[MCD] Cards that would not see much play in present-day EDH

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

I'm talking about the cards from that other thread. These cards would see almost no play because they're annoying and no one wants to play against them. If they were legal and you played them you'd get drummed out of your group or they would be worthless, possibly both.
These cards are either just super bad or have no real practical purpose. The game has come so far in the last 5 years in terms of deck construction and archetypes and power level that these cards that some of which used to be terrifying are now red hot steaming garbage piles.

Of all of these, Biorhythm might see play as a finisher. It might. Maybe. But it's far worse than craterhoof behemoth or tooth and nail and those cards don't risk anything and have a higher kill rate.

But every other card on that list is absolute nonsense that would see so little play that a stern talking to every few months is all that'd be required to keep them in check.

Games just do not go as long as they used to. And these cards are *confusing* to be on the banlist because no one wants them unbanned for anything because they're trash.

The only thing they do is sit on there being confusing. Like who looks at panoptic mirror and is like damn that's gonna break the game wide open!! I'm gonna take infinite turns for only an 11 mana startup cost and having it survive to my next turn!

Do I want them off the banlist? No. Nobody does because like Zach morris, they are trash. But If they print something just like one of them I think it's a waste of time to ban list.

I think they're a great case for why we need the old Problematic casual omnipresence criteria back explicitly. Avoid wasting our headspace when they print another one of these pieces of crap.

When was the last time you had a game ruined because someone cast worldpurge? No? me neither.
Last edited by pokken 4 years ago, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by onering » 4 years ago

Problematic casual omnipresence wasn't a gate keeper that you had to check off to ban a card. None of the cards being discussed ever met that criteria. If a card was enough of a problem whenever it showed up, then it could get banned.

To spell it out more clearly: not meeting any single criteria has never been a reason to keep a card from being banned. Ever.

These cards, in particular, were never awesome. They weren't banned because they were so unbeatably strong that you had to run them, or even so good they saw wide play. They were banned because they are miserable, non-interactive, cheese machines. They are garbage from a power standpoint, and garbage to play against. They are also very appealing to a certain kind of Timmy that is drawn to this sort of splashy, flavorful effect. Some people like big spells that upend games and "oops I win" buttons, even if those are objectively bad choices from a min max perspective. The only thing these cards do is impact the game in ways the RC has repeatedly, consistently, and explicitly said they are against. There are no other uses for them, and banning them is consistent with the RCs vision for the format. From a cEDH or even strong casual perspective, it seems redundant, as you're unlikely to see these cards either way, but most people just aren't that good. I've seen enough people do dumb %$#% online to know these would see play, not anywhere close to omnipresent but enough that they collectively would ruin a small but significant amount of games, and that is literally all that unbanning them would add to the format. How low does that number have to be to not give a %$#%? If 1 out of every 20 games is ruined by one of these flipping the table, is that fine? 1 in 40 maybe? I'd say you'd have to go under 1 percent of games getting ruined by these to justify unbanning them for the segment of the playerbase that likes these effects, and I don't think it would be that low.

Now what if Wizards prints one of the following, all sorceries:

5UUU: Each player's life total becomes the number of cards in their hand.

4BBB: Each player sacrifices all permanents they control, discards their hand, and exiles their library, then shuffles their graveyard into their library and draws 7 cards.

5RRR: Each player sacrifices all permanents, then shuffles their hand and graveyard into their library and draws 7 cards. Then each player reveals their hand and cardname deals X damage to them, where X is the total converted Mana costs of all cards in that players hand

5WWW: Each player shuffles all permanents they control, their hand, and their graveyard into their library, then draws 7 cards. Each players life total becomes equal to their starting life total.

4WWW: Begin a subgame of magic using your library as your deck. The winner of the subgame wins the main game. If you have a commander, you may place it in the command zone for this game.

I'm pretty sure that every single one of those cards would suck. It would be wrong to run any of them. I'm also pretty sure that each one would ruin every game they show up in, and each one would appeal to enough people to see play, but that none would ever be staples or even close. And I'd bet they'd get banned.

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Post by folding_music » 4 years ago

Mmm, I find posts like this weird, like you're speaking for an entire casual community when you're really only in tune with a slice of it. Plenty of casual players are gonna look at Panoptic Mirror, have their imagination fired with all the weird stuff they can do it without ever considering taking infinite turns or doing infinite board sweeps, then find out it's banned and realize they're holding onto a useless card. Of course I want it removed from the ban list!

Biorhythm can stay on though >:) talk about yr anticlimactic wins.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

onering wrote:
4 years ago
How low does that number have to be to not give a %$#%? If 1 out of every 20 games is ruined by one of these flipping the table, is that fine? 1 in 40 maybe? I'd say you'd have to go under 1 percent of games getting ruined by these to justify unbanning them for the segment of the playerbase that likes these effects, and I don't think it would be that low.
I think it would be way fewer than 1/100. How many games does jokulhaups even figure in - as a win condition or a table flip - for you? I've seen it cast maybe twice in the last 6 years.

The segment of the population that likes those effects also likes playing with other people, and they stop.

That's the main point I'm trying to make I think is that these cards would not see play because of peer pressure - much stronger versions of all these cards already exist, and they aren't out there rampantly ruining games and demanding bans, so why would these?

My guess is you would see a worldfire basically never and if you did people would be like man that card isn't fun, and then you'd never see it from that player again.
folding_music wrote:
4 years ago
Mmm, I find posts like this weird, like you're speaking for an entire casual community when you're really only in tune with a slice of it. Plenty of casual players are gonna look at Panoptic Mirror, have their imagination fired with all the weird stuff they can do it without ever considering taking infinite turns or doing infinite board sweeps, then find out it's banned and realize they're holding onto a useless card. Of course I want it removed from the ban list!

Biorhythm can stay on though >:) talk about yr anticlimactic wins.
"nobody" is a moderate exaggeration, and panoptic mirror is certainly the most fun of the bunch - a buddy of mine had it in his deck for like a year before we realized it was banned.

My thinking is generally like...who's gonna play biorhythm? If they really wanted to do that they could have it on a reasonably strong mana dork with shaman of forgotten ways and no one really plays that.

Do you think casual players would really play it that much in a way that's that bad?

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Post by folding_music » 4 years ago

I think my exception to Biorhythm comes from the way I always played in lower power groups; having a card that just wins on the spot, even if it's inefficient, counterable and not a sure-fire victory, just feels bizarre in those contexts. It's like... okay, you won, while everyone else was laying out their theme decks or trying to get a hacked kormus bell concept going, or putting every Desert in their deck into play or getting a coronet on a rabid wombat, or something, you won, so now we'll put our cards away? It's almost a meaningless effect... and when "serious players" consider these victory conditions that suck the air out of the room scrubby approaches to the game then the Rule 0 rating-outta-ten concept stops being sufficient, cos you can say your deck that cycles to Biorhythm is a four out of ten and unserious.

edit: Serious play is a worrying term to people looking on from other perspectives!

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

folding_music wrote:
4 years ago
I think my exception to Biorhythm comes from the way I always played in lower power groups; having a card that just wins on the spot, even if it's inefficient, counterable and not a sure-fire victory, just feels bizarre in those contexts. It's like... okay, you won, while everyone else was laying out their theme decks or trying to get a hacked kormus bell concept going, or putting every Desert in their deck into play or getting a coronet on a rabid wombat, or something, you won, so now we'll put our cards away? It's almost a meaningless effect... and when "serious players" consider these victory conditions that suck the air out of the room scrubby approaches to the game then the Rule 0 rating-outta-ten concept stops being sufficient, cos you can say your deck that cycles to Biorhythm is a four out of ten and unserious.

edit: Serious play is a worrying term to people looking on from other perspectives!
When I wrote serious play I meant "a serious amount of play." I don't think those cards would see very much play at all.

Do you think that your lower powered groups would really play stuff like that biorhythm? My expectation is it would see most of its play as a substitute for craterhoof behemoth in some green creature decks, where it functionally does the same thing.

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Post by folding_music » 4 years ago

I mean, in the groups I've played in, people aren't applying these archetypical deck functions at all, like, we aren't looking at card X or Y and thinking, "While this may be less optimal than the accepted best overrun effect in the format, I may be able to use this card to similar ends" cos underpowered doesn't mean the same as tuned EDH but with worse cards. It's more of a free-for-all, run your pet cards, see what happens type thing.

Sorry if I've sounded frustrated at yr posts, I like your writing and you care about the game as much as I do - I just don't feel represented by what you're saying the ban list should care about!

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

folding_music wrote:
4 years ago
I mean, in the groups I've played in, people aren't applying these archetypical deck functions at all, like, we aren't looking at card X or Y and thinking, "While this may be less optimal than the accepted best overrun effect in the format, I may be able to use this card to similar ends" cos underpowered doesn't mean the same as tuned EDH but with worse cards. It's more of a free-for-all, run your pet cards, see what happens type thing.

Sorry if I've sounded frustrated at yr posts, I like your writing and you care about the game as much as I do - I just don't feel represented by what you're saying the ban list should care about!
No worries, I understand. I'm still pretty interested in whether you think your rabid wombat loving folks would play many of these cards though :)

There're a few of those kinds of decks in my meta still and I can't imagine any of those guys playing worldfire for anything more than a fire-themed deck.

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Post by onering » 4 years ago

Did Iona see a ton of play? Not really by the time she was banned. People generally were not ok with the card, and she really isn't that good from a competitive perspective or even a 75 percent perspective, and she still ended up getting banned.

Would you, like, ever see Shahrazad? The card sucks and people hate it. Its still banned. Few people would run it if it were unbanned, but it appeals to a certain kind of player who would, and it would be miserable.

I just cannot fathom why you keep cycling around back to power level as if that matters to how the RC bans cards, or expecting that a card needs to be widely played to be banned. Historical precedent, including the recent Iona banning, proves that neither of these things is true. This is why I said in the other thread that you dont seem to understand the banlist. Your argument is that none of these cards would be banned today, but in order to make that argument you use reasons that aren't relevant to how the RC actually bans cards. As I said in the other thread, your arguments are perfectly good arguments for why the RC should change the banlist philosophy, but until they do they still ban the same way as they did when Iona was banned, and that bodes I'll for all these cards.

Except Panoptic Mirror, I could see that having enough fair uses to be unbanned. It's not because it's not that good, it's because it's pretty open ended and you can actually have fun with it. You don't have to use it as a janky extra turns combo or do something that destroys the game, you could put any sorcery under it, and that opens up some actually interesting possibilities. It's the only one of these cards that actually offers something to the format other than it's problematic applications.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

onering wrote:
4 years ago
Did Iona see a ton of play? Not really by the time she was banned. People generally were not ok with the card, and she really isn't that good from a competitive perspective or even a 75 percent perspective, and she still ended up getting banned.

Would you, like, ever see Shahrazad? The card sucks and people hate it. Its still banned. Few people would run it if it were unbanned, but it appeals to a certain kind of player who would, and it would be miserable.

I just cannot fathom why you keep cycling around back to power level as if that matters to how the RC bans cards, or expecting that a card needs to be widely played to be banned. Historical precedent, including the recent Iona banning, proves that neither of these things is true. This is why I said in the other thread that you dont seem to understand the banlist. Your argument is that none of these cards would be banned today, but in order to make that argument you use reasons that aren't relevant to how the RC actually bans cards. As I said in the other thread, your arguments are perfectly good arguments for why the RC should change the banlist philosophy, but until they do they still ban the same way as they did when Iona was banned, and that bodes I'll for all these cards.

Except Panoptic Mirror, I could see that having enough fair uses to be unbanned. It's not because it's not that good, it's because it's pretty open ended and you can actually have fun with it. You don't have to use it as a janky extra turns combo or do something that destroys the game, you could put any sorcery under it, and that opens up some actually interesting possibilities. It's the only one of these cards that actually offers something to the format other than it's problematic applications.
Iona being banned is still one I find extremely questionable; however, it at least fits some of the ban criteria as a very high ranking as opposed to a few criteria at a modest to negligible ranking. She could easily be on this list; it was never really an issue and someone got it into their heads that it and painter's servant were mutually exclusive despite no real reason to think that's the case.

I wish you'd lay off of the things like "you don't seem to understand" and "I don't know why you're cycling between whatever" statements. They don't serve any real purpose except to make me not want to talk to you. There're so many factors at play that it's difficult to stay locked onto one. If you want to structure the discussion feel free to propose that. But dial back the aggression a little.

I'm not really making just one argument, there're a bunch of thoughts floating around. Power level factors in a little, but mostly only in respect to how they compare to existing cards that do functionally the same things.

* I do think that the RC's bannings are more acceptable to the broader community when there is a threshold of play volume. You can see this in cards like prophet of kruphix that are now widely accepted as banworthy, vs. iona, Shield of Emeria which left probably 90% of the community scratching their heads as to why that even matters. It was a really questionable ban that opened up the banlist to attacks from a ton of angles.

* I do not think that these old bans fit the criteria of the current banlist very well; I understand that they are not a clear cut checklist "if it meets 3 of these criteria we will ban" and there are no precise gatekeeper criteria. However, there *is* a kind of summary statement and I don't think these cards fit it. You and I disagree on this -- but that's a disagreement not a failure to understand on my part I don't think.

--Going along with that, many things have changed in Commander insofar as how people construct decks and how the game is played that make the state of the game MUCH different now. Jhoira was a big bogeyman at that time and sees basically no play now, for example.

--The criteria now are straight up a lot different than they were when those cards were banned.

* I also think it's weird to say that rule 0 can handle MLD and Stax but can't handle Sway of the Stars. Rule 0 had handled Iona easily in every community I've ever been and I have heard from basically no one who said anything to the contrary.

So there's really two things right, one I disagree with the current criteria allowing for bans that are for tiny subsets of the population (mono colored decks who happen to run into one of the 7 people who bother playing Iona), and two that I don't think any of these cards is as banworthy even as Iona was because they don't line up with the criteria every well.

One of the problems that I see in these kinds of very niche cards being on the banlist is that they are a wedge you can use to ask "well, if it's okay to ban this card even though some people have fun with it and it isn't really hurting anyone often, why not this other card."

The argument someone made about these cards conceptually aligning with Flash really resonated with me, personally. The people who play flash as a weird scout's warning probably are probably not all that different from the people who might like playing a janky coalition victory deck in a fun manner.

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Post by papa_funk » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
Rule 0 had handled Iona easily in every community I've ever been and I have heard from basically no one who said anything to the contrary.
I think there was a fair bit more Iona play than you believe. One of the reasons that we took so long to ban it was that we really hoped that social pressure would keep it down, but - as best we could tell - that wasn't working that well. Turns out that big, splashy angels are kind of popular.

It wasn't played as much as it might have been; social pressure was somewhat effective, but we eventually decided it wasn't enough.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

papa_funk wrote:
4 years ago
pokken wrote:
4 years ago
Rule 0 had handled Iona easily in every community I've ever been and I have heard from basically no one who said anything to the contrary.
I think there was a fair bit more Iona play than you believe. One of the reasons that we took so long to ban it was that we really hoped that social pressure would keep it down, but - as best we could tell - that wasn't working that well. Turns out that big, splashy angels are kind of popular.

It wasn't played as much as it might have been; social pressure was somewhat effective, but we eventually decided it wasn't enough.
That is really weird but very interesting to hear.

I saw it on the battlefield 4 times in 7 years and 3 of 4 were one friend of mine who is, er, kind of a dink about those kinds of effects.

Can I ask where the numbers/perception came from?

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Post by onering » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
onering wrote:
4 years ago
Did Iona see a ton of play? Not really by the time she was banned. People generally were not ok with the card, and she really isn't that good from a competitive perspective or even a 75 percent perspective, and she still ended up getting banned.

Would you, like, ever see Shahrazad? The card sucks and people hate it. Its still banned. Few people would run it if it were unbanned, but it appeals to a certain kind of player who would, and it would be miserable.

I just cannot fathom why you keep cycling around back to power level as if that matters to how the RC bans cards, or expecting that a card needs to be widely played to be banned. Historical precedent, including the recent Iona banning, proves that neither of these things is true. This is why I said in the other thread that you dont seem to understand the banlist. Your argument is that none of these cards would be banned today, but in order to make that argument you use reasons that aren't relevant to how the RC actually bans cards. As I said in the other thread, your arguments are perfectly good arguments for why the RC should change the banlist philosophy, but until they do they still ban the same way as they did when Iona was banned, and that bodes I'll for all these cards.

Except Panoptic Mirror, I could see that having enough fair uses to be unbanned. It's not because it's not that good, it's because it's pretty open ended and you can actually have fun with it. You don't have to use it as a janky extra turns combo or do something that destroys the game, you could put any sorcery under it, and that opens up some actually interesting possibilities. It's the only one of these cards that actually offers something to the format other than it's problematic applications.
Iona being banned is still one I find extremely questionable; however, it at least fits some of the ban criteria as a very high ranking as opposed to a few criteria at a modest to negligible ranking. She could easily be on this list; it was never really an issue and someone got it into their heads that it and painter's servant were mutually exclusive despite no real reason to think that's the case.

I wish you'd lay off of the things like "you don't seem to understand" and "I don't know why you're cycling between whatever" statements. They don't serve any real purpose except to make me not want to talk to you. There're so many factors at play that it's difficult to stay locked onto one. If you want to structure the discussion feel free to propose that. But dial back the aggression a little.

I'm not really making just one argument, there're a bunch of thoughts floating around. Power level factors in a little, but mostly only in respect to how they compare to existing cards that do functionally the same things.

* I do think that the RC's bannings are more acceptable to the broader community when there is a threshold of play volume. You can see this in cards like prophet of kruphix that are now widely accepted as banworthy, vs. iona, Shield of Emeria which left probably 90% of the community scratching their heads as to why that even matters. It was a really questionable ban that opened up the banlist to attacks from a ton of angles.

* I do not think that these old bans fit the criteria of the current banlist very well; I understand that they are not a clear cut checklist "if it meets 3 of these criteria we will ban" and there are no precise gatekeeper criteria. However, there *is* a kind of summary statement and I don't think these cards fit it. You and I disagree on this -- but that's a disagreement not a failure to understand on my part I don't think.

--Going along with that, many things have changed in Commander insofar as how people construct decks and how the game is played that make the state of the game MUCH different now. Jhoira was a big bogeyman at that time and sees basically no play now, for example.

--The criteria now are straight up a lot different than they were when those cards were banned.

* I also think it's weird to say that rule 0 can handle MLD and Stax but can't handle Sway of the Stars. Rule 0 had handled Iona easily in every community I've ever been and I have heard from basically no one who said anything to the contrary.

So there's really two things right, one I disagree with the current criteria allowing for bans that are for tiny subsets of the population (mono colored decks who happen to run into one of the 7 people who bother playing Iona), and two that I don't think any of these cards is as banworthy even as Iona was because they don't line up with the criteria every well.

One of the problems that I see in these kinds of very niche cards being on the banlist is that they are a wedge you can use to ask "well, if it's okay to ban this card even though some people have fun with it and it isn't really hurting anyone often, why not this other card."

The argument someone made about these cards conceptually aligning with Flash really resonated with me, personally. The people who play flash as a weird scout's warning probably are probably not all that different from the people who might like playing a janky coalition victory deck in a fun manner.
Look, I'm not trying to insult you, but it's difficult to follow your point when your mixing two separate arguments. You have said that the RC would not ban these cards today, but the majority of your arguments aren't in service of that, but rather arguing that the RC shouldn't ban cards like this, because you think that expensive cards that are unlikely to be ubiquitous aren't banworthy. Like I've said repeatedly, that's a perfectly fine argument to make on its own, and if we were just having a discussion about what the banlist criteria should be I wouldn't really see much to disagree with. But arguing that the RC should, say, require cards to see widespread play before banning them or take power level into account doesn't do anything to suggest that they wouldn't ban the cards you're talking about if they were released today. Your making very good points, but they don't support what you are trying to prove.


In the other thread, you finally, after a couple of pages, actually described why you don't think these cards meet the banlist criteria as it actually exists. I disagree, I think you rated them way too low on most of the criteria, but those are at least relevant points that further your case that the RC wouldn't ban these cards. The reason I said that I didn't think you understood the banlist is that it took you a long time to try to make those points (and you hadn't yet tried to make them when I said that). When you mix those two arguments (that the RC wouldn't ban these cards today on the one hand, and what you think should be added to the ban list requirements on the other) it muddles both arguments, and when you start using your arguments for the latter to support the former, I can't really think of any other way to describe it than you misunderstanding something. It's like if you wanted to argue that DiCaprio deserved his Oscar for Revenant by bringing up his performance in The Departed for how strong it was. You'd be right, you'd make great points, but it wouldn't further the argument that he deserved an Oscar for Revenant.

Once you start discussing the actual criteria, that's where I see us just disagreeing, it's only when you start arguing based on how you think the RC should ban cards as if that is how they actually do it that makes me question your understanding.


Yes, the criteria for the banlist has changed, but those cards still tick the same criteria they did when they were banned. In fact, the relevant criteria that is no longer extant, problematic casual omnipresence, was one that they didn't check. It was never a gatekeeper criteria anyway, only one way a card could be an issue, but it's removal stands against your argument that a card needs to be widely played to be banworthy (or should be widely played to be banworthy). The way decks are built has also changed, but that doesn't change what these cards actually do. It makes them weaker, solely because games are less likely to go to turn 11, but it doesn't change what the cards do when they actually resolve. You're right when you say it changes the likelihood that people will run them, because they'd be less attractive to people who would otherwise like them, but if they even approached Iona numbers they'd be at banworthy territory. And just like Iona kind of sucked and there was social pressure against her, some people just wanted to run her anyway. And Iona left more opportunity for interaction.

At some point it just boils down to the RCs philosophy. So long as they view low hurdle I win buttons as against their vision for the format, these kinds of cards will get banned. That could change. They've changed their stance on things before. They changed how they view bogeyman combos like Worldgorger Dragon or Painterstone. They absolutely could decide, using the same reasoning that you put forth, that a low hurdle oops I won card like CV is actually ok now because despite the setup being trivial, it's still 8 Mana and this format already has fast combos so whatever, or Sway upends the game but a majority of games are already over by the time it comes online so who cares. But they haven't said that yet, and they haven't given any indication of moving in that direction, and Iona getting banned argues that they probably aren't.

You said you disagreed with the Iona ban, and I think that's the most relevant point, because it shows that you disagree with how the RC approaches the banlist, at least partly. That's ok, especially since it's the kind of disagreement that isn't attacking and isn't trying to make the format something it's not. But that still means that when you are trying to argue what the RC would do, it should be based off of what we know about their thinking based on what they've said and what they've done, the more recent the better. That's a very different matter from arguing what they should do, because your opinion on the format or my opinion on the format don't actually matter when the question is predicting what the RC would do.

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Post by if4ko » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
papa_funk wrote:
4 years ago
pokken wrote:
4 years ago
Rule 0 had handled Iona easily in every community I've ever been and I have heard from basically no one who said anything to the contrary.
I think there was a fair bit more Iona play than you believe. One of the reasons that we took so long to ban it was that we really hoped that social pressure would keep it down, but - as best we could tell - that wasn't working that well. Turns out that big, splashy angels are kind of popular.

It wasn't played as much as it might have been; social pressure was somewhat effective, but we eventually decided it wasn't enough.
That is really weird but very interesting to hear.

I saw it on the battlefield 4 times in 7 years and 3 of 4 were one friend of mine who is, er, kind of a dink about those kinds of effects.

Can I ask where the numbers/perception came from?
From my playgroup (when it was about 15 players), there was a fair amount of Iona play. We had 5 decks with Iona, including myself.

As someone who has been on the receiving end of an Iona in a mono-colored deck, I don't miss her that much.
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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

I will note that 'ubiquity' is still in the summary criteria ("problematic because of extreme consistency, ubiquity, etc.") -- so problematic casual omnipresence lives on in spirit. :)

I just don't think each of those arguments deserves a separate thread hence they are all over the place a bit, so here we are. If you'd like to focus down on one topic lemme know.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

if4ko wrote:
4 years ago
From my playgroup (when it was about 15 players), there was a fair amount of Iona play. We had 5 Iona players, including myself.

As someone who has been on the receiving end of an Iona in a mono-colored deck, I don't miss her that much.
I need more info about this :P

You had 5 different *iona decks* or 5 different people who played iona?

And did you have rule 0 discussions about it?

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Post by if4ko » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
if4ko wrote:
4 years ago
From my playgroup (when it was about 15 players), there was a fair amount of Iona play. We had 5 Iona players, including myself.

As someone who has been on the receiving end of an Iona in a mono-colored deck, I don't miss her that much.
I need more info about this :P

You had 5 different *iona decks* or 5 different people who played iona?

And did you have rule 0 discussions about it?
5 different decks with Iona in the 99, hahaha.

No rule 0 discussions about it, though. Nobody had many problems with the card except the occasional "well this sucks". The few people who tried to start these discussions focused on value pieces like Smothering Tithe or common combo pieces like Omniscience or Mindcrank, and none of them have been successful. We generally trust the RC on most issues, and there isn't enough opinion to Rule 0 it out.

The reaction to the Iona ban ranged from indifference to "I don't have a personal problem with the card but I can understand why she was banned."
Last edited by if4ko 4 years ago, edited 2 times in total.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

if4ko wrote:
4 years ago

5 different decks with Iona in the 99, hahaha.

No rule 0 discussions about it, though. Nobody had many problems with the card except the occasional "well this sucks". The few people who tried to start these discussions focused on value pieces like Smothering Tithe or common combo pieces like Omniscience or Mindcrank, and there have yet to been housebans. We generally like to play by the RC's rules.

The reaction to the ban ranged from indifference to "I don't have a personal problem with the card but I can understand why she was banned."
That was pretty much my reaction and my opinion on most o the cards in this thread -- like yeah I'm not gonna miss them and I wouldn't really aggressively lobby for them to come back. But I do worry about the consequences for what people think those kinds of bans mean.

Thanks for sharing :)

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Post by MrMystery314 » 4 years ago

As someone who definitely leans toward the competitive end of the spectrum, I somewhat ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ regarding those banned cards and similar ones like Worldpurge: I don't particularly mind them over any other splashy spell like Enter the Infinite, but I can't say I'm particularly excited by them. In my opinion, adding more potential game-changers to the legal card list doesn't really change anything; they aren't miserable, but I don't think there is a net benefit to unbanning those cards. I think Panoptic Mirror is a fun card, one that has lots of possibilities besides 8 mana: add 30 minutes to the game, and once again my preferred philosophy is "unban everything," but I'm not shedding tears about those cards. Similarly, even with something like Iona, something I could theoretically play, I can't say my average EDH experience is better or worse with it in the format. It's merely one of the many cards like Sheoldred that are strong but not completely busted, despite never bringing joy to opponents. I don't think the format is in a worse place with Coalition Victory banned, even if it's not a necessity. Cards like that or Biorhythm that have few ways to be easily disrupted, especially at lower power levels, don't feel great when people don't have the luxury of saying "That was epic. Game 2?". It's hard to find good cards that win efficiently where people feel good about them, as people don't like feeling that they've lost without any potential for counter-play. That does segue back to a lot of the rule 0 discussion where there should be some discussion about how interactive games are expected to be, where cards like Biorhythm range from laughable to ticking time bombs.

In short, while none of the cards listed would hurt significantly by being unbanned, they don't provide any significant benefit where changing the status quo matters; players that feel like they're being denied their janky win conditions have plenty of options to choose from. Similarly, other game-changer cards like Jokulhaups aren't hurting enough people to where a blanket ban on all such cards wouldn't cause collateral damage through mistrust, even if only a relatively small percentage of players benefit from them in the "this enables my superfriends deck to have a cool board wipe" way, not the "yeehaw, we get to restart the game again!" way.

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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

One down, four to go. :)

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Post by TheAmericanSpirit » 2 years ago

No offense @pokken, but forget these terrible cards and their current legality in EDH. They're beneath you and almost beneath contempt.

Instead, focus your mighty brain on getting Gifts Ungiven off the banlist. That is a much more worthy cause, and the continued freedom of Intuition (the vastly stronger card) only serves to exacerbate the inanity of its banned status. C'mon, be the hero we need!
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Post by BeneTleilax » 2 years ago

TheAmericanSpirit wrote:
2 years ago
No offense @pokken, but forget these terrible cards and their current legality in EDH. They're beneath you and almost beneath contempt.

Instead, focus your mighty brain on getting Gifts Ungiven off the banlist. That is a much more worthy cause, and the continued freedom of Intuition (the vastly stronger card) only serves to exacerbate the inanity of its banned status. C'mon, be the hero we need!
Make your own thread about it then? This is pretty explicitly about cards that are low-power, but banned. I agree with you, but this is pretty transparent topic hijacking.

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Post by TheAmericanSpirit » 2 years ago

I wouldn't call it hijacking so much as backseat driving. I just think we have better places to go than this thread's likely destination. And pokken makes great threads, so hell yeah, I will baldly attempt to poach his interest if I must.

That being said, I'll desist from any further derailment. But Pokken, don't forget ol' Gifts when you've eaten your fill of this topic.
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

TheAmericanSpirit wrote:
2 years ago
I wouldn't call it hijacking so much as backseat driving. I just think we have better places to go than this thread's likely destination. And pokken makes great threads, so hell yeah, I will baldly attempt to poach his interest if I must.

That being said, I'll desist from any further derailment. But Pokken, don't forget ol' Gifts when you've eaten your fill of this topic.
I think gifts needs its own thread and I would not be surprised if there was one already. Started by Dirk who I gree with generally on this issue:

viewtopic.php?f=38&t=24804&p=75367&hilit=gifts#p75367

The thing with Gifts Ungiven is that it would be a powerful instant staple, so I don't think it belongs in this thread full of trash cards no one would play except as memes (which are a total waste of banlist real estate).

Gifts should be unbanned for far different reasons - it's a cool card that gives a budget option to Intuition that's a lot more fun. But it's very powerful so I can't kid that it would never see play :)

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Post by BeneTleilax » 2 years ago

Panoptic Mirror also becomes annoying when you imprint a wrath.

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