SCD: Demonic Tutor

[DirkGently]

On a serious note, once again, putting a busted card in a bad deck [...] doesn't prove that the card isn't busted.

I don't think a deck needs to be bad for dtutor to go from "busted" to "pretty good". In your average, 7/10, non-combo commander deck I think the card is probably strong but fair. Ofc the context of commander is "all the most busted cards from every set in existence" so it's a high bar.

In the context of cEDH ofc the card is more problematic.

Adding 50% to a card's cost and a colored pip at that would make most cards unplayable

In the context of balanced-for-modern-magic cards, that's probably mostly true, but compared to other old broken stuff I think there are cards that clear that hurdle easily. Sol ring, obviously, is still playable at triple its cost with downside (Worn Powerstone), 2 mana removal is still widely played (compare Swords to Plowshares and even the modern Path to Exile), Mana Drain would still be a strong counter at cancel mv, all the 1mv topdeck tutors would definitely get played at 2 mv (let alone 1.5), Mystic Remora is good at 2mv, Dockside Extortionist is still good at 3mv...I mean yes, all these cards are extremely good but the context of commander is that all these cards are legal so all other cards need to justify themselves against those sorts of cards.

Obviously not to say that Demonic tutor isn't one of the best cards in the format, because it is, but personally I don't think it's as anomalously powerful as Mana Crypt and Sol Ring which are undercosted by a significantly larger margin. That, and tutors are only as broken as the deck that plays them, and if you're getting major mileage out of dtutor costing 1 less than grim, you probably aren't playing normal commander.

The basic question is "how good is the best draw in your deck?" If you're playing a combo deck, probably it's very good and dtutor is very powerful. If the answer is "a good answer to the current board state or my best on-curve value piece" then I think dtutor is strong but not problematically so.

All in all, I don't find tutors to be the biggest problem with the format. Combo decks with a ton of tutors would still be unfun even if they were running trash-tier stuff like Diabolic Tutor. The issue is the competitive deckbuilding mindset.

@DirkGently I don't really want to derail the thread any further, if you want to keep discussing this I can make a new thread, but again, if we aren't measuring cards based on the most optimal way to use the card, both in piloting and deck building, then what's the point?

Sure, EDH doesn't need ANY ban list as long as everyone's responsible, there are tons of cards that are broken, but probably fine in a certain deck, but if that's the metric we are using, then what's even the point of talking about power level?

Sol ring and magna crypt are definitely more powerful than dt. DT isn't the best card in the format, but it is clearly, firmly, in the "busted" category, even if other stuff is even more busted.

(Ban sol ring btw)

Sure, I'll make a thread.

I doubt we actually disagree about the efficacy of Demonic Tutor in the various possible contexts so I won't waste more time on that unless necessary.

if we aren't measuring cards based on the most optimal way to use the card, both in piloting and deck building, then what's the point?

Whether or not you agree, the banlist philosophy does not follow your methodology. The banlist serves to both guide players towards the correct (no quotes, sue me cEDH players) commander deckbuilding philosophy, and to help prevent good-intentioned people from accidentally falling into any open manholes. That's why there are so many "busted" cards (like dtutor and sol ring) that remain unbanned - as long as you're approaching deckbuilding with the right mindset, these cards probably won't cause problems. The cards that tend to get banned are ones that don't really have a fair use. I have had many games where someone cast demonic tutor and it was completely fine. I've had basically zero games where someone cast Paradox Engine and the game continued to be enjoyable.

I'm not sure how the format would look if the RC took a heavy-handed approach to the banlist. Possibly it would be fun to have a format that prevents anything too broken from happening by law rather than spirit - especially as that spirit gets less and less common. But for sure the banlist would be waaaaaay longer, and I can see the desirability in keeping it short. Especially when I'm trying to do something silly and need efficient facilitators like demonic tutor to help it come together.

[Treamayne]

My strongest memory of Demonic Tutor was a guy at college in 94ish who used it to stack his deck. He would "consider" 3-4 cards, choose one and "shuffle" in a way to make sure the other 2-3 stayed on top because he knew 9/10 people wouldn't cut a mid-game shuffle.

I've avoided it for the most part since, and to-date the only EDH deck I have even run it in was Demon Tribal (Rakdos).

Good or not, it's still a card I associate with (mostly) shady practices. . . .

[Jemolk]

I run Demonic Tutor in a bunch of decks. It's very strong, no two ways about it, but I don't fetch combo pieces with it. I don't play infinite combos, actually, and even remove them from my decks when I realize that cards I included for other reasons go accidentally infinite. Being able to get whatever you need most at the moment just makes games go more smoothly, be it a wrath, card draw, or even mana. I've been perfectly happy DTing for a Phyrexian Arena, a Damnation or a Thawing Glaciers plenty of times in the past, and I don't think anyone would argue that my doing so breaks the game. If your deck can go "oops, I win" off a tutor, that's a pain, but also it means your deck can go "oops, I win" off a lucky topdeck, which, if anything, is even more irritating because it doesn't even make sense to play around at that point.

Ultimately, my feeling on the card is this -- it's just a really efficient enabler. Outside of cEDH, that means being an enabler for interaction and for casual silly nonsense, which I think is fine. Counting cEDH, well, cEDH is actively trying to break the game, so I don't see that there's much room to complain from there when it happens. That's kinda what you signed up for, no?

[NZB2323]

I would be against a Demonic Tutor ban. cEDH players enjoy running it, as do casual players. I've used it the most in my cleric tribal deck to search for Edgewalker. In my minotaur tribal deck I use it to search for Deathbellow War Cry.

I am for, however, more answers to demonic tutors. Aven Mindcensor, Opposition Agent, Ob Nixilis, Unshackled, Stranglehold, Archivist of Oghma, ect.

[Mookie]

I would argue that the following statements are both true:

• There are broken cards that are not banworthy
• There are banworthy cards that are not broken

To me, at least, 'broken' cards are outliers based on power level - Sol Ring, Swords to Plowshares, and Mana Drain are all cards that are significantly better than their peers and should be included in most decks that can run them. But power level and usage alone by themselves get cards banned - rather, I feel like cards should be banned when they make the format as a whole worse. Iona, Shield of Emeria and Golos, Tireless Pilgrim may not have been egregiously powerful... but they did make the games they were in worse. There is a non-zero cost associated with banning cards, so I wouldn't necessarily advocate for banning every card that makes games worse... but I do think we should be more critical of cards that do see widespread play.

,..anyway, I do think Demonic Tutor is a broken effect. Drawing the perfect card when you need it is a very strong effect, and its low cost means you incur less tempo loss than with other tutors. The difference in power level between 'tutor for something to cast next turn and signal to your opponents to hold open mana for interaction' and 'tutor for something to cast immediately while your opponents are tapped out' is massive. Its power level does depend on game speed - it's less important in slower games - but if your game is ending on turn 6, the difference between tutoring for a 3-drop with Grim Tutor vs a 4-drop with Demonic Tutor is certainly meaningful.

However, I don't think Demonic Tutor is banworthy. I would like there to be more counterplay to tutors in the format... but while it can be used to fetch something degenerate, I've also seen it used to fetch plenty of janky build-arounds, board wipes, and spot removal... and also plenty of lands. If someone is using it to do something degenerate, I usually feel like that's more of a problem with the player or the fetched card than the direct fault of Demonic Tutor.

[Dunadain]

Ah, is the problem that you think I'm advocating for DT to be banned?

Cause I'm not, not because the power isn't there (it definitely is) but because, as you said, that's not the metric the RC uses to ban cards.

I want to separate the idea of banning a card from this conversation because, quite frankly, the barn list is quite archaic and I'm not sure there any meaningful discussion to be had around it.

I'm pretty sure we're on the same page tbh. Yeti said dt was good, not broken, and I said it was most definitely broken.

Edit: rereading my posts it's probably my fault for mentioning the ban list in the first place, my bad, I can definitely see how it came off as me calling for a ban.

The ban Sol Ring/Mana Crypt I did mean, but that's kind of off -topic XD.

[NZB2323]

Maybe it's semantics about verbiage, but I wouldn't call Demonic tutor broken. It may find you a card that breaks the game, but in itself it's not broken. Infinite combos break the game. Cards on the van list break the game.

I mean, if you say the ideal use of the card breaks the game, you could say the same thing about Command Tower or Island.

[Lifeless]

I think this is a pretty interesting topic actually. In a 4x format where Demonic is always 4 extra copies of the best card in your deck taxed by 1B I think it's pretty broken, but in this format I'm not entirely sure. We certainly have to come to some consensus about what broken means, and I guess I agree that the brokenness is also at least partially dependent on the cards that are going to be tutored. Is the most flexible card ever printed broken on its own? I'm not sure it is. I certainly think it's below rate at very least.

[PrimevalCommander]

Efficient tutors are really strong and can almost be evaluated like combo pieces. Flashmay be a good analogue. Mundane in casual games, but overpowered in competitive games. Efficient tutors are just fine when tutoring answers or engines. It all depends on how you play them.

A tutor being strong or broken is a gray area and subjective because of the wide variance in their use. I think of a broken card as something that breaks the fundamental rules of the game in an utterly powerful way. Cyclonic Rift is an example for me. Smothering Tithe perhaps. Mana Drain is a good one because it is on rate, but adds a stupidly useful ritual on top of an already playable card for no additional cost. Demonic Tutor doesn't do much different than a dozen other cards except be cheaper on mana. I consider Expropriate to be a broken card, despite the MV due to the shear power of the card and the lack of ways to play it fairly. If it's on the stack, its a bad time.

I guess my opinion of a broken card is it needs to do something truly unique and powerful. Being a common effect below average mana value rate is a higher bar. Moxen, Mana Crypt, and Sol Ring not withstanding due to the severity of their under-rate-ness. Swords to Plowshares being an efficient removal spell is not broken, just good.

Some cards are broken regardless of their use. We all know Ad Nauseam is bad in a casual deck with averave cmc greater than 3. But that doesn't stop it from being a stupidly busted card. Maybe it's because I've been playing Demonic Tutor casually for 14 years, but I don't have that stigma for it.

[umtiger]

Efficient tutors are really strong and can almost be evaluated like combo pieces. Flashmay be a good analogue. Mundane in casual games, but overpowered in competitive games. Efficient tutors are just fine when tutoring answers or engines. It all depends on how you play them.

1.) Demonic Tutor costs 2 mana but is not a good comparison to Flash.
2.) Efficient tutors should not be evaluated the same as the combo pieces.

Searching your deck for any card is "broken" in the same sense that you get to start every game with your chosen card in the command zone as an "8th" card that cannot be Thoughtseize'd and is a recurring threat that can neither be tucked nor exiled away.

In my current playgroup, they had been playing 60 card casual for years until I met them. I felt I had discovered something unique, like one of the last bastions of casual MTG untouched by modernity. Myself, I've been playing for 20 years and even have a version of Dandan built for goodness sakes.

Tutoring is fun. They tutor. Demonic Tutor does nothing but enhance our games. It means they get to play that card that they haven't seen in a while. Those of you who choose not to play Demonic Tutor can also just continue to not play it. Banning Demonic Tutor wouldn't accomplish anything. Some people cannot have fun "playing" this game regardless.

[PrimevalCommander]

1.) Demonic Tutor costs 2 mana but is not a good comparison to Flash.
2.) Efficient tutors should not be evaluated the same as the combo pieces.

I respect your disagreement with my opinions. But the rest of your post does not do anything to explain your stance on those two points.

1. Flash didn't get banned because it was breaking casual games. It was banned because it was being used in the most optimized way possible at the highest level of commander. Tutors have the same problem to some extent. They don't typically hose casual games unless you are purposefully playing them in the most optimized way. At that point your idea of casual may be different from the rest of the playgroup.

2. Some here have already stated that tutors are only as powerful as you make them. Combos are mostly the same. Anyone can play A+B combos in any deck and win games. "The secret of the format is NOT breaking it" -Sheldon. Now individual cards in many powerful combos might not be objectively powerful alone, but many are. There are many cards that scale with the power of the table. Dockside Extortionist Mystic Remora Carpet of Flowers. Without their being an accepted definition of what is broken in magic, its all open to discussion and opinion.

[aliciaofthevast]

Idk. You have to spend two on your own turn to get the card you want. I'd much rather see you cast this than any of the MIR tutors.

Demonic tutor is just undercosted, not bannable I think. It, diabolic intent, and grim tutor are important to ensure you can find the answer you need but without being a cheap instant you fire off on someone's end step to avoid the tempo hit.

[BaronCappuccino]

A lot of casual players, especially straight out of deck construction, would benefit way more from draw than tutors, Demonic included. It can take quite a while to discover all the interactions the deck builder made possible, and tutors inhibit that process. Odds are, a casual deck has way more ways to win than a tuned one, and racing for a favorite of them turns your casual deck into a subpar competitive one as you opt to lack variety, yet still lack speed and resilience. In this mindset, I find myself more in the "better card for better decks" camp. I shy away from tutors, because I think they make me play worse, and I don't particularly like the decks where they would make me play better.

[umtiger]

I respect your disagreement with my opinions. But the rest of your post does not do anything to explain your stance on those two points.

1. Flash didn't get banned because it was breaking casual games. It was banned because it was being used in the most optimized way possible at the highest level of commander. Tutors have the same problem to some extent. They don't typically hose casual games unless you are purposefully playing them in the most optimized way. At that point your idea of casual may be different from the rest of the playgroup.

2. Some here have already stated that tutors are only as powerful as you make them. Combos are mostly the same. Anyone can play A+B combos in any deck and win games. "The secret of the format is NOT breaking it" -Sheldon. Now individual cards in many powerful combos might not be objectively powerful alone, but many are. There are many cards that scale with the power of the table. Dockside Extortionist Mystic Remora Carpet of Flowers. Without their being an accepted definition of what is broken in magic, its all open to discussion and opinion.

You're right. I didn't use the rest of my post to explain my points. I do not always feel the need to explain my points. The rest of my post was just my anecdotal experience on why Demonic Tutor and Tutors in general just have no place on the ban list.

But here goes:

1.) Flash is not comparable to Demonic Tutor on any level beyond cmc and being able to trigger prowess. Demonic Tutor has a use other than ending the game. Flash was not ever cast other than to end a game. Demonic Tutor is played in decks of all "power-levels" (and I don't even like mentioning that mostly arbitrary measure). Flash was played in only decks aiming to win quickly (and here, I chuckle that you refer to this as the "highest level of commander.") Truly, most players that I have ever played EDH with would struggle to consistently 3-0 FNM drafts (relic that they are now). Flash truly was an "easy" button even low skill players could employ. Thus, pretty much every one wanted it banned. Especially the better ones.

2.) Tutors are powerful regardless. Because the effect in and of itself is strong. You can play down (fail to find, etc.) or build down, but it's still strong. I mean, many players simply choose to just not play them. Because once again, the effect in and of itself is strong. Even new players recognize Tutors as strong. That's one reason why they don't include them in the precons. Because if any decks were ever purposefully weak, it's those pre-cons. And Demonic Tutor would easily be the best card in any pre-con. I'd argue better than Sol Ring. Since ramping early in a pre-con environment does not snowball advantage versus a more turned environment and drawing a Sol Ring late is garbage.

I disagree that Demonic Tutor is only as strong as the deck that it's in. What's wrong with just stating the obvious. Tutors are just simply strong. You might argue that it's weak in a 98 land deck, but even then I'd argue that unless that deck was designed to just lose on purpose, then there's a darn good reason that it's 98 lands + Demonic Tutor AND it'd likely be the best card in the deck. I know, because I had a 60 land deck for a long time. DT was one of the best cards because it's simply any card (especially since you can tutor and play a land right away for 0 mana).

[Avacyn Believer]

The cards that tend to get banned are ones that don't really have a fair use. I have had many games where someone cast demonic tutor and it was completely fine. I've had basically zero games where someone cast Paradox Engine and the game continued to be enjoyable.

I never thought about it this way, but this is actually a good point.

I think if RC started to ban fast mana and fast tutors it wouldn't really improve the average game experience. I've played with a fair few different groups and it has been rare that even the most competitive players didn't have lower power decks so that they could play with newer players, and/or just have more casual games. I think case could be made that it is part of the Commander experience, realizing after you start playing how good tutors can be, and then eventually removing them from many of your decks because you want more fun when playing your decks. That is also when you start deckbuilding with different self-imposed limitations to challenge yourself.

Personally I only ever owned two copies of Demonic Tutor, my oldest one from Divine v Demonic which always went to any black deck I wanted to have the most options... the second one I think I pulled from a booster recently and can't even tell you where it is top off my head

[krakked]

The thing is with tutors is that it's about what power level you want to be at.
With tutors, your fetching combo pieces and board wipes, or at least investing into the future. Without tutors, I would assume, either stem from just wanting to keep things fresh, or to keep the game casual. Back to the topic of the thread, demonic tutor and tutors in general just show which level your deck is at. In my opinion at least.

[Moxnix]

In a format where I find tutoring for tutors to recast both the tutors with yawgwin a common line of play demonic tutor is pretty busted for its cost. Sure you can tutor a bad card and you can sol ring into an over costed vanilla beater but anyone who has used demonic tutor knows the flexibility and power of its effect for 1B makes its a staple in any deck using black where as with cards like grim tutor or dark petition etc. do require you asking what kind of deck am I playing what's my meta etc. If your in black you play demonic tutor. I don't agree with the sentiment only combos or unintended loops etc break games IMO card quality is king and I can use a fair strategy with nothing but vintage staples and smash someone on combo using less than CEDh power cards. Doesn't really matter if I'm fetching wrath of god in control or doomsday post dark ritual in combo demonic tutor is always powerful and efficient at 1B. I find the argument it can tutor fair things to be arbitrary and irrelevant i can play mana crypt with no good curve our plays and very color hungry curve and have it be a ping totem that's bad. I don't see how not having curve out plays for a mana stone is any different from having no good tutor targets. This isn't even a hyperbolic argument the number of 5 color decks I've seen drop mana crypt and have zero way to utilize the mana is almost comical. In some ways I think the ability to grab a perfect answer is a more powerful way to play it than grabbing a combo card. I don't think sol ring is inherently more powerful in a CEDH setting as many of those decks win at colored mana costs in the 3-4 range its not a huge deal unless they curve into colored sources etc again CEDH players mull to luck lands and decide games during mulls half the time. Maybe in a random casual pod sol ring is normally better but by no means is this always the case. TLDR its a staple cost matters and for 1B any card into your hand is a pretty damn good deal.

[DirkGently]

@Dunadain
If we want to avoid the term "ban" then I'd say "problematic". Correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the impression you think DT is a problematic card. Personally I don't. I think it's basically a mirror. If your deck is problematic, it will reflect that and make it even more problematic. If your deck is fine, then it will reflect that and be fine. Basically the same situation with sol ring etc, although I think there's more room for a 7/10 deck to run away with a game off a lucky tempo boost than off good card selection.

If we decided to create a new banlist with the goal of depowering the format, and started banning the most problematic cards in order, we'd eventually get to DT but imo it would be pretty far down the list. Once you get rid of all the most broken stuff in the format (a long list, to be sure) then DT loses a lot of its potential power. It's always a strong card but it's never really "the problem", imo.

[Dunadain]

You got to realize the context that started this discussion: yeti said "dt is good, not busted"

"Busted" is a pretty vague term and everyone's going to draw a line at different points, but if a card that is banned in all formats besides commander and restricted in vintage doesn't qualify as "busted" then idk what DOES count as busted. Is it restricted exclusively to the moxen, Black Lotus, and Ancestral Recall?

But, I think that discussion is a dead end, even if I think calling dt not busted is dumb, it IS a a subjective opinion, so I can't really prove yeti, or anyone else, wrong.

Moving onto the topic of bans, specifically the hypothetical new ban list you're talking about, I don't want to imply that your opinion is meaningless since you don't play cEDH but as someone that's played a lot of it, I don't think you grasp how central tutors are at the highest levels. Pretty much every aspect of the format is conspiring together to make tutors better in this format than any other:

A singleton format means it's harder to dig for cards,

Increased deck size means it's harder to dig for cards.

Sextuple opposing life total means combo is much more powerful than alternative strategies, which in turn feeds tutors.

Multiplayer puts control in an awkward position and rewards proactive strategies, like, once again, combo.

Heck, we talk about "deck archetypes" in cEDH and they do exist, but compared to any other format, their all combo. Whether your stax, combo, or control, your actual gameplay is, ultimately a combo deck with control/stax elements (with a notable exception being Winota, Joiner of Forces).

So take the most powerful tutor ever printed, put it in the same format as the most powerful cards ever printed, and restructure the entire format to make sure the that tutors are several times more powerful than they are in whatever environment they were originally "balanced" for (not that dt is even balanced in it's appropriate game structure), and you've got cEDH DT

DT wouldn't be the first ban on this hypothetical list, but I think it would be pretty high up there.

As for the whole "mirror" conversation. I think I misunderstood you earlier, you weren't saying that dt isn't good because you choose to put it in bad decks (in the context of making the most competitive deck possible, I'm aware that you are a perfectly capable deck brewer), but because in a low powered format, dt wouldn't be broken. Correct me if that's not what you meant, but I've already said that evaluating cards based on the assumption that they are going to be used suboptimaly is, I'm my eyes, a fools errand, so I'll tackle this interpretation instead:

How far do you think the meta would have to be de-powered to make dt an appropriate card? I think the answer is a lot, commander is either the most powerful, or second most powerful format out there, and just based off of empirical evidence from legacy, your going to have to at least make the format weaker than legacy, probably a lot weaker than legacy considering the structure of EDH makes tutors much stronger than they already were. Your talking about banning a huge swath of the card pool (that sees play in cEDH) in order to bring DT to an appropriate power level, and there's no guarantee that it will even work. Predicting the impact of bans is notoriously difficult.

[DirkGently]

@Dunadain

I agree that the term "busted" is too vague to be a good jumping-off point for a nuanced discussion. Us coming into this with different interpretations of that term is probably where a lot of the disagreement originated.

I don't seek out cEDH but I do peruse lists sometimes and sometimes end up playing against them, and I just generally keep an ear to the ground. I think I have a reasonable grasp of tutors centrality to the format - it just makes sense from a deckbuilding perspective (lord knows I've made plenty of tutor-heavy decks for that reason, they're just finding jank instead of combos). And of course I understand quite well why combo is so popular within cEDH, because it's the exact same reason I don't play combo.

But I haven't been talking about cEDH and I don't care about the balance of cEDH. A card being problematic in cEDH means exactly zero to me. At one point General Tazri was the most powerful commander in the format - I proxied that deck for a tournament in fact. That doesn't mean General Tazri is a problematic card.

Within the context of normal commander, I think DT is basically fine. Strong, sure, but so are a lot of cards.

Within the hypothetical balance-via-banlist, I think you could take one of two paths at the onset to attempt to depower the format broadly and steer it away from the all-combos-all-the-time hellscape that is cEDH - either start removing the best tutors, or start removing the best combos. The best combos, if there's no tutoring, become much worse, and basically unusable as a primary wincon in most cases. The best tutors, if they don't have any combos to find, I think become basically fine, just as they are in regular EDH. Either solution potentially works. But, I think if you want to go down the ban-all-tutors route, I think you end up needing to go pretty damn deep on banning tutors. Even if the best tutors are crap like Diabolic Tutor, combo is still probably the best wincon by a fair bit. And even with all tutors banned, there's draw and card filtering and etc. And you're also removing the viability of a lot of fair and fun things by removing tutors, whereas most strong combo pieces are only ever used for those combos. So I definitely favor the ban-all-strong-combos approach to a balance-via-banlist.

[Dunadain]

But I haven't been talking about cEDH and I don't care about the balance of cEDH. A card being problematic in cEDH means exactly zero to me. At one point General Tazri was the most powerful commander in the format - I proxied that deck for a tournament in fact. That doesn't mean General Tazri is a problematic card.

And now we're back to square one XD. If we aren't measuring the power of a cards under the assumption that they are going to be put in the best deck possible piloted by the best player possible (aka cEDH), then we aren't really measuring the power of that card, are we?

I suppose if you provided some alternative measuring stick rather than the best possible deck, piloted by the best possible player, then we could have a discussion based around this theoretical format where people play all decks at the same not fully optimized power level.

First of all however, I don't think there's any way to say that whatever measuring stick you determine is better than any other arbitrarily determined measuring stick. Second of all, if you've ever had a discussion about power levels in edh, you know it's impossible to objectively measure the power of a deck. Third of all and most importantly, now you're not really measuring the full power of the card. You're just measuring the power of the card when played in suboptimal decks, or piloted by suboptimal players.

I know you don't like cedh, and for what it's worth I much prefer casual though I do enjoy dipping my toes in competitive edh. But if we're having a discussion about power levels, you'd have to somehow convince me that talking about the cards used in the most powerful way possible ISN'T the discussion we're having.

[DirkGently]

@Dunadain I have provided an alternative measuring stick - being problematic. Talking about the raw power level isn't particularly useful in commander because everyone is mediating their power level to some extent. Within that context DT has a useful role to play that doesn't generally cause problems. In the way that a card like, say, Limited Resources does not.

[Dunadain]

@Dunadain I have provided an alternative measuring stick - being problematic. Talking about the raw power level isn't particularly useful in commander because everyone is mediating their power level to some extent. Within that context DT has a useful role to play that doesn't generally cause problems. In the way that a card like, say, Limited Resources does not.

"Problematic" is the question in this discussion, not that context. Problematic based off of what measuring stick? Cause if we are using cEDH as the measuring stick, it is definitely problematic. If we are using some other power level, what power level is it, how do you measure it, and why is that power level a better power level than all alternatives?

[DirkGently]

"Problematic" is the question in this discussion, not that context. Problematic based off of what measuring stick? Cause if we are using cEDH as the measuring stick, it is definitely problematic. If we are using some other power level, what power level is it, how do you measure it, and why is that power level a better power level than all alternatives?

In my experience, the vast majority of LGS commander games that aren't explicitly cEDH are happening from precon-tier up to about an 8. For the games around 8, when combos become increasingly dominant, demonic tutor starts to become somewhat of an issue, but below that I think it's basically completely fine. Insofar as I don't think the increased consistency provided by strong tutors negatively impacts those games.

I'll concede that defining power levels on a 1-10 scale is vague, and that "problematic" is subjective, but that's just the nature of the format. If you really want to, we could drill down into what a 6, 7, and 8 game looks like, and what sorts of specific impacts would be considered acceptable vs problematic, but I think that would get pretty tedious and I think people generally understand these concepts even if they're not rigorously defined.

[Dunadain]

"Problematic" is the question in this discussion, not that context. Problematic based off of what measuring stick? Cause if we are using cEDH as the measuring stick, it is definitely problematic. If we are using some other power level, what power level is it, how do you measure it, and why is that power level a better power level than all alternatives?

In my experience, the vast majority of LGS commander games that aren't explicitly cEDH are happening from precon-tier up to about an 8. For the games around 8, when combos become increasingly dominant, demonic tutor starts to become somewhat of an issue, but below that I think it's basically completely fine. Insofar as I don't think the increased consistency provided by strong tutors negatively impacts those games.

I'll concede that defining power levels on a 1-10 scale is vague, and that "problematic" is subjective, but that's just the nature of the format. If you really want to, we could drill down into what a 6, 7, and 8 game looks like, and what sorts of specific impacts would be considered acceptable vs problematic, but I think that would get pretty tedious and I think people generally understand these concepts even if they're not rigorously defined.

The power level is a precon deck, or maybe an 8
You don't have a way to measure whether or not a deck is the right power level, but you're sure you could find one if it wasn't so tedious
That power level is better than any alternative because that's the majority of YOUR experience at YOUR game store when YOU exclude tables that are explicitly labeled cEDH

I don't expect you to be able to answer my three questions with more clarity, because i don't think it's possible to (by all means though, if you think you can, take a shot), but how are we supposed to have any meaningful discussion about the power/problemnaticness of a card with these parameters?

I totally understand not wanting to hammer out these definitions (honestly, I don't either, but if you want to stick it out I'm down to try) but if we aren't going to set clear parameters then we're just ships in the night and it's probably best to leave the conversation here.