ISBPathfinder wrote: ↑3 years ago
Sorry in advance, this is going to get messy to respond to.
No apologies necessary, this just what it's gonna look like, and there's no help for it
I could use
Biorhythm to help me against a lifegain deck too.
Okay, but I don't believe Biorhythm should be banned either.
Oracle / Jace aren't good cards outside of their win the game function and similarly to Bio it tends to be how they are played.
I think that's a matter for debate, but, also... Commander is the format for 'not good' cards. I would like to play my bad cards.
It is rude of me to say that nobody will play it for its psudo scry effect but I also think that its a very weak card on that end of its play for this format. Its going to be a lot more limited to mono blue devotion style of plays with that and while I can't argue that it won't be played for that, I also think that a VAST majority of decks using it are not intending it for that purpose.
Again, I don't have hard data on how Oracle is being played, but it hasn't been my experience that people win with it. Most of the time, it's a value dork.
If you actually break down
Thassa's Oracle for the dig function, I would say you need at least 6+ devotion digging before it becomes a somewhat reasonable card in that you could instead
Impulse and get a card to hand instead of topdeck for the same mana with less color requirement. Impulse is far from a super used card and I think even at 6 its still somewhat of a weak card limited to mono blue decks digging for a wincon (likely a combo piece) but why dig for the combo piece when it is the combo piece?
Well, this is an apples to oranges scenario; Thassa's Oracle does stuff Impulse can't do, and vice versa; Oracle can hold a sword, but it's not going to help you dig for an answer at instant speed.
Whether it is 'worth it' is not only inherently subjective, but, it's also almost a non-sequitur in the Commander format. We play with what we play with not for competitive reasons, but for whatever reason we feel. That something is better or not is kind of a subjective argument. In one of my recent games, someone played
Bounty of the Luxa unironically (it wasn't like Rivers tribal or anything). If they had decided that they would instead play Jace because the crappy value card they had would have been less crappy, I don't think I would have blinked. I think it's completely reasonable for people to play these cards as value propositions, even if they're bad value propositions.
Jace is likewise an incredibly weak play to throw out without the win in this format. The ability to protect walkers to generate value over time is something that is incredibly unlikely. If you look at most planeswalkers that see play in this format they tend to be ones that generate most of their value the turn they enter play. He is a red flags everywhere sort of play and my expectation to slow roll Jace and see him survive a turn rotation is incredibly low. Paying 4 mana to mill 2 draw 1 isn't a good play.
Lots of people play Phyrexian Arena to slow roll draws. I realize that being a walker makes Jace more vulnerable, but, some people want that slow drip. Or maybe they just like Jace.
I think my position here is that, even if a card is 'bad' with some win-the-game clause notwithstanding, it still doesn't mean that people are only playing it for the wincon. I mean, we all know someone who has built Chandra Tribal. I will agree that win-the-game clauses help a card along, and that's why people might play Oracle over Impulse, but, it doesn't necessarily follow that people are playing Oracle with the express intent of winning the game with it on a consistent basis.
If someone is playing Oracle to win with it on a consistent basis, they know exactly what they're doing and there are already a bajillion ways of them doing it, and arguably Oracle is currently the best way to do it. There will always be a best way to win the game, and I don't believe we should ban a card just because it's potentially part of that 'best way.'
If someone is playing Oracle as a value card with a happenstance win on it, I can't say I see the problem.
Barren Glory isn't a problem because it has a long delay, an incredibly hard setup, and gives all players time to respond to it. The speed of value and difficulty to interact with are in fact big reasons why things are or are not banned. If there was a
1W sorcery that said "you win" it would be banned right? Lots of the why things get banned in games like this comes down to how efficient, how easy, and how difficult they are to interact with.
Barren Glory was firmly tongue-in-cheek, but, you've made a good point. I think few cards on the banned list got there because they are hard to interact with. Flash was, but, the RC's announcement for Flash is that this was a one-time departure from the banning philosophy, and that they wouldn't revisit this kind of thing again. If cEDH proponents are to be believed, Flash was the 'best way' to win. It got banned (within this single departure of philosophy) for being the 'best way' and being non-interactive.
If Thassa's Oracle is now the best way to win, and requires the same intent that Flash required, I can't say I care that it's going to be banned. In a casual setting, decking out 100 cards isn't easy, especially if hate gets leveraged against you. If you consistently win with Thassa's Oracle, I think the problem isn't Thassa's Oracle (more below).
What should / shouldn't be banned is a polarizing topic that its hard to agree where said line is. Thats fine if you don't agree, I am just stating my thoughts on why I think it should be. Its not like everyone will ever agree to banned list thoughts.
I think consensus for bannings is a fool's enterprise, but that doesn't mean we can't discuss it.
My stance on it is that Oracle/Jace don't,
in and of themselves, make games unfun. I think that players who use these efficient and hard-to-interact-with cards to consistently win the game are simply utilizing what may be the 'best way' to win.
But, those players were
always going to play the 'best way' to win. If it isn't Oracle/Jace, it's some other bs no one outside of competitive wants to play against. And that's the real key: The player leveraging these cards to win is the problem, not the actual card. I don't believe for a second that Thassa's Oracle and Jace are ruining games because they accidentally won games or the games were accidentally anticlimactic. I've had many more games feel anticlimactic because of cards like
Insurrection than any alt-wincon card ever.
I am of the opinion that 95% of the reason to run both of these cards is in their 'win the game' function. I see your point and if I thought that Jace / Oracle had more merit outside of winning the game then I might be inclined to agree. In my experience though people horde these cards in hand and wait until they can win with them instead of just playing them out for whatever value they could be.
As players get better and have more wincons and ways they can win I think they do tend to shift and be more accepting of playing cards to get what value they can when they can but many of the ways I see them played is with them as the primary wincons at which point players are less inclined to value play them.
These just sound like bad competitive players to me. People more concerned with winning and less concerned with the player experience. I think this lines up with my position above, where the player leveraging these cards is the problem, and if Oracle/Jace were banned, they'd just move on to the next thing that lets them win the game.
If you ever get to a point where you have no cards in library you often don't have 30+ cards still in hand with no max hand size.
Not in my experience. The players who end up decking themselves in casual settings are almost always getting there with card selection that scuttles the library in the process (stuff like
Underrealm Lich +
Sylvan Library). Few people accidentally reach the bottom of their library IME, and when they do, they have all the tools they need to win anyway, even if Thassa's Oracle didn't exist.
The last time I reached the bottom of my library, it was in
Adun Oakenshield, and I won with a 60/60
Apocalypse Demon which I equipped with
Embercleave followed up with a
Heart-Piercer Manticore to kill another player. So I assembled wincons out of the immense card selection and advantage that I already had. Thassa's Oracle is just another way of doing that (the interactivity of which notwithstanding).
Payinig seven mana to maintain not dying plus playing to the board still can be tricky and it also still allows for some interaction of opponents such as removing a threatening creature. I say its less annoying because essentially from the point they cast it the first time at the end you should already know how things play out. It doesn't take forever, its a question of "do I have this" and if you have the biggest stick that people can't throw all blockers into killing or remove then you win. It feels better to me because if I can impact the board or set up better defenses I can make it not win.
I see what you're saying here, and how it'd apply to my last empty library experience, but, at the same time I think that Oracle is just as acceptable a shorthand. Nobody has a counterspell or Stifle effect, or Hushwing Gryff or whatever, fine, you win.
I think Oracle would be bannable if it were frequently ruining games accidentally. Take the Golos thread. The argument there is that it ruins games because Golos kind of does it all; you play Golos, get resources, and then, oh hey, you can pay mana into Golos to spend those resources! So you do it, and this pattern of getting further and further ahead by just naively playing Golos results in games with foregone conclusions, and makes them anticlimactic because they just played Golos and activated him a bunch.
I don't think anyone is
naively winning with Oracle or Jace on a consistent basis. If someone is winning with it on a consistent basis, banning it will serve no purpose, they'll just win with the next most efficient thing that happens to be unbanned. I don't even believe Golos should be banned, but I believe the case in that thread is stronger than what's presented here.
