I'd repost the link but nah.
While the rest of the civilized Magic world mourned the loss of Deathrite Shaman in Modern, the big hurt was secretly being dropped in Commander. Sheldon and friends apparently decided that in a format where Deadeye Navigator breaks more cards than Dave Gearhart, a fixed Prime Time is still just too goddamned good to be more than a 0-of.
Man, I've been blown out by turn 2 NO -> SP. Shit happens. But real talk, WTRF is the deal here? Like honestly, this is the format where folks play chicken with their 2-card blowout just to see who flinches third. That format needs more control, not less.
I know the EDH banlist is just a strong suggestion, but honest to God, it's like... the minute I forget how terrible most Commander players seem to be at evaluating relative card strength, this ban rolls down the hill like a 4-ton turd straight from the ass of the holy risen John Candy.
Who else didn't see a problem here?
Originally Posted by Dissection
The card wasn't the backbone of any deck I'm playing or really THAT strong. If you blink it a million times sure but that's slow and easily disruptable. Surprised this got banned instead of DEN. I don't really care but it is a strange target for banning.
"We are goblinkind, heirs to the mountain empires of chieftains past. Rest is death to us, and arson is our call to war."
My general experience with Primordial was that, if it resolved and you were in any way behind (and not the one resolving Primordial), you were losing a mana source and probably also the game. That it was ridiculously easy to curve into a Primordial on turn four meant that you could very well end up stuck on three lands or less versus a 6/8 controlled by an opponent with 10+ mana. Killing the Primordial at that point was pretty irrelevant because your opponent could cast an entwined Tooth and Nail or a Genesis Wave for seven or some other ridiculous mana-intensive bomb and you were just SOL because the table that let Primordial resolve probably wasn't in a position to stop the follow-up play either. It was the textbook definition of NPE and was "soft" house banned around here because no one actually enjoyed playing with or against the card.
If Primordial were just, "Get a Forest for each opponent" or "Bramblecrush each opponent" it would be perfectly fine, but the fact that it was both at once was a little too much. Also, Sundering Titan is banned, and "destroy one land, ramp" is only mildly less obnoxious than "destroy two lands," especially because Primordial could actually Armageddon you whereas Sundering Titan would at least leave you with things like filter lands or Core Set CipT lands.
That said, yeah, I'm surprised both Consecrated Sphinx and Deadeye Navigator continue to be legal (the former especially given the Trade Secrets ban). Deadeye is a card whose time I suspect will come eventually, although if Primordial didn't do it then I'm not sure what would. And I say this as someone who really, really likes Deadeye and cards like Deadeye, simply because he gives you an incentive to play with some less common EtB dudes in a format too-often dominated by the same burly, card-advantage-generating finishers.
On the other hand, the RC doesn't seem to be managing the format for complete balance - Sol Ring is still legal, for example, and that thing is better than the currently-banned Moxen. Sphinx has been in the format for longer than Deadeye and doesn't seem to cause as much complaining, so my guess is Deadeye will be next if anything gets banned soon. I'm actually somewhat reluctant to pick up a foil one for my Damia deck since they're around $15-20 and I don't want to play it for three months and then watch it get the axe.
Oddly, some people on the official Commander forums seem to want Prophet of Kruphix banned next, which strikes me as being wrong on multiple levels.
I agree with a lot of this, and I'm a guy that enjoys playing DEN as well, if for no other reason than it makes Sedris not a terrible commander. Really I think the tenor of the discussion revolving around DEN is a lot like that of the SotF discussion in Legacy right around the time Vengevine pushed the card over the edge.
I haven't played against Prophet yet, I'm sure it's a durdly house in this format though. Even so I have a hunch that it's in the same vein as the other discussions; is PoK being looked at because it is enabling stupid combo to just win? Or is it allowing control decks to play control?
I dislike the notion that the basic RPS of aggro/control/combo has to be upset in favor of "my favorite two dudes + T&N". Especially if they're going to ditch SP and then just blatantly ignore the bevy of busted Blue things like Consecrated Sphinx and Deadeye Navigator, and yeah some of these mana rocks are fucking ridiculous as well.
Anyway though, having said that, I admit I didn't like being shut out by SP, but at least in my experience it was never the kind of shut-out where I was going to catch up anyway, know what I mean? If Sylvan-P was wrecking my board and I was that far behind everybody, honestly that's just a mercy killing. In 3, 4, 5+ player games of EDH, someone's always on the bottom rung. No sense in making the game last longer than it needs to, I say.
Last edited by TsumiBand; 02-03-2014 at 11:01 PM. Reason: i forgot to talk about SP durrrr
Dunno. I haven't really bothered to go looking for cogent arguments for the banning of the card, I just know some outspoken members of those boards want it banned. My guess is that it's a combination of not liking having to play against it and "it warps games around it," neither of which are sufficient reasons to warrant a ban. I mean, the latter reason was applied to Prime Time, but Prime Time also did a bunch of dumb things that generally exploited the taboo against MLD in the format.
As someone who plays Prophet, I can say that the card is amazing and very powerful but also very fragile. She's not like DEN where you can use something like Mystic Snake or Venser to keep hate cards off your back; many of the anti-removal creatures have flash already, so she's not really adding anything there that couldn't already be accomplished with Seedborn Muse. The fact that she's two colors also limits how often she'll show up, which makes her less of a problem in my book than similarly-powerful monocolored cards. Something like Sphinx is good in every blue deck regardless of what other color(s) that deck is and regardless of what that deck's game plan is; Prophet is at her best in a UG/x creature deck that's also heavy on sorceries or activated creature abilities. DEN doesn't even need that many creatures to be a hassle, as long as at least a few of them have annoying EtB abilities.
I'd like to hear the logic as to why DEN is still around. I get that it's answerable by mass and instant-speed targeted removal, but so are (currently banned) Griselbrand, Metalworker, and Painter's Servant. Even when you just pair it with something derpy like Man-o'-War, it's very, very strong, but when you pair it with something bigger like one of the Primordials it just turns into a headache.
I suspect Sphinx is legal mostly because of inertia. It's been in the format for almost three years and at no point have they seemed to really consider it for a ban, so I don't expect it to end up banned anytime soon. Kind of a pity, because if you can't deal with it right away, or at least within the same turn cycle it's cast, the blue player is probably never going to let you deal with it.
EDIT: I guess my reaction to the ban of Primordial is, "It didn't need to go right now, but I'm nevertheless glad it's gone," which is better than some reactions I've had to bans.
I was not surprised when Sylvan Primordial was banned. Simply because Sundering Titan and Primeval titan were already banned. Sylvan primordial is both... so I expected him to be banned months ago and I often predicted that it will be banned one day...
I have seen games when he was entombed and reanimated on turn 2. Also guy who let him into play as the first one also won the game. Never seen him with DEN but in reanimation decks. The situation was so bad that I included Sadistic sacrament in my Anowon deck and planned to add Extract to my blue Teferi deck only because of Sylvan Primordial.
On the other hand I agree that there are cards which deserve banning too and DEN is one of them.
By the way whats so broken on Consecrated Sphinx? I know some of interactions it opens, but... generally nothing as much broken as Primordial.
...the advance of computerisation, however, has not yet wiped out nations and ethnic groups...
I don't really have a strong opinion one way or the other on SP...but I do think that 95% of the problems people have with the card could have been solved by the designer including "you may" right there before "destroy" in the text box.
Sure, I've been in games where it came out "too soon", blew up some lands because they were the only legal targets currently in play, and proceeded to dominate...but it was never really a "feel bad" kind of moment. I mean, this is supposed to be a fun format, right? Who the hell am I to tell you how to play your cards or what you consider "fun"?
On the other side of the coin, I've been in games where the decision tree for SP went something like this: Blow up that artifact, and your annoying enchantment, and...um...I guess that mountain? That kind of situation is perfectly fair in my opinion.
Like most things on the banlist, we do this to ourselves. Sylvan Primordial is just another casualty of people doing things because they can, not because they should.
If I may pontificate here for a moment - The true problem with the format is lazy deck building, not whatever the current boogeyman card is. You know what stops the guy trying to reanimate his SP on turn 2? Tormod's Crypt. Or Relic of Progenitus...or Nihil Spellbomb...or Grafdigger's Cage. Sure, you may not draw it every game. I get that. But he won't draw Entomb and Reanimate either. There's lots of talk about DEN being "too good". Play Torpor Orb then. Or Pithing Needle...or Phyrexian Revoker...or Cursed Totem. It's not like playing answers to what you think of as problem cards for your particular strategy is somehow taxing...they're all colorless for shit's sake. Hell, they're all even useful against other, less "broken" plays your opponents could make. Rather than piss and moan about how the RC banned the wrong card or didn't ban the true menace learn to play around it. If you can't do that, at least learn that you can't win every game you sit down and play. Sometimes you lose to the guy playing reanimator. Oh well. Shuffle up and play again. /rant
Hermit Druid is legal and all of these other cards get banned? Lol Lol Lol
That's a great point about "you may". I always hated blowing up a player's stuff if they weren't in the game, or if they were a new-jack rocking some jank because someone told them EDH was nothing but dollar-bin madness.
That whole "can vs. should" thing is a real problem as a result of the kinds of players the format brings to it -- but really given the nature of the card we're talking about right now, I don't know that it applies to Sylvan Primordial. As stated, SP has a mandatory effect, and I stand by my previous assertion that there's always a laggard in a multiplayer game and they will always have the uphill struggle, unless they're purposefully ignored to be given a shot at interacting. In my experience, they typically are left alone, save the random mandatory effect or like some 13-year-old random who's just dying to cast that Blightning and so they cast it on the person who represents the least threat, to feel like they're doing something.
So on one hand, Sylvan Primordial was necessarily dicking the ugly duckling, but on the other hand -- that's one game out of, how many? Where it just equalizes the board, or even better -- that laggard manages to catch up, precisely because they had SP in their deck.
The part about building decks with answers in mind though; I gotta say, without some kind of sideboard rule I really don't know that that's going to be realistic for this format, ever. It's been asserted by some that Legacy has too wide a field to adequately sideboard for a truly random experience, and whether this is an assertion based on what's Tier 1 vs. what's in the actual metagame is a discussion for a different thread, I think. If there is any truth to that statement, I think it is doubly a problem in EDH due to the whole "Spirit of the Format" thing that everyone harps on.
My approach so far has been to try and whip out the right deck for my opponents - not necessarily to load all my decks with metagame answers. Maybe it's worth re-evaluating that decision; I gotta say though, I like playing decks that have some kind of thematic significance. When I play GoodStuff in EDH, I feel… bored? Cheap? Subversive? I don't necessarily mean Torpor Orb is subversive, but it's a great sideboard card in a format without sideboards (apart from the optional 10-card rule, but it's optional, because… it's optional).
I mean I get that the things that drive this banned list are people trying to foster interactions of nature J, K, L and M while downplaying Q, R, and S. Anything that subverts the nature of the format; Prime Time, Emrakul, or Grusselbrand hits and we suddenly stop playing Magic and start playing Capture the Flag. The problem sometimes is that the dragon eats its own tail for its appetite. When LD is bad but T&N -> 2-card lock is good, there's a ton of collateral damage between the casting costs of Armageddon'sand Tooth and Nail's
, and the stupid thing is that's where some valid control elements live. It's true that the choices players make define this format -- but I don't think the choice was with the way people were playing with Sylvan Primordial, but rather in the way people weren't playing stuff like Catastrophe, Cataclysm, Obliterate, and so on. There are 155 cards in Gatherer that contain the phrase "destroy all" -- whether they are Jokulhaups or Suleiman's Legacy, doesn't really matter -- there are a non-zero number of playables.
It's the same problem as new kids have with counterspells. They bring their 70-card non-linear aggro deck to a tournament and fear casting spells because they're sure you have counters, and poo-poo about how busted counters are, when they don't even see that if they'd just tune their deck a little and make counters bad via redundant card choices and functional analogues they were actually being protected from combo blowouts by those counter-slinging jerks. Or at least, they used to be, there's a hatebear for everything now, but that's besides the point.
Off the top of my head, I feel like this affects maybe… one deck of mine? So it's not a huge deal on a personal level. Not sure if anyone noticed this but I tend to play up my emotional responses to things because my humor tells me to just go there -- really, this banning just seems like one of those oddball cult snuffings where they have to kill someone who wants to, like… reintroduce some modern convenience to their twisted version of alternative life-styles. Per the following reenactment:
Gerold Ackins, played by Rick Moranis: "…I…I'm telling you!! Going back to email will save us so much time and effort in spreading the Gospel of Marmaduke!!"
Fr. Don Blintz, played by Christopher Lee: "No, Gerold. The Slobbery Codex is clear: None shall return to the entrapments of cyberspace!"
Gerold: "But I… wait, wait, w-w-w-what are you doing with that knife, Father?"
Blintz: "…What must…" *stab stab stab* "…be done!"
Insert Sylvan Primordial wherever you like. I think I confused the metaphor. He's there, somewhere.
Perhaps I can be more clear about my point - The more the RC caves on stuff like this the more people will look to it as an answer to whatever the problem is rather than trying to come up with a solution on their own.
I agree that it's not feasible or fun to build sideboard.deck, but I don't think it's all that unreasonable to look at your local metagame when making card choices...especially if there's one guy who is out of bounds with his play.
Mana Crypt is legal, but a 7 mana green creature is banned.
Ya... OK - this format is a joke.
EDIT: I didn't just come in here to say EDH is a casual only format. But rather, that the perceived threat of Sylvan Primordial is somehow more important to ban than the best accelerator in the format. I don't think I've ever encountered a game in which I led with Mana Crypt and did not win (in 1v1 play).
West side
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I think the RC considers a players intent when adding/removing cards to the banned list. By this I mean, the average player that uses Hermit Druid, Mana Crypt, LED, etc... has the intention of 'being a dick' and winning right away or making the game unfun for others. This type of play style is controlled socially and the cards do not require banning because if it becomes a problem in a play group, the group stops including the dick. Some groups are full of dicks and it is a race to see who's the biggest that game.
The problem with SP and Primeval is that it makes casual players dicks without much effort.
Ramp into PT, find Cabal and Urborg. Next turn Exsanguinate for lethal!
Ramp into SP, destroy lands and ramp 3 forests. Next turn Tooth and Nail entwined!
This sounds exactly right to me. My local playgroup enjoys playing EDH for fun, so even when someone does play a combo deck, it's a complicated Rube Goldberg-type contraption. Several people play Hermit Druid...in decks with 20ish basic lands. On the other hand, Sylvan Primordial and Consecrated Sphinx fit nicely into "fair" EDH decks but warp the game around those cards.
InfoNinjas
Eeeehhhhhhhh I dunnnnoooooooooooo…...
I mean if this is the mentality, then there should be a Johnny, Timmy, and Spike banlist accordingly, right? If we're just going to see bans based on the ways we choose to interact with cards? "Augh I put Primeval Titan in my deck, and I dunno man I was just like… compelled to add all this shit like Urzatron and fucking Urborg/Coffers. Those church folk were right, the game's got me man. It's fucking got me."
If that's the prevailing philosophy, then why bother to ban anything officially? Play groups will ban as they see fit regardless of anything official.
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* Maverick is dead. Long live Maverick!
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Well that's part of it too, their whole banned list is just a polite suggestion. I just don't happen to know anyone who would actually appreciate taking the local banlist and going rogue, so yeah. Really I mean it's an unsanctioned format, you can play with Vs. cards and hockey sticks if your local group allows for it.
i posted this earlier and lost most of it, but: i can get behind banning sylvan and prime time since they amplify an early mana advantage and act either as a tutor for a combo piece or as an anti-answer while doing it.
there is an answer in the social contract and deck-building (i.e. infinite combos are okay if the redundancy/tutor density is kept low enough, or if your only DEN targets are value creatures such as EWit and Coiling Oracle as in my Damia goodstuff control build, or you make a rule to scoop to dumb plays—i scoop on sight to a resolved genesis wave), but the rules committee has to do something visible and official to make people take notice, or at least start a conversation.
1v1 is another beast.
edit: i got 99 posts but a broken commander playground ain't one.
@warfordium on twitter.
This. I know that EDH tourneys at SCG events or whatever aren't "official", but leagues around at LGS's and such adhere to the ban list that is "encouraged" by the EDH guys. Just cutting out PrimeTime and Sylvan doesnt even affect that type of deal. I mean I guess technically you could simply just allow your buddies to play the cards in your local play group, but at that point it seems meaningless to have a ban list that, despite the format not being official, actually affects some sorts of tournaments.
Tournament EDH is already managed by the French 1v1 List. I'm pretty sure the Rules Committee is managing the format with a mid-powered metagame in mind, one where maybe one person has Mana Crypt so the card rarely shows up, where Hermit Druid mills five before he reveals a Forest, where a card like Sylvan Primordial is legitimately oppressive rather than just a beefy green utility jerk.
However, given that, I don't know why Consecrated Sphinx and Deadeye Navigator are still legal. In mid-power metagames, both of those are obnoxious, a pain to deal with, and warping when they're in play.
Consecrated Sphinx is pretty retarded. Oh the third player finally killed it? Okay. I drew at least 6 cards
Just discussing this reminds me of why I hate EDH.
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