July 2021 Banlist Announcement

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Cool

I payed 30 euros for this card and thx to pandemic I got to cast it zero times.

No one told you to buy questionably busted chase cards when you had zero propensity to play in the meantime. You have only yourself to blame for this.

While I am happy with the banning, I wholeheartedly am against this kind of comment.
If HB wasn't banned, maybe the price would have gone up with time. @illakunsaa could have bought this for cEDH, could have bought this because they have a treasure deck... it doesn't matter why, there are any number of valid reasons to buy this. And the pandemic is hardly something they can control.
Any card banning in any format is a FAILURE by WOTC and it carries immense baggage. It is their fault, not @illakunsaa's fault.
I remember when Splinter Twin was banned in Modern. I had friends that had just gotten their decks. Is it their fault for not trying to guess what could maybe be banned?
No. It is WOTC's fault, and getting burned by bannings HURTS players.

Interestingly, on Arena, when a card is banned you get Gems as compensation.
But in the paper world, forget about it.

It is so frustrating! Could you imagine buying a car from a dealership and finding out it is not street-legal? Could you imagine buying your groceries and not being reimbursed when the chicken is recalled due to contamination?

In any sane world Banned cards would result in some kind of compensation. "you spent money on our product but you are not allowed to use it"
I am sure they have disclaimers for this kind of stuff, but it is in all normal senses wrong and blaming players is 100% incorrect.

Uh...it's not banned in legacy, where it supports a whole deck, or Vintage, where it can pop up too. Unlike the car you can't drive or the chicken you can't eat, HB still has value and use so one can just go sell it. WotC and the world owe the consumer nothing in that regard, especially since they don't even handle the bans in this case lol. Caveat Emptor is sometimes true.

I say this as someone who bought a Paradox Engine at $9, saw it spike to $50 over its lifespan, and held onto it (for the memories) to see it fall to $5 post-ban. That's just the dang ol' invisible hand of the market. Nobody's going to pay out the $41 I could have made or the $4 I actually "lost" because it's my property and responsibility. I didn't sell at maximum profit, and the value crashed due to outside market factors a short time later. As the little fine print says on the bottom of every Investment/Fund advertisement, "All investments carry risk".

I think instead of the financial loss, the saddest part of illakunsaa's story is that they never got a chance to use it because of the pandemic. Everyone should have a chance to play a truly busted card once or twice in their life, if only for a time.

[BeneTleilax]

If anything rc should at least refund me.

aaand there goes any sympathy for you. You knowingly played chicken with the rules, the RC doesn't owe you because you swerved too late. It's not like you were some poor ignorant noob, you are regularly online here posting hot takes on the format. You knew that everyone hated playing against it when you bought it, and you bought it anyways. You remind me of a guy at my old LGS who threw a tantrum and demanded the other players pony up when they said Gaea's Cradle was above the powerlevel of their group.

Even beyond EDH, the minute you start feeling entitled to (not hoping for, not being happily surprised by, not capitalizing on, but demanding) return on investment for your Magic hobby, rather than treating it as a hobby expense, you have failed at both budgeting and Magic. You're not a victim of the secondary market. You're the reason that it sucks.

[3drinks]

When you buy a spicy card, one should evaluate how good it is and if it face potential banning for it's unhealthy nature. Did I like G-Brand getting surgically removed from Kaalia? No. But I enjoyed those three months even as I knew there was a high likelihood a card with unrestricted text to draw7 for zero mana value was gonna burn me.

You live and die by the sword. My comments stand. I don't regret them no matter how many users believe that corporations owe you anything. To believe otherwise is foolish.

[illakunsaa]

If anything rc should at least refund me.

aaand there goes any sympathy for you. You knowingly played chicken with the rules, the RC doesn't owe you because you swerved too late. It's not like you were some poor ignorant noob, you are regularly online here posting hot takes on the format. You knew that everyone hated playing against it when you bought it, and you bought it anyways.

Playing chicken? RC literally gives advice on designing cards for commander. They thought was black lotus was fine. Notion thief variants are nothing new in the format. I almost never saw breacher online and the one time I casted it online I just died. RC could have easily said at release or close to it that they are going to ban the card but they did not.

People hate a lot of different things and to me HB is just another card on that pile. People cry about HB, Death Cloud, Sorrow's Path etc.

[Mookie]

This development is not particularly surprising - Hullbreacher was a strong card, extremely easy to slot into decks, and not particularly fun to play against. Still legal in Legacy and Vintage though.

[Cyberium]

It might've been more acceptable if it's white, but blue is supposedly the SLOWEST color, it shouldn't have a hand-denial and a ramp in one card, with flash attached.

But I thought rule committee worked with WotC in creating Commander Legends, so how did this happen?

[ISBPathfinder]

Playing chicken? RC literally gives advice on designing cards for commander. They thought was black lotus was fine. Notion thief variants are nothing new in the format. I almost never saw breacher online and the one time I casted it online I just died. RC could have easily said at release or close to it that they are going to ban the card but they did not.

People hate a lot of different things and to me HB is just another card on that pile. People cry about HB, Death Cloud, Sorrow's Path etc.

I have sympathy for you but I also don't really have a good way to not get burned on powerful cards getting banned. There have been a number of very powerful cards that eventually got banned that were legal for years before getting the axe as well as a number of cards that are powerful and controversial that to this day still haven't gotten the axe. There is some level of risk with any high powered card. It does sound like you experienced some unfortunate timing in your purchase but honestly if I had made a prediction on the future of Hullbreacher yesterday it would have been that in six months to a year it would get banned not this specific set release.

I am constantly playing with fire from the standpoint that I own multiple Mana Crypts and a Gaea's Cradle. These are high powered cards that I know the RC has had their eye on for years and I accept the risk that at literally any time the RC could decide to ban them and I will get burned with having ownership of them. I believe I still own all of my Sylvan Primordial and Primeval Titan from when they got banned.

[ISBPathfinder]

It might've been more acceptable if it's white, but blue is supposedly the SLOWEST color, it shouldn't have a hand-denial and a ramp in one card, with flash attached.

But I thought rule committee worked with WotC in creating Commander Legends, so how did this happen?

It could be a few things but the two that come to mind for me are:

1) Its possible that they didn't get to work with the final product but instead got to work on the concepts and feel of the set. Often times early work on a set doesn't have the mana costs / stats as hard numbers and or sometimes those change with testing at a later date.

2) Notion Thief largely didn't come up in ban level talks until after Hullbreacher was a card and its not that big of a leap to look at Notion Thief in this light and see that it hasn't really been a huge problem for the format historically. The effects are a little different but drawing cards and ramping mana can be seen in sort of similar light. I can actually see a precedent to feel that a slightly different and cheaper Notion Thief might be fine and I think that largely the issue at hand is that it was just a good card on its own that then later combined with other cards to create issues. Notion Thief costing more mana and being in a specific two color combination limits its exposure to the format as a whole. I can see reasons to not feel like Hullbreacher would be overly problematic as we hadn't pushed the wheel enablers to breaking too badly in the past (this being my opinion at least).

[BeneTleilax]

People cry about HB, Death Cloud, Sorrow's Path etc.

This mindset, that card value is absolute and should be recompensed if lost, but the views of your fellow players and what they enjoy playing against is just "people crying", is anathema to EDH.

Also, Sorrow's Path? Seriously?

[umtiger]

It might've been more acceptable if it's white, but blue is supposedly the SLOWEST color, it shouldn't have a hand-denial and a ramp in one card, with flash attached.

But I thought rule committee worked with WotC in creating Commander Legends, so how did this happen?

Maybe if Hullbreacher cost WWW. Any card with just one devotion might as well be a gold card at this point. You got people using partners just for colors now + it's not even a drawback since partners are just generically good.

Does anyone really think the RC designed + developed cards like Jeweled Lotus? I find having the mindset that RC and WOTC are in bed with one another to be a harmful way to view the game.

I am constantly playing with fire from the standpoint that I own multiple Mana Crypts and a Gaea's Cradle. These are high powered cards that I know the RC has had their eye on for years and I accept the risk that at literally any time the RC could decide to ban them and I will get burned with having ownership of them. I believe I still own all of my Sylvan Primordial and Primeval Titan from when they got banned.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I think Hullbreacher is a "better" or more powerful card than Gaea's Cradle.

With the things that you can build a deck to do, can't Hullbreacher make just as much [marginally useful] mana? AND also Mind Twist opponents? Gaea's Cradle isn't shutting out my opponents at the same time it's making mana.

RC didn't ban Hullbreacher on the sole basis of power level. It never bans any card for that reason. Hullbreacher is just straight up not cool.

[Crazy Monkey]

It might've been more acceptable if it's white, but blue is supposedly the SLOWEST color, it shouldn't have a hand-denial and a ramp in one card, with flash attached.

But I thought rule committee worked with WotC in creating Commander Legends, so how did this happen?

It could be a few things but the two that come to mind for me are:

1) Its possible that they didn't get to work with the final product but instead got to work on the concepts and feel of the set. Often times early work on a set doesn't have the mana costs / stats as hard numbers and or sometimes those change with testing at a later date.

2) Notion Thief largely didn't come up in ban level talks until after Hullbreacher was a card and its not that big of a leap to look at Notion Thief in this light and see that it hasn't really been a huge problem for the format historically. The effects are a little different but drawing cards and ramping mana can be seen in sort of similar light. I can actually see a precedent to feel that a slightly different and cheaper Notion Thief might be fine and I think that largely the issue at hand is that it was just a good card on its own that then later combined with other cards to create issues. Notion Thief costing more mana and being in a specific two color combination limits its exposure to the format as a whole. I can see reasons to not feel like Hullbreacher would be overly problematic as we hadn't pushed the wheel enablers to breaking too badly in the past (this being my opinion at least).

I agree with this entirely. Specifically, I think the second of these is most likely. Frankly, I rarely encountered using symmetric draw effects such as wheels as an asymmetric value engine or hate piece before breacher. Sure there were a couple of players adding Smothering Tithe to their wheels decks, and there were some different players running Notion Thief but it was neither common nor a problem. Having effectively the 'stax' effect of one 4 mana card with the ramp effect of another 4 mana effect just pushed this far further than anything else by a large margin.

It's my opinion that hullbreacher at 4 mana, and colorshifted to white would be fine, so if the card was changed during set design that's another key point where it would be difficult to evaluate balance. For example, a version of this card for www would hard enough to add into decks and in a color that commonly punishes draw. Additionally, White as a color does not have the critical mass of cards which enable the wheel effects.

Taken together, I'm convinced that accurately catching this in set design would have been extremely difficult. It's kind of like Underworld Breach, which at first glance doesn't seem great in commander but has had massive impacts in deck design at various power levels of deck building.

EDIT:
I didn't give my opinion on the ban. Good riddance. Even when I had breacher+wheel in hand I never wanted to go for it. The only "fair use" I could find for it was ramping via Nin, the Pain Artist, and that was pushing it. I'd have played a white version in 3-4 decks.

[Cyberium]

Does anyone really think the RC designed + developed cards like Jeweled Lotus? I find having the mindset that RC and WOTC are in bed with one another to be a harmful way to view the game.

RC mentioned in the past that they've been keeping tab with WotC on several recent EDH specific products (such as Strixhaven precons), though they didn't clarify on how "deep" or frequent their interactions were.

That said, no, I don't believe RC would've designed a card like Jeweled Lotus, that doesn't mean they didn't know its existence ahead of time. Even if they let some cards pass (Hullbreacher perhaps), they have the right to ban it, so it's possible that they let players test water before swinging the ban hammer.

[benjameenbear]

Lol. Can't say I'm sad to see it go, as a pretty dedicated cEDH player, but it was a delightful way to keep Wheel effects in check and stop a few infinite draw combos. Meh.

No worries though. Time to update my decks and roll with it. I'll say I'm more neutral about this ban than I was in comparison to the Flash ban.

I think it's just a matter of time until the RC decides that Dockside Extortionist is going to be bannable. THAT card is broken in cEDH and probably extremely good in lower power playgroups too. I won't be sad to see it go.

[3drinks]

Lol. Can't say I'm sad to see it go, as a pretty dedicated cEDH player, but it was a delightful way to keep Wheel effects in check and stop a few infinite draw combos. Meh.

No worries though. Time to update my decks and roll with it. I'll say I'm more neutral about this ban than I was in comparison to the Flash ban.

I think it's just a matter of time until the RC decides that Dockside Extortionist is going to be bannable. THAT card is broken in cEDH and probably extremely good in lower power playgroups too. I won't be sad to see it go.

I'm really not sure of this tbh. It is very reliant on what your opponents are doing, and often it really is just a Wily Goblin. Unlike the card they correctly banned today that just exists and makes all but the caster miserable.

[ISBPathfinder]

I am constantly playing with fire from the standpoint that I own multiple Mana Crypts and a Gaea's Cradle. These are high powered cards that I know the RC has had their eye on for years and I accept the risk that at literally any time the RC could decide to ban them and I will get burned with having ownership of them. I believe I still own all of my Sylvan Primordial and Primeval Titan from when they got banned.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I think Hullbreacher is a "better" or more powerful card than Gaea's Cradle.

With the things that you can build a deck to do, can't Hullbreacher make just as much [marginally useful] mana? AND also Mind Twist opponents? Gaea's Cradle isn't shutting out my opponents at the same time it's making mana.

RC didn't ban Hullbreacher on the sole basis of power level. It never bans any card for that reason. Hullbreacher is just straight up not cool.

In the right deck / meta I can see that being correct. It is a more fragile card and tends to be a lot more reactive to what your opponents are doing (outside of wheels). I don't like using the dies to doom blade argument as its bad but things that die to shock and are high priority targets are also worth noting as well.

I would argue that outside of combining it with wheels it was just a solid card. I have played with and against it and excluding the wheel situation I felt it was fine. It felt like a weird counterspell value card on cast and then a hatebear that just forced opponents to play around it afterwards or remove it.

[nobody]

I am not surprised to see this get banned, what I am surprised is nothing got unbanned! they could have used this as an excuse to unban lutri, snice the rules change, lutri now cost six as a companion and no deck is willing to cast lutir for six mana , plus they edh rules already cover this by saying cards cant be brought in from outside the game!

[cryogen]

Thanks for grabbing this @3drinks, I've been busy all day.

[SocorroTortoise]

I am not surprised to see this get banned, what I am surprised is nothing got unbanned! they could have used this as an excuse to unban lutri, snice the rules change, lutri now cost six as a companion and no deck is willing to cast lutir for six mana , plus they edh rules already cover this by saying cards cant be brought in from outside the game!

Lutri, the Spellchaser is never coming back unless it's banned as a companion or companion as a mechanic is excised from the format. First, companions currently work in commander. They're revealed before the game begins and not as part of an spell or ability in game, so the rule changed with this update isn't relevant to them. Second, the reason Lutri is banned is because there's literally zero cost to including it in any URx list that's neither already running a different companion nor playing Persistent Petitioners/Relentless Rats/etc. Even if you never intend to pay for it when building, the deck is strictly better for including it because it has no deckbuilding cost and adds in-game options. The card being lower power level than it was when originally printed doesn't address the reason it's banned.

On Hullbreacher: Oh no!
Anyways,

[Yatsufusa]

I opened an extended-art (nonfoil) one from my Collector box, contemplated making deals with it in order to get a foil (non-EA) one, but never really got around it because I almost never played the game for the past year plus due to obvious circumstances. I didn't even put it in any deck yet partly because I wasn't playing (and partly because it wasn't foil), but never let it go either because I knew it was powerful and it was "safer" to at least have a copy on-hand, even if I hadn't put it in any deck.

Objectively, I already analyzed it to be a problem card (think about it, it's a amp-ed up Smothering Tithe that doesn't provide the tax options, just straight-up locks draws and has flash for one mana less to boot, in the color with most draws and 2nd-most wheels, bluntly put, it's Tithe plus Narset, Parter of Veils plus Dockside Extortionist fused together in a way), but given the slow-nature of the RC generally when it comes to decisions like this along with the structure of the format technically still providing a chance for it to be socially regulated, I chose to err on the side on keeping a copy first (because the same analysis that determined it dangerous also meant it's on the track on spiking faster than other cards, making it safer to keep one on-hand).

Well, I "lost' that "bet" (in a way it was a loss I was prepared to risk/lose in-lieu for having-the-card security, but a loss is still a loss), but if there's any consolation it's only a single copy and I probably have the version that might recover the fastest for other formats (foils may be an iffy issue for Legacy/Vintage and Commander Legends foils weren't exactly stellar either). A bit of a sting that this tanking happened exactly around the time I would be moving cards around (since MH2/fetches is entering its slow descent to its "best deals" phase).

But objectively this is a correct move, I once described this deluge of one-sided draw hate design mistakes as "Leovolds in the 99" and while I guess in the RC's view, being in the 99 did curb Narset, Parter of Veils to an extent, Hullbreacher slapping Dockside Extortionist onto itself that 99 broke it.

I'll be blunt, WotC needs to step up their design-balance a whole lot more, funny how they're so careful when designing similar cards when they're in W, but then when it comes to u they decided to go "hey r can ramp semi-efficiently with Dockside", how about we let u do the same by slapping it on the better absolute one-sided draw-hate designs we have?" Extra funny when you realize no matter which side of the Opposition Agent camp you stand on, the Agent in the same set can't curb the ramp provided by Hullbreacher.

[Dunharrow]

In any sane world Banned cards would result in some kind of compensation. "you spent money on our product but you are not allowed to use it"
I am sure they have disclaimers for this kind of stuff, but it is in all normal senses wrong and blaming players is 100% incorrect.

The problem lies in WotC printing cards like this in the first place, not in the ban, especially as WotC didn't even ban it. Having your cards banned sucks, I have a Paradox Engine sitting sadly in my binder (still think it should stay banned, tho). That said, demanding compensation is absurd. It would only make WotC more ban-shy and protect the most expensive and obnoxious cards (and those with the disposable income to pick them easily) from format controls.

I also think "jam it 'til they ban it", while it might make sense in more competitive formats, is absolutely toxic to EDH. The chilling effect of a potential ban is not just a side-effect of the RC's format controls, it is an essential part of how they control the format. The more aggressively players try to call their bluff on obvious problem cards, the more aggressively they have to ban. It's the worst sort of rules-literalism, and will only undermine Rule 0.

I wouldn't demand compensation. It is just crazy that they can sell you a product then tell you that you aren't allowed to use it. There is nothing else like it in the world.
I have 4 paradox engines, including a prerelease promo version and a kaladesh invention version. And maybe another that is foil?

in any case, my only point is that you can't blame players for buying cards to play with, as if we have clairvoyance to know what will happen down the road.

[BeneTleilax]

in any case, my only point is that you can't blame players for buying cards to play with, as if we have clairvoyance to know what will happen down the road.

I'm not blaming anyone, I'm just saying demanding compensation for hobby expenses shows a warped mindset and approach to the game, especially when combined with dismissiveness towards other people's preferences when they aren't backed by official bans. I'm blaming people for that.

[RxPhantom]

RIP. Hullbreacher. May you burn in hell forever.

There have been some weird takes in this thread though. The RC doesn't owe you anything, certainly not compensation for putting the format's health above your wallet. On the other side, attempting to, I don't know, dunk on people for taking a bath on this card is strange too.

Stop being weird.

[Dunharrow]

in any case, my only point is that you can't blame players for buying cards to play with, as if we have clairvoyance to know what will happen down the road.

I'm not blaming anyone, I'm just saying demanding compensation for hobby expenses shows a warped mindset and approach to the game, especially when combined with dismissiveness towards other people's preferences when they aren't backed by official bans. I'm blaming people for that.

sure, just not sure why you direct this at me
never demanded anything

[illakunsaa]

I'm not blaming anyone, I'm just saying demanding compensation for hobby expenses shows a warped mindset and approach to the game, especially when combined with dismissiveness towards other people's preferences when they aren't backed by official bans. I'm blaming people for that.

I'm pretty sure lot of hobbies refund you. You can refund video games just because you think they are bad. Wotc refunds you if they ban cards on arena.

[vandertroll]

Putting "evidence" alongside "casual play" when trying to justify a ban makes statistics cry. I really don't get it. Just say that ''we are in charge of the format and we don't like the card period'' , it would be more honest at that point.