Why is everyone in cEDH keep calling about 'ban' Flash thing?

[onering]

People were saying that about Biorythm et Al in 2012, then wizards printed worldfire and it was quickly banned. I have no doubt that the same decisions would be made today, as the RC recently updated the banlist philosophy and maintained the points that got those cards banned in the first place.

And yet 2012 and 2020 are 8 years apart and not a single card has been banned like that since worldfire, despite shaman forgotten ways, triskaidekaphobia, approach of the second sun, biovisionary, mechanized production, maze's end, jace, wielder of mysteries, liliana's contract, hellkite tyrant, simic ascendancy, revel in riches and that's just the recently printed win the game effects not the windmill stupid sorceries.

To be fair there have not been many cards after the pattern of worldfire and sway of the stars but plenty of 'you win the game' effects, many of them far more efficient than CV.

The format is so completely different now - between 2012 and 2020 than between like 2009 and 2012 is night and day. People would look at Worldfire and laugh if printed today. There're so many combos that are all good cards now that the setup involved in winning with worldfire is not worth it.

Not a single card you mentioned is relevant. Alt wincons aren't the problem, and many alt wincons existed and we're not banned when edh started. The problem with Worldfire type cards is that they have a negatively disruptive impact on the game with no additional setup. That they win out of nowhere with minimal setup is a problem, and that they just screw up games with no additional set up is another. Triskedeck, simic ascendancy, hellkite tyrant, etc all require setup, sometimes a great deal of setup. Simic visionary can potentially win out of nowhere but it needs support, at which point it's a combo. Even Shaman of Forgotten ways requires at least 6 additional power on your board and either passing a turn cycle or a way to give it haste to go off, Biorythm just needs to be cast. Thats like saying that Time Warp wouldn't be banned because Safe of Hours exists.

I don't for the life of me understand what confuses people about this.

[pokken]

[
Not a single card you mentioned is relevant. Alt wincons aren't the problem, and many alt wincons existed and we're not banned when edh started. The problem with Worldfire type cards is that they have a negatively disruptive impact on the game with no additional setup. That they win out of nowhere with minimal setup is a problem, and that they just screw up games with no additional set up is another. Triskedeck, simic ascendancy, hellkite tyrant, etc all require setup, sometimes a great deal of setup. Simic visionary can potentially win out of nowhere but it needs support, at which point it's a combo. Even Shaman of Forgotten ways requires at least 6 additional power on your board and either passing a turn cycle or a way to give it haste to go off, Biorythm just needs to be cast. Thats like saying that Time Warp wouldn't be banned because Safe of Hours exists.

I don't for the life of me understand what confuses people about this.

Regularly have a disruptive impact on the game - and yet thieves' auction and the great aurora are fine, and warp world and so on.

It's all just arbitrary. You can't win with worldfire without extra mana and something that's going to kill, barring jhoira, who does the same exact thing with obliterate or decree of annihilation and a planeswalker or two or eldrazi or whatever.

Biorhythm needs to be cast AND have a clear board advantage. Worldfire requires some kind of setup.

You can't convince me anyone is going to play biorhythm these days except for the lols. Decks are way too efficient for that. People are cutting tooth and nail now which is quite a bit better way to win for a big mana sorcery that's much more surely going to win the game.

The point is that comparing any of them to Flash is a joke. Nothing in common.

[onering]

I agree that those cards aren't comparable to flash, but your missing the point of why Worldfire et Al are banned. When Warp World, Great Aurara, Thieves Auction are cast, their effect is based on the board state. What happened in the game prior to Warp World actually matters, because its effect is based on how many permanents were on the field. The more permanents you have, the better your chance of being left with a board state. Further, it's less likely than cards like Worldfire to just leave opponents screwed. There's an inherent risk in casting Warp World that your opponents are going to get an eldrazi or two while you get screwed. It both depends on what has already happened in the game, and actually plays out differently game to game. It actually has the potential to make for memorable games, rather than just flip the table like Worldfire.

I've also said before that the combo win off of Worldfire, Biorythm, etc aren't the real problems. You try to set up a two card combo with them and it's not much different than any other two card combo, except probably less efficient. The problem, and why they're banned, is that their non combo use, when they are used as intended, is in itself problematic. With Worldfire, you are either casting it for the combo win, or your casting it to essentially flip the table. And that's what the RC saw when they banned it. Wrath, 1 drop, Biorythm is perfectly fine. Firing off Biorythm to just randomly off a guy who got caught without creatures isn't.

What these cards do, when used as intended, is ruin games. Other cards, like Jokulhaups, Armageddon, Warp World, etc CAN ruin games, but can just as easily be played in ways that don't. The Worldfires play out, at their best, as cheesy combos, and when played straight they play out like the most obnoxious, reckless, and arbitrary uses of cards like Armageddon and Jokulhaups. Not only does banning them prevent people from ruining games with them, but it also sends the message that you shouldn't use other cards to do what they do. It says "don't just fire off Jokulhaups because you drew it". More directly, it says "don't just randomly %$#% up the game. People like the decisions and actions they took in the game to matter, and these cards, when used as intended, invalidate everything that came before and make the rest of the game either a slog, or a coin toss. Don't just blow up the lands if it's going to mean everyone passes 7 turns before they can do anything, don't just blow up the board out of spite, don't flip the table."

Tooth and Nail absolutely can just win the game, and honestly I've felt like it should have been banned long ago, and I wouldn't mind seeing it bite the banhammer alongside Hulk, though it's become less popular lately. The RC has spoken on why they never banned T&N despite it being able to win out of nowhere, and they have repeatedly stated that it is because T&N can also be used to just grab a couple of bombs that don't combo, and that's completely fine. People actually do use it that way, and I've played against it where that's what happened. That's what sets it apart, that it has fair uses other than just winning the game out of nowhere. That's what sets flash apart as well, that it has fair uses other than winning the game out of nowhere. That's the part of the win out of nowhere ban criteria people seem to keep forgetting about, that the card has to have limited use other than to win out of nowhere to be banned. Simply being able to win out of nowhere has never been enough, it also has to have to other real use (like CV), or it's alternative use has to be just as problematic (Like Worldfire or Sway). Biorythm is probably the least problematic of the currently banned cards because it only effects life totals, so you could potentially just use it as a massive burn spell that leaves real game left to play to finish, but it just randomly offing people is still a problem. Worldfire is probably the worst, winning via Jhoira combo is the best case scenario with that card.

I really do feel like I have to repeat myself here: being able to ruin games isn't enough, being only able to ruin games is what gets these cards banned.

[DirkGently]

Wrath, 1 drop, Biorythm is perfectly fine.

I agree with everything else you said, but I think part of the problem with Biorhythm is that, unlike say hulk that requires specific cards to combo win, wraths are cards that get run frequently, and very reasonably, in many many decks. There's a big difference between a specific 2-card combo like painter stone, and a card that "combos" with any given one of a hundred different cards, most of which are already fine cards. In the right context, you don't even need to be the one to cast the wipe to reap the benefits.

That and, even if everyone does have creatures out, it's fairly rare to have out more than five creatures, and very rare to have more than 10 creatures, outside of a dedicated token deck - partly because board wipes are common enough that its generally a bad idea to go too all-in. That means, if nothing else, you're Sorin-ing the entire table at its weakest, with one spell which is very hard to interact with meaningfully. So even if you have no setup whatsoever, and everyone has creatures out, it's still extremely brutal. Partly this is because it's designed for 20-life formats. If it was life = creatures x2, it'd be a lot more plausible to have a semi-livable amount of life after it resolved. But as is, you're either playing a token deck or you're dead to the next stiff breeze - no matter what you did to prepare.

[pokken]

In my experience social pressure is enough to stop people from abusing jokulhaups as a board flip, and there's zero reason to think it wouldn't stop worldfire too. Just a waste of a ban slot in my opinion, much like most of those cards.

If all card does is ruin games people will just not play it especially if it's 9 mana garbage that has no purpose. That's the point where we disagree; I honestly could not care less if a game gets shat up every six months because someone casts worldfire. Playing who's got the prophet every single game was horrendous and deserved a banning.

I don't think that you repeating yourself is making it any more convincing to me, so we can just agree to disagree. I would prefer they only ban things that are actually a problem that rule 0 can't fix, because it makes the banlist incoherent in my opinion.

Putting cards like that on the banlist just opens the doors to questions like the one that fueled this -- if one stupid win the game card that nobody is playing can get banned, why can't Flash?

I believe that a serious metagame share benchmark is vital to considering things to be banned at this point. Rule 0 can solve these weird outlier cards.

edit:

I just remembered worldpurge. Where's the clamoring for that to be banned?That's right, nobody plays it because it's garbage We had a dude cast it once, everyone yelled at him and he never did it again.

And I posted an MCD if we want to take this rumble where it belongs

viewtopic.php?f=38&t=24100&view=unread#unread

[WizardMN]

I just remembered worldpurge. Where's the clamoring for that to be banned?That's right, nobody plays it because it's garbage We had a dude cast it once, everyone yelled at him and he never did it again.

While I get the underlying sentiment behind your arguments for some of these cards, there is one fundamental and irrevocably important detail with Worldpurge that none of the other, similar , cards have: "Empty all mana pools" (or, I suppose, with the Oracle Text: "Each player loses all unspent mana.").

This is where I feel the comparison starts to break down. Yes, it is a terrible card but it is this clause that makes it so. Worldfire and Sway of the Stars both allow for the entire game to be reset *while also* allowing the caster to immediately cast their general. It is this bit that I think pushes those cards over the edge into "bad for the format" territory. Or, even, interacts poorly with the format since it if the very existence of the Commander in the Command Zone that allows them to work as well as they do.

While not necessarily an argument in itself, but just look at all the hoops SaffronOlive had to jump through to make Worldfire work in Modern. This format has a built in way to break the symmetry which Worldpurge doesn't allow for.

And yes, I realize there are other ways to do it, such as casting something and Flashing in Worldpurge but the rest just work on their own with literally no other setup needed beyond "make sure your commander is in the command zone".

[if4ko]

[
Not a single card you mentioned is relevant. Alt wincons aren't the problem, and many alt wincons existed and we're not banned when edh started. The problem with Worldfire type cards is that they have a negatively disruptive impact on the game with no additional setup. That they win out of nowhere with minimal setup is a problem, and that they just screw up games with no additional set up is another. Triskedeck, simic ascendancy, hellkite tyrant, etc all require setup, sometimes a great deal of setup. Simic visionary can potentially win out of nowhere but it needs support, at which point it's a combo. Even Shaman of Forgotten ways requires at least 6 additional power on your board and either passing a turn cycle or a way to give it haste to go off, Biorythm just needs to be cast. Thats like saying that Time Warp wouldn't be banned because Safe of Hours exists.

I don't for the life of me understand what confuses people about this.

Regularly have a disruptive impact on the game - and yet thieves' auction and the great aurora are fine, and warp world and so on.

It's all just arbitrary. You can't win with worldfire without extra mana and something that's going to kill, barring jhoira, who does the same exact thing with obliterate or decree of annihilation and a planeswalker or two or eldrazi or whatever.

Biorhythm needs to be cast AND have a clear board advantage. Worldfire requires some kind of setup.

You can't convince me anyone is going to play biorhythm these days except for the lols. Decks are way too efficient for that. People are cutting tooth and nail now which is quite a bit better way to win for a big mana sorcery that's much more surely going to win the game.

The point is that comparing any of them to Flash is a joke. Nothing in common.

I feel like you're misunderstanding my point. Obviously, I'm not goinna say these cards are more powerful than Flash or would see play at the average table. Maybe I'm underestimating how much the silent majority in the EDH community plays Flash fairly, but from my view, it's most commonly played to cause the "win out of nowhere" feelsbads that onering mentioned. The AWC distinction is largely a relic of the past, but as long as they remain on the list, the comparison is valid.

It also doesn't help that most of the "filler pieces" (including almost all of one of the Hulk lines) are very playable cards.

[Dragoon]

I feel like you're misunderstanding my point. Obviously, I'm not goinna say these cards are more powerful than Flash or would see play at the average table. Maybe I'm underestimating how much the silent majority in the EDH community plays Flash fairly, but from my view, it's most commonly played to cause the "win out of nowhere" feelsbads that onering mentioned. The AWC distinction is largely a relic of the past, but as long as they remain on the list, the comparison is valid.

It also doesn't help that most of the "filler pieces" (including almost all of one of the Hulk lines) are very playable cards.

But winning out of nowhere has never been a self-sufficient criteria for the banlist. Many combos can be played in EDH after all. The problem comes when a single card allows you to win out of nowhere almost immediately, without a significant setup and with no particular deckbuilding restrictions. Coalition Victory, Worldfire and Biorhythm all fit into that category. That's what the RC is after. Flash requires to build your deck in a way that allows you to abuse it, which means you know what you are doing. Again, if you want to break the format, nothing is preventing you from doing so, except Rule 0. But cards like Prophet of Kruphix or Sylvan Primordial could ruin games on their own without their owner realizing it during deckbuilding process.

[ilovesaprolings]

People gotta stop bringing this card up. The problem with biorhythm is that it can kill people out of nowhere. a creature with a tap ability is a very different thing. Every color has the ability to kill the creature if the ability is likely to kill them. Plus 11 mana is a lot more than 8 mana, and you've gotta pay for the creature first as well (and meet the power requirements).

It's really not the same thing at all.

The effect is literally the same. It's everything else that's different.
My point was that the "byorhythm effect" is not some scary casual bogeyman. The byorhythm effect an "counter this or game" sorcery that require almost no board state is.
This point is actually more intricated and intesting than you claim.
Perphas triggers and answer windows are way more important than the actual effect regarding the "health" of a card.

[DirkGently]

There are lots of ways to win the game. Many decks can create a board state that basically says "deal with this by next turn or I'm going to win". While I don't love those, I'm way more okay with those situations than cards that can win out of nowhere with no time to react, especially wins that can only be interacted with on the stack.

That's why I'm more ok with CV than biorhythm personally - CV can be disrupted via removal. Biorhythm can't really. Best (likely) case would be forcing a draw instead of a loss.

[onering]

Wrath, 1 drop, Biorythm is perfectly fine.

I agree with everything else you said, but I think part of the problem with Biorhythm is that, unlike say hulk that requires specific cards to combo win, wraths are cards that get run frequently, and very reasonably, in many many decks. There's a big difference between a specific 2-card combo like painter stone, and a card that "combos" with any given one of a hundred different cards, most of which are already fine cards. In the right context, you don't even need to be the one to cast the wipe to reap the benefits.

That and, even if everyone does have creatures out, it's fairly rare to have out more than five creatures, and very rare to have more than 10 creatures, outside of a dedicated token deck - partly because board wipes are common enough that its generally a bad idea to go too all-in. That means, if nothing else, you're Sorin-ing the entire table at its weakest, with one spell which is very hard to interact with meaningfully. So even if you have no setup whatsoever, and everyone has creatures out, it's still extremely brutal. Partly this is because it's designed for 20-life formats. If it was life = creatures x2, it'd be a lot more plausible to have a semi-livable amount of life after it resolved. But as is, you're either playing a token deck or you're dead to the next stiff breeze - no matter what you did to prepare.

Those are good points that I didn't consider.

There are lots of ways to win the game. Many decks can create a board state that basically says "deal with this by next turn or I'm going to win". While I don't love those, I'm way more okay with those situations than cards that can win out of nowhere with no time to react, especially wins that can only be interacted with on the stack.

That's why I'm more ok with CV than biorhythm personally - CV can be disrupted via removal. Biorhythm can't really. Best (likely) case would be forcing a draw instead of a loss.

CV is the least offensive of the bunch in light of your arguments on Biorythm, but it's still the least likely to get unbanned, simply because it has no other use other than winning out of nowhere. It's a poster child for the sort of anticlimactic oops I win gameplay the RC discourages, and it doesn't have any alternative uses to argue in it's favor. More than any other card, it's a pretty discrete case. The RC is against X, and CV only does X, so it's banned.

[onering]

In my experience social pressure is enough to stop people from abusing jokulhaups as a board flip, and there's zero reason to think it wouldn't stop worldfire too. Just a waste of a ban slot in my opinion, much like most of those cards.

If all card does is ruin games people will just not play it especially if it's 9 mana garbage that has no purpose. That's the point where we disagree; I honestly could not care less if a game gets shat up every six months because someone casts worldfire. Playing who's got the prophet every single game was horrendous and deserved a banning.

I don't think that you repeating yourself is making it any more convincing to me, so we can just agree to disagree. I would prefer they only ban things that are actually a problem that rule 0 can't fix, because it makes the banlist incoherent in my opinion.

Putting cards like that on the banlist just opens the doors to questions like the one that fueled this -- if one stupid win the game card that nobody is playing can get banned, why can't Flash?

I believe that a serious metagame share benchmark is vital to considering things to be banned at this point. Rule 0 can solve these weird outlier cards.

edit:

I just remembered worldpurge. Where's the clamoring for that to be banned?That's right, nobody plays it because it's garbage We had a dude cast it once, everyone yelled at him and he never did it again.

And I posted an MCD if we want to take this rumble where it belongs

viewtopic.php?f=38&t=24100&view=unread#unread

I will always repeat myself when someone responds to my post with an argument that only works if it ignores part of my already posted argument. That leads me to believe that either the person missed that part of the argument, or doesn't care. In either case, it means that I am responding to an argument that I have already debunked, and thus I'm just going to repeat the part that debunked it, probably worded differently. It's pretty easy to avoid.

I don't think that this discussion is derailing the thread, it's pretty tied to Flash and arguments about it's banning. Understanding why certain cards are banned is important to discussion about banning other cards, especially if the argument being used in favor of banning a card is based on those already banned cards being banned. Understanding why Worldfire et Al are banned is important to countering the argument that flash should be banned under the same criteria, and it centers around an understanding that Flash has alternative uses that are ok while Worldfire et Al don't. That is also what sets apart cards like Warp World or Great Aurara. The ability to ruin games doesn't get cards banned, it either had to be ruining games constantly or have ruining games be the only thing it does.

Rule 0, I agree, does a lot, but the banlist provides a starting point that informs those discussions. It's a point of reference that reinforces the format philosophy with examples while ensuring certain particularly problematic cards don't get played. Unbanning Worldfire et Al wouldn't mean they would be run all over the place, but it would mean they would be ran more often and the people who enjoy those effects would have an argument in favor of not Rule 0ing them out. Unbanning them would send the signal that these cards are ok, while leaving them in the format if they were never banned would at least leave it ambiguous and give tacit approval. This is less of a problem in established playgroups with well adjusted people, but all it takes is one That Guy in a shop for these cards to cause issues.

The banlist also signals to wizards what is ok to print. These are big splashy flavorful Timmy spells that don't hurt any tournament formats. They are the sort of card that screams commander, as it is in commander that they have their best shot of going off. They also have appeal to a segment of the player base, so wizards has an incentive to print cards like them to throw that segment a bone. Banning the worst offenders sends the signal to wizards that they have to be careful when designing them because if they aren't they will get banned in the only format they matter in and thus lose their appeal. Since these are expensive sorceries with symmetric effects, it's easy for wizards to go nuts with them without risking constructed balance or limited balance for tournament formats, and that is basically what happened with Worldfire (others predated commander or at least it's popularity and thus there is an excuse for them). Having certain disruptive effects banned and others, that lack the most problematic elements or have other non problematic uses, unbanned shows wizards how to design these cards so they can be played and enjoyed by the segment that loves them without ruining the game for everyone else.

As for Worldpurge, I think that actually is comparable. It has enough differences to perhaps put it on the not banworthy side. It doesn't have the interacts poorly with the format issue by not letting you float Mana to cast your commander, for one. It also doesn't totally negate the rest of the game to the same degree as it leaves life totals intact. I personally would be in favor of banning it because realistically all it does is ruin games.

[if4ko]

I feel like you're misunderstanding my point. Obviously, I'm not goinna say these cards are more powerful than Flash or would see play at the average table. Maybe I'm underestimating how much the silent majority in the EDH community plays Flash fairly, but from my view, it's most commonly played to cause the "win out of nowhere" feelsbads that onering mentioned. The AWC distinction is largely a relic of the past, but as long as they remain on the list, the comparison is valid.

It also doesn't help that most of the "filler pieces" (including almost all of one of the Hulk lines) are very playable cards.

But winning out of nowhere has never been a self-sufficient criteria for the banlist. Many combos can be played in EDH after all. The problem comes when a single card allows you to win out of nowhere almost immediately, without a significant setup and with no particular deckbuilding restrictions. Coalition Victory, Worldfire and Biorhythm all fit into that category. That's what the RC is after. Flash requires to build your deck in a way that allows you to abuse it, which means you know what you are doing. Again, if you want to break the format, nothing is preventing you from doing so, except Rule 0. But cards like Prophet of Kruphix or Sylvan Primordial could ruin games on their own without their owner realizing it during deckbuilding process.

Fair enough. He asked why people in cEDH wanted it banned, and I gave a reason. The cEDH community does not want to ban Flash Hulk over its power or its ubiquity. The cEDH community is advocating for a Flash ban because in their side of the format, it has the exact "win out of nowhere" setup and now has the lack of interaction and minimal deckbuilding restrictions. I'd also call 3 of the other 5 cards in the package "good cards", with Blood Pet being the only one of those that isn't an outright cEDH staple. One of them is even a tutor for Flash itself! Obviously, the "win out of nowhere" cards are very different in power, and Flash has other uses than "lol gg", but the feelsbads are similar to the "I win button" cards.

It also doesn't help that the data from EDHRec strongly associates Flash with Hulk. There are lots of Rector decks there too, and there seem to be a lot fairer uses in Rayami, but people just see the 88% pairing rate without context and juxtapose that across the community. And we haven't gone over the data not distinguishing between "value Hulk" players who search for Etali or Sphinx or Roalesk or a bunch of elves, or that the decks on EDHRec paint a small picture of the community. There may very well be a silent majority of casual Flash users that the average player can't see.

It's much more complicated than "Flash is to cEDH what Coalition Victory is to casual EDH," and I don't know a solution that will satisfy everyone. All I know is that from the tea leaves, our RC is still figuring out what to do with Flash and cEDH in general, and it looks like they're still figuring out a solution. As someone who plays casual EDH as well, I'm happy with how they handle that aspect of the format and I'll give them whatever time they need.

[Spleenface]

But winning out of nowhere has never been a self-sufficient criteria for the banlist. Many combos can be played in EDH after all. The problem comes when a single card allows you to win out of nowhere almost immediately, without a significant setup and with no particular deckbuilding restrictions. Coalition Victory, Worldfire and Biorhythm all fit into that category. That's what the RC is after. Flash requires to build your deck in a way that allows you to abuse it, which means you know what you are doing. Again, if you want to break the format, nothing is preventing you from doing so, except Rule 0. But cards like Prophet of Kruphix or Sylvan Primordial could ruin games on their own without their owner realizing it during deckbuilding process.

Hot take: Building your deck to consistently have Domain 5 and a permanent of every colour would actually be more deliberate than including a 5 card package that lets you win with flash. Especially because on of those cards can be spellseeker, which is far from a "dedicated" slot.

[WizardMN]

But winning out of nowhere has never been a self-sufficient criteria for the banlist. Many combos can be played in EDH after all. The problem comes when a single card allows you to win out of nowhere almost immediately, without a significant setup and with no particular deckbuilding restrictions. Coalition Victory, Worldfire and Biorhythm all fit into that category. That's what the RC is after. Flash requires to build your deck in a way that allows you to abuse it, which means you know what you are doing. Again, if you want to break the format, nothing is preventing you from doing so, except Rule 0. But cards like Prophet of Kruphix or Sylvan Primordial could ruin games on their own without their owner realizing it during deckbuilding process.

Hot take: Building your deck to consistently have Domain 5 and a permanent of every colour would actually be more deliberate than including a 5 card package that lets you win with flash. Especially because on of those cards can be spellseeker, which is far from a "dedicated" slot.

I assume you are talking about Coalition Victory? It hardly seems deliberate to build your deck with fetches and duals, which a lot of people do already even in casual games. And, considering a lot of 5 color generals already handle the other half of the card on their own, CV is more about "well, I am playing a 5 color general, I might as well throw in CV" rather than building the deck around CV. I don't think the thought is that people are going to gun for winning with CV as fast as possible. It is more that they play their deck, happen to draw it (and have their general out), and just win. It seems like a pretty easy "I win" button in a lot of 5 color decks.

And yes, I realize the arguments for stopping it and blah, blah, but your description of it isn't really adequate.

[pokken]

I just remembered worldpurge. Where's the clamoring for that to be banned?That's right, nobody plays it because it's garbage We had a dude cast it once, everyone yelled at him and he never did it again.

While I get the underlying sentiment behind your arguments for some of these cards, there is one fundamental and irrevocably important detail with Worldpurge that none of the other, similar , cards have: "Empty all mana pools" (or, I suppose, with the Oracle Text: "Each player loses all unspent mana.").

This is where I feel the comparison starts to break down. Yes, it is a terrible card but it is this clause that makes it so. Worldfire and Sway of the Stars both allow for the entire game to be reset *while also* allowing the caster to immediately cast their general. It is this bit that I think pushes those cards over the edge into "bad for the format" territory. Or, even, interacts poorly with the format since it if the very existence of the Commander in the Command Zone that allows them to work as well as they do.

While not necessarily an argument in itself, but just look at all the hoops SaffronOlive had to jump through to make Worldfire work in Modern. This format has a built in way to break the symmetry which Worldpurge doesn't allow for.

And yes, I realize there are other ways to do it, such as casting something and Flashing in Worldpurge but the rest just work on their own with literally no other setup needed beyond "make sure your commander is in the command zone".

People were beating the "it's an annoying reset button" drum pretty hard vs. the "then cast your commander" argument. I'm not sure which I'm arguing with or both

If you're talking about playing it then casting your commander, decree of annihilation is only marginally less horrific (and allows some avenues of exploitation re: enchantments/planeswalkers that make it far more attractive and yet it sees hardly any play).

My take on these cards is the same which is that no one is really going to do it. 9 mana sorceries that win the game in combination with your commander is not really a thing the game has a shortage of.

Fundamentally there are just plenty of ways to win the game at 9 mana period and worrying about if one interacts slightly awkwardly with commander is really beneath my personal notice.

[WizardMN]

If you're talking about playing it then casting your commander, decree of annihilation is only marginally less horrific (and allows some avenues of exploitation re: enchantments/planeswalkers that make it far more attractive and yet it sees hardly any play).

I do like this argument actually. I think your comment about being able to exploit it is important as Worldfire really can't, beyond the Commander, but they are arguably in the same ball park. It is possible that setting the life totals to 1 is the clincher for Worldfire? That is, it starts to fall into the "invalidates everything before it" mindset whereas Decree still needs damage to have been done. Zo-zu+Worldfire is pretty much game over compared to Zo-zu+Decree.

It is an interesting comparison though.

[pokken]

If you're talking about playing it then casting your commander, decree of annihilation is only marginally less horrific (and allows some avenues of exploitation re: enchantments/planeswalkers that make it far more attractive and yet it sees hardly any play).

I do like this argument actually. I think your comment about being able to exploit it is important as Worldfire really can't, beyond the Commander, but they are arguably in the same ball park. It is possible that setting the life totals to 1 is the clincher for Worldfire? That is, it starts to fall into the "invalidates everything before it" mindset whereas Decree still needs damage to have been done. Zo-zu+Worldfire is pretty much game over compared to Zo-zu+Decree.

It is an interesting comparison though.

Yeah I dunno man I'm not 100% sure about anything in these arguments I just feel kinda like...if someone zozu-worldfires me, am I going to be any more upset if it was niv-curiosity? Not really.

It's definitely true that the life total riders of sway/worldfire/biorhythm factor in, but do those things interact worse with the format than rhystic study? Not really in my opinion.

Honestly like I've said though I just don't care that much, they aren't going to make anything better to unban so I would never make the case for it. I just would be really cautious about using the reasoning those cards got.

[Spleenface]

I assume you are talking about Coalition Victory? It hardly seems deliberate to build your deck with fetches and duals, which a lot of people do already even in casual games. And, considering a lot of 5 color generals already handle the other half of the card on their own, CV is more about "well, I am playing a 5 color general, I might as well throw in CV" rather than building the deck around CV. I don't think the thought is that people are going to gun for winning with CV as fast as possible. It is more that they play their deck, happen to draw it (and have their general out), and just win. It seems like a pretty easy "I win" button in a lot of 5 color decks.

And yes, I realize the arguments for stopping it and blah, blah, but your description of it isn't really adequate.

If you are on a top notch mana base, you will probably have 2-3 sources for your splashiest colour, and maybe 4 or 5 for your next. Considering the rainbow lands, the odds that you are consistently fetching for say, Plains and Mountain are actually pretty low.
Coupling that with the fact that most 5c commanders people actually build aren't 5c at all, according to EDHRec, 56% of 5c decks are built with non 5c commanders.

Even if we count Fetches/Duals as substantially less deliberate than say, protean hulk, they still aren't exactly common, and even a fetch/shock manabase is hundreds of dollars in 5c. Add to that the fact that without more land searching, a fetch/shock manabase will require deliberate sequencing to consistently find your lands, I genuinely think that the number of existing decks into which you could just shove CV and have it work consistently is tiny.

[DirkGently]

Yeah I dunno man I'm not 100% sure about anything in these arguments I just feel kinda like...if someone zozu-worldfires me, am I going to be any more upset if it was niv-curiosity? Not really.

I would, personally. With Niv it's pretty easy to interact with via counterspells or removal - even enchantment removal. With worldfire you presumably have no resources whatsoever (unless you were suspending something?).

I guess I keep coming back to this. I'm ok with combos and insta-wins, so long as they're reasonable to interact with.

(Not that I'm saying anything about flash here - I think flash is fine since it's only a problem in cEDH. I'm just explaining why I mostly agree with the current banlist for normal EDH)

[Eyecut]

This is a corner case, but I use flash in casual. The instant speed death triggers can be fun.

My favorite use for it recently was in a Sidisi Brood Tyrant deck, an opponent recently cast Jokulhaups to reset the board, and I have flash and World Shaper in hand, I cast flash to recur all my lands for two mana. It's great in the right deck.

[pokken]

Yeah I dunno man I'm not 100% sure about anything in these arguments I just feel kinda like...if someone zozu-worldfires me, am I going to be any more upset if it was niv-curiosity? Not really.

I would, personally. With Niv it's pretty easy to interact with via counterspells or removal - even enchantment removal. With worldfire you presumably have no resources whatsoever (unless you were suspending something?).

I guess I keep coming back to this. I'm ok with combos and insta-wins, so long as they're reasonable to interact with.

We're round and round in a circle because if the only time instant win cards are okay is if they're interactable, the banlist needs to get a lot longer It's not like enter the infinite or torment of hailfire have any purpose but to win the game at X=toomuch mana and the amount of support they need is minimal (probably less than playing zosu and trying to make 12 mana:P)

worldfire and sway of the stars specifically have a weird life total rider that makes them very vaguely unique in comparison to other win cards, but I would contend that that's largely a pointless distinction.

[DirkGently]

We're round and round in a circle because if the only time instant win cards are okay is if they're interactable, the banlist needs to get a lot longer It's not like enter the infinite or torment of hailfire have any purpose but to win the game at X=toomuch mana and the amount of support they need is minimal (probably less than playing zosu and trying to make 12 mana:P)

worldfire and sway of the stars specifically have a weird life total rider that makes them very vaguely unique in comparison to other win cards, but I would contend that that's largely a pointless distinction.

I mean, I wouldn't be against banning enter the infinite at all. But I also don't really see it. If it was actually played I'd probably hate it.

Torment I don't love either, but it'd be pretty lame to just ban every X spell just because they're used to close out the game. Besides, Torment does have some non-counterspell play-around by gaining life, drawing cards, or having a bunch of random permanents. If you're at 40 life with 6 cards in hand and 8 nonland permanents, X would have to be 28 to kill you.

[pokken]

I mean, I wouldn't be against banning enter the infinite at all. But I also don't really see it. If it was actually played I'd probably hate it.

...and that's my main point. these cards are garbage and only biorhythm would you see more than never. And biorhythm is worse miles worse than primal surge genesis wave great Aurora tooth and nail and I can just keep naming mono green sorcery bombs for a while.

The negative impact these cards have on play would be basically nothing these days.

And that connects with my feelings on flash because the flash people have a good point that there are a bunch of cards that won't see any play in casual that are on the banlist. This sets a precedent that low play crap can get banned for creating a small number of bad games.

What's that one...ummm... panoptic mirror? Is that like a joke or something?

[MrMystery314]

On a somewhat related note, I've seen a few people (largely the ones against banning Flash) saying that the ban list isn't all-inclusive, but meant to provide suggestions on what other cards should be avoided. I'm curious how many groups that aren't perfectly capable of self-regulating through rule 0 rely on this inherent logic; I would imagine those that stick to an as-written philosophy regarding what's OK to play shrug their shoulders when they see cards like Armageddon and Torment of Hailfire legal and go ahead playing them, even if they're similar to cards on the ban list, just as they shrug their shoulders when apparently Sway of the Stars is too much in comparison to those cards. I just don't think many groups avoid mass-reset effects like Worldpurge and Warp World because similar cards are on the ban list, not because they don't like playing those cards anyway. Few will read the banlist having Sway of the Stars on it and think "I shouldn't play Warp World because it's part of the same philosophy the Rules Committee thinks should not be encouraged," not "I don't play Warp World because all my friends hate it, myself included". The astute groups who actually read banlist philosophy documents besides skimming the announcements, saying "Huh," and moving on, are most likely the ones that already have some sort of self-regulatory principles in place; I think relying on this tacit gentleman's agreement to somehow come through when the standard social contract wouldn't is an absurd notion coming mainly from those who are sufficiently in tune with the "official" EDH philosophy and can't think of a mindset otherwise. I am still largely of the opinion that groups can regulate themselves beyond a bare-bones ban list of "if you and your friends happen to have a bunch of spare Moxen laying around, by all means go ahead, but we don't want to put everyone not in that position at a disadvantage competitively or force them to tell people they can't play their prized expensive cards because we don't own any".