I think I see some potential for "tier-pushing" like Niko9 suggests. Print some "best at" category __ & make sure it is one tier up on the another commander that does the same thing in a lamer way. Now you are thinking, "they made my playstyle in a way better card" I want to play that card but I'm going to have to move up a tier & I better get all those associated higher tier cards. Who knows how it actually runs in practice though. They already do this with WUBRG "best of" cards each set anyway, so would it really be that different? With WUBRG "best of" they suddenly have you trying to optimize your mana base for WUBRG & all the generically best categories from 30 years of the game being around without limitation. So, I guess WUBRG "best of/at" commanders being constantly printed is still the greater evil than pushed tier-releases. Though tier-systems may be pretty funky for commander precons.

Oh yeah! This could be interesting with Pauper

Well! I'll have to see what comes about in the next year. This might be the perfect stopping point for me as far as MtG is concerned anyway. I have more fun spending less money on DnD (& liquor) & partying more anyway. We have a house rule where I have to go shirtless if I score a crit, it makes for a lot of shirtless time.

Don't forget Scaled Wurm!!

Haha... Touche & solid. The things I would trade away for Leviathon or Craw wurm

Beautiful!.. Though if you want to compare gray-bushy-ear hairs :) - Fog comes rolling in - My Savannah was $4.00 at Shinders. Them were the wonder years when the bargain bin contained things undreamt of now

I think it possibly would be the "straw that broke the camels back" for me if this was all taksy-backsied somehow. That would be the most chaotic, weak-precedent action; to let some loud try-hards whine their way back into what they want the format to look like. Just the weakness of that action would be saying: "yep, maybe it just ain't for you".

The power creep of 4-6cmc legendary critters in the format & acceleration with lower input than output is a bad combo. Super-early warded dick-kickers is not super healthy, everyone else is playing a normal game & someone is just stressing a whole table out doing that.

Maybe it would be proper in a 40 life format if crypt potentially dealt you 6-8dmg potentially (an equivalent % to the 20 life format it was built for)? I still feel like that might not even be enough life-pay, since it was originally designed to accelerate chance-based hands, not ultra-powerful, game warping cards that you always have access to.

Maybe J.lotus would have brought fair power to nostalgia-commander if they worded a limitation "mana can only be used on a commander from Legends or before"?

... Honestly, I would delight in ABUR duals being banned too (even though I own them) :)

Then we would truly see a few cages rattled!

The toxicity of this whole deal probably makes me happier to keep distancing from the hobby in general. How do you get such sore-losers from one end of the spectrum when the other end of the spectrum (filthy casuals) were losing for so long & just putting up with it. Well, I've got my DnD for nerding & great storytelling (though the less imaginative elements of the videogaming world seem to pervade that these days too). I spend alot more time becoming enthralling victoresque & playing hockey. Just feeling generally alive... But then again, oof! Winter will be rolling around here in no-time. Guess I'll have to get a couple of roleplay groups rolling :)

Plus, fast mana has 0 panache. It sounds like heresy, since how do you say a pirate has 0 panache? but dockside had 0 panache too :)

This is why I want to see some more viable "punish low cmc" cards come around :) ... I've absolutely torched playgroups with a simple Culling Ritual

It is all beautiful to me.. Except the idea of banning itself, but that is more of an indictment on the players & direction of the meta at-large. If people are so upset by this that they are quitting, or doing worse things, then they probably investing beyond their means' in the 1st place. Most my playgroup falls in the other camp of "enfranchised" but life goes on. We have a few new spendy "bookmarks" after the bannings, but we never took out of the mortgage for hobby card games. Maybe if some of the "enfranchised" are actually showing the resolve to quit for this reason, maybe that is actually a good & healthy step for them to take... possibly they were playing for the wrong reasons (I understand though that LGS staff would not see it that way).

I think, to an extent, Jeweled Lotus was just a design botch. I think some of the idea was going to be to open some access/early game to color+mana intensive commanders of the crapulent/lackluster variety (maybe even some of the true "elder dragons" for eg). Meanwhile, working some nostalgia into the equation. This was all theory that I liked... but the practical application was a direction I could not stand.

It just ended up enabling more turn 1 or 2 play your high-compete commander with an otherwise suboptimal hand with no future prospects, glass-jaw, all-or-nothing BS. Lotus was popped & sacced to springboard ahead with a pivotal commander ahead of schedule, but if the commander was wiped out, with minimal future resources on-board I would see (some-quite a few) players concede. It was a pretty toxic play-pattern & pretty bad precedent to set for a chase card from a set that was supposed to be somewhat shaping the future of the format.

That card, specifically, for me felt like the road to hell was paved with good intentions.

Some of the above stuff is pointing to my succinct - but not well-articulated idea that the cardboard addict market is alive & well. If there is some predatory future releases as a rider to this (which is slightly tinfoil hat, since it would mean a RC is now heavy on corporate/marketing strategim), then they know the addict market will spend beyond their' means for the next big thing to fill that empty space. Others, who could afford the cards they had in the first place will just say "meh", move on, & use more exciting options. The addicts will be incredibly upset, some might say they've quit, but most won't fully commit to putting that to action, they will say their begrudging piece & then move on to finding some next-best high-budget options that they probably shouldn't be throwing their $$ at... & maybe the RC now knows full-well that this is a hefty chunk of the market.

Also... Dealers don't worry about the addicts feelings :)

As someone who had dockside plugged into a too-good-to-ignore ETB effect in ETB Rakdos. I am happy to remove dockside & play something more interesting. The rest I don't care about. I personally hated Jeweled Lotus since I saw it come into being. That being said, I'm not much of a supporter of bans, but I do like when groups take a stance or have a backbone... which seems to be the case here