Topical Discussion of the Official Multiplayer Ban List

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

Airi wrote:
3 years ago
pokken wrote:
3 years ago
The more I think on it I'm not sure this is really fundamentally different than booster packs, especially of masters sets. And people are upset about it more because it's saying the quiet part out loud than anything different from the status quo.
Given it's limited time availability (most sets are printed to demand for a while after release) and limited distribution market, with a large number of people being able to even purchase them, I'd say they're extremely different than booster packs.

I think it's goofy to differentiate the secret lairs from masters sets. If anything they are *more* available to the average player than masters packs, since many game stores straight up refused to sell UMA to players and kept it all.

None of the masters sets have been print to demand ever.

The only distinction there becomes that they're unique new cards I guess? But to me the difference in the practical availability of cards is worse with masters sets (things like mana crypts, etc.).

If you want unique cards and limited availability, Jumpstart is the only real good example, but Dominaria also was fairly under-available and for a very short time compared to other sets IIRC.
Last edited by pokken 3 years ago, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Airi » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
I think it's goofy to differentiate the secret lairs from masters sets. If anything they are *more* available to the average player than masters packs, since many game stores straight up refused to sell UMA to players and kept it all.

None of the masters sets have been print to demand ever.
For the part I bolded, that's a choice on the stores, not WotC. And even then, Masters sets are reprint sets. They are pretty poor at actually dropping prices, but they're not mechanically unique cards either. I haven't had a problem with Secret Lair up to this point, because they were just reprints with alternate art.

Edit: The better comparison here would be Jumpstart, which I have a much harder time judging because of all of the covid-related problems surrounding it's release.

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Post by Dunharrow » 3 years ago

Airi wrote:
3 years ago
To me, it's about the RC making sure their players don't feel like they have to go for broke on a product because those specific cards, mechanically, are only ever going to be available for like 5 days. Sure, WotC could reprint the cards later, just like they could make sure the enemy fetchlands weren't roughly $75 a pop. To me, there shouldn't be that kind of pressure to try to get a hold of cool new cards, many of which will really only ever have a place in this format.
I get the frustration. What happens if you don't buy now, and in 5 years you realize you really need Michonne for your new zombie equipment deck? What if Michonne never gets reprinted? What if you have to pay 100$ just because of the scarcity, even though nobody is playing her.
I get it.
WOTC should have been planning reprints (Godzilla style) in upcoming sets.
I think they get this now.

I just don't see why the RC needs to reinforce this. There are plenty of scarce cards in our format and non of these are auto-includes like Mana Crypt, ABUR duals, etc. We get by.

The RC should not ban these on the basis of scarcity or disagreement about sales tactics. Those are WOTC problems, and we are correctly giving them crap about it. This is not a commander issue. If it becomes a commander issue, then it can be dealt with.
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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

Airi wrote:
3 years ago
They are pretty poor at actually dropping prices, but they're not mechanically unique cards either. I haven't had a problem with Secret Lair up to this point, because they were just reprints with alternate art.
More examples of mechanically unique cards with limited availability - Commander decks

On several occasions the precons have been in super short supply because of chase cards (see TNN especially).

Is letting profiteers, retailers and shops be in charge of bilking players really better than Wizards giving unlimited availability to everyone for a short window?

I think of all the times I was unable to get an FTV for example because of that printing model being in the hands of shops and the more I think about it the more I prefer Wizards being in charge. It's generally a lot more fair.

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Post by Airi » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
More examples of mechanically unique cards with limited availability - Commander decks

On several occasions the precons have been in super short supply because of chase cards (see TNN especially).
With the exception of the first Commander release, and the initial release of C13 (or whichever one had Jeleva, it's been a while (and side addendum, they did fix the print run issue)), they have all been extensively printed and available for a lot longer than a week. There was no "i have to buy this right now or it will never be available again." They saw print runs comparable with actual set releases,

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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

Airi wrote:
3 years ago
With the exception of the first Commander release, and the initial release of C13 (or whichever one had Jeleva, it's been a while (and side addendum, they did fix the print run issue)), they have all been extensively printed and available for a lot longer than a week. There was no "i have to buy this right now or it will never be available again." They saw print runs comparable with actual set releases,
The print timeline of commander sets has been very hit or miss as to when they suddenly spike and disappear. Some years they're available all year long, and some years they vanish. The partner decks IIRC were another year where they were in very short supply and vanished early, though I can't recall exactly.

Wizards is mysterious and wildly inconsistent. There was a long time there where Modern Horizons was in short supply and there were rumors it would never have a second wave. Which people believed because of stuff like Mystery boosters, Masters sets, Comiccon promos, etc.

Conspiracy 2, Battlebond and Jumpstart all had kinda similar experiences (along with Dominaria).

The window being longer doesn't make it any different from 'some random amount of time and you'll never know when it's running out' to me.

If anything I think secretlair is ultimately more fair than the current model. Hell, any of the secret lair cards out there can be had pretty cheaply if you want them on the secondary market because people buy the hell out of them to resell. This one will undoubtedly be sold into oblivion.

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Post by Airi » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
The print timeline of commander sets has been very hit or miss as to when they suddenly spike and disappear. Some years they're available all year long, and some years they vanish. The partner decks IIRC were another year where they were in very short supply and vanished early, though I can't recall exactly.

Wizards is mysterious and wildly inconsistent. There was a long time there where Modern Horizons was in short supply and there were rumors it would never have a second wave. Which people believed because of stuff like Mystery boosters, Masters sets, Comiccon promos, etc.

Conspiracy 2, Battlebond and Jumpstart all had kinda similar experiences (along with Dominaria).

The window being longer doesn't make it any different from 'some random amount of time and you'll never know when it's running out' to me.

If anything I think secretlair is ultimately more fair than the current model. Hell, any of the secret lair cards out there can be had pretty cheaply if you want them on the secondary market because people buy the hell out of them to resell. This one will undoubtedly be sold into oblivion.
With the exception of Jumpstart, to me they're different. Though I addressed jumpstart in an earlier post, it had.... unique problems due to outside circumstances.

If you don't think it's bad, then you don't think it's bad. This to me is crossing some seriously lines with FOMO, and I'm going to come out of this pretty disgusted and disillusioned if the RC does not step in for their players. I don't really know what argument could change my stance at this point, as this practice is so far beyond what I would consider to be okay.

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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

Airi wrote:
3 years ago
If you don't think it's bad, then you don't think it's bad. This to me is crossing some seriously lines with FOMO, and I'm going to come out of this pretty disgusted and disillusioned
Yea my kneejerk was that way. Then I started thinking about how closely it compared to masters sets and FTV, in general all limited product. I think more people have access to SLs than ever had access to FTVs and that's a net improvement for me.

I think both models are kinda skeezy and there should be a much longer duration things are available for. But making them available for a quarter or so would be plenty for me, treat it kinda like set redemption on MTGO - fixed duration things are available for.

I was originally thinking it was super sketchy to print mechanically unique things direct, but fundamentally the direct model really appeals to my tree-hugging side for printing specifically desirable cards instead of tons of chaff. As long as they can ensure everyone has access to them - especially by fixing some of the issues with overseas ordering - I think it'll end up better than the booster pack model.

Additionally, the booster pack model is incredibly sketchy on its own, and I think the gambling aspect of it is even worse than the FOMO of secret lairs. And the waste.

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Post by JWK » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
Additionally, the booster pack model is incredibly sketchy on its own, and I think the gambling aspect of it is even worse than the FOMO of secret lairs. And the waste.
If you are just looking for a few specific cards, buying booster packs is always a terrible idea. Buying singles from secondary market vendors is almost always going to be a better idea.

I personally love sealed and draft, so I like booster packs. I buy boxes (or prerelease packs), play with them in sealed and draft, where cards that never see play in commander have value, and then I can incorporate the stuff that's good in commander into commander decks and trade off the stuff that's strong in standard but not so great in commander. Doing that provides play value at each step.

I think set boosters and "the list" are terrible things which create the illusion of being a better value than draft boosters, when in fact they statistically provide no added value when you factor in the higher price, and they aren't useful for sealed or draft.
I have 68 active EDH decks, with more in progress. I don't consider this a problem. Do you?
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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

JWK wrote:
3 years ago
Buying singles from secondary market vendors is almost always going to be a better idea.
And therein is my issue. Fundamentally the secret lairs hit the secondary market the exact same way as boosters do, so why stress about them?

Buying packs to get cards is dumb, so we use the secondary market. You can actually get exactly the SL cards you want (almost everyone can anyway), AND you can just buy them on the secondary market, where they may be expensive -- but so are most particularly desirable cards.

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Post by JWK » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
JWK wrote:
3 years ago
Buying singles from secondary market vendors is almost always going to be a better idea.
And therein is my issue. Fundamentally the secret lairs hit the secondary market the exact same way as boosters do, so why stress about them?
Nothing about Secret Lair releases is at all similar to how things work with normal releases. The print runs are much, much smaller, they are produced for a very brief window, and they aren't available at all to a pretty significant chunk of the player base. They are sold directly to consumers, vs vendors being able to open packs and sell individual cards, which results in even fewer being available to the secondary market, and since the initial price of the product is set so high, the secondary market price will be even higher. Now toss in the fact that these are entirely new cards, something that hasn't been the case of Secret Lair drops up to now.

What you are failing to grasp is that cards released in booster packs are opened in much greater quantity than any SL product is going to reach. You think the price of Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath was bad? Imagine what it would have been if only a couple thousand were printed, and they were only available for a week.

Or if you want a comparison likely to be closer to the reality of these specific cards, imagine a card that isn't quite on the level of Uro, but which is still very playable - something like Elspeth Conquers Death - had been released as a standard-playable Secret Lair card instead of being included in booster packs. What do you think that card would have been going for 5 months later, and do you think that would be a good thing for the game?
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Post by BeneTleilax » 3 years ago

Ma Ro LIES! Forsythe LIES!

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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

JWK wrote:
3 years ago
what it would have been if only a couple thousand were printed, and they were only available for a week.
Where are you getting these numbers?

How many booster boxes do you think it takes to get a single Uro? You're talking, on average like 3 boxes to get a single of a particular mythic.

Each person can order between 10 and 30 of each Secret Lair. I would be extremely surprised if fewer than millions of these things were sold. At the very least hundreds of thousands.

* Anecdotally I know multiple people who scummed the system and ordered many times the number of some secret lairs. I would be really surprised if stores don't do this.

So they need to print one secret lair for every 3 *boxes* of Theros Beyond Death to keep pace. And I guarantee you there is *waaaaay* more demand for Uro than Glenn or whatever.

Edit: Is the confusion here that people think it's hard to get secret lairs like they're limited editions like FTV? They're not. Every single one has been easy to get. I took my time on all the ones I ordered and got them when I felt like it, and they all showed up.

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Post by Yatsufusa » 3 years ago

Airi wrote:
3 years ago
Wallycaine wrote:
3 years ago
Worth pointing out that while a functional reprint is one possibility, they also can create an actual reprint with a Magic name and flavor, ala inverse Godzilla cards. If they print Gorthos, Tyrant King with a little bar under it that says Neegan, The Cold-Blooded, then that's still a Neegan for deckbuilding purposes. Every statement I've seen from Wizards/Maro implies that that would be the route they'd pursue first, and a functional reprint would be a last resort (But one they presumably want to keep open, in case there are copyright/licensing issues).
And I shall concede that point when WotC does so. Until then, it's just a weak cop out to reduce the amount of criticism they're seeing over the product. And honestly, even if they do exactly that, it's still a really awful precedent to give exclusive early access to cards.

I'm not blaming MaRo personally for it, he's the unfortunate messenger and face for this debacle. WotC can have my goodwill towards their intent and actions when they've earned it. Which at this rate, is never.
I have only one thing to say, they want to make the MTG in-universe equivalent of these cards the FLAVOR TEXT for a TWD card that's recognized by the comprehensive rules so just to fix this mess of a problem that the Godzilla series already solved all because they decided to reverse the process instead to create two problems.

That's like the ultimate insult to MTG Lore and a scar to the entire brand itself, if I've ever seen one. While they're at it can we have in-universe-flavor remastered versions of Arabian Nights and P3K, since they want to utilize this to "fix problems?"
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Post by RxPhantom » 3 years ago

For those of you calling for a ban, I don't think you're truly considering the consequences for what you're asking. First, your'e asking the RC to risk its relationship with WotC. Do you think they'll take kindly to the RC cutting into their bottom line? Second, there are players that are excited or happy to have these cards, and frankly, they shouldn't be made to feel bad about it or treated as pariahs. This is not an easy ask, and it's not all that realistic.

This product is problematic for many, many reasons. While I won't be purchasing it on principle, and I don't care for an influx of other IPs in Magic, I am not so arrogant or mean-spirited that I'll turn someone away from a game for playing these. WotC being awful to us doesn't mean we should be awful to each other.
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Post by toctheyounger » 3 years ago

RxPhantom wrote:
3 years ago
For those of you calling for a ban, I don't think you're truly considering the consequences for what you're asking. First, your'e asking the RC to risk its relationship with WotC. Do you think they'll take kindly to the RC cutting into their bottom line? Second, there are players that are excited or happy to have these cards, and frankly, they shouldn't be made to feel bad about it or treated as pariahs. This is not an easy ask, and it's not all that realistic.

This product is problematic for many, many reasons. While I won't be purchasing it on principle, and I don't care for an influx of other IPs in Magic, I am not so arrogant or mean-spirited that I'll turn someone away from a game for playing these. WotC being awful to us doesn't mean we should be awful to each other.
I mean personally I'm not going to castigate anyone for playing these cards should I run into someone who has managed to track them down, however unlikely that might be in my corner of the world. I hate almost every part of this product, in terms of what it means for products down the road, what it signifies WOTC thinks of us as customers and most importantly the absolute crapping-on of lore that comes with it, but if someone out there loves TWD and MtG enough to play these, that's fine by me. They've earned the right to it by paying Wizards' pound of flesh. No, personally, whatever disgust and disappointment I have in this whole abomination is entirely reserved for its creators. Should they not be banned until whatever janky retcon Wizards decides to pull is put in place I'll look the other way if anyone I know wants to play them. But I play randoms online mostly, so I've had my fair share of games stacked way against me, OP commanders, super tuned decks and what have you, so in terms of actual gameplay I'm not fazed by these commanders.

I also don't think the RC is risking as much as all that. I doubt very highly they would ban without at least a full discussion with their contacts at Wizards. If any hammer does fall, I'd say it'll be temporary until Wizards finds a loophole (and almost certainly by prior agreement). Ultimately it's their format, so decisions relating to it are theirs to make, and historically Wizards attempting to subvert that has not gone well.
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Post by Vertain » 3 years ago

Considering how long it takes the RC to take any form of actual action, aside from Lutri, the Spellchaser (which was on a technicality), I would be very surprised to see anything but a statement that acknowledges how upset parts of the community are, but that no action is required since the holy grail of rule 0 is already there for everyone to use.

Not because they're WotC shills, which I'm convinced they aren't, but simply because pointing to rule 0 under the assumption that every player equally benefits from it, and then calling it a day is their way to go.

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Post by Peterhausenn » 3 years ago

cryogen wrote:
3 years ago
I'll give you planeswalkers as commanders as well as the partner mechanic, as those were things Wizards pushed and the RC had to adapt to (although since one of the members of the RC is a WotC employee it's not like they were blindsided and they did have an opportunity to offer input during the design stage). But while those cards messed around in the design space of the Command Zone, the core philosophy of your deck being led by a unique character of Magic lore.

And you got me on the 100 card deck size with companions. They absolutely should have counted as part of your 100. But that was a decision the RC made, not WotC.

Overall, I think powercreep has been the most damaging thing to the format since you and I started playing. Remember how OP generals like Uril and Rafiq used to be? And how a kicked Rite of Replication was game breaking?
while i can agree that the legendary rule change didnt impact the format meaningfully, it helped open the door for everything else we have seen happen. think of the phrase death by a thousand cuts. thats what these rule changes are. you may have not cared about this change, but what about the next one and then the next one. then when you draw the line you will see wizards apologize and then step across the line again, habitually. they are habitual line steppers. it really is a bit late to start getting upset now (thats more of a general statement. i dont know if you are one of the people upset about this).

and i disagree about the format being strengthened with the removal of the tuck rule and color identity rule. the loss of the tuck rule not only changes a handful of cards from doing what the card does but also removed a format safety valve. you had to be more thoughtful with your commander since there was a possibility of losing them into the deck. you had a certain risk that you needed to be aware of. besides you cant tell me that all the people playing kenrith or golos are doing so because they appreciate the identity the card gives to their deck. they just see powerful card and fill in the deck.

as for rafiq and uril i must have been lucky because they werent prevalent with the groups i played with. sure they would make an occasional appearance and you had to respect the deck but it was never a cause for alarm. granted i was running an esper control deck led by Dromar, the Banisher so there were multiple ways of dealing with them before they got out of hand. likewise in the thousand plus games of edh i have played i dont think i have ever lost to a kicked rite of replication. to be honest i think i have seen the card played only a handful of times and none of them were memorable. all that said powercreep is and will probably always be an issue with magic and it does cause considerable affects to the format. at the same time we just cant ignore what rule changes do the format as well.

while i wouldnt say i feel bad for the rules committee it does seem that they are between the proverbial rock and hard place. they can look like sellouts and make a very vocal part of the player base unhappy by not banning these cards or they can make a very corporate wizards unhappy and ban cards specifically aimed at commander players and risk losing control of the format. the sad thing is that either way its the players that lose.

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Post by Rumpy5897 » 3 years ago

cryogen wrote:
3 years ago
Overall, I think powercreep has been the most damaging thing to the format since you and I started playing. Remember how OP generals like Uril and Rafiq used to be? And how a kicked Rite of Replication was game breaking?
I won't pretend that a typical 2010 EDH deck is of a similar scope as a 2020 EDH deck.

The main change was the abolishing of tuck, which allowed players to build around their commanders with more confidence. There are still options to lock people off their commanders, but they're more temporary. Back in the day, you had to plan around someone trying to stuff your head honcho into your deck, a one-time action that you'd have trouble recovering from. Whereas now you can just pop that Song of the Dryads and you're good. You can get away with less goodstuff'y contingency plan and go deeper on synergy.

The second big ticket item is the change to legends themselves. Once aware of the format, WotC started printing various build-arounds, which really got to take off once tuck went away as means to keep them down. This has been around for years though, arguably starting with the original wave of precons in 2011. Taking a look at a sensible-looking tier list reveals a relatively healthy mix in terms of year of origin, after clearing that 2011 hurdle. Heck, one of the options from the top tier is from 2006 somehow!

There are ten extra years of cards, but I'd argue there hasn't been a lot of powercreep in the 99. Hear me out. Those cards are not exactly ripe with braindead autoincludes. How many of those did 2019 birth? Smothering Tithe and Arcane Signet? How about 2020? WotC caught on eventually that it's better to design niche cards that work well in select decks, rather than keep churning staples. I remember that not that long ago, I split up sets into four chunks chronologically and inspected the fraction of stuff from the most recent years in my decks. I came up with a perfect 25% average, i.e. no overrepresentation to speak of. If there was rampant powercreep, you'd think that every set would bring countless new cards into my decks. This is not the case. Also, both of 2019's staples can be explained - Tithe is them trying to support a notoriously crap colour, and Signet was pushing Brawl precons off the shelves.

If anything, WotC was more keen to print this sort of autoinclude'y stuff during its initial attempt at EDH support, back around 2009-2013. A whole bunch of stuff from that time frame got itself banned. Given the fact the RC is still here after whacking a whole bunch of cards Wizards tried to make for the format, I honestly think they're pretty safe.

Another aspect is the fact we have a decade of collective efforts to figure this stuff out, what works, what doesn't. It's super easy these days to find resources online to help you build a sensible deck.

As an aside, Uril, Rafiq and Rite all came out 2008-2009. Which kind of plays into EDH players' know enjoyment of recent shiny. As to Rafiq/Uril bogeyman status, a similar situation happened when we tried to implement PDH locally. Games were slow, grindy and stally, matching the stereotypical formative EDH experience. The easiest way was to stick some power onto an evasive commander and clean up house that way. The initial build-arounds, so to say.
 
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Post by Hermes_ » 3 years ago

Here's the statemen https://mtgcommander.net/index.php/2020 ... king-dead/ the site is crashed as post the link

Full statement :

Full article, as the site may get overwhelmed:

We're not going to bury the lede here. We're not banning the cards from Secret Lair: The Walking Dead. We understand that this won't sit well with some folks; we have spent a lot of the last few days listening to a wide variety of opinions, and we want to thank everyone for taking the time to share their thoughts. It was, at times, quite overwhelming. It's clear that this is an issue that many people are passionate about.

Our decision doesn't reflect an endorsement of these cards, but what we believe is best for Commander in the long run. If you'd like to understand how we arrived at this decision, we encourage you to read on.

We identified three major concerns during the course of these discussions, and we'll address each and how they relate to Commander below. They are:

The availability of these cards is problematic The existence of non-Magic IPs on cards should be discouraged Negan is a dubious character. There's no support in the Commander Philosophy Document for banning these cards. They certainly present no mechanical difficulties, and taken simply as cards, don't come close to fitting any criteria we have for banning. However, as we are always seeking to improve the document, we discussed whether banning these cards could fit under new philosophical criteria and whether using the banlist in this way was appropriate.

CARD AVAILABILITY

A concern of many players is that these cards would not be widely available, and for some countries, only available through third-party sellers. They worry that this model will be repeated in the future. We've heard you loud and clear on this issue. Because the cards are mechanically unique, this is the major problem most folks have. We wish that all of our friends around the globe had access to these cards. However, the RC of its own accord can't solve that problem. What we can do—what we already have done—is add our voice to yours. Since this issue broke, we've been in contact with well-placed people at Wizards of the Coast to make sure that they understand your displeasure and where it comes from, as well as urging that they work towards a solution.

While we understand why people are concerned about such limited availability, we don't believe that the problem applies to Commander in the same way it does to tournament formats. Successful tournament formats require generally equal and complete access to cards. But, one of the themes that we've reiterated since the earliest days of the format is that you don't need access to every card in order to have fun playing Commander. The focus of Commander being on non-tournament play, plus the enormous cardpool available where almost everything goes, means that unique cards floating around don't present the same kind of problem. The stakes in a Commander game is the fun of the participants, and that doesn't require all the cards.

A problem we see with adopting a ban philosophy based on card availability is explaining it down the road. If, a year from now, someone stumbles across a copy of one of these cards, tries to use it and discovers that it is banned in Commander, they will ask why. And the explanation is unsatisfactory: people didn't like how they were allocated. This does not make a lot of sense to the person who is holding the card, and who doesn't own many other cards that may be out of reach for them. We want people to be able to play the cards they own, and only resort to bans when it's problematic for the health of the format, not the wider ecosystem.

These cards are in no way a threat to the health of Commander. In fact, we see it just the opposite. We're the only format that could bear the weight of this kind of experimentation. This is the format in which Crab Tribal is just as valid as Blood Pod. Adding a few quirky cards that aren't ubiquitously available doesn't threaten that.

One of the calls from the community was that we should ban these cards to "send a signal" to Wizards of the Coast for a "blatantly commercial act". First of all, we don't think it's appropriate to tell them how to run their business; that's way outside the scope of our charter. Second, the banned list isn't the appropriate vehicle to voice our displeasure over something, nor is using it as punishment. The banned list is an abstract construct to corporate decision-makers. The right path to walk is the one we've gone down: real change happens from having real conversations with real people, which we have been doing since the news broke. Finally, attempting to send such a signal would be doomed to failure. It will not have the effect that people hope. The primary goal of these cards is almost certainly new-player acquisition. Wizards hopes to lure some Walking Dead fans into Magic and any interest from Commander players is just a small bonus. Banning the cards until functional reprints are available doesn't do much either.

NON-MAGIC IP

Some folks simply don't like the idea of The Walking Dead crossing over into Magic, a modern IP breaking an immersion barrier. We understand that feeling (none of us care at all about The Walking Dead), but also realize that almost everyone has some universe for which they've dreamed of having Magic cards. We don't think it's productive to try to gatekeep that. If you dislike it, we support you not playing with the cards. Introduction of a different IP opens Commander to audiences who might not have ever heard of Magic or the format; we welcome the new friends we haven't yet met.

NEGAN

We've also heard some displeasure over the Negan character being on a card, given his (fictional) history of terrible actions. We are sympathetic to this, and did give some consideration to banning just that card. We chose not to because Negan is a villain, plain and simple. There's no implied endorsement, sanitation or glorification of his actions. In that, he's no different than other villains already in the Magic universe, even though as portrayed by an actor it seems closer to "real world" discomfort. No one is suggesting that by putting him on a card he should be idealized, any more so than Nicol Bolas or Yawgmoth. We will use this as an opportunity to remind each other to respect other players' boundaries. Being empathic and accommodating is vital for a healthy gaming community; being considerate of other players makes us all better.

IN CONCLUSION

The community outcry over these cards did not go unheard. We used our relationship with people inside Wizards of the Coast to have an honest conversation about how and why so many of you felt betrayed by this process. One of the outcomes of that conversation is that they were supportive of whatever decision we made. We believe that conversation has had influence and they clearly understand the concerns. Thank you to everyone who has weighed in with their thoughts. We tried very hard to keep up with all of them, even as the Discord became overwhelming.
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Post by RxPhantom » 3 years ago

This is 100% the right move for the right reasons. I have a lot of objections to this product, and the RC clearly does too, but banning these cards would be the wrong move for all the reasons they cited. Good call, RC. Good call.
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Post by ZenN » 3 years ago

This whole thing has left a very bad taste in my mouth.
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Post by Vertain » 3 years ago

Hermes_ wrote:
3 years ago
A problem we see with adopting a ban philosophy based on card availability is explaining it down the road. If, a year from now, someone stumbles across a copy of one of these cards, tries to use it and discovers that it is banned in Commander, they will ask why. And the explanation is unsatisfactory: people didn't like how they were allocated. This does not make a lot of sense to the person who is holding the card, and who doesn't own many other cards that may be out of reach for them. We want people to be able to play the cards they own, and only resort to bans when it's problematic for the health of the format, not the wider ecosystem.
this argument just reeks of dishonesty to me. People who weren't around to witness the copious blinking, copying and reanimating of Sylvan Primordial have a hard time understanding that ban either and are confused why -insert powerful creature xy here- isn't banned as well. This didn't stop Sylvan Primordial from getting banned and rightfully so, so why is it different now?

With their abolishment of "perceived barrier to entry" as a possible banlist criterium, the RC has shown that they not only have no problem with the rampant speculation on reserved list cards that has been going on for the last couple years, they also want to actively avoid having to deal with any of that as it becomes more and more of a problem for the average player.

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Post by Hawk » 3 years ago

I'm glad I thought last night and decided a ban, while what I wanted, was probably a wrong call. That's not the right way to stop WotC. I don't know what is. I'm full of complicated emotions today. But I think this is the right call, to not auto-ban them.

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Post by RxPhantom » 3 years ago

Vertain wrote:
3 years ago
Hermes_ wrote:
3 years ago
A problem we see with adopting a ban philosophy based on card availability is explaining it down the road. If, a year from now, someone stumbles across a copy of one of these cards, tries to use it and discovers that it is banned in Commander, they will ask why. And the explanation is unsatisfactory: people didn't like how they were allocated. This does not make a lot of sense to the person who is holding the card, and who doesn't own many other cards that may be out of reach for them. We want people to be able to play the cards they own, and only resort to bans when it's problematic for the health of the format, not the wider ecosystem.
this argument just reeks of dishonesty to me. People who weren't around to witness the copious blinking, copying and reanimating of Sylvan Primordial have a hard time understanding that ban either and are confused why -insert powerful creature xy here- isn't banned as well. This didn't stop Sylvan Primordial from getting banned and rightfully so, so why is it different now?

With their abolishment of "perceived barrier to entry" as a possible banlist criterium, the RC has shown that they not only have no problem with the rampant speculation on reserved list cards that has been going on for the last couple years, they also want to actively avoid having to deal with any of that as it becomes more and more of a problem for the average player.
They are the Commander Rules Committee, not the overlords of MTG Finance, which is a complex ecosystem that no one group could ever hope to mitigate. Also, one does not have to witness a card in the wild to understand how problematic it is or why it is banned.

If you honestly expect them to take these things into account and do something as extreme as a ban, then I'd say you're being, at best, unrealistic and at worst, willfully obtuse. Your expectations of them are a bridge too far.

Simply put, these cards to not meet the criteria for a ban, no matter how reprehensible the product itself is (and it is). Banning cards just to teach WotC a lesson would be petty, and would undermine the integrity with witch the RC has carried itself thus far. To be fair, part of me wanted to see a ban because I would want to stick it to WotC, but it wouldn't serve the greater good. The RC took the best course of action and I think the community will agree in time.
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