Source and ExplanationOriginally Posted by Sheldon
Glad I still have my Protean Hulks from the Flash-Hulk days,
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
I've had one sitting in a binder for years now. About time I got to dust the old girl(?) off.
Glad I still have my Protean Hulks from the Flash-Hulk days,
Personally, I'm not even interested in the various net-decked combo builds involving hulk. I just want a 6/6 that gets me some value when it inevitably dies. Hell, even just grabbing an Eternal Witness or something seems like decent value - anything else is just gravy.
EDIT: forgot to talk about Leovold.
It sucks that a bunch of non-creative people who can't see past the "play Windfall.dec and lock everyone out!" plan ruin what is otherwise an interesting card for everyone else. That list isn't even interesting.
Yeah, I actually have no plans to play them. My only two decks built right now are Rhys (which only has 12 creatures in it) and Ayli, but it's nice to have them just in case. While I think there are some reasonable things you can do with the card, I think it's a far shot from Staff of Domination, in that Staff is useful even in the event of finite mana, where Hulk is really only good if your deck is about to abuse him.
My brother-in-law actually has that shirt for his son. Applies to Hulk too really, I have a feeling it might get rebanned at some point.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
I dunno... Card feels like Hermit Druid where you have to very intentionally build the deck to break the card. Otherwise it does incredibly powerful, but fair-ish, stuff.
If your goal is to break the card, there are already combos out there you likely use. So why is this one worse?
It's not a creature the table fights to control, like Primeval Titan or Sylvan Primordial.
It doesn't ruin a game like Leovold + Windfall, which then drags out until the Leo player wins.
It either wins on the spot, which was the pilot's intention all along, or it's a card infused with value for anyone playing fair.
At a minimum, I am glad to see the RC actively evaluates cards on the banned list to see if they are finally safe to unban.
Another pet card of mine is Chasm Skulker, which is a lot like Hulk in that you get something when it dies. I think that sort of interaction is particularly strong in this format since board wipes are so common, so you don't even really need to go very deep to make it "good". A sequence like Wrath kills Hulk, Hulk fetches some beefy 6 drop can put you way ahead of the rest of the players with zero effort. Then, if your opponent doesn't want to pull the trigger on that removal because they're afraid of what you might do, you're still jamming with a 6/6.
Deadeye Navigator, Hermit Druid, and Mikaeus, the Unhallowed (to name a few) are just as "broken" as hulk as far as enabling boring and entirely predictable wins goes. I guess I don't see the point in having hulk in time-out while the others get to run free.
Yeah, I agree. Now all we need the RC to do is look at Recurring Nightmare and maybe Gifts Ungiven the same way. There's plenty of "hate" for those things too...especially when stuff like Intuition is legal and not warping the format in any way.
I find it incredibly weird that the RC would unban Hulk while banning Leovold. I mean, I get that the difference between them is that you're basically guaranteed Leovold on turn three every game, but they're both cards that lead directly to degenerate and unfun games unless the player playing them deliberately made sub-optimal deck building choices. I don't even think Hulk is particularly compelling as a pure value critter, so it's basically combo or bust. Was that really necessary?
I don't know, I guess I'm just bitter because garbage like Trade Secrets is on the Banned List but Sol Ring / Mana Crypt / Mana Vault are legal.
I think you're missing something when it comes to the development of the ban list for this format. Since it's "casual" and most people are playing with a handful of buddies, there's not much by way of global metagame data. You can't call up a bunch of EDH GP results and see that Leovold is in 75% of BUG decks and no one is playing naya anymore as a result or whatever. That means the ban decisions (and unban decisions) are purely subjective on the rules committee's part. Sheldon will write his column and talk about how that's not the case, but the more changes that get made the more obvious it becomes.
We could easily make a list of the most "degenerate" commanders out there: Arcum Dagson, Scion of the Ur-Dragon (assuming Hermit Druid combo like 90% of Scion players), Zur the Enchanter, Atraxa...the list goes on. What does Leovold do that those others don't? I'd argue nothing.
Which brings me to my point: things get the axe seemingly at random because whomever is calling the shots must play against them more or less at random. I'm willing to bet that if "the Zur deck" showed up regularly in Sheldon's playgroup he'd find his spot on the bench soon after. It has nothing to do with objective power level, or the ban list would be much longer.
I do find it interesting that Protean Hulk was unbanned, but then again, he's basically just a 7 mana Tooth and Nail if you have a sac outlet, and apparently TaN isn't on the chopping block for the banlist so it's whatever.
I do like that I get to grab Hulk off of a Pattern of Rebirth and win in the same turn (so long as there's no grave hate) in my Ghave deck because I already run Karmic Guide, Reveillark, and Saffi Eriksdotter, lol.
I know that. It's just frustrating for me. I believe pretty adamantly that a game system should be balanced around competitive play - that is, game systems are most fun for every type of player when ban and balance decisions are only made from the standpoint of competitive play. At the end of the day, there's no bouncer at the door of the format to keep out the filthy Spikes, and your casual Mecca can quickly get wrecked if one guy decides to play dirty, or people start power creeping their decks, or whatever.
It's interesting, though, from another perspective: just as how all Wikipedia articles eventually link back to "Philosophy", all ban decisions ultimately link back to fun. You can put a veneer of objective data on it (Leovold is 75% of BUG decks!), but there's no intrinsic reason why that's bad...it's just that players usually equate deck diversity to fun, and playstyle diversity to fun, and options to fun, so having one guy suck all the oxygen out of the BUG room is bad for fun even if there are valid reasons to keep him around (i.e., he puts a stop to a lot of miserable draw-go and combo shenanigans when played fairly). I don't like this decision because I don't think he's a particularly egregious offender in a format chock full of them, but at the same time I can understand why it needed to happen from a certain point of view.
At the end of the day, I don't think the problem is any one card. The problem is when you take Leovold, hit up google or reddit, and assemble the first result you find. How hilarious, if I cast Windfall I'm the only one who draws cards! No one has thought of this sweet deck before! Now you've got 10 of those decks floating around every LGS. Then you take your tribal thopter deck to play with net-deck Leovold guy and lose over and over again, decide the problem is clearly him and not that the support for tribal thopters is mediocre at best, and start whining for a ban on social media. Suddenly, the rules committee decides they need to take action to save us from this scourge. Tribal thopter players everywhere rejoice while the rest of us just scratch our heads.
Let's be real though, playing against Leovold in EDH wasn't the most enjoyable thing regardless of what you are playing.
Asylum EDH: Foil or go home.
Yeah, Leovold was one of those Fun Police cards that no one liked playing against no matter how vital his function was. It's actually kind of interesting to think about Fun Police, negative player experiences, and balancing a game system using the lesser of two evils, but, eh, I don't think the Rules Committee really does that kind of analysis. Regardless, I'm glad I was too lazy to pick up a foil one for my Sidisi deck now.
I'm still peeved that Sol Ring & Co. are legal, though.
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