@wallisface, Caerwyn, I get the criticisms, most of it is exactly why you wouldn't run Temple Bell in a 1v1 format and if the discussion was for its use in a 1v1 format I wouldn't be advocating for it at all. Do those same factors in 1v1 not exist in multiplayer? No, tempo and card parity are still there and relevant. My stance is that they aren't as relevant in multiplayer settings which is where I split and why I feel Temple Bell's usefulness is based more on personal preference as well as our own individual experiences at playgroups. (That's not to say I don't care about tempo or card parity either when it comes to deck building, I merely put less stress on it than I would in a 1v1 format.)

For me at least EDH is like a break from the 1v1 mindset rather than just another outlet for it. As for my own experiences, even if decks aren't running interaction, extra cards lets other opponents develop their boardstates better which has always had a higher aptitude of creating longer combat stalemates and prolonging games which has always served my decks well that prefer longer drawn out games rather than fast ones, and I like that more than simply running a prison deck for the same reason you wouldn't want to bring removal to this format.

I think it's also nihilistic to "hope for the best, but prepare for the worst." I mean, (unless my deck's power level is absurdly cracked over all my opponents,) if all my opponents decide to go after me in a game, I'm going to lose no matter what I put in my deck, and that's okay. It's unreasonable to build a deck that's meant to consistently beat three other random decks that target yours at the same time. The games you're going to win are the ones where that doesn't happen and it's those games that I build my deck around. Maybe I could win a few more of those games if I put more thought into tempo and card parity, but then again, I wouldn't get to experience the other tactical wins I've won. If my opponent draws that one thing that they needed to survive something lethal the game prolongs and that buys me extra turns I wouldn't have had. (As in if that opponent was KO'd the one that did the finishing blow would likely go for me next, but if the KO'd opponent survives or resists the push, that same opponent may become hesitant on attacking me if it leaves them open to being attack by the opponent they would have KO'd.) And thus, the cards I run in my own deck capitalize off of this prolonged state better than my opponents cards that would have wished to have ended the game much earlier.

Regardless though, this is comment and my previous comment are both just part of my deck building ideology. If you think my approach is dumb because it's playing too much with factors that are harder to control and not enough on the factors that are easier to control such as more focus on tempo and card parity that's cool. There is enjoyment and practicality in building decks that way, so don't get the impression I'm telling you you're playing the game bad because I'm taking a different approach. I stand by my views on Temple Bell because my own experiences reflect what I've said on it, and perhaps your own experiences with it are also reflected by what you've had to say on it. I'm just here to provide my perspective since I didn't see it here anywhere on this thread. If my words don't hold up for those reading them, that's fine, I'm not advocating Temple Bell is universally good for all decks, but that its value lies in preference and those that share similar preferences should consider it and those that don't need not give it a second thought. For me it sounded like the OP was okay with having Temple Bell in their deck up until the point enough people told them it was bad, which is why I feel so strongly about leaving my thoughts on the matter here.

I'm a bit late to the discussion, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say cards like Temple Bell and by extension Horn of Greed are not bad cards and they're perfectly fine to run in non-group-hug // non-wheel decks.

I see the argument that one card for you is collectively three cards for your opponents, but last I checked, hardly ever do all three of those cards get aimed at you to begin with unless you're running a tier 0 meta-deck against a group of casuals who already see you as the archenemy. Do you want to know what is also one card for you, three for your opponents? The draw steps taken by you and all your opponents, so by the same logic it would imply you already start off with a massive disadvantage the moment you start any game which is just silly. Like, how could a seven-card hand ever beat a collective 21-card hand that is your opponents'?

Let me put it another way, if my opponent plays a Temple Bell by the same logic for every one card that Temple Bell gives me, it's collectively giving three cards to my opponents. When applied by that perspective doesn't that not make Temple Bell sound like a serious threat of a card to my game plan? Well, it's not. The logic just doesn't hold when put to practice.

Now look, if there was another card with the same CMC that had "{T}: Draw a card." Then yes, that would be serious leagues better than Temple Bell. If something like that exists for you to slot in definitely make the cut or hell, why not run both? Both is fine in my opinion.

My analysis on Temple Bell is that it is mostly good, not amazing, but definitely serviceable. Its only con is that you're using up a card to effectively double the number of draw steps for everyone. If this was a 1v1 format having a one-card disadvantage just to alter the flow of the game is just gimping yourself for a loss unless you have some serious payoff tied to both you and your opponent drawing extra cards. In a multiplayer format where wins and losses can be heavily dictated by how much the table wants to gang up on someone Temple Bell's drawback is incredibly negligible when compared to the forces that are beyond your control. (Though if you wanted to, you could argue giving your opponent's extra cards can have some political sway over how much they would be willing to team against you which can be a pro in of itself, but I digress.)

Temple Bell has two pro's that I'd argue make it worth it over its one con, but the trade-off is very debatable so let your preferences be the deciding factor here.

(1) One pro to consider is, if you play a game of EDH and in this scenario everyone's decks were perfectly balanced such that those decks could consistently win by turn 8 always, then the player with the best chance of winning in that scenario would likely be whoever started the first turn of the game as that player would reach their 8th turn before everyone else could take their own 8th turn. Your odds of being the first player is not favorable and if the probability of drawing something game changing is what your deck is banking on for a win, then Temple Bell changes the dynamic almost as if you were the player that had started first. That is to say if it is turn 7 and you're going last you can tap Temple Bell to draw your eighth card on turn 7 and while this will also give your opponents their eighth card at the same time, it will be during your main phase while everyone else will have to wait for their main phase after yours before they can use any sorcery speed card they may have drawn. Keep in mind this only impacts effective turn order where card draw is concerned as it doesn't affect other aspects such as additional land drops and additional combat steps. Also keep in mind Temple Bell benefits you only every other card drawn such as in this scenario your opponents will still draw their 9th card before you, but you'll still be able to effectively draw and use your 10th card before them and so on. Do note this is still much better than having your opponents always drawing and using their Xth card before you do without Temple Bell in the same scenario. And in scenarios where you're the player who goes first where your draw step always comes before everyone else's draw step, having Temple Bell effectively double up on your draw step which only furthers the advantage of going first. These are advantages you wouldn't get with Howling Mine and Font of Mythos and is why Temple Bell and Horn of Greed should be seen as a serious upgrades from those cards.

(2) The other pro is that giving your opponents more cards in situations where one of your opponents is in the lead makes it much easier for the table to gang up on them and set them back, and in situations where you're in the lead you can simply choose not to ring the bell just to maintain your advantage. You can make the counterargument of what good is a card if it has no use under a given scenario, but the only scenario where it doesn't have a use is if you already happen to be winning. Would you really scrap a card that could save a game you would have lost if it can't be counted as a win-more type card? At worse it will definitely prolong games, but I'd hardly ever say it hands a win to an opponent on a silver platter. If an opponent was able to power through three opponents that had extra card fodder to throw at them then it likely wasn't a game you were going to win without the Temple Bell anyway. This is one advantage I'd give Temple Bell over Horn of Greed, but if your deck has a means of removing the horn easily when you're ahead then they'll both work great especially if you're operating a deck that can easily fly under the radar of your opponents.

To conclude this massive word wall I want to restate, Temple Bell is a serviceable card. Not amazing and not bad either. As always, if you can find a similar replacement that gives only you card draw with negligible drawback, that should always be the better pick, but again there's also nothing wrong with running both. If a card isn't breaking anything in your deck, then why make an excuse to fix it?

@predation, @Bookrook, the reason to allow EDH decks is for accessibility reasons. The fastest way for a new format to die out is if you can't find someone who has built the same format-legal deck as you. Extensions of pre-existing formats is usually the best way to develop new formats, because the lack of players predicament is no longer a factor.

Before there was a Commander format there was a format known as 100-card singleton, where players built 100-card decks that had every card except basic lands restricted to just one card, there was no self-enforced restriction on color identity, there was no commander, and games were typically 1v1. If you had a commander deck back in the day and none of your friends had commander decks it was typical to instead make a multiplayer game where it was your commander deck versus your friends' 100-card singleton decks, because the formats were very similar enough to one another and the 100-card singleton players understood you were self-restricting yourself out of 2-colors just to have a clunky creature exist in your command zone. (Old EDH only allowed you to pick between five 3-color dragons to be your commander before branching out the commander choices, hence the name "Elder Dragon Highlander".) If EDH hadn't designed itself so closely to 100-card singleton it would have had a huge lack of players to play games against and it would have died out before ever becoming the success it is today. Modern is another example, back in the day if you couldn't find Modern players you'd bring your Modern deck to your local Legacy playgroup, because there really is no rule stopping you from playing a game of Legacy with a Modern deck and from there the format was able to take off organically from player interest.

Accessibility has to be the biggest factor to be kept in mind when designing a new format. If Cursebound were to take off and become a widely played format, then I could easily see players scrapping the EDH carve out which would be fine if it ever got to that point.

@predation, I don't think it de-incentivizes players (at least nowhere near the same extent as it would not having another Cursebound player to play with). A lot of players have a nonlegendary creature they absolutely wish they could use as their commander and while there's nothing stopping these players from making a Rule-0 commander deck, playgroups can always decline such a deck from being played which can mean that nonlegendary creature deck has no one it can be played with. Playgroups can have a multitude of reasons for declining a Rule-0 deck, but the most common reasons tend to be the playgroup views the Rule-0 deck as having an unfair advantage or the Rule-0 deck is on a much higher power level than everyone else's decks. Cursebound sets to ease the apprehensions EDH players might have the same way EDH set to ease the concerns of 100-card singleton players. That is to say 100-card singleton players tolerated EDH players because they saw the color-restriction EDH-players put themselves under was a heavier handicap than what advantages having a commander in the command zone provided them. In Cursebound your deck has a higher likelihood of being tolerated because the curse can be seen as a heavier handicap than whatever advantage you'd get splashing in an extra color through your curse's added color identity. That is to say the Cursebound deck is more likely to not be turned away from the average playgroup compared to a Rule-0 nonlegendary Commander deck and all the while the extra color identity incentivizes a lot more creativity in deck-building for mono-colored and dual-colored nonlegendary creature commanders that wouldn't exist if they had to build strictly in their color identity. (The added color is important because WoTC hardly ever prints nonlegendary creatures that have three or more colors in their color identity.) And of course, just because it has an EDH carve-out today doesn't mean the format can't evolve over time to remove that EDH caveat if it ever becomes a mainstream format in of itself.

@FormOverFunction, I like the novelty of the thought, but the limited variety of available curses could be very constraining, especially if you've added a color outside your commander's color identity via your commander's fate.

@Bookrook, the restriction on curse rarities is in place to keep curses themselves from being arbitrary. If most decks wanted to splash a color, an overwhelming amount of them would likely by default utilize whatever curse disrupts them the least, such as Curse of the Pierced Heart with seldom any deck ever picking any of the other red curses to splash into that color. An Ink-Treader Nephilim that uses Curse of Oblivion as their commander's fate would likely get much more value from color splashing into black than whatever drawback that curse would exert on them.

The mindset should be that the strength of the nonlegendary commander should also determine the strength of the curse. I do acknowledge rarity is and can be a very inaccurate way to determine power level, but it's a simple solution that benefits game balance to some extent better than to have no rule that mandates equal strength between commander and curse.

Cursebound is a "Rule Zero" extension of the EDH format. All legal EDH decks are legal in Cursebound. Cursebound slightly loosens up deck-building limitations of EDH to allow for nonlegendary creatures to be your commander while maintaining traditional commander gameplay as well also lightly capping the power level of nonlegendary commander decks for the sake of fun and fairness.

In the cursebound format, if your commander is a nonlegendary creature you must also have a "curse" card as your "commander's fate" in the command zone. The chosen curse card in the command zone can only enchant yourself, and it has the added text, "[this curse has] protection from yourself." If your commander is a nonlegendary card, you can only cast it from the command zone if your "commander's fate" is already on the battlefield first. The "commander's fate" is not subject to the command tax. Removing a player's commander's fate from the battlefield will not counter or return their commander to the command zone if their commander is on the stack or on the battlefield. (Removing the commander's fate only impacts their ability to cast their nonlegendary commander from the command zone.) The command tax still applies to nonlegendary commanders and nonlegendary commanders are treated as if they have the legendary supertype regardless of what zone they're in. (As in they'll proc cards like Hero's Blade," and cards like Mirrorweave would not see that commander as a valid target.) All other EDH rules apply.

In Cursebound you are allowed to choose a commander's fate that is outside your commander's color identity. The color identity of the commander's fate will also be added to your commander's color identity, (and thus you'll be allowed to add cards of that color identity to your deck). There are only two deck building limitations regarding the commander's fate. (1) Your commander's fate must be of a higher or equal card rarity than your commander. (Ex. Vampire Nighthawk + Curse of Predation is allowed. Vampire Nighthawk + Curse of the Nightly Hunt is allowed. Vampire Nighthawk + Curse of the Pierced Heart is not allowed because the curse is of a lower rarity.) If a card has multiple rarities then their rarity is always the least rarest from among their physical card printings. (2) Curse cards that have the words "you" or "your" or omit the words "you" or "your" in its text box can not be used as your commander's fate. (For example, Maddening Hex and Curse of Vengeance can not be your commander's fate as they mention the word "your" and "you" in their text boxes. Curse of Disturbance and Curse of Opulence can not be your commander's fate because both omit the word "you" in their text boxes - "Whenever enchanted player is attacked, [you] create a 2/2 black Zombie creature token." & "Whenever enchanted player is attacked, [you] create a Gold token.") All front-faced curse cards that meet these criteria may be used as your commander's fate. Decks can only have one commander's fate.

The intent and spirit of this format and the commander's fate is for two reasons. To provide nonlegendary creatures with more color flexibility as they're much-much more likely to be mono-colored compared to most legendary creatures, and to keep in spirit with "Rule Zero" fairness by providing a reasonable drawback that can make their existence more tolerable to more playgroups. These principles should be kept in mind when enforcing a banlist for this format, for example, Curse of Obsession and/or Bane of Progress would both be banned from being command zone candidates simply for going against the spirit of the format by either being able to abuse their curse's drawback or having a way to negate their curse's drawback from the command zone with very little difficulty. Command Beacon would be an example of a banworthy card in the 98 for also skating around the spirit of this format as well. (Do note, cards banned in the 98 don't apply to legal EDH decks that aren't running a commander's fate in the command zone.) While competitiveness is acceptable trying to find ways to break the intended mechanics of this format should be discouraged for the sake of healthy game balance and group enjoyment.