Flash Banned
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on April 21, 2020, 2:21 p.m. by Nemesis
I don't think I've seen this topic come up yet, so in case you missed it - as of the 20th, both Lutri (the new companion creature) and Flash (the card, not the mechanic) have been banned in EDH.
The RC have changed the rules a bit to allow non-Lutri companions to function as well.
Personally, I'm both shocked and excited by this change. I think it goes a long way in bridging a divide within the community.
DrukenReaps says... #3
Yeah, makes me wonder why Sheldon made certain comments about not wanting to appear to be favoring certain groups. I think it was on his Twitter a month or more back... It just stuck in my memory as a really weird reason not to ban Flash and now they ban Flash. /shrug
SynergyBuild better than it was, I think? lol.
April 21, 2020 2:38 p.m.
GhostChieftain says... #4
Joyous day! Countless fringe decks became viable again and even the fish hulk builds can just pivot onto more of a focus on dc.
April 21, 2020 2:57 p.m.
Agreed GhostChieftain, the cEDH community will be far better off and much more diverse as a result, all without any other subgroup losing much of anything. Happy to see a common sense exception made by the RC for the health of the meta.
April 21, 2020 3:21 p.m.
fadelightningmm says... #6
DrukenReaps the command zone sort of addresses that on their ban update video. Basically it sounds like the RC weren’t in favor of making the ban happen but the CAG talked them into it. Sheldon saying don’t get use to this is basically him saying that they won’t step in for cEDH often and not to get use to these cEDH based bannings
April 21, 2020 6:39 p.m.
Personally I think banning Flash has only made it more difficult for non-blue decks to interact with Hulk decks. My best cards to stop it were Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast. Now that Flash is gone Hulk decks will resort to a myriad of tactics to get Hulk’s dies trigger which demands a different answer for each one. Personally I think the ban should have been harsher by banning just Protean Hulk or banning Grand Abolisher and Thassa's Oracle as the two shut down any interaction with the win condition. I find this disappointing.
April 21, 2020 6:45 p.m.
GhostChieftain says... #8
Hulk is no longer the boogeyman though. Yeah it can still be used to great effect, but it requires more pieces and more set up than just having flash in your deck. It is A wincon now, not THE wincon. White decks are pretty amazing at stopping hulk triggers when they have any time to set up or time to respond to hulk on the battlefield, there are effects in black that can put it straight to exile also. Green decks have things like scooze to try and make it so it can't be reanimated or that can prevent sacrifice if you are that worried about it. Plenty of ways to prevent search.
Removing flash made it require more pieces so it is a bit clunkier, made it lose speed, and made it interactable outside of when the spell is cast.
Reb and pyroblast are still good because blue is so good, but they already can't get all combos so I don't see how this is a problem.
April 21, 2020 7:12 p.m.
It has been discussed elsewhere. I knew the RC would cave to more banning. I still stand by it setting a bad precedent.
April 21, 2020 7:36 p.m.
SynergyBuild says... #10
Overall, Kess consult seems really, really strong. Right now it hits on so many axis of speed and grindy value that it seems to be the best off from this ban.
Consult Scepter and Razaketh Tymna/Thrasios decks are still tier 1 variants on the former tier 0 list, but now Najeela versions similar to the old ones and Kess will just be tier 0.5 for the time being, all with backup plans to a Consult core.
Najeela is consult and infinite combats, Consult Scepter is just as the name implies, Razaketh builds will loop there dumb wins xD with consult backup, and Kess with arrange graveyard reanimation wins too on consult.
Gitrog, Yisan, and other high tier decks like Urza will still battle it out, but the 2 tier 0 decks (Najeela and T'n'T Fish Hulk decks) will still basically exist, just with the next runner up added and one of the decks splitting camps.
Also, expect some Tymna Thrasios lists to just be pure consult value, running the 3 lab mans, both forbidden tutors, etc. Perhwps with a backup like power artifact on grim Monolith or not.
April 21, 2020 7:39 p.m.
To a lot of decks its still the wincon. Rest in Peace, Grafdigger's Cage and Planar Void is powerful enough to stop it consistently, but it shuts down my own deck's strategies. Instead I would run Nevermore naming Flash but I can't even run that tactic anymore. Lesser forms of graveyard hate such as Scavenging Ooze and Tormod's Crypt are not good enough as they can't prevent a dies trigger such as how Rest in Peace does.
In the event a Hulk player hard-casts Protean Hulk and then right after casts a spell like Diabolic Intent or Life's Legacy to sacrifice it as part of the cost the only way I could possibly see of disrupting that at instant speed in non-blue is through Aven Mindcensor. I know the Aven is typically good in EDH, but it doesn't nearly answer as many combos as Pyroblast does nor can I run a second copy of it nor cast it for one mana.
Hulk isn't so bad of a problem that it needs to be completely banned either. The issue is any hulk pile with Grand Abolisher or Thassa's Oracle is just too difficult to stop at all. Grand Abolisher requires you to run super narrow cards you wouldn't run anywhere else like Ghost-Lit Raider and Cabal Pit just to get around it and Thassa's Oracle requires answers in blue like Stifle to stop it or Torpor Orb which will be a magnet for removal for everyone playing at the table.
Unless more efficient non-niche answers get printed in other colors the strategy is still too strong. The banning shouldn't have made this strategy slower. The banning should have made it easier to combat which it has only done for blue.
April 21, 2020 8:14 p.m.
DrukenReaps says... #12
fadelightningmm interesting. I'll have to take a look at that but, to me at least, a healthy cEDH is also a healthy casual meta...
April 21, 2020 10:21 p.m.
Megalomania says... #13
StopShot I don’t think you’ll see that many Hulk decks now that Flash is banned. It just isn’t as viable as it was before.
April 21, 2020 10:41 p.m.
GhostChieftain says... #14
Itll still be around some, but the builds will look a lot different overall from sushi as we knew it. Here comes varolz hulk
April 21, 2020 10:45 p.m.
Well, Flash is a silly card so I'm happy it's out, but I don't truthfully think this changes anything in the format dramatically.
Hulk decks might have been the boogeyman, but against top tier pilots with top tier concepts that concept hadn't been performing at even a mediocre level for over a year now. The consult concepts simply aren't viable competitive strategies against skilled pilots who understand how to interact with them properly in play pattern terms as even attempting that line of play results in the player attempting the line losing on the spot the vast overwhelming majority of the time. The Scepter decks that were already dominant just got even more dominant. While the banning of Flash makes me happy simply because the card is silly in it's functionality, I think it's banning actually makes the format slightly less diverse overall rather than more diverse. The only reason many people believed the format lacked diversity with Flash is because the cEDH community at large wasn't interested in trying to employ concepts that regularly bested Flash concepts, regardless of the fact that those concepts also consistently bested every other concept as well.
April 22, 2020 1:16 a.m.
jaymc1130 which concepts were superior that you are referencing?
April 22, 2020 6:38 a.m.
GhostChieftain says... #18
He is implying that his inception builds are the best and that nobody realizes it.... to me it looks like a worse version of cst. Granted cst is one of the best strategies around
April 22, 2020 7:03 a.m.
Veil of Summer's existence put a damper on the Inception concept. Opponents won't always have it in the opening hand, but over a large enough sample size of games it proved to decrease win rates by a significant enough amount that we generally don't play that concept as much these days.
Regardless, with the amount of effective interaction in the format all tutor heavy glass cannon strategies are still performing less than ideally. That play pattern itself is extremely vulnerable in ways most people simply don't care to realize. The consultation win lines are even more vulnerable given their nature. Proper skillful play simply trumps these extremely risky types of ideas over large sample sizes of games.
SynergyBuild says... #2
Cool!
Now consult scepter, kess consult, and najeela tempo or layered makes up the top 4 xD.
April 21, 2020 2:27 p.m.