[SCD] Dockside Extortionist

[pokken]

Reminded myself of this card in the Rofellos thread, as one of the examples of why the RC has largely given up enforcing 'too much mana too quickly' as a ban criteria. They seem a lot more focused on things like monopolizing game time and stax effects these days.

Dockside is basically Sol Ring level goodstuff most of the time - it should be in every deck with red. It's at 17% right now which is pretty unheard of penetration from a new card perspective.

What does it do?

• Makes tons of mana for very little most of the time
• Makes tons of easy infinite combos with basically everything
• Easy to use (no real deckbuilding costs)
• Non-restrictive mana cost that enables ubiquity
• Relevant creature types (goblin tutors, for ex) and P/T to be recruited

My experience with Dockside has been that it wins the game for the person who casts it a high percentage of the time at all levels of play. Late game it can completely overrun an established board, early game in rock-heavy metas it can go bonkers. It recurs easily and obviously is eminently blinkable.

Should it be banned? Dunno! Here's the current list of cards banned for too much mana:

• fastbond
• channel
• tolarian academy

You can make an argument that Black Lotus, Paradox Engine and Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary are also on that list, but they all have other reasons.

So, is Dockside Extortionist better than any of the big three there? It's got plusses and minuses over all of them, not a strict yes/no.

Fastbond is probably the card closest to dockside, though it has far different play patterns. It requires a lot more of you, while dockside requires the opponents to play things that accelerate it. That is, Fastbond requires you to have enough lands for it to be useful. Functionally, Fastbond acts more like Dark Ritual unless combined with other cards.

In a vacuum, I think Dockside Extortionist is way better mid-late game unless you are playing a lands themed deck with lots of Crucible of Worlds effects, but Fastbond accelerates more early and provides a more long-term advantage. That said, there's a significant percentage of the time that Fastbond is worse than Exploration or Burgeoning as goodstuff.

Welll...Channel again is kinda insane early, which is a bit of a distinguisher of most of the cards on the list. Dockside Extortionist needs a particularly established meta (mostly CEDH) to be as good as Channel early - where all your opponents are playing rocks for example. At the top levels of gameplay, Channel is probably slightly worse than Dockside, but at mid power levels a turn 2 Genesis Wave for 28 is going to win a lot of games.

Just from a mana production perspective Channel is a lot more explosive, potentially generating 39 mana on turn 1 or 2, which is absurd. It does have the constraint of only making colorless, but presumably a well built deck would take advantage of that with its bombs.

My expectation is that Dockside Extortionist would be more ubiquitous but less problematic than Channel - its easier mana cost and lower deckbuilding constraints and making colored mana make it a bit more suitable as goodstuff. But channel is going to create a LOT more turn 1 and 2 kills which is probably why it's on there

This one is interesting for sure. Academy makes a consistent mana production advantage, but has a much higher deckbuilding constraint to be truly overwhelming than Dockside Extortionist. Much like Channel it's going to be played less but be more problematic when it happens, I think. Lots of turn 2 tap for 7 blue and win the game type stuff.

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My personal take is that Dockside Extortionist is closer to the busted cards than it is not, but not sure it's quite bannable. The main issue with it that bugs me is that it's basically an autoinclude that can be game breaking at every level of play - slow casual metas with big boards can generate game winning amounts of mana easily, and it's pretty egregious in CEDH too. Not sure that it ought to be banned just for being explosive, considering it's probably not on the same level as Mana Crypt or Sol Ring that are legal...although it is surely more explosive than those some of the times and has more combo elements.

What do you guys think?

[Wallycaine]

So I think there's two main things that stand out to seperate Dockside Extortionist from other stuff banned for being fast mana. One is persistence: Dockside gives you that mana in the form of treasure tokens, and once you've used them, they're gone. While you can blink it, that's getting into the realm of 2 card combos, which are allowed to be powerful. It's not like Fastbond putting the lands into play permanently, or Tolarian Academy just... untapping normally. The other main factor is more nebulous, but I'd call it something like "board state dependence". As you note, outside extremely competitive environments, Dockside typically isn't going to be that explosive in the early turns, and certainly not to the level of something like Channel. Furthermore, and I think this is an important distinction: outside weird interactions, you as the player of Dockside don't get to determine how explosive it is. For something like Tolarian Academy or Fastbond, you're already going to be running your own artifacts/lands, and that naturally snowballs quickly. For Dockside, you having lots of mana doesn't translate into your opponents having more artifacts (if anything, typically the opposite for a red deck ), so even when you repeat the process, it doesn't snowball nearly as much. So the fact that the opponents determine, if somewhat indirectly, how much mana you get out of him makes him scale better to the play level of the group. And if he is getting those massive, big mana boosts... well, the board's already pretty developed, as indicated by there being a lot of artifacts and enchantments on the board, so it's less likely this is a "out of nowhere" win and more likely it comes at the end of a good game.

[umtiger]

I just don't think it's as useful to compare cards as it seems.

If I look at dockside solely on the merits of what is in its textbook and not the text on other cards, I don't see a ban worthy card. You cannot just jam it turn two every game and get that guaranteed impact.

Should it have been costed at least rr or even rrr? Sure, but that's a different type of discussion.

I don't think dockside is better than channel or academy. Those cards are guaranteed all the time.

I think Fastbond is banned because of Strip Mine more so than being a super Burgeoning. If it got unbanned, I promise to only use it to shorten my clock on Maze's End, promise....

[ISBPathfinder]

I don't really have much of a comment here other than to say that the better the meta is the better this guy gets. I play against a few decent and even some solid decks but I also play against a lot of somewhat jank decks. Dockside for me is almost unplayable unless I plan to go infinite with him via some sort of recursion / flicker loop. My expected value if I were to play him on turn 2 would probably be somewhere between 0 and 3 treasure tokens.

I don't really have a lot of input here because I don't actually think that a 1R make 0-3 treasure tokens card is that playable in light of Grim Monolith being a legal card in this format. Sure its colored mana but that doesn't really sway me personally.

I get that mana generation is a big issue, my point was more to point out that this card is a scaling card and as you and your meta get more competative it gets to be more of a problem. To some degree though the banned list is designed not just for the high end play though is all I guess.

[Mookie]

Yeah, I don't think Dockside Extortionist is that banworthy. It's certainly an extremely powerful card, and its status as an autoinclude makes it pretty suspect... but I don't think it leads to bad games the way Tolarian Academy or Fastbond would. Crucially, it's not generating degenerate amounts of mana when played on curve - unless your opponents are running a bunch of moxen or other cheap artifacts/enchantments, this is unlikely to generate more than two or so mana if played on turn 2. That makes it comparable to other rituals like Dark Ritual or Pyretic Ritual, and it's very easy to conceive of a situation in which it performs even worse.

Dockside Extortionist does certainly scale somewhat degenerately in the lategame, and it is a powerful combo piece... but Mana Geyser, Peregrine Drake, and Palinchron already exist.

[pokken]

I mostly agree with what you said but...

but Mana Geyser, Peregrine Drake, and Palinchron already exist.

mana geyser makes colorless red only and the other two generally require a combo piece. Dockside just reads "win the game" on turn 8 most of the time, making 10+ mana.

My record of 'fair' # of treasures was when one guy had a Smothering Tithe and refused to sac all his treasures, then one guy made dockside, then I cloned dockside and none of them sac'd their treasures

(It nearly crashed MTGO)

[Wallycaine]

I mostly agree with what you said but...

but Mana Geyser, Peregrine Drake, and Palinchron already exist.

mana geyser makes colorless only and the other two generally require a combo piece. Dockside just reads "win the game" on turn 8 most of the time, making 10+ mana.

My record of 'fair' # of treasures was when one guy had a Smothering Tithe and refused to sac all his treasures, then one guy made dockside, then I cloned dockside and none of them sac'd their treasures

(It nearly crashed MTGO)

Mana Geyser makes R, not colorless?

[pokken]

Mana Geyser makes , not colorless?

sorry, brain filed it under Mana Echoes

Regardless, is still a fairly significant limitation.

[toctheyounger]

I don't think it needs banning, but it does need more printings. The price is disgusting. I was blown away to see its CMC too. I initially thought it was like 3r and thought that was quite fair. For 1r it's pretty obscene.

I think what stops it from being banworthy is how tempo-dependent it is. If the board is relatively empty the effect is fine, if there's lots going on it goes off. The floor is quite low, especially early, and the ceiling is bonkers. If the floor were higher, we'd be talking a different outcome, I think.

[RxPhantom]

What sticks out about Dockside Extortionist for me is that it's emblematic how juiced red has become in the past few years, and how white seems even further behind now. Red used to be the absolute worst color in Commander (in my view anyway), but it's left white in the dust.

On the card itself, I agree with other posters insofar as it being board-dependent and one-shot. I think there could also be some confirmation bias involved in which people always remember when it makes a dozen treasures, but don't always remember when it made, like, three (which is still solid, IMO).

[onering]

The card is a mistake that shouldn't have been printed in current form, but not quite banworthy if only because dropping it early won't ramp you enough to be broken as its a one shot. Though I do think its borderline. Say you drop him turn 2 and he poops out 3 treasures, now your in Rofellos turn 3 territory, with the difference being he's dependent on your opponents deck rather than your own and he's not a commander. That, I think, is the relevant difference, a 6 drop turn 3 is ok every once in awhile but not consistently. And making 10 mana turn 8 simply is not "too much too fast" by any stretch, mainly because its far too late in the game to be "too fast", and at that stage even the "too much" part is questionable.

I wouldn't be sorry to see it go, though, its not good for the format and ramps too hard midgame (turns 3-6). Netting 6-8 treasures during those turns is too much, and it does so too consistently, and its on the border of too fast.

[UnNamed1]

I wouldn't be sorry to see it go, though, its not good for the format and ramps too hard midgame (turns 3-6). Netting 6-8 treasures during those turns is too much, and it does so too consistently, and its on the border of too fast.

So is Smothering Tithe bannable as well? Because say no fast manaramp is involved, Smothering Tithe is dropped turn 4, By turn 6 you have at LEAST 6 treasures. This gets you just as much value, if not more than Dockside. You say it borders on too fast, but yet, the "power level" of the game determines how good it is. If no artifacts/enchantments are played, Dockside is just as well as useless.

Dockside is extremely meta/game dependent, and I really don't believe a card that has so much variability should be banned. Even in cEDH where you will be getting much more value off Dockside....I don't believe it is ban worthy. Personally, I use Dockside to filter colors just as much as I do for insane value.

[pokken]

2 is a lot less than 4 and now is different than later

[Swift2210]

My friends have started holding their mana rocks in hand to avoid surpassing the threshold of say 5 early artifacts or enchantments for the combo decks running Dockside to go off before T3. It's a very strong card. I don't think it should have been printed., As much as I like playing it in my Yurlok, it's too good for 1R.

[Sinis]

It seems fine. It's parasitic on your opponents plays; they basically have to give you permission to get rich with it. Second, there's stuff like Mana Vault/Grim Monolith in the format. Maybe if they don't play a bunch of fast mana, you get a 1/2 Goblin for 1R. At my tables, this card is sometimes questionable, because we're very casual.

I think the only thing that bothers me about the card is that it's kind of boring; it just makes mana, and the fact it's a goblin or whatever is very secondary.

That said, I think the combo elements with Korvold or other combos involving the feature of artifacts/sacrifices can be overwhelming, but... I think if someone wants to be a jerk in the format, they have every tool available to them, and if Dockside Extortionist, there's a long list of other cards that probably have to go first.

...and it's pretty egregious in CEDH too.

NO! We banned Flash, and now the cEDH meta is perfectly balanced. That's what the experts told us beforehand, and it is now true beyond any dispute.

[onering]

I wouldn't be sorry to see it go, though, its not good for the format and ramps too hard midgame (turns 3-6). Netting 6-8 treasures during those turns is too much, and it does so too consistently, and its on the border of too fast.

So is Smothering Tithe bannable as well? Because say no fast manaramp is involved, Smothering Tithe is dropped turn 4, By turn 6 you have at LEAST 6 treasures. This gets you just as much value, if not more than Dockside. You say it borders on too fast, but yet, the "power level" of the game determines how good it is. If no artifacts/enchantments are played, Dockside is just as well as useless.

Dockside is extremely meta/game dependent, and I really don't believe a card that has so much variability should be banned. Even in cEDH where you will be getting much more value off Dockside....I don't believe it is ban worthy. Personally, I use Dockside to filter colors just as much as I do for insane value.

Well, considering I said that I don't think Dockside is banworthy, I guess the logical thing for you to assume is that I also don't think Smothering Tithe is banworthy. Like Dockside, I think that both are borderline cards, for largely the same reasons. Smothering Tithe costing more upfront, and not getting you the mana until a turn cycle later, does make it a bit less borderline than Dockside, but both are there. Yes, if Tithe isn't dealt with, it will over time generate more mana that Dockside. And more mana than Black Lotus, yet clearly the latter is more powerful. 6-8 mana telegraphed, and earned over a turn cycle or more, is less powerful than 6-8 mana in a burst, and Tithe is only brought back up to Dockside's level by it being more reliable. Generating more over time is less relevant, lots of less powerful cards will generate more mana than Dockside over time, Gilded Lotus will get there in 2 of your turns, aka one turn cycle on par with Tithe and outpacing it if your opponents just draw one per turn. But Gilded Lotus splits its mana into chunks of 3 and has a lower ceiling than Tithe, which lets you bank the treasures until you need them and can generate a lot more treasure on a good turn cycle, and comes down a turn earlier. Dockside coming down turn 5 is usually going to generate as much or more than Tithe would have if played turn 4, and as a surprise, which makes it better. But again, because its doing these mana bursts consistently around that time, and not earlier, I don't think it crosses into ban territory. I would have preferred that neither card got printed (although if any color ever needed something broken to help it out, its White), but neither should be banned.

[pokken]

I am going to flip my position on Dockside Extortionist after a lot of gameplay over the last year.

I think Dockside is a good meta card that discourages people from overplaying a whole raft of problematic cards (Mystic Remora, Mana Vault, etc.) at the higher level of play. It's a fairly common strategy in higher power commander to jam a bunch of powerful artifact and enchantment enablers and then accrue advantage with them while people sweep the board of creatures. Dockside punishes this strategy a bit, and I have come to kind of like the dynamic.

It's pretty unfortunate that its mana cost wasn't RR or 1RR but I don't think it is any more broken than Mana Crypt so let's not stand by sacred cows and say 'because it's new, we should get rid of it.'

It's also a little funny how Dockside Extortionist punishes treasure-meta a little--watching people scramble to sac their treasures in the face of a dockside and trying to decide is funny.

Bottom line, I think it's probably better for the game than not at least right now. If you're in a game where at turn 2 dockside is crushing games, people are probably going super hard already, and if you're in a game where turn 8 dockside is crushing things, chances are good Mana Reflection would have done the same thing (or worse).

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In general banning a card purely for mana production and/or combo potential is pretty rare; cards like Sylvan Primordial are problematic because they set other people back while pushing you ahead, and cards like Prophet of Kruphix or Paradox Engine have active-player-time ramifications that are key to them being banned.

The only cards banned for 'creating a ton of mana' are:

* Fastbond → persistent advantage over time is real, although I think this is a card that could be reconsidered nowadays (it's not realistically going to outperform Exploration that much of the time with how decks are built these days). But still, it provides a long term huge mana advantage with no support.
* Channel → 39 mana now is a lot :p
* Tolarian Academy - I think it's probably unbannable personally still, but it's an exponential mana gain and obviously stronger than dockside most of the time.

Metalworker was a card previously banned for mana production and came off, but was quite a lot worse than dockside all around (although not as board dependent).

[Legend]

I think Dockside is a good meta card that discourages people from overplaying a whole raft of problematic cards . . .

Agreed. Now my only issue with Dockside is that it isn't colorless.

[ISBPathfinder]

Dockside in a fair deck is on the acceptable / ok level. In cEDH decks its busted in half. My opinion of Dockside is that it shouldn't have been printed how it is or it should have had an upper cap of like three which is part of its problem paired with its low cost. I do think that he was a design mistake and that treasures are overpowered due to the level of the power of the cards they are on primarily this card and 1-2 others like smothering tithe. In the end though I would kill Thassa's Oracle about 8 times banning before I could get to dockside in my level of priority.

Dockside is a card that would be on my if I could ban a bunch of stuff list but he would probably be 5+ cards down before I would get to him.

[pokken]

I think Dockside is a good meta card that discourages people from overplaying a whole raft of problematic cards . . .

Agreed. Now my only issue with Dockside is that it isn't colorless.

From a play experience design perspective I think the game is best when the best cards in various colors cost more pips, and that they be deep color investments. I think cards you can easily play in any deck that are high powered as dockside are kinda homogenizing.

The more Sol Ring effects we have the more boring the game is because decks slowly become 95, 93, 90 cards as more autoincludes sink in

[Legend]

I think Dockside is a good meta card that discourages people from overplaying a whole raft of problematic cards . . .

Agreed again. Now my only issue with Dockside is that it isn't colorless.

From a play experience design perspective I think the game is best when the best cards in various colors cost more pips, and that they be deep color investments. I think cards you can easily play in any deck that are high powered as dockside are kinda homogenizing.

The more Sol Ring effects we have the more boring the game is because decks slowly become 95, 93, 90 cards as more autoincludes sink in

I totally agree. My little joke was lost in translation. I should've put a " /s " in there. It already is an autoinclude for red, though.