[SCD] Flash
Posted: Fri Jul 12, 2019 9:35 am
There is currently a lot of noise surrounding this card, and I'd like to discuss it (and more broadly the interrelationship between "casual spirit of the format" Commander and cEDH).
The first thing you're probably saying is, "Why ban Flash? No one runs that card." Well, that's sort of true. I am struggling to think of a time when I ever saw this card played in a game that didn't have prizes on the line. And there is the argument to be made that you can do some non-degenerate things with this card, like using it in conjunction with an ETB creature like Eternal Witness to get a Counterspell back to your hand, or with Kokusho, the Evening Star to stop yourself from taking lethal damage. There are certainly some generals that would find a way to use Flash fairly.
The counterargument to this, and the reason that so many players want to see it banned is because it is dominating the cEDH scene to the point where you either run a Flash Hulk combo or you attempt to metagame against it. In talking to people from that community, Flash Hulk has completely stifled creative deckbuilding and deck variety.
So what, right? That's a cEDH problem. Well, yes and no. It's true that the Rules Committee does not tailor the list to competitive play, and I think they would have a hard time making a ban list that catered to both groups without upsetting one group. But at the same time, cEDH players ARE Commander players like everyone else, and they don't necessarily play exclusively cEDH. So we should be concerned about their happiness with the format. And as public play increases, it gets harder and harder to keep playstyles separated, meaning that the chances of a Tymna and Thrasios deck could easily run up against a Feather deck are higher, even with steps like Rule 0 in place to try and prevent this.
If we look at Flash from the perspective of the format philosophy, Flash is actually a good candidate for banning.... almost. The phrase "it does not seek to regulate competitive play or power level, which are decisions best left to individual play groups" is a disqualifier immediately, although I would offer the notion that the problem Flash presents isn't one that is solvable at the "talk to your play group" level. But let's look at the rest of the philosophy. Commander is a social game that is designed to let players express themselves through their decks. Cards that win out of nowhere, are ubiquitous, or cause other players to feel they must run, and lead to repetitive game play should be avoided. Flash hits every one of those points. It has warped their format to the point where you have to play it, and it has pushed many other decks and archetypes out of the format. As such, games play out very similar by being an race to see who can Flash first, with the combo easily achieved by turn two.
In summary, banning Flash would have very little impact on the casual Commander players (as evidenced by EDHREC showing that the overwhelming majority of decks that run Flash also run Hulk), but by banning it you would reopen the cEDH metagame into one of diversity and greater enjoyment.