STATE OF THE FORMAT 2024

[PrimevalCommander]

Unban Primeval Titan when???

Sorry, everyone else was doing it. I'd take a Gifts unban to, but PrimeTime is my dream. The ban list is a touchy subject, but we haven't seen anything useful unbanned in years, and we know power creep and product releases are ramped up to 11 these days.

Glad to see the RC has some plans for the format moving forward and being as transparent as they can.

[folding_music]

mm if griselbrand was unbanned I'd imagine people tutor chaining their way into cheating him out from deck and using a sultai commander to get it done? like searching for Oath of Druids is way easier than finding 8 mana
the card is broken as heck though, I hope he stays gone. i have issues with the "philosophies rather than individual cards" nature of the banlist but griselbrand isn't one of my problems lol

[ISBPathfinder]

Primeval Titan is an interesting discussion point from the stance that the average game as far as turns has dropped quite a bit. Back when it was in its hayday a lot of games were more drawn out with slower wincons. I doubt you can convince the RC of this but the meta has changed a lot since its banning. I can't recall exactly when it was banned but it was sometime similar to when commander tuck changed and the clone rules stopped killing legends. Those changes were all very impactful pushing more clones into the meta and pushing for wincons to be less direct and commander centric.

Personally, I don't care if it gets unbanned or not but if there was a leg to stand on for unbannings its probably that commander has gotten faster and less generic ETB value focused.

[Avacyn Believer]

This only works when others do the same. When you play at the LGS because, like, you don't have a personal group, how on Earth can you expect to follow this when you know others are gunning for their A game? It's hard when you have no idea if you're gonna see the deck that loops dockside ad infinitum or the deck that just wants to grind into Value TownTM.

That is true, and I'd say it is one of the reasons why I go to any LGS with a range of decks, from pre-con level to fully optimized. I don't think you can expect it from any random game, but you can always suggest it during pre-game discussion about what decks people want to play. In my experience, plenty of people are keen on trying something different, especially if they are veterans of the format.

[Mookie]

One of these days, I should sit down and rank all the cards on the banlist. I'm generally against unbans from the perspective of 'most of the cards on the banlist make games worse', but if it frees up space for more egregious issues, that seems worth it. There are definitely some cards on the banlist that are mostly there due to inertia, and probably wouldn't be there if it were built from scratch today.

[onering]

I feel like some of you didn't understand their reasoning behind some of the bans.

For instance, with recurring nightmare, it's not just the power level, which is high but fair by today's standards, but that it creates extremely repetitive gameplay. They said in the description that once you cast it, it's probably going to be the only spell you cast the rest of the game because repeatedly doing so is likely to be your best path to victory, while it's also difficult to interact with. Panoptic Mirror is banned for similar reasons, and it's not even really a good card.

[Wallycaine]

Recurring Nightmare and G-Brand unban when? Don't give me that crap that G-Brand is busted when we can play a legal tutour that gets the exact card we want at a given time for 2 life and a sacrifice. 0 mana universal tutour > 0 mana random seven off the top. Full stop.

I don't know about that. Razaketh needs some setup in bodies to sacrifice. G-B doesn't need any setup. Raz pays life, without any inherent way to offset that payment, while G-B can swing/block to refund the life payment if needed. Also, there's often little functional difference between tutoring for 1 or 2 cards, and drawing 35. Finally, while not a huge difference, 7 mana vs 8 mana in the command zone IS a difference when you're looking to turbo out a commander. Oh, and I don't recall seeing many Raz decks around/on EDHREC, whereas I know for sure I'd see some G-B helmed decks if it were unbanned.

Griselbrand is still 8 mana, he's just got more black invested.

[3drinks]

I feel like some of you didn't understand their reasoning behind some of the bans.

For instance, with recurring nightmare, it's not just the power level, which is high but fair by today's standards, but that it creates extremely repetitive gameplay. They said in the description that once you cast it, it's probably going to be the only spell you cast the rest of the game because repeatedly doing so is likely to be your best path to victory, while it's also difficult to interact with. Panoptic Mirror is banned for similar reasons, and it's not even really a good card.

Sure. Kidding aside, Nightmare is a strong card precisely because of how hard it is to interact with. It does require setup however, and often is more resource intensive than a thassa's resolution which also similarly is hard to interact with (counterspell or Hushwing Gryff). In 1v1 play Nightmare will dominate but commander is not a 1v1 format. It takes time to get the snowball rolling into that certain inevitability. In the case of P-Mirror, it's simply "imprint a Time Warp, make everyone watch you play".

[aliciaofthevast]

Recurring Nightmare and G-Brand unban when? Don't give me that crap that G-Brand is busted when we can play a legal tutour that gets the exact card we want at a given time for 2 life and a sacrifice. 0 mana universal tutour > 0 mana random seven off the top. Full stop.

You can't fool me, you only want this to put it into Kaalia 🤣🤣. Which, I guess fair ah ha ha ha ha. You keep on being you, drinks. Luv ya friendo. 😘

[Ruiner]

I wouldn't be so worried about ol' Grizzlebee as a commander, as you have to for the most part just play him for his cost and are limited to just black cards, I'm sure it'd still be a super strong deck though. Being in the 99 of other decks, to be able to Reanimate, Sneak Attack, or Show and Tell him in is where it would get ridiculous. I'd be throwing him into the 99 of a few decks for sure if he were ever unbanned. Getting him in a reanimator deck would bring back memories of playing him in Legacy years ago. Including him in my Liesa deck to abuse card draw and then lifegain shenanigans would be totally worthwhile (already have Children of Korlis in that deck, which would facilitate some dumb stuff with him I remember from Legacy).

[kirkusjones]

I wouldn't be so worried about ol' Grizzlebee as a commander, as you have to for the most part just play him for his cost and are limited to just black cards, I'm sure it'd still be a super strong deck though. Being in the 99 of other decks, to be able to Reanimate, Sneak Attack, or Show and Tell him in is where it would get ridiculous. I'd be throwing him into the 99 of a few decks for sure if he were ever unbanned. Getting him in a reanimator deck would bring back memories of playing him in Legacy years ago. Including him in my Liesa deck to abuse card draw and then lifegain shenanigans would be totally worthwhile (already have Children of Korlis in that deck, which would facilitate some dumb stuff with him I remember from Legacy).

You saw the onions burst!? Man, I miss TinFins.

[RxPhantom]

I'm generally ok when they tinker with the ban list, but I'm still salty about losing Flash. Also, I really wanna play with Primeval Titan and Prophet of Kruphix, sooooo....

[yeti1069]

Recurring Nightmare and G-Brand unban when? Don't give me that crap that G-Brand is busted when we can play a legal tutour that gets the exact card we want at a given time for 2 life and a sacrifice. 0 mana universal tutour > 0 mana random seven off the top. Full stop.

I don't know about that. Razaketh needs some setup in bodies to sacrifice. G-B doesn't need any setup. Raz pays life, without any inherent way to offset that payment, while G-B can swing/block to refund the life payment if needed. Also, there's often little functional difference between tutoring for 1 or 2 cards, and drawing 35. Finally, while not a huge difference, 7 mana vs 8 mana in the command zone IS a difference when you're looking to turbo out a commander. Oh, and I don't recall seeing many Raz decks around/on EDHREC, whereas I know for sure I'd see some G-B helmed decks if it were unbanned.

Griselbrand is still 8 mana, he's just got more black invested.

Shows how much I've played it. Also, that's kind of disappointing from a design perspective: 7/7, pay 7, draw 7...8 mana?

[Wallycaine]

I don't know about that. Razaketh needs some setup in bodies to sacrifice. G-B doesn't need any setup. Raz pays life, without any inherent way to offset that payment, while G-B can swing/block to refund the life payment if needed. Also, there's often little functional difference between tutoring for 1 or 2 cards, and drawing 35. Finally, while not a huge difference, 7 mana vs 8 mana in the command zone IS a difference when you're looking to turbo out a commander. Oh, and I don't recall seeing many Raz decks around/on EDHREC, whereas I know for sure I'd see some G-B helmed decks if it were unbanned.

Griselbrand is still 8 mana, he's just got more black invested.

Shows how much I've played it. Also, that's kind of disappointing from a design perspective: 7/7, pay 7, draw 7...8 mana?

Yeah, back when it came out Mark talked about how they probably should have changed some other numbers when they bumped up the mana cost. Given how much play it's seen, I can definitely see why they bumped the mana cost up in playtesting, though.