not even saying that's a bad thing; diversity is a very good thing. But, I think saying "we all play EDH" while true in fact is definitely not true in spirit once you consider the divergence in the approach to the format, how we play, how we derive our fun, or pretty much everything except the framework of "we all happen to be playing EDH". It is like a common ground you can apply to a homeless man and Jeff Bezos: They're both alive, but that common measure is all but meaningless with respect to the rest of their day-to-day life.

I don't consider this a bad thing. I just want the format to retain what it started as (at least for me): An easily accessible framework intended to be an alternative to competitive magic and as rules-light as possible. There is exactly one identifiable demographic among EDH players pushing to change that, and I would say that is where exactly 100% of my enmity comes from.

I think the bolded portion of this post (I agree with all of it) but the bolded gets to the heart of this fracture between the two sides to me. There is an 'othering' from both sides. Perhaps it seems greater from the EDH side because there are more players on that side? But it also goes on on the cEDH side. With as you mention the assumption that casual players don't really know how to play the game well enough yet. Discounting that while that may be true for some (newer players would obviously begin in 'casual' EDH) there are casual players who know the mechanics of the game just as well as cEDH players but their aim isn't competitive play so they don't build cEDH type decks even though they could.

The reverse is that most cEDH players obviously were causal players at first or probably still have casual decks they enjoy playing so shutting them out of the community isn't right.

I am not sure there will ever be a way to actually stop this divide. But I think the RC doing this maybe will help and the heat from both sides will die down for a while?

I think more online content creators are starting to try to bridge the gap as well. The CZ did a good episode with Kyle Hill about this recently where their main point was that the two sides are all part of a larger community. Maybe more discussion will help.

[Airi]

The vocal minority he's talking about has a far more extreme view than "please ban flash this once."

The common view of the extremist folks is "RC must go and be replaced by a group focused on competitive play quality."

To be fair though, there is an equivalent group on the extreme casual side who love to harp on cards that are probably not an issue to the vast majority of players. Doesn't make what either group of players is doing okay, but it is not a problem constrained to a small minority of cEDH.

[tstorm823]

I am not sure there will ever be a way to actually stop this divide.

The problem isn't the divide, the problem is pretending the divide doesn't exist.

Like, I can be making pudding, and you can be making soup, and we both could start out with a bowl full of milk. That doesn't mean we're making the same thing. Me telling you to add chocolate to your soup would be nonsense, as would you telling me to add vegetables to my pudding. Neither option is a problem, keeping them separate isn't a problem, mixing them together would be incredibly, incredibly gross.

It's fine to accept differences. It's a problem to pretend they don't exist.

Edit because overextending analogies is fun: Flash is mushrooms. They're in way too much soup, and pudding eaters like me don't care if they're banned from everything.

[Sinis]

To be fair though, there is an equivalent group on the extreme casual side who love to harp on cards that are probably not an issue to the vast majority of players. Doesn't make what either group of players is doing okay, but it is not a problem constrained to a small minority of cEDH.

Yeah, but we're not creating driveby sock puppets, calling for the RC's dissolution, or issuing death threats.

People are allowed to complain, but I don't see any casuals doing anything beyond being keyboard warriors, myself included.

[onering]

I agree with everything you wrote, except this:

What too many people don't realize is that those people are not even representative of cEDH players as a whole, and will never get their way.

They did get what they wanted. They got Flash banned. The RC consulted with some "cEDH players they trust" (that's the verbage in the press) and banned Flash. Realistically, would it have ever been a consideration without the perpetual noise, forum drivebys, users with a name like sheldonshouldretire, and a death threat or two from those caustic few? My guess is no.

That was something that was wanted by almost all cEDH players, not just the extremists

[bobthefunny]

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This is actually incorrect. The *vast* majority of Magic players are not actively trying to move towards cEDH. Most players see Magic as a fun outlet, a game where they can get together and sling spells with their friends. Cards get added to their decks because they get opened in packs and look cool. cEDH is moving away from them faster than they're approaching

There's nothing wrong with wanting to improve, but it isn't the motivation for a heck of a lot of people out there. I will again post this article here, as it does a better job of explaining it all than I ever could: https://adjameson.wordpress.com/2018/12 ... -at-large/

Note also that most other formats don't make a distinction between casual and competitive because the casual scene in them is virtually nonexistent. Commander tapping into the (enormous) casual audience was a big deal.

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The longer you play more you accumulate cards and eventually you get the good ones. Cedh also suppose peak power level wise so it can't really go anywhere while casual can go up.

Emphasis mine.

This isn't related to wanting to play competitively at all. For EDH, my collection is essentially as complete as you could want, including many big ticket items like Timetwister, Imperial Seal, Mana Crypt etc. bobthefunny can back me up, he's seen it.

I can build any cEDH deck in paper, which is more than I can say for most of the proxy-using cEDH player base.

And yet, here I am, playing Tana the Bloodsower/Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa saprolings, or "Chandra Tribal" complete with Chandra playmat. bobthefunny can back me up on that, too.

More than that, there are many people who play casually, despite having even better collections than mine. This point could not be more patently false.

I just want to reiterate these as well, and the fact the casual does NOT mean trending towards cEDH. Like Sinis, I have most of the cards that I could ever want to build a deck (though I am missing some of the big ticket items). I've been playing a long, long time - and a good portion of my collection has just grown organically - to the point that I am often surprised at what value certain cards have taken.

This means that I have a far greater set of options, and also a far greater breadth of knowledge in building my decks than many players in my playgroup. Many of them don't frequent online forums, or post deck lists. They just look through whatever box is in their basement. Often what ends up happening starts off as you describe: I'll build a janky deck off a theme, then research, edit, update, and tune. Eventually, that deck gets a bit too strong for my meta... and then I stop playing it. Because that's not fun. I still have a few of them built together, because I'm proud of the creation of it - but at that point it's time to move on to a new project, and something new that will be fun for all those involved.

Overall - we've been very, very good about managing the powerlevel of our LGS and where we seek to play at. Sometimes new players have come in with far and above more powerful decks - and I can have a bit of fun bringing out my tuned creations and having a game or two. But by and large, each of those players that has converted to a regular has come back - with a new deck. One that's jankier, crazier, and more fitting to our environment. And we all have fun that way.

[Segrus]

The vocal minority he's talking about has a far more extreme view than "please ban flash this once."

The common view of the extremist folks is "RC must go and be replaced by a group focused on competitive play quality."

To be fair though, there is an equivalent group on the extreme casual side who love to harp on cards that are probably not an issue to the vast majority of players. Doesn't make what either group of players is doing okay, but it is not a problem constrained to a small minority of cEDH.

It may just be my experience, but the extreme casual side you're talking about are regularly outright dismissed for being silly/ridiculous, out of touch, misunderstanding power levels, maybe poor at threat assessment, or even sometimes idiotic (and sometimes inappropriately called worse). What I mean is whenever I've seen stuff you're talking about, I also find them being called out at the same time. I haven't been finding that to be the same case with the cEDH extreme lately.

Of course it's hard to quantify where and how often the casual extreme make their curious claims. Mainly due to how they may not be regularly bringing their opinions to the Internet. And furthermore, I won't claim to have a far-reaching lens when it comes to Magic content. I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't necessarily find the two sides you're talking about being on the same level, so to speak.