[Discussion] Most broken Commander?

Zur is my number one.

Don't get me wrong, Griselbrand's pretty boss hog, if that's even a term. Costing 8 makes him a -little- less broken. Even though you can ramp into him, it keeps me from ranking him higher than Zur, the king of stupids. If I see a Zur deck and a Griselbrand deck both sit down, I'm going to pay attention to Zur first. Grisel and Rafiq are my 2/3. Been destroyed by Rafiq too many times by too many players not to fear it.

Griselbrand, however, is a much much easier deck to build well financially. Which means it shows up a lot more.

Other guys who don't get the attention they deserve:

1. Multani, Maro-Sorcerer. I swear, I'm the only guy who plays this guy. And I just don't get it. I keep one-shotting people on the backs of Bellowing Tanglewurm, Overwhelming Stampede, or them just not having a guy out by turn 3-4. The stupidity with Garruk, Primal Hunter and Greater Good is a real thing, too.

2. Jhoira of the Ghitu. Jhoira would be tier 1 if 95% of the people that played magic weren't awful at magic. Instead, Jhoira draws a lot more hate than commanders like Azami/Azusa/Teferi/Oona, just because you can usually sort of see how far Jhoira is from killing you. Good players can see how close the others are, but bad players tend to leave them alone until it's too late.

3. Arcanis the Omnipotent. Doesn't get the respect he deserves due to Azami and Teferi, but Arcanis has his own barrage of infinite combos that play out a little differently, and he's incredibly badass if you don't have any sort of combo going at the time he hits and are just playing piles of amazing blue stuff.

4. Sakashima the Impostor. Lots of fun in an Eldrazi/Griselbrand heavy metagame.

EDIT: I also play Vish Kal, and love him to death, but won't argue that he's anywhere other than an underrated mid tier 2 guy.

SECOND EDIT: Also, I agree that Cavern of Souls should be banned.

With the addition of Cavern of Souls I adjusted my Karn list to include only Golem. It's quite strong however I'd argue people actually attempt to run spot removal for both creature and lands as both paths are stronger then people give them credit for and help circumvent Cavern.

I suppose one could make that argument for any broken card but I have difficulty swallowing banning Cavern when there are far more gross offenders (Mind Over Matter anyone?).

Plus I'm not sure how receptive the RC would be to banning something that prevents Tucking; a mechanic so many people bitch about regardless of how obviously necessary it is.

I'm glad Godo got some love in here. He's ridiculous. There's very few people that have beaten that deck consistently without playing specific hosers to beat him.

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Originally Posted by Ertai's Familiar

Plus I'm not sure how receptive the RC would be to banning something that prevents Tucking; a mechanic so many people bitch about regardless of how obviously necessary it is.

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Preventing tucking is WHY I don't like Cavern. Tucking is such a necessary part of Commander to me. Games are the most fun when all the broken strategies get kept in check and people have to do ridiculous desperate things to get there.

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Originally Posted by Tacosnape

Preventing tucking is WHY I don't like Cavern. Tucking is such a necessary part of Commander to me. Games are the most fun when all the broken strategies get kept in check and people have to do ridiculous desperate things to get there.

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I agree. My point was that there seems to be a plethora of reasonable and already played answers to Cavern; this coupled with casual hatred of tuck is why I don't see it getting the axe.

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Originally Posted by Ertai's Familiar

I suppose one could make that argument for any broken card but I have difficulty swallowing banning Cavern when there are far more gross offenders (Mind Over Matter anyone?).

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Well Mind Over Matter got unbanned in Highlander two years ago for some reasons. I believe that Monoblue became less viable in that meta.

Cards with 6cmc while 4 of them are blue are not as popular as they were in the past...

Cavern of souls in EDH cripples blue. Virtually no direct removal, while a lot of counterspelling is useless (very few cards can get around it).

However as far i know I am only player in whole city who is playing it anyways... White-red combination is dominant in all formats in my location. Killing, removing, cheap creatues with some boost in power.

There are many different philosophies how to play, but I like how Meloku comments Hinder. Most players are playing reactive game. They got screwed when they found that there is nothing to react.

How does Cavern of Souls cripple blue? Does no one run Wasteland/Strip Mine/Dust Bowl/Ghost Quarter/Back to Basics anymore?

EDIT: I mean, the worst I can come up with is if they name Demon and then use it to immediately cast Griselly Bear, which is pretty backbreaking to be sure, but seems unlikely unless it's a dedicated Griselly Bear deck or some sort of godawful demon tribal build.

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Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies

How does Cavern of Souls cripple blue? Does no one run Wasteland/Strip Mine/Dust Bowl/Ghost Quarter/Back to Basics anymore?

EDIT: I mean, the worst I can come up with is if they name Demon and then use it to immediately cast Griselly Bear, which is pretty backbreaking to be sure, but seems unlikely unless it's a dedicated Griselly Bear deck or some sort of godawful demon tribal build.

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Strip effects are way more potent in 1v1 than in multiplayer. To Wasteland one guy's Cavern of Souls is to basically give the other players at the table card advantage. I have no compunction about Stripping a bad land in 1v1, but player three will inevitably play his, so like, then what. So really, even Back to Basics is wrong, because anyone playing Cavern of Souls is only trying to resolve their general (or, you're right, play bad tribal, but bad decks with uncounterable spells are still bad decks).

The real question then becomes "What, does no one play Geddon/Ravages/Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon anymore"?

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Originally Posted by TsumiBand

The real question then becomes "What, does no one play Geddon/Ravages/Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon anymore"?

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Because OTHER players are bad at magic, and will target you for dropping the Blood Moon, even if it's only a minor inconvenience to that player and saving them from a bigger threat. This is not true of all players, of course, but it's true of way more than you think.

My classic example is in Multani, I used to run Chalice of the Void. I've only got 4 1-drops in the whole deck (Sol Ring, Burgeoning, Skullclamp, Sensei's Divining Top), with the occasional turn one GSZ for Dryad Arbor. Given that most commander decks I see run about 10 1-drops, I liked the ability of being able to Chalice at 1, sometimes even at 2, and do so pretty quickly off Sol Ring and/or Mana Crypt. I'd even Chaliced at 5 off Rofellos before an opponent could get 5 mana for their Commander.

I had to quit playing it, however. Because every time I dropped it, the WRONG people targeted me. Example: I was playing a 5-player game with Myself (Multani), Rafiq, Zur, Visara, and Karador. I drop Chalice at 4. This happens to shut off Visara's Lashwrithe, so Visara guy starts wailing on me, not caring that I'm saving the entire table from RAFIQ AND ZUR. Karador player draws an Elvish Piper, so Karador player tags it in a Relic Crush. Siiigh.

Ironically, though, Armageddon and Ravages of War don't suffer from this problem. Lasting minor board annoyances will cause bad players to slaughter you, but something that happens once and is just over? Players focus more on recovering than wreaking vengeance on you.

And from what I've seen, every Zur player in existence still packs these two cards.

So now, my argument on "Land destruction kills Cavern of Souls," is that killing Cavern of Souls didn't matter now. Zur and Armageddon happened. The game is 80% likely over. If Cavern of Souls hadn't existed, however, that Zur might not have hit the table. It might have been Hindered, Crumpled, etc. And maybe instead of Armageddon wiping the board, somebody would have just Tunnel Visioned his ass out of the game.

Ah. See, I don't really keep track of these things because I try not to play EDH competitively.

That said, people really should run more land destruction than they do.

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Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies

Ah. See, I don't really keep track of these things because I try not to play EDH competitively.

That said, people really should run more land destruction than they do.

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Agreed on all counts.

That said, I still get raged when people do incredibly terrible things.

I feel like people are missing out on the other really good commanders out there. Iname is a great combo deck. Animar wins on turn 4-5. Scion Of The Ur-Dragon is also very resilient. Cavern Doesn't need to be banned. There are so many more powerful cards in the format.

Armageddon and Ravages are just good cards to run in the first place because most decks ramp out hoping to land bombs. Mass LD allows a smaller deck to go big with dropping a small threat or two and nuking everything that casts spells.

Well banning of Cavern does not lie on fact whether its powerful or not.

Its a colorless card, producing any color of mana, which makes your general uncounterable. The reason of banning is more like for similar discussion around Senseis Divining top. Decent power level, not expensive to play and can be added to any deck.

As a result majority of players will have it in deck. And if you ask them if they have any specific reason for that they will reply in a manner "u mad? its powerful. Everyone is playing it" (which means they dont have reason of their own).

this happened several times in smaller formats and its typical for Spike players... There is nothing to argue about power level of the card, including its powers or weaknesses.

Its more about keeping the format healthy and variable. For example... Tournament organizer came with rule that you have 45 minutes to be best of three games. He could rather bring big sign with "Control decks not allowed".

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Originally Posted by Offler

Well banning of Cavern does not lie on fact whether its powerful or not.

Its a colorless card, producing any color of mana, which makes your general uncounterable. The reason of banning is more like for similar discussion around Senseis Divining top. Decent power level, not expensive to play and can be added to any deck.

As a result majority of players will have it in deck. And if you ask them if they have any specific reason for that they will reply in a manner "u mad? its powerful. Everyone is playing it" (which means they dont have reason of their own).

this happened several times in smaller formats and its typical for Spike players... There is nothing to argue about power level of the card, including its powers or weaknesses.

Its more about keeping the format healthy and variable. For example... Tournament organizer came with rule that you have 45 minutes to be best of three games. He could rather bring big sign with "Control decks not allowed".

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This is pretty fair, actually. The current overseers of EDH do show a disdain for "staples for staples sake", and additions to the banned list do not simply include things which are broken on their face but turn the game into Capture the Flag. Emrakul did this; the entire game becomes bent around dealing with the guy with Emmy in play. This argument has been used to further arguments for banning such cards as Primeval Titan and more recently Griselbrand, as simply controlling the permanent becomes the name of the game.

Furthermore, cards have been banned on the basis that they promote non-interactive game-play. Erayo is a prime example of this. And as casual-competitive as the format claims to be, it's never taken a strong stance against countermagic, which leads me to reckon that they just might consider a card which makes entire tribes - or just generals - uncounterable, with no real drawback and a clear auto-include for everyone... I wonder if it's less broken than Sol Ring on its face, and they've not banned Sol Ring. We'll see, although honestly this post has got me thinking.

The problem with banning Sol Ring is that it doesn't actually fix the problem of whoever gets the Sol Ring gets the huge jump. It just makes it more elitist by changing Sol Ring to Mana Crypt. In good games with good players and good decks, being the only guy with Sol Ring draws attention, two players with Sol Ring end up having to focus on each other, and three players with Sol Ring means the guy without it gets overlooked in the power struggle. Also, FWIW, the metagame around here has adjusted to where EVERYBODY runs ways to deal with Sol Ring, fast. Shattering Spree, Creeping Corrosion, Mental Misstep, etc. are everywhere, and I've seen a Null Rod or two hit play.

Now, let me clarify Cavern of Souls. I don't think it needs to be banned by virtue of being too powerful. I think it should be banned because it makes the game worse overall. This isn't to say I hate the card, the way I hate cards like Collective Voyage. It just subverts the nature of the game to me. I won't be too upset if it stays around forever, but I will play it in every Commander deck, because quite honestly I love the idea of Multani being Super Thrun.

@Menace's list of overlooked commanders: I kind of agree. Animar is a monster and on the lower end of my top ten. He'd be higher, but I find I only actually LOSE to Animar when other players are too bad to figure out he's scary until it's too late. Scion also makes my top ten, for the 5-color enabling and the Moltensteel Dragon combo.

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Originally Posted by Tacosnape

for the 5-color enabling and the Moltensteel Dragon combo.

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What's the Moltensteel Dragon combo?

I don't think Sol Ring should be banned either. In my experience, the card is only as powerful as the deck it's in, with an early Sol Ring out of a generally low-powered deck being much, much less threatening than a Sol Ring out of a competitive deck. Sol Ring only becomes onerous when it goes from, "I'm trying to patch up issues with my [lack of a] mana curve" to, "I'm trying to be the first person to out-broken the rest of the table."

That is, incidentally, one of the reasons why I try not to play competitive EDH.

Cavern of Souls is just another in a long line of powerful lands, and should be dealt with in the same way. I don't hear anyone clamoring for a ban on Cabal Coffers, Gaea's Cradle, Academy Ruins or many, many others.

There are plenty of ways to shut down a resolved Cavern of Souls that are also uncounterable, and in a format of board wipes and plentiful spot removal dealing with a resolved creature is a pretty trivial matter.

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Originally Posted by Tacosnape

@Menace's list of overlooked commanders: I kind of agree. Animar is a monster and on the lower end of my top ten. He'd be higher, but I find I only actually LOSE to Animar when other players are too bad to figure out he's scary until it's too late. Scion also makes my top ten, for the 5-color enabling and the Moltensteel Dragon combo.

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I only play 1v1 on MTGO for EDH because I don't like free for alls. The format is insane. Drawing a card while going first, 40 life starts and a very small banned list. Edric is also a very fun deck to play with( Love drawing and countering).

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Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies

What's the Moltensteel Dragon combo?

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Firebreath on Scion becasue he gains Moltensteel ability; pay 30 life one shot for commander damage.

Cavern also diminishes the power of Clique, Tefferi and Edric.

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Originally Posted by menace13

Firebreath on Scion becasue he gains Moltensteel ability; pay 30 life one shot for commander damage.

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Oh. I thought there was an actual combo or something. I used to have a deck that did this, but using Hatred with Wydwen, the Biting Gale.

The thing about Scion of the Ur-Dragon is that you only really have to pay 17 to do it, and that you don't have to ever draw a single specific card to do it. You just play him, swing, pay 2, pay the life, and get there. You ALWAYS have access to it, provided you can hit all five of your colors. Some form of Lifelink ability ices the cake, but isn't necessary. It's just that you get to one-shot a player with a guy that already enables you to play a 5-color deck and thereby the biggest pile of broken humanly possible. In other words, you use him to one-shot the guy who's going to stop whatever combo you're about to drop, then win.