umtiger wrote: ↑4 years ago
You know Caustic Tar isn't in the same ballpark and that it doesn't belong in the conversation, yet you still mention it. I get it, you're trying to make me seem ridiculous, by being even moreso. It's a nice story, but maybe your threat assessment is off if you view Caustic Tar as anything but a bystander to Rings enabling a cool win.
I'm not trying to make you look ridiculous. The things you're saying aren't unreasonable arguments, but I think the premise on which you argue is flawed, so I'm applying the principle to a ridiculous situation to help identify the issue. Like, it's not wrong to argue that equal cards deserve equal treatment, but you're grouping cards based on the possibility of running away with a game, and an extreme example was meant to display that "can take over a game" isn't the right comparison.
If you're only point is that a huge resource imbalance is ok at 4 cmc but not at 1 cmc, then I would propose that 2 from Sol Ring isn't really that much in the grand scheme of EDH. Every "problem" about Sol Ring is when it ramps into something else very early and the table didn't face a Bane of Progress or the like. It's never just the 2, it's the snowball. Those cards "don't do the [exact] same thing," but the reason why I mention S.Tithe is they can lead to a huge resource imbalance or snowball. And in that way, they are the same.
I just don't see the point with grumbling about Sol Ring when there are plenty of other cards that lead to the same snowball. And that powerful interactions are very common in EDH.
Playing something oppressive on turn 3 isn't snowballing. That's not what snowballing is.
Smothering Tithe snowballs, that's all it does. You play it, and you accrue value over time as people draw cards, and that value compounds and builds momentum. That card snowballs.
Sol Ring can snowball, it can be ramp that ramps into more ramp and you build your advantage over time, ramp basically is snowballing as a strategy.
But that's not the only thing Sol Ring does.
Sol Ring is also a ritual, and someone ritualing out an early threat is a very different play pattern than snowballing value with different complications than resource imbalance. Someone who uses normal rituals to blitz out a threat is arguably putting themselves down on the resource balance (assuming the threat isn't like
Griselbrand), where a single answer undoes the effect of multiple cards at once. Turn 2 multiple rituals into
Sire of Insanity is an oppressive line, it's difficult to answer because it blows out the game before you have yourself well set up to answer it. That's not snowballing, that's pure burst speed. But if someone has a
Swords to Plowshares at the ready, the ritual player is super blown out.
There are, to my knowledge, exactly 2 cards in the game that offer both the early burst speed of mana rituals and the snowballing resource advantage of traditional ramp, both aspects having the potential to determine the course of a game. One of these cards is in roughly 3 out of 4 decks in the format.
And I see Sol Ring's universal appeal as a positive. I get to be like Green without having to make my deck green. Sure, you might see it only as a means to T4 the entire table, but I see it as a way to play giants, dragons, and huge mana spells that otherwise only see play in my Limited Infinity Stack:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2004-03-01
You can play those things without
Sol Ring. I guarantee you do play these things without Sol Ring, because every deck with Sol Ring can fail to draw it. If you have a deck with both a Sol Ring and a big dumb dragon, and you draw the big dumb dragon before you have the Sol Ring, do you look at it and go "crap, I guess I'm not playing this creature." No, you just play it a turn or two later. Lack of Sol Ring (or
Mana Crypt) isn't the deciding factor on whether to play fatties. I promise, big threatening creatures are still a win condition on turn 6. If nobody played any early ramp at all in the entire format, big mana threats would still reign supreme in 4-person 40 life games of magic. Sol Ring is not the singular card making 9-mana spells win games. I say this as someone who refuses to play Sol Ring and likes
Grozoth. 9 drops can still win games on turn 9, I swear.
I think it's a huge deal to be able to play ahead of curve. You think the only time someone should be able to play two 5cmc cards on the same turn is on turn 10? If you only play on curve, how do fatties compete against 3 players with Doom Blades, StPs, Counterspells, and Wraths?
Seriously, what's the difference in waiting turns? How is fairly playing ahead of curve not an arbitrary difference. What is the difference in 7-mana spells on turn 4 vs 7-mana spells on turn 7 other than fewer cards drawn and the possibility of someone being left behind? How is a turn 4
Thraximundar any more resilient against Swords than a turn 7 Thrax? It isn't. You're just hoping to kill people before they draw any counterplay at all. You're hoping for a non-interactive game, which is to say a non-game. And conversely if everyone is playing ahead of curve, nobody is. There's just a different completely meaningless number if someone asks what turn you're on. Why is a different arbitrary turn number more fun?