What cards deserve to be unbanned?
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on June 21, 2020, 11:48 p.m. by SynergyBuild
Many players love cards like Biorhythm or even Paradox Engine yet, their favorite cards were banned, other people dislike some of the reasonings behind bans, and even many dislike the idea of bans at all in the format.
What do you all think about it? Should there even be any unbans?
By the way, to all of you on the forums, thank you all for the incredibly interesting discussions!
DrukenReaps says... #3
Unban everything and create a banned as commander list. I feel like some cards really are too consistently overpowering to be available 100% of the time. However, with all the broken and busted things we do in commander right now, even on $25 budgets, I don't think there is much of anything that really deserves to be out of the format completely.
June 21, 2020 11:57 p.m.
Omniscience_is_life says... #4
There’s a lot of great discussion points related to that on the “Abusive Cards” thread, I suggest y’all check it out :)
June 22, 2020 12:26 a.m.
Mox for sure. I believe they are only banned because of their price tag.
June 22, 2020 1:26 a.m.
SteelSentry says... #7
Worldfire. There's been decks I want to play this in as a legitimate win, and this isn't even the worst version of "start the game over" cards, many of which are unbanned.
Also Crusade, but I don't think I'm winning that fight.
June 22, 2020 3:18 a.m.
Prophet of Kruphix might as while read I take 4 turns a game that card is too busted and needs to stay banned it is stupidly broken and i hope to never ever see Paradox Engine ever again just so I never have to see casual players that have no good way to win durdle for 15 minutes doing nothing because it just a good stuff card thrown in every deck
June 22, 2020 12:40 p.m.
All cards in edh should be unbanned.
My play group does not support the ban list
However our rule is if you play with a banned card in your deck you are subject to the mulligan rules of when that card was first printed.
before unlocking all the banned cards in our play group we did a play test.
One of our members built a Kenrith, the Returned King edh deck consisting of every card on the ban list. Including power 9.
What was discovered is that being subjected to the original mulligan rule not only destroyed the consistency of his over powered combos, but most games the deck was busy just trying to catch up.
A tier 1 cedh deck can normally pull off 25-30 lands but with the original mulligan rule you suddenly get a lot of 1-2 land games
June 22, 2020 6:52 p.m.
Is that not more confusing due to the different mulligan rules?
What was the original mulligan rule, and how does this effect the game?
June 22, 2020 7:54 p.m.
Original mulligan
Magic's earliest mulligan rule (“all land/no land”) allowed a player who had drawn either zero or seven lands in their opening hand to reveal that hand to their opponent and shuffle it back, drawing a replacement hand of seven cards. This could only be done once per game.
Paris mulligan
The Paris mulligan rule was introduced at 1997's Sealed Deck Pro Tour in Los Angeles, then tested for Standard play at that year's Pro Tour Paris, hence its name. A player dissatisfied with their hand, for any reason and without being required to reveal that hand, was allowed to return their hand to their library for an opportunity to draw a new one with one fewer card, after shuffling.[3][4][5][6] The choice to take a mulligan was made after the starting player was determined, but prior to any other action. Players could take multiple mulligans, until either satisfied with their new hand, or left with a hand of zero cards.
Vancouver mulligan
The Vancouver mulligan replaced the Paris mulligan in sanctioned play beginning with the Battle for Zendikar prerelease in September 2015.[7][8] To perform a Vancouver mulligan, the player returns their hand to their library, then draws a hand of one fewer card. Once all players keep their opening hands, each player with fewer cards than their starting hand size may scry 1.[9]
London mulligan
To take a mulligan, a player shuffles the cards in their hand back into their library, draws a new hand of cards equal to their starting hand size, then puts a number of those cards equal to the number of times that player has taken a mulligan on the bottom of their library in any order
I dont have links enabled
Taken From (Mulligan - MTG Wiki)
https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Mulligan#:~:text=To%20take%20a%20mulligan%2C%20a%20player%20shuffles%20the%20cards%20in,their%20library%20in%20any%20order.
June 22, 2020 10:09 p.m.
Its really not that confusing
Just like everything else in magic it appears to be overly complicated but after a couple games it all comes naturally
as for how it effects game play, what we have discovered
London mulligan rule breaks the spirit of commander by greatly increasing the odds of putting together a two card combo from your opening hand
Paris & Vancouver sit on the edge, they do improve your odds just not as bad as london
With the original mulligan no card is over powered because you can not stack the odds of your opening hand.
June 22, 2020 10:21 p.m.
@SynergyBuild
we never supported partial paris whats the point? just pick out your opening hand and stop holding up the group
i was referring to original magic mulligan aka the land mulligan.
June 22, 2020 10:34 p.m.
Haha yes! Ramble I mentioned this back in the day & got squashed by the competitive crowd. The lack of flexibility exhibited by these guys was amazing though. I said, "it's not a problem in my playgroup because we play with appropriately built decks for less pick&choose, takesy-backsy play". This has led to so many great games in my meta, & I keep saying, you just need to build the deck right. You don't get 32 land hyperspeed wincon only occurrences playing that way... Super fun. Not even a rule in my meta, more that you get razzled for much more than 2 mulls.... So effectively it has been similar.
June 23, 2020 12:08 a.m.
& returning to topic: All cards should be unbanned, self-control should be practiced, mulls should be minimized - decks that are built for this may not shoot off all the time, but will consistently be able to make plays.
June 23, 2020 12:11 a.m.
SteelSentry says... #17
As someone without a consistent playgroup, I think a banlist is good to have; it allows a mostly consistent play environment from store to store, and without it there would be a million U/G decks built around Prophet and getting as many Primeval Titan and Sylvan Primordial clones as possible. However, there are a few cards like Braids, Cabal Minion or Worldfire that are by no means worse than cards that are allowed, like Worldpurge or Static Orb.
June 23, 2020 12:46 a.m.
A 5 cmc creature with no protections. It's the same as Seedborn Muse except it trades untapping all permanents for casting with flash. So BAN Seedborn Muse too I guess.
June 23, 2020 8:20 a.m.
I want to build Prophet of Kruphix with Paradox Engine and I think it's a sin we never got to see that shit show.
June 23, 2020 8:26 a.m.
@SteelSentry
My heart goes out to anyone in edh with out a play group (Not Sarcasm)
@DarkHero
(In my opinion) what makes edh the greatest format
Is the ability to play all the cards you own that you are not allowed to play in any other format.
June 23, 2020 10:29 a.m.
SteelSentry says... #21
DarkHero Prophet of Kruphix was a problem though, just like Primeval Titan was, because of decks built around tutoring it out and abusing its effect, and a large deckbuilding requirement was "can I deal with 1-3 Prophets, killing, cloning, or stealing, every game reliably as soon as possible?" because if it did not get immediately killed the floor is a 5 mana extra turn spell, and very likely more.
The comparison to Seed Muse is diversionary. Not untapping artifacts doesn't matter because you're in and can cut mana rocks for mana dorks and land ramp. On top of that, it's also a Flash speed enabler, which is still a powerful effect (and why Vedalken Orrery is over $30). Seedborn Muse is a powerful card, but only does half of the Prophet's ability.
As a final statement, I wish cards didn't have to be banned, but I accept that the existence of some cards make for miserable play experiences, and self-policing doesn't always work, especially without a regular playgroup.
June 23, 2020 10:35 a.m.
It is not like the alternative has been tried in a long time. EDH was fine when it was still the Wild West. But now that precedent is set, if there are enough complaints we can just head straight to banning. I hate feeling regulated in a format that doesn't need regulation. I think the RC should just say "figure it out for yourselves" more often & be more concerned for the foundation of the format, like deciding that commanders can have death triggers.
June 23, 2020 7:13 p.m.
SteelSentry I played EDH from the printing of Prophet of Kruphix to her banning.
I had two main "playgroups" one consisting of a cycling number of 20 players at my LGS, which player showed up depended on the day of the week. The second was personal friends with a similar cycling of players due to who was available numbering at 8 players.
I never saw or heard for the banning of Prophet. It was a blindside ban. The RC said "casual" players had a problem with it. Neither of my playgroups was cEDH, I thought we were pretty casual, and it was never a problem.
I did end up moving towards cEDH, mostly because I don't want to intentionally nerf my decks when I have better cards to play. Why play worse versions of cards when I can just run the good cards? I still did not see a problem online with Prophet.
I legitimately have no idea who had a problem with it or just how casual those players had to be. I would assume it was players that had power levels under that of a precon.
I believe this is a similar situation to the Commander death rule change. If you don't know why we got that rule change, a member of the Commander Advisory Group did not know how death works in MtG. They were playing an Elenda, the Dusk Rose deck and didn't know how it worked. Their misunderstanding of basic MtG rules got us a rule change in our format. Like the change or not, the justification for it is stupid.
June 23, 2020 9:09 p.m. Edited.
Agreed, the reason for the change was stupidity; however, the rule as it previously was made was stupidity as well, so it all balanced out. Yes, state-based zone changes occur but that doesn't change the text on another card (if you used a kill spell or my commander was sacrificed, it died & therefore involves the graveyard). It was always ridiculous that the state-based zone change just wiped away something that had occurred. I always wondered why it couldn't basically (split-second) hit the GY mandatory & if there was an attempted interaction THEN you could still decide the zone change. Now, that is what they do in a nutshell, that kind of rule change is good, progressive work regardless of if it was done for the wrong reason. But, yes that is another primary argument against banning: it is not exactly process-driven... & now can be apparently used as a tool of political statement instead of being driven by gameplay.
June 24, 2020 8:43 a.m.
I guess I said it kind of weirdly, it should have always been mandatory zone change to GY (if appropriate) then you decide (with priority) where it zone changes to from there, if you decide (with priority) that it is going to command zone then that is fine.
SynergyBuild says... #2
Link to the banlist for those that want it:
https://mtgcommander.net/index.php/banned-list/
June 21, 2020 11:49 p.m.