@illakunsaa Yeah no thanks.
umtiger wrote: ↑1 year ago
In my post, I listed perfectly reasonable ways to stop Maze's End. Its "attack surface" just isn't as tiny as you put it. That premise is false. Everyone can be playing Wasteland. Everyone should play graveyard removal. Many people can play countermagic. Sure, no one wants to play Blood Moon. That's on the group.
Ah, the "dies to removal" argument. Except in this case you're talking about very narrow answers. Sure, everyone CAN play wasteland, but it's still only 1 card in your deck, and it's also not particularly cheap. And even if you draw it and use it, setting yourself back a land drop in the process, it's probably not worth much unless you ALSO have the grave hate. Sure, if you're running all the land-destruction-lands, and all the good grave hate, then you've got pretty good odds of hitting both of those elements. But the vast majority of decks don't include very many of those things, if any, because they want to focus on their own things. There are a lot of strong utility lands competing for wasteland's spot. And there's counterplay even when you do have both LD and GY hate.
If anyone wants to complain because they find it personally annoying, that's fine. Their feelings are legit. Anyone can complain about anything. However, if anyone wants to hint at Gates being "good" or playable that's the problem. That's not a legit stance to have.
Cards being "good" or playable isn't why cards get banned in commander. They get banned because they create bad experiences. I would argue that maze's end creates bad experiences.
I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove but I don't think it's relevant. I can make a deck where
Limited Resources sucks, that doesn't mean we should unban it.
Also, "racing" does not necessarily mean win-as-fast-as-possible. If you do nothing put play lands and rocks for the first 6 turns of the game, you should not expect to win a game where the opponent is supposed to win by making land drops. Push the initiative and start the game on turn 1, rather than turns 4-6. In my opinion, that would be a positive for the format.
Maybe I'm missing what you're saying, but it sounds like you're saying "you don't need to race them, you just need to race them".
Of course you're acting like gates are the only wincon in the deck. In reality, gates are - while obviously subpar - okay fixing lands that many people play without any payoffs. So literally all you have to do is take a deck with a mediocre manabase, throw in maze's end, and now you've added a countdown timer that says you just win the game if it goes on for long enough. I think that's lame. I like utility lands, but lands should not be able to win the game all on their own. Inevitable wincons create unfun game states, and most decks don't have very many ways to interact with lands.