SCD: Golos, Tired-Ass Pilgrim

onering
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Post by onering » 3 years ago

No card tag because we all know what it does.

I rarely call for banning cards, I tend to feel that the correct answer is for the format to adapt, and even though there are borderline cards that I would generally want to see gone (like Tooth and Nail) I realize that my personal distaste for a card does not make it banworthy, even if its borderline. But enough is enough. Golos has been the single most disruptive commander I have ever seen hit the format, having been playing since 2008, comparable to Griselbrand (but being more disruptive because Griselbrand was quickly banned). It is a wrecking ball in casual that both demands to be dealt with yet which cannot effectively be dealt with as its etb lessens the impact of commander tax. It is a broken card advantage and mana advantage mana sink that turns game into archenemy unless someone else is running a legit cEDH deck or other form of fast combo. I'll list the RC's stated red flag's for cards below and analyze them. I've listed them in the order, from most to least relevant in Golos' case.

• Lead to repetitive game play.- Dear lord does it ever. You can, practically, build Golos decks in interesting ways, like Pokken's bushel of "monocolor" variants, Golos Lands, etc. I've even seen a Gods Tribal deck headed by Golos. Unfortunately the most common way Golos is played is ramp into him as fast as possible then drown everyone in free spells, which are often extra turns and other haymakers. Its an incredibly repetitive deck, that creates incredibly repetitive games, and its everywhere. Its omnipresent. Even the more varied builds I mentioned tend to play out the same way, ramp into Golos then spam his ability, its just that what he craps out is different. Not as sure about Pokkens decks since I haven't played against him, but its what happens in mtgo. The exception here is Golos Lands, because that usually plays out as Field of the Dead.dek. So rushing Field of the Dead being the most unique way the commander plays is a pretty bad knock against it. 9/10, only because there is some variation in the contents of Golos decks even if they still play the same, and Lands.dek exists.

• Cause severe resource imbalances- It casts the top 3 cards of your library for 6 mana, after tutoring a land to the field on etb. 3 cards, on its on, is a significant but fair resource imbalance, but those 3 cards plus the often double digit mana savings, even when factoring in the cost to activate him, is absurd, and really hits into Prophet of Kruphix and Paradox Engine territory 8/10

• Are very difficult for other players to interact with, especially if doing so requires dedicated, narrow responses when deck-building.- For most commanders, simply repeatedly removing them will eventually cause them to become to expensive to cast, but that standard answer is greatly undermined by Golos' etb ability, which enables the Golos player to easily keep pace with commander tax, especially the first couple of times as it can grab Ancient Tomb and other lands that product more than 1 mana. Once a mana doubler or smothering tithe hit the field, simply removing Golos only provides a minor speedbump. Answering Golos with removal requires everyone at the table to be playing sufficient removal AND to play archenemy, dedicating their removal to Golos until the pilot is dead, as allowing Golos to stick long enough to be activated begins the CA and mana advantage spiral. Thus, only specialized answers like Dranith Magistrate, which themselves can create issues, are actually effective against Golos' ability. 8/10

• Cause other players to feel they must play certain cards, even though they are also problematic.- Already talked about this with Dranith Magistrate, but the answers that are actually effective against Golos are few, and often create undesirable play themselves. MLD is another effective answer in response to Golos getting removed or the Golos player having cast him but needing to untap to activate, but while I'm not anti mld many are and its not something that should be everywhere, especially not when its used as an answer to stop one broken card from taking over a game. The choice shouldn't be Golos goes crazy or the game grinds to a halt. The other answers are either very narrow and white or consist of simply comboing out before Golos comes online. The latter is the most effective answer to Golos, and we shouldn't be in a place where the key to dealing with the boogeyman in casual is to play faster combos. 7/10, as its already covered a bit above and the choice most people make seems to be to eschew the narrow answers and instead combo faster or play archenemy (neither of which are ideal for casual).

• Interact poorly with the multiplayer nature of the format or the specific rules of Commander.- Not the multiplayer nature, which is actually a saving grace as it allows players to archenemy Golos, but the specific nature of the format. Its a tutor in the command zone that helps negate its own commander tax. Its a soft work around the commander tax mechanic that greatly reduces its effectiveness at allowing opponents to deal with problem commanders. Being a tutor in the command zone is also mildly problematic as it helps circumvent the singleton nature of the format, which is made less problematic by it being a narrow tutor (lands only) but that is cancelled out by it being a 5 color commander that can be cast for colorless and tutor up whatever it needs to hit all five colors. 4/10 This is a moderate issue but would not make the card banworthy on its own, or even worthy of consideration. In the context of everything else, though, it serves as another strike against it.

• Allow players to win out of nowhere- Not really. It is capable of doing this certainly, but it requires some luck. You have to hit the right cards off his ability, at which point it is possible to just loop into extra turns and mana and just win from a board that started with just Golos, but its difficult enough and luck based enough on its own that I don't consider it very relevant. If that was all that was wrong with the card, it would be either a minor annoyance or a funny thing that can happen. The chances of accomplishing this go up with top deck manipulation or mana doublers already in play, which are both obviously common in the deck, but that's not really out of nowhere then is it? Its not a problem that the deck gets surprise wins, so 2/10.

• Prevent players from contributing to the game in a meaningful way. The one category it doesn't hit at all. It doesn't stop its opponents from doing anything except by winning quickly. If you can do your thing before Golos comes online, Golos sits in the command zone and cries. While as I said earlier this pushes the format towards faster combo or other ways that win early (or can kill a player early), and I think that's bad for the format because I think the critical turn with Golos is 5, that isn't relevant to this category. 0/10

The result is an extremely problematic commander that creates exceedingly repetitive gameplay, is omnipresent in the format, is difficult to interact with, circumvents one of the commander mechanics meant to restrain commanders, creates undesirable play patterns (by promoting fast combo as an answer and by making games devolve into archenemy), and is a powerful mana sink that creates sever resource imbalances. It is a broken, badly designed card that is actively harming the format. Is it unbeatable? No, its beatable. Unfortunately, building to beat Golos is necessary, because you will play against Golos extremely often, and doing so narrows the kind of decks you can play and pushes you toward fast combo (hard control can work, I'm sure Dirk's flying hippo can handle Golos, but again that's a fairly narrow deck type, and is generally going to require convincing other players that its an archenemy game because if you keep going one for one with Golos the other players will take over the game).

Golos is causing a strongly negative impact on deck diversity, and doing severe damage to the health of the format. It is changing the way we pay commander, and doing so for the worse. There is no sign that this will abate in any way, as many decks can simply be improved by switching the commander to Golos and throwing in Cascading Cataracts (credit to Pokken). While that would seem to indicate that we should be seeing at least a large diversity of Golos decks, as I said before the contents of the decks don't actually make them play any different, as the correct line too often becomes ramp into Golos then spam his ability. It has been long enough and I have seen enough. The format is worse off for having Golos in it, and significantly so. Wizards even banned it from Brawl, where there are fewer tools for it to abuse. The time has come to ban it from commander.

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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

onering wrote:
3 years ago
Not as sure about Pokkens decks since I haven't played against him,
It definitely plays out the same way. My decks add an extra step of "use the land you tutor for to create a ton of mana" but it's still cast golos, ramp, spam golos activations until the game is over. Everyone hates it, even the weakest one mono red is just dumb. It has insane amounts of inevitability that makes it put too much pressure on casual games. No amount of killing golos will stop it.

All my unique color builds do is make it so I can play a much higher ratio of hits since all I need to do is ramp into golos, play my good cards, and those ramp me because of Nykthos/Cradle/Sanctum/Coffers. [in the mono blue version Golos creates mana by finding Inventors' Fair which almost always completes an infinite mana combo]

He's the absolute epitome of commander who has to die the moment he hits the board and every turn thereafter or he dominates the game.

I would 100% be behind banning him. He's a terrible card design.

I really, really enjoyed the design space because there are just so many fun angles. But he's straight up too generically powerful.


----------------------------------------------

Fundamentally my problem with Golos is that he does what Thrasios, Triton Hero and Tymna the Weaver do to so many decks -- he's the absolute best way to play so many archetypes (lands, activated abilities, artifacts, most 5c tribes, flicker, etc, etc.) that he reduces deck diversity just by existing.

And he's even worse because his color demands are so minimal that you can do things like play 2 or 3 color decks and just splash for his ability, which makes him way too easy to build any archetype.

The fact that Golos is one of the best mono colored commanders for every color is pretty telling :P Play a Cascading Cataracts and Chromatic Lantern and get to work.

finally --
re: win out of nowhere
Golos is an infinite mana outlet. His win out of nowhere rate is pretty high for a commander. 4-5/10 at least.

onering
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Post by onering » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
onering wrote:
3 years ago
Not as sure about Pokkens decks since I haven't played against him,
It definitely plays out the same way. My decks add an extra step of "use the land you tutor for to create a ton of mana" but it's still cast golos, ramp, spam golos activations until the game is over. Everyone hates it, even the weakest one mono red is just dumb. It has insane amounts of inevitability that makes it put too much pressure on casual games. No amount of killing golos will stop it.

All my unique color builds do is make it so I can play a much higher ratio of hits since all I need to do is ramp into golos, play my good cards, and those ramp me because of Nykthos/Cradle/Sanctum/Coffers. [in the mono blue version Golos creates mana by finding Inventors' Fair which almost always completes an infinite mana combo]

He's the absolute epitome of commander who has to die the moment he hits the board and every turn thereafter or he dominates the game.

I would 100% be behind banning him. He's a terrible card design.

I really, really enjoyed the design space because there are just so many fun angles. But he's straight up too generically powerful.


----------------------------------------------

Fundamentally my problem with Golos is that he does what Thrasios, Triton Hero and Tymna the Weaver do to so many decks -- he's the absolute best way to play so many archetypes (lands, activated abilities, artifacts, most 5c tribes, flicker, etc, etc.) that he reduces deck diversity just by existing.

And he's even worse because his color demands are so minimal that you can do things like play 2 or 3 color decks and just splash for his ability, which makes him way too easy to build any archetype.

The fact that Golos is one of the best mono colored commanders for every color is pretty telling :P Play a Cascading Cataracts and Chromatic Lantern and get to work.

finally --
re: win out of nowhere
Golos is an infinite mana outlet. His win out of nowhere rate is pretty high for a commander. 4-5/10 at least.
Thank you for giving that perspective. That makes me even more convinced that he needs to go. It looks like the only deck that doesn't just want to spam his ability is Lands, but like I said that's about tutoring for Field of the Dead then abusing that (and possibly getting a random Maze's End win off of Scapeshift) so that's still pretty repetitive.

I rated Golos a 2/10 for wins out of nowhere just because even as a mana sink he does require some set up, or a lot of luck, to just win on the spot. You need some sort of way to generate a ton of mana in play to semi-reliably win right there. Activating his ability just once is a massive resource imbalance, and it becomes backbreaking if you can do it twice in a turn or do it over multiple turns, but I haven't seen that lead to winning on the spot without a serious dose of luck, usually by flipping an extra turn spell and a mana doubler at the same time. If you build enough support on your board to be able to cast Golos and then start activating him more than once a turn, that's going to have a decent chance of just winning right there, but it is also something that required setup. It doesn't require a terribly large amount of setup, but enough that opponents should have a chance to respond and know that they should. You destroy the Smothering Tithe or counter the Mirari's Wake if Golos is the commander, asap. Basically, its a lot of mana to cast him and activate him once on the same turn, and you're typically going to need to activate him at least twice to win. Its fairly trivial to do that, but that's because he's frighteningly resilient and getting one activation puts you far enough ahead to make it reasonably likely you'll get another, even if you have to recast him and pass your turn, not because you can reliably cast him onto a nearly empty board and just go off. Normally I'd rate the way he plays as a 4/10 on the wins out of nowhere criteria, but I always dock a point or two for commanders, as its a telegraphed play so its less "out of nowhere." Your opponents know that its coming and are more able to play around it and be ready to answer it. Still, I see this as something where there's a lot of room for reasonable disagreement over what truly defines "wins out of nowhere." I suspect that I'm pretty conservative in my definition, and that your's is probably closer to the consensus.

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Post by Mookie » 3 years ago

As I posted in the RCotD thread: Golos is everything I love about EDH. Golos is everything I hate about EDH.

From a pure power level perspective, these are some of the lessons I've learned from deckbuilding over the years:
  • EDH is a slower format, which means that aggressive strategies are difficult, and lategame / ramp-based strategies are strong.
  • Every deck is going to want a consistent way to ramp and draw cards, and being able to do either of those in the command zone is strong. Cheating on mana costs (or just reducing them) counts as ramp, and is also very good.
  • If your commander can't ramp or draw cards, the next-best thing is to tutor, or function as a combo piece.
  • From a CEDH perspective, having your commander function as an outlet for infinite mana counts as being a combo piece.
  • Ramp-based strategies are very safe, because the social contract discourages mass land destruction.
  • Due to the color identity rules, having access to more colors is strong.
  • The primary balancing factor for running multiple colors - inconsistency in casting your spells - isn't a problem in EDH, due to how much good mana fixing is available (both from lands and from colorless artifacts).
  • The other limiting factor for multicolor decks - Blood Moon and Back to Basics effects - are discouraged by the social contract, and do not see a lot of play.
  • Even when those cards do see play, they're difficult to take advantage of. This is because so many decks run nonbasics (which means they don't want the effects), and because there isn't a lot of redundancy for those cards (which means that their owners probably won't draw them).
  • One of the better tools for fighting against ramp strategies - mass land destruction - is discouraged by the social contract. And, again, it's hard to build around because most decks need lands to win.
  • Land-based ramp is stronger than artifact-based ramp, because it's less likely to die. Similarly, both are better than creature-based ramp (like Birds of Paradise).
  • The best way to close out a game is to have a single huge turn - either by comboing out directly, or by casting multiple large spells back-to-back.
  • Board wipes are common, so creatures with ETB effects are the best way to get immediate value.
  • The best commanders are either cheap (so they are easy to recast), or have protection (so you don't need to recast them repeatedly).
  • Graveyard-based strategies are strong, because they benefit from prolonged games. As a result, every deck will want to run grave hate, even if it's just Bojuka Bog or Scavenger Grounds.
  • One of the strongest things to do with cheap ramp (or Sol Ring) is to play a snowball-y card advantage engine. Value-generating commanders are an excellent way to take advantage of this.
These are all things I learned prior to Golos even being printed. So, I wouldn't say that Golos is an inherently broken card. Rather, it just happens to be a confluence of pretty much every strong thing you can do in EDH. Given that the original design intent of the card was 'EDH players love to play Solemn Simulacrum, so let's build a supercharged legendary version of it', I'd say that was sort of the point.

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Post by onering » 3 years ago

Mookie wrote:
3 years ago
As I posted in the RCotD thread: Golos is everything I love about EDH. Golos is everything I hate about EDH.

From a pure power level perspective, these are some of the lessons I've learned from deckbuilding over the years:
  • EDH is a slower format, which means that aggressive strategies are difficult, and lategame / ramp-based strategies are strong.
  • Every deck is going to want a consistent way to ramp and draw cards, and being able to do either of those in the command zone is strong. Cheating on mana costs (or just reducing them) counts as ramp, and is also very good.
  • If your commander can't ramp or draw cards, the next-best thing is to tutor, or function as a combo piece.
  • From a CEDH perspective, having your commander function as an outlet for infinite mana counts as being a combo piece.
  • Ramp-based strategies are very safe, because the social contract discourages mass land destruction.
  • Due to the color identity rules, having access to more colors is strong.
  • The primary balancing factor for running multiple colors - inconsistency in casting your spells - isn't a problem in EDH, due to how much good mana fixing is available (both from lands and from colorless artifacts).
  • The other limiting factor for multicolor decks - Blood Moon and Back to Basics effects - are discouraged by the social contract, and do not see a lot of play.
  • Even when those cards do see play, they're difficult to take advantage of. This is because so many decks run nonbasics (which means they don't want the effects), and because there isn't a lot of redundancy for those cards (which means that their owners probably won't draw them).
  • One of the better tools for fighting against ramp strategies - mass land destruction - is discouraged by the social contract. And, again, it's hard to build around because most decks need lands to win.
  • Land-based ramp is stronger than artifact-based ramp, because it's less likely to die. Similarly, both are better than creature-based ramp (like Birds of Paradise).
  • The best way to close out a game is to have a single huge turn - either by comboing out directly, or by casting multiple large spells back-to-back.
  • Board wipes are common, so creatures with ETB effects are the best way to get immediate value.
  • The best commanders are either cheap (so they are easy to recast), or have protection (so you don't need to recast them repeatedly).
  • Graveyard-based strategies are strong, because they benefit from prolonged games. As a result, every deck will want to run grave hate, even if it's just Bojuka Bog or Scavenger Grounds.
  • One of the strongest things to do with cheap ramp (or Sol Ring) is to play a snowball-y card advantage engine. Value-generating commanders are an excellent way to take advantage of this.
These are all things I learned prior to Golos even being printed. So, I wouldn't say that Golos is an inherently broken card. Rather, it just happens to be a confluence of pretty much every strong thing you can do in EDH. Given that the original design intent of the card was 'EDH players love to play Solemn Simulacrum, so let's build a supercharged legendary version of it', I'd say that was sort of the point.
It was the point, I agree, but that's also the problem. Being a confluence of everything that is good to run in edh makes it an inherently broken card. Its an easy to cast tutor that ramps, both directly and via its ability, provides significant CA, and gives access to all colors. Putting all that together, at the costs they did, is just inherently broken. Even needing to tap for its ability would have gone a long way to making the card less busted, by limiting the ability to activate it right away or get more than one activation a turn. Hell, if it just tutored a basic land (or any land to hand instead of the battlefield, and drew cards instead of giving you free spells, it would still be pretty solid but not broken in casual.

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Post by MrMystery314 » 3 years ago

Golos isn't overpowered from my perspective of primarily playing cEDH, but I wouldn't shed a tear if it were banned. I played Golos "all the annoying value creatures" and it was the most mind-numbing experience: I either lost because there were too many board wipes without really doing anything or ran away with the game simply by vomiting good cards onto the battlefield. As much as it feels good to get nice value off a Golos activation, the fact that you could win with most Golos decks by following a flowchart makes them a bore.

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Post by onering » 3 years ago

MrMystery314 wrote:
3 years ago
Golos isn't overpowered from my perspective of primarily playing cEDH, but I wouldn't shed a tear if it were banned. I played Golos "all the annoying value creatures" and it was the most mind-numbing experience: I either lost because there were too many board wipes without really doing anything or ran away with the game simply by vomiting good cards onto the battlefield. As much as it feels good to get nice value off a Golos activation, the fact that you could win with most Golos decks by following a flowchart makes them a bore.
That's why I see it as akin to Prophet and PE (though I see it as being far more widespread and problematic than PE was). It falls into a toxic mid point between being not fast enough for cEDH, and yet far too strong and consistent for casual. The flow chart point is great, that's exactly how it plays. It sounds like you played a fairly tame build of it as well, most people start throwing in wipes, mana doublers, and extra turns so its easier to close the game out once you get a few activations. Simply throwing a bunch of value in isn't quite as bad, but it still leads to repetitive play and just runs away with the game if it isn't constantly answered.

There's a saying the RC bandies about that, to paraphrase, says the format is broken, and the key is to try not to break it. With Golos, even when you intentionally handicap yourself and play a pile of cards without synergy, even artificially limiting the deck to mono color like Pokken did, the card is still broken. If you are intentionally avoiding synergy and/or using massive artificial restrictions in your deck building and the commander still plays exactly the same, and still plays in a broken way, then that's an enormous red flag that the card should be banned.

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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

It definitely has a lot in common with Prophet of Kruphix. Every game with Golos is about golos.

It doesn't feel quite as excessive because it's really not an issue from the deck; as a card it's not particularly worse than any other nonsense thing you can do at 5 mana with a 6 mana activation cost. The issue is the consistency.

In days of old it's a card I would advocate for banning as a commander only.

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Post by umtiger » 3 years ago

MrMystery314 wrote:
3 years ago
Golos isn't overpowered from my perspective of primarily playing cEDH, but I wouldn't shed a tear if it were banned. I played Golos "all the annoying value creatures" and it was the most mind-numbing experience: I either lost because there were too many board wipes without really doing anything or ran away with the game simply by vomiting good cards onto the battlefield. As much as it feels good to get nice value off a Golos activation, the fact that you could win with most Golos decks by following a flowchart makes them a bore.
In my opinion, if you actively play cEDH, you should be able to see exactly why Golos is so powerful in casual EDH. Eye of Ugin is the analogy that I would compare to Golos to in a competitive sense. When a card like Eye of Ugin is a dominant strategy, no "reasonable" control deck can be viable. No slow, controlling deck will ever be able to out-clock an uncounterable asset like Eye of Ugin.

Golos is the same way. Most casual decks will not be able to clock a Golos deck before it gets to the end game. And just like how Eye of Ugin is one of the ultimate end-games, so is Golos in and of itself. Personally, I don't like to play cEDH and prefer highly-tuned metas. Sure, my decks can beat Golos. But in order to beat Golos, most decks have be structurally different (i.e. more aggro, have built in hate, etc.). All of my decks can beat Golos because of how I built them. But most decks will not have the tools to beat a Golos in the end-game and it's very easy to reach the end-game in casual games.

Most of the tools available to beat Golos are also for some reason unpalatable to many players:
1.) Lock pieces like Trinisphere or Drannith Magistrate or Teferi(s)
2.) Pithing Needle (in a Trinket Mage package), Meddling Mage w/ a blink package
3.) Non-basic land hate (Back to Basics, Blood Moon, etc.)
4.) Mass-LD and an aggro strategy

In many ways, playing Golos is like gaming the system. You know that people will spend the first couple of turns ramping and/or drawing. Not enough people play aggro, you knowingly assume that every game reaches the end-game, and can be assured that no one is going to mess with your lands. S

You can spend your first 4 turns playing rocks and get smashed by a Vandalblast. Everyone knows that you had it coming and you will not get sympathy (which is fair). But if you get your bounce land Waste'd, you get to cry. If that's the meta, why not just spend all game accumulating lands and win when you're ready?

I'm not exactly sure if Golos the card itself is the problem? Or the play patterns that allow for Golos to be so easy to win with? But if people don't ever adapt their play patterns, I guess Golos is the problem then?

???JUST WHY IN THE WORLD DID THEY TACK ON THAT ACTIVATED ABILITY ONTO GOLOS???

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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

Hey my mono black golos deck used Eye of Ugin as the endgame after setting up coffers/urborg :) Good analogy. It's incredibly inevitable and hard to interact with.

I remember online I was playing my mono white golos deck against a 5c golos deck and he instantly scooped to my Fall of the Thran :) Pretty hilarious memory. Sorry your 9 lands on turn 4 and Field of the Dead can't handle a little 6 mana enchantment :P
umtiger wrote:
3 years ago
why not just spend all game accumulating lands and win when you're ready?

I'm not exactly sure if Golos the card itself is the problem? Or the play patterns that allow for Golos to be so easy to win with?
It is surely part of both. People have been doing the same nonsense of weaponizing ramp since Maelstrom Wanderer and again with every stupid ramp commander who gets printed (Tatyova, Benthic Druid and Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath from recent sets spring to mind as being samey ramp lands are sacred shenanigans).

I do think something has to give in the EDH meta to tamp down the ramp meta. I think banning Golos is a pretty good way to send a message, and see what kind of impact that has.

I feel like the one-spell-per-turn stax effects are criminally underplayed and are a good example of stuff that helps control ramp (Arcane Laboratory for example). It'd be nice if those were normalized at least.

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Post by MrMystery314 » 3 years ago

I know for certain that if I knew I was playing against a lot of Golos, depending on the deck I'd play something like Blood Moon or Armageddon, especially if without those cards we were losing more often than not. They get salty because their lands are messed with? Boo hoo, you can play counterspells like we are. However, people don't like being metagamed against, even when they're playing a deck that's better than the rest in the long game. I've found another good counter to Golos decks is a turn 1 Sol Ring or Mana Crypt because then you're ahead of the curve, but that rat race is simply what happens when people are too scared to play interaction for the troublesome decks. I'm not expecting people to run Blood Moon or Armageddon casually unless everyone at the table knows that Golos is the problem. There's nothing wrong with ramp in EDH. There is something wrong with people not playing cards to counter ramp as they would any other strategy. Prophet of Kruphix is definitely a good analogue, as when Golos resolves the game becomes about Golos unless someone else is doing something more annoying. Still, as people are unlikely to metagame against Golos no matter how annoyed they feel because of it, a ban would honestly make most people happy.

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Post by umtiger » 3 years ago

Here's a link to Muddstah's latest gameplay video. I watch his channel because I don't play via webcams. Yeah, playing Golos is nuts. I doesn't matter what win-con you choose to play.


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Post by Maluko » 3 years ago

I just wanted to say that I've been tracking how many Golos decks I'm currently finding when playing with random opponents in Cockatrice. Currently, I'm at 22.22% of games have at least a player piloting Golos (10 out of 45 games). I actually started counting this because it came to the extreme of me joining a game with not one, not two, but three opponents playing Golos (yeah, I was the only one not playing Golos that game). I do not have data on how many games Golos has won, but I can tell you that, in at least half of those games, players stopped having fun or outright quit the game after Golos activated its ability for the first time.

The bottom line is: I honestly wished the RC would ban Golos. I really do. I'm 99% sure they won't, though, because it doesn't meet any of the criteria for banning. And, truth be told, Golos can be built in fun ways (but then again, so can many other oppressive commanders). But, from the anecdotal data I've been gathering, I have to ask just how healthy Golos is for the format. Five-colored decks should have disadvantages over lesser-colored decks, but Golos completely denies that disadvantage. I don't think the format is any better with such a commander in it.

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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

I don't think golos can be built in "fun" ways, interesting ways sure, but he applies insane pressure to the board forever. It's fine if you don't use his ability but otherwise it's just going to overpower most games with the value.

Believe me I tried. Even my monocolored golos decks were oppressive.
Maluko wrote:
3 years ago
because it doesn't meet any of the criteria for banning.
I believe the sheer volume of golos decks out there is bannable. He's the 4th most popular commander after a year of play. That's unprecedented. He also creates really tedious board states and repetitive gameplay.

Definitely meets several criteria.

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Post by Dragonlover » 3 years ago

In my meta there's my wincons deck and one other Golos deck that's playing like, 56 lands and doing nonsense things with all of them, so it's kind of opposite ends of the curve. Golos is pretty much the thing that lets wincons keep up though, so personally I really hope they don't ban him since the next best candidate is probably Kenrith and I can't be arsed to track down a copy.

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Post by onering » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago

He's the 4th most popular commander after a year of play. That's unprecedented.

I agree with your post entirely, but I want to highlight this point. I'm typically skeptical of the popular commanders list because it includes decks from over the lifetime of the format, which leads it to be at best moderately correlated with what the format actually looks like at any given moment. But when a commander has only been around for a year, and its cracking the top 5 all time, that a pretty clear picture of where the format is right now, and if anything underestimates how often it shows up. EDHrec breaks it down by submissions in the past week and past month, and Golos is the second most added commander of the past week and most added in the past month, and the past month is by a lot (the release of M21 I suspect pushed up Sisay because lots of those are Shrines.dek based on the deckstats link). That's dominance.

Still, there's always that nagging idea that this only samples the decks submitted to a site, not what is actually being played, meaning that it may be an unrepresentative subset. Its the best data we have to go on though, and it points to Golos being over represented, and possibly verging on omnipresent.

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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

Go on mtgo it's 25% golos :p

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Post by toctheyounger » 3 years ago

Yeah, I'd support a ban. Not that I hate the card, I at least have it as a 99 in a vorthos deck of mine. Very much a bit player there at least.

My issue with him is that he centralizes the game around himself. If you're not nuking the Golos player into the ground you're most likely going to lose to him. Extra bad is the fact that he supports himself for recasting, too, so you're up against it for pricing the Golos player out of an easy commander recast.

I actually sort of like his mechanics, they just happen to be too pushed. But then again, we can say that about a lot of 5c commanders printed in the last couple years, so what do I know? Does he deserve a ban? Maybe. Would I be sad to see him go? Absolutely not. He's the latest 'cram every possible piece of goodstuff into your deck for free plays' commander and he's far too easy to leverage. I could see either one of his land tutor ability or his activated ability on one card, but both on the same is just a bit nuts.
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Post by onering » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
Go on mtgo it's 25% golos :p
I'd say that's about right, perhaps a bit conservative of an estimate lol

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Post by Kelzam » 3 years ago

Usually the posts here are people that have pet peeve cards, so it's nice to see a SCD about an actual problematic card. Frankly I'd equally like to see Narset, Enlightened Master go because she creates very similar games. While Golos doesn't have to attack to become broken, he doesn't have the built in Hexproof on top of being in a Jeskai deck that can concentrate the best protection due to the limitations of building in those colors. Golos is almost equally as bad at holding games hostage as Narset is when a player is playing them as a Commander, though. There is no fair way to build Golos or Narset. because casting multiple spells for free off of your Commander is inherently unbalanced. The closest thing comparable is Etali, Primal Storm but Etali mostly flips cards off of your opponent's decks and it's harder to stack him to be busted (also being in Mono-R so having poor protection).

I've never had a fun game against either Golos or Narset because especially with Narset, the moment that player declares her as an attack, it's going to be infinite turns, combat steps, some number of Planeswalkers or other absurdity and the Hexproof and color identity make it exceedingly hard to stop. The last Narset player that told me he built a fair deck, it was a troll deck that spat out Hive Mind, Possibility Storm and Cast through Time thanks to one attack step. The same is true for Golos, who despite the lack of protection has access to Green to find ways to untap all the lands and spam his activated ability. I will give Golos the defense that being 5-colors, there are people out there that build him more casually sometimes as opposed to Narset where the colors lend to one attack trigger being so broken.

Any game where players are obligated to not play the game because they have to keep a weary eye out on a player is not a fun. Players are forced to hold their removal and responses for the moment Narset hits the battlefield or enters the combat phase because everyone knows as soon as Narset or Golos either one are out there, that the game is immediately teetering on being over. That means players feel bad for interacting with the players not playing those Commanders in the game because they know what will happen with either of those Commanders go off, so boards get out of control due to saving responses for the Narset/Golos player, or feeling resentment from needing to use an effect on another player. It's just flat out not fun for anyone but the player that is playing that deck. Either they get targeted out of the game first which leads to frustration for that player, or they're not allowed to keep their Commander, or everyone else is held hostage to that Commander's presence. This is exactly the opposite of what Commander is about.
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Post by RxPhantom » 3 years ago

I hate out every Golos deck I ever see. The last time I did it, the deck's pilot acted shocked and gobsmacked that I was targeting them. I told him it would be like that whenever I play against a Golos deck, as it's the most degenerate, obscene value-generating, format-ruining commander since...maybe forever. He didn't see the problem and just whined about being ganged up on.

Finally, I used my Merieke Ri Berit deck to steal Golos and spam his ability as many times as possible, with the goal of showing him how miserable it was to play against. No such luck there. He was miserable, but still doesn't seem to understand or care how much fun he sucks out of a game.
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Post by toctheyounger » 3 years ago

RxPhantom wrote:
3 years ago
I hate out every Golos deck I ever see. The last time I did it, the deck's pilot acted shocked and gobsmacked that I was targeting them. I told him it would be like that whenever I play against a Golos deck, as it's the most degenerate, obscene value-generating, format-ruining commander since...maybe forever. He didn't see the problem and just whined about being ganged up on.

Finally, I used my Merieke Ri Berit deck to steal Golos and spam his ability as many times as possible, with the goal of showing him how miserable it was to play against. No such luck there. He was miserable, but still doesn't seem to understand or care how much fun he sucks out of a game.
I see a lot of this mentality about too. It's frustrating to play against. It's almost a 'fun for everyone, but mostly for me' mentality, and it's pretty hard to crack. To me it seems a really myopic way of seeing the game and the players about you, that their fun is less important than yours. Even at a casual table it's not a great mentality to play the game with.
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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

DirkGently wrote:
3 years ago
I mean obviously some commander will be most popular. His popularity isn't wildly high compared to other popular commanders. I'm sorry but 1% doesn't exactly sound like ubiquity.
I think if you're arguing semantics you could say that the word ubiquity doesn't strictly apply, although the sense of 'appearing everywhere' is something I'd argue pretty hard if I were in an arguing mood. Golos is seriously common, would guess half the people I know have a golos deck of some kind.

If 1.3% is actually accurate, that means more than 1 out of 100 people you play against are playing Golos which is absolutely unheard of for a commander.
DirkGently wrote:
3 years ago
When prime time was banned, a big part of the reason that the RC talked about was how frequently it would be cloned, stolen, tutored, etc. If it was in a deck, it'd usually show up and a lot of the game would be fighting to take the most advantage from it. That's not really true for Golos since he's not an overly effective clone or theft target usually (except as a means to disable him ofc - add that to the interaction options).
hahaha man speaking as someone who has cloned golos and then blinked it over and over again he's a ridiculous clone target even just for the land ability. If someone plays Golos against my Ephara deck you can bet I am going to try to steal it and Thassa it or dig for Phantasmal Image asap. Ramping nonbasics is insane.

So while he's not a great theft target because of the mana cost to activate his ability, he's a huge theft target because of how centralizing he is. And he's a fantastic clone target. And you don't need to tutor for him because he's in the stupid command zone. Guh.

In terms of his centralizing effect on games the play patterns are very similar to primetime. Games become about Golos the moment golos is on the battlefield.

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Post by BeneTleilax » 3 years ago

Ramp legends should not include their own payoff.

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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

DirkGently wrote:
3 years ago
I'm not sure how you're defining repetitive? Ofc most commander decks are repetitive insofar as they seek to cast and use their commander. But which cards they draw to synergies are where game experiences diverge. For a very repetitive deck, I'd point to my child of alara deck with 30 tutors getting corpse dance every game.
Repetitive is more than just 'i get the same card and repeat the sequence of a lock.'

The play pattern of golos is:
1. I get golos and ramp
2. someone must immediately kill golos or I go bananas
(...repeat ad infinitum, except late in the game I can both play golos and go bananas in response to removal:P)

There're other repetitive sequences of course - Golos flipping bombs off the top and getting a powerful mana acceleration land that puts them far ahead even if you kill him (e.g. coffers, nykthos, cradle, serra's sanctum, etc.)

Golos has a lot in common with Maelstrom Wanderer in terms of play patterns, in that it doesn't really matter what stupid bombs he's flipping. It's largely irrelevant whether he's flipping wheels or flipping ramp spells or flipping stupid fatties. The overwhelming advantage at extreme consistency is repetitive.

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