From the article you seem to be under the impression prophet isn’t banned. Prophet is very banned in Commander. Just to clear up anyone else that might’ve been under that impression.

I will agree that the ability to untap all permanents, or all lands, or all non-lands is a HUGE advantage. seedborn muse is at the top of the list of cards that go into most green decks I make. That said, not every deck can take full advantage of the benefits, just as not every deck can take full advantage of, say Hypersonic Dragon or Teferi, Time Raveler 's +1 ability. If everyone and their grandmother are building the deck around one card (as we saw with paradox engine), then it makes sense to ban it; behold, to paraphrase the the EDH rules committee: "That $#!t don't fly".

 The ability to cast ANY spell at flash, however, is something that every deck can take advantage of.  By waiting on specific triggers, certain combinations otherwise impossible become disgustingly good.  At the end of opponent's turn?  cast 
        Phage the Untouchable
     , and respond to it with 
        Supreme Verdict
     .  Field wipes, phage resolves, untap & swing.  Sure, it's an over-the-top example, but it does illastrate the point nicely.  Hell, for ages I had a deck of "bad cards" just so I could run 
        Barren Glory
     and respond to it with 
        Kaervek's Spite
    .  the ability to flash that at the end of an opponent's turn massivly reduces the chances an opponent can do something about it.

 I think (or possibly just hope, but who knows) that wizards has discovered that 
        Vedalken Orrery
     and 
        Leyline of Anticipation
     aren't what people should have (it may be what they want, but that's another thing entirely).  In war of the spark, we saw 
        Vivien, Champion of the Wilds
     , 
        Teferi, Time Raveler
     , and 
        Emergence Zone
     , all good examples of what _should_ work as a flash mechanic - ones that have limitations built in - they have to remain in play, are on attackable, damageable permanents, or are a one-time, sac to activate effect.  
        Quicken
     , 
        Scout's Warning
     , and 
        Savage Summoning
     are all other good examples of this mechanic being used.

 Now, 
        Wilderness Reclamation
     is actually _waaaaaay_ lower on my threat-meter for one, simple reason - it only untaps once.  Honestly, the 
        Isochron Scepter
    +
        Dramatic Reversal
     combo is far more dangerous in my book, simply due to the ability to untap creatures as well as mana rocks.  In a multi-player format, the difference between it and 
        Seedborn Muse
     or 
        Unwinding Clock
     is huge.

 Speaking of 
        Unwinding Clock
    , this is one of the cards that also don't have as much of a problem with - to get the full effect of this card, you're typically going to have to build your deck as an artifact deck.  and in a format with 
        Vandalblast
    , 
        Bane of Progress
    , 
        Shatterstorm
    , 
        Nevinyrral's Disk
    , 
        Akroma's Vengeance
    ...well, the list goes on.  And since most people run 
        Sol Ring
     (I'll confess to a love/hate relationship with that card, but thats a story for another time), most decks will run at least _one_ artifact removal (or steal) effect on the assumption that their opponent's will also be running it.

anyway, just my two cents as a response.

huh, that formatted wierdly

it sounds like you just want to punish good deckbuilding. you should be running artifact removal anyway, so just destroy the Vedalken Orrery when you see it.

Liliana69X This isn't attacking "good deck building". It's pointing out that certain cards warp the deck building process to a point that only certain options can be considered "good".

sanddeviljack: i would strongly disagree. Vedalken Orrery doesn't warp anything so that "only certain options can be considered good". it literally works in every color combination with any type of card. its 1 card in 99, and its an artifact in a format where literally every deck should have artifact removal.

Liliana69X Your reply perfectly proves the position of the OP.

Playing at instant speed is powerful because a) you reduce other players' ability to respond, b) spells templated as instants tend to have higher or somewhat more restrictive casting costs, so you are effectively cheating on mana, and c) in the case of creatures, you are also tacking "Haste" onto everything, further increasing the benefit. So if playing at instant speed is more powerful, and VO allows me to play at instant speed, the "logical" thing to do (because it is "good deck building") is to play VO. Same logic applies to any of the other cards mentioned in the OP. That's not good deck building, that's forced deck building. It has nothing to do with whether the opponents are putting proper removal in their decks and everything to do with negating the restrictions of the basic rules of the game.

Look at it this way: something like 12,000 cards available in the format. 100 card decks: 36-38 lands; 10 ramp spells; 10 draw spells; 10 removal cards; all the tutors in your color(s); sufficient recursion. The remaining--what? 20 cards?--have to a) synergize with your commander, b) protect your board, or c) win the game outright. Start including a category called "Cards that Skew the Fundamental Rules of the Game" and you're really down to like 5-10 cards that are truly "choices". The fewer choices made by the deck builder, and the more choices dictated by the meta, the less deck building skill is involved. Take this small number of cards out of the format, and four things happen: the power dynamics shift tectonically, the viability of the various archetypes is reset to a much more level playing field, some few cards lose their "auto-include" status, and many other cards become worthy contenders for a slot. More deck building freedom, which now requires more deck building skill.

Now, I get it. These are great cards--fun to use, powerful--and I even play some myself. But if I never see VO or Seedborn Muse (or even things like Craterhoof or Cyclonic Rift) ever again, I won't cry about it either. Maybe some metas don't care, and that's fine if everyone playing there is on board. But for more casual and more open settings (say an LGS or a gaming club at a high school or university) there can and probably should be some throttling down on the max power level--and that's the real point of a official ban list. OP's point stands.

sanddeviljack: Point of order, but it's actually 19126 cards pre TED.

sanddeviljack: i didnt even read anything beyond your first sentence, because it is simply objectively false. play artifact removal or play your own Vedalken Orrery . period. the OP is just trying to whine about something they lose to.

Like all things i feel if a card has no answers other then counter spell i feel it should be banned with that said i hate orrery too but it shouldn't be banned simply cause it's good in commander theres always answers to flash if you can't figure them out its on you. But there is cards that consitantly win games like doomsday combo turn 2 or counterspell tribal draw out win or krenko with untap it gets gross but if you can't stand these win combos simply don't play against those decks i even made antidecks for just those situations.

berryjon: I really like the section in the article where you talk about the 2:1 resource advantage becoming 4:1 in EDH. I play a lot of EDH, and in my experience it has to do with the fact that cards aren't balanced around a four player pod, rather they are balanced on the standard 1v1. For most practical purposes, Seedborn Muse is basically a Nirkana Revenant in terms of mana acceleration; however, when you add more players to the game you see that geometric growth you were talking about.

I don't think it is something you can fix with anything short of a ban (which I'm not really a fan of in general), but going forward perhaps R&D can put some form of limiting clause on cards like this to avoid this kind of unintended power creep. e.g. When Neo-Seedborn Muse enters the battlefield, choose an opponent. Untap all permanents you control during that player's untap step.

I really do not see an issue with resolving your spells when your opponent is vulnerable, it is every players choice to decide whether or not to play the game and at what time, as an example a person who runs counterspells in a deck will Be forced, in many occasions, to choose not to play the cards they need to resolve to win and hold removal for certain situations. Long before this issue becomes an concern please pay attention to the no-fun styles such as stax which is the "you cant do anything" style of gameplay while the person who is doing the stax deck can do everything because their deck is built around not caring for those abilities or the deck that is mainly there to destroy lands. My main point is i do not consider the ban of flash as an option its just another style of play.

Liliana69X: Quick question. Name all (or give examples of) the Artifact removal in , please. No dipping into other colours or artifacts themselves, so Angrath's Rampage and Universal Solvent are out.

LordBlackblade An interesting suggestion, and while I could get behind that, I would have to point out that it would be adding conditional clauses that only have an effect in a minority of formats. It might show up on something printed straight into Commander, but in a regular set, I doubt it.

berryjon: thats an absurd request. you never mentioned mono black (or mono colored anything for that matter) until now. if you want to play a mono colored deck while full well knowing its weaknesses, thats your own fault. there ARE black cards that can get rid of artifacts. i'm not looking them up for you. the "no dipping into other artifacts themselves" is just ridiculous. even mono black decks can use Universal Solvent .

there are also colorless nonartifact cards that can remove artifacts. Scour from Existence is artifact removal that meets your requirements of "no dipping into other colors or artifacts themselves". or you could use discard spells to pluck the Vedalken Orrery before it gets played.

by asking someone to show you black artifact removal, you're basically saying "if a mono color deck can't answer a thing, we should ban the thing". thats insane.

Sarkhan9000X You too are missing the point. My point is that people like Liliana69X are taking the position that the only viable response to a problematic card should be to use that card itself, or dedicate disproportionate resources to removing it. That there is no alternative.

My counterpoint to that was that there are decks that can't run removal to certain problems because their colours don't have them. Or there's no room to dedicate to removing them. Cards that require an equal or greater response aren't good cards. They're cards that can warp the format, or at least the metagame around them. I picked black in this case partly because it was the best choice in this case, and because the commenter in question was using the Face'walker as their handle to help drive the point home.

berryjon: that is blatantly false. im not missing the point, nor am i saying use a "disproportionate amount of resources" to remove it. almost EVERY commander deck uses artifacts, so EVERY commander deck should have artifact removal ANYWAY. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. don't care what your deck does or who your commander is. you should already know this. its not hard. if your colors don't have needed removal, add colors. you should not be running mono colored decks that cant answer a permanent type that EVERY commander deck has.

and no, "liliana69" did NOT choose their username for the sole purpose of "driving a point home".

if the card is so uber powerful, put it in your own deck and start winning games. its ONE card in 99, you're not copying a whole deck. or do what you should have been doing this entire time, and run artifact removal.

I do not think Vedalken Orrery is that scary of a card, and certainty do not think that it is worthy of a ban. First and foremost, not every deck wants to run Vedalken Orrery . Orrery's main value comes from allowing you to leave mana open during your opponents' turns for counterspells or other instant-speed interactions, then, if you do not need to use instant-speed interaction, still having the opportunity to play permanents on the end step before your turn begins.

For that to really shine, you need a critical mass of instant-speed interaction. While Orrery still has some utility in decks that don't hit that critical mass--such as surprising someone with a blocker or sorcery removal--the added value it brings does not necessarily justify spending four mana, which is a high enough mana cost that you are quite possibly unable to play any other cards alongside Orrery.

Ultimately, Orrery is a powerful card, but it is not all that gamebreaking on its own right.

Seedborn Muse and Wilderness Reclamation are also powerful cards, yes, but I do not think they are banworthy either. For them to be effective, you need to either run an extremely large volume of instant-speed cards to take advantage of their benefits, or you need to run another enabler, such as Orrery, so you can play things at instant-speed. Unwinding Clock has the same issues as Seedborn Muse and Wilderness Reclamation , but also requires you to have fielded a whole host of artifacts, thus requiring additional build constraints. These are cards that are powerful if built-around, but they do require fairly significant build-arounds to make shine. As such, they are not worthy of bannings either.

Bear Umbra and Sword of Feast and Famine (which you did not mention) also require significant build-around to get to work. Sure, they go infinite with Aggravated Assault and some other cards--but that's not dangerous in their own right. Both cards require you to have a creature you can safely attack with, and, on their own, only get you one additional main phase worth of casting. That's strong, but it's not something that an opponent can't recover from.

Dramatic Reversal is not that harmful as a one-off, and is only really scary when you combine it with a lot of rocks and Isochron Scepter .

For all of the above, I think it is reasonable for the Rules Committee to keep them in the game--they're powerful, but most require your deck to be built in a specific way or for you to dedicate slots to other cards. The RC has made it very clear that they don't want to limit players' options too much with bannings--they don't want to ban cards that require significant deck-building investments, but rather cards that, exclusively on their own with no other deckbuilding constraints, warp the format.

Which brings me to Prophet of Kruphix , which is "turbo banned." As I said above, Seedborn Muse only becomes really scary when you have Vedalken Orrery also in play. That's what makes Prophet worthy of a ban--it takes two different cards, each fine on their own, but devastating together, and mashes them into a single card. It can be slotted into almost any Green/Blue deck and automatically makes that deck better, without any consideration to other deckbuilding constraints.

TL;DR - Most of the cards listed as needing to be banned are powerful, but still need additional support before they are devastating. The only one on your list that should be banned is Prophet, and that's because it is both "power" and "additional support" all rolled into one card--which is precisely why it already is banned.

Still, while I disagree with your conclusions, as always I enjoyed reading your thoughts!

Do me a favor. Grab one of your Commander decks at random, and tell me how much Artifact and Enchantment hate is in it. Then count how many artifacts are in it.

On my side, for my Thelon of Havenwood deck, I have Casualties of War , Status / Statue , Putrefy and Abrupt Decay . Yes, they can take out those cards, but that's not their primary use. Each of those also takes out Creatures, which is their primary use. In colours that are really good at taking out Creatures, Artifacts and Enchantment. As for my artifacts, Golgari Signet , Golgari Locket , Lifecrafter's Bestiary and Coat of Arms . None of which even come close to being cards that require dedicated removal. Not even a Sol Ring because it doesn't do what I need.

Well, I take that back with Coat of Arms . That can get overboard. Especially in a dedicated Tribal deck like that one.

My point stands. Cards that require a response are, by definition, format warping. Paradox Engine required a response because it was too powerful, and warping. So did the Prophet. And with those out, Vedalken Orrery is the next best thing, as you so cheerfully point out.

And as for my comment about mono-? You have it backward. I chose my example, not that person.

Gate to Phyrexia and Phyrexian tribute are 2 black artifact removal cards, though both require sacrifices. Also withering boon is a black remove soul. Infernal reckoning might be useful against artifact creatures that are not colored, also otherwise black has a weakness to artifact and enchantment but not to players so the best removal of an artifact is to remove the player.

Putontheritz: Nice! Gate to Phyrexia is quite limited though, EDHRec shows it in a little over 500 decks out of 142 thousand, and Phyrexian Tribute shows up in a measly 70.

While I appreciate the information, I have to wonder if two cards that show up so little as to be rendered as a rounding error can really support the point being made.

berryjon: its none of your F'ing business how much artifact removal or artifacts i use. all my decks have plenty of both. your point does not remotely stand. have you even noticed that NOBODY here agrees with you? Vedalken Orrery is NOT format warping, as others have already pointed out. and i NEVER said it was the "next best thing". clearly, you need to work on your reading comprehension.

Liliana9000x And that's all I needed. Welcome back. How was your latest ban?

On a different note, there will be no PR this week as Work has prevented me from getting the time to do more than about 1/3 of the article done by this time. It will be done for next week, as I have the weekend off.

all you needed? so you're finally convinced you are WRONG? bout damn time you stupid fucktard. the dumbass admins are wasting their fucking time banning me and you're wasting your fucking time with your fucking articles. you type a lot without actually saying anything, and what little you do say is stupid as shit. for fucks sake you didnt even know that Prophet of Kruphix was ALREADY BANNED!! thats all the proof anyone needs you're a damn fool that should never be listened to.

To me flash is not ever the issue as a mechanic, the card Flash is but that is for another time. The untap all lands mana advantage is almost always the problem, but once again it is not a problem that I would want any bannings to fix. True, flash can let people do some very powerful and wonky things but that is why we play interaction. In a group with 4 players who are worth their salt there will be 2-3 players holding something to try and stop an opponent from doing broken things, be it counterspells, instant speed removal, or on board hate pieces. This is not a 1v1 format and you should be able to reasonably assume that someone has something in hand if you don't.

I think Caerwyn was 100% on point as always in their assessments.

I know this is basically necromancy target thread but just my two cents:

Oh boy this thread escalated into monkey feces throwing behavior quickly. Ease up boys.

Plain and simple; I disagree with you berryjon on the suggested bans and mostly agree with the sentiment put forward by Caerwyn.

A ban should only happen if a card too easily provides a massive advantage that often culminates with a victory. Paradox Engine supported win conditions very easily and thus was deserving of a ban.

Flash and untaps are quite powerful, but they do require a back-end that supports it. Prophet of Kruphix would be close to pointless in a deck without sufficient card draw or alternative ways to utilize that mana efficiently.

I would go so far as to say that tutors in general is more problematic to the Commander format than either of the cards you mentioned - save the Prophet, which is already banned. Tutors allow combo far more than they allow answers to combos, mostly on account of their sorcery speed.

I play Vedalken Orrery and Leyline of Anticipation in my Derevi, Empyrial Tactician . It is not a Stax deck but an evasive beater deck with voltron elements. My play group gasped every time I played the deck in the beginning, thinking it was Stax. When I played either of those two Flash-givers there would be strong statements on the need to remove them. However Flash-giving never surmounted to anything devastating within my deck. After a while my playgroup came to know the power level I set for the deck and don't take particular notice of it and only assess the Flash-givers as problematic as you would, say a Grave Titan . They are way more inclined to remove a Bident of Thassa or Coastal Piracy .

Also asking people for their proportional inclusion of enchantment and artifacts to their enchantment and artifact removal is kinda pointless, as most people design their decks to match with their playgroup.

In my playgroup, we generally play casual Commander and don't run with infinite combo assemblies as the norm. Some of us have the option for a secure and final end to match, but it is not what defines our decks. We match removal accordingly to how problematic the general power level is within the group.

Those playing in changing or complete unknown playgroups, should likely pack more removal than most of my group does.

It's all within context that deckbuilding critique matters.

It also sounds like the ones you play Commander with is way more competitive minded than mine.