What cards deserve to be banned?
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on June 21, 2020, 12:58 p.m. by SynergyBuild
Many players wished Flash to be banned well before it was, are there any other cards that any of you think deserve to be banned? For their ubiquity, I've heard Cyclonic Rift, Sol Ring, and Command Tower even, however more often, I heard of cards like Armageddon, Winter Orb or other hate-stax pieces after a game they took over being bannable.
From commanders you believe are unbalanced (I've heard Urza), cards that were too pushed for the format (I've heard Oko, Thief of Crowns), or even cards that are different given the EDH rules (such as Serra Ascendant/Seedborn Muse), or other overpowered or expensive cards (like Mox Diamond or Mana Crypt), what should be banned if you had the opportunity?
I will follow this up later on with unbans as well, so you can comment your thoughts on that later!
If Biorhythm is on the ban list Tooth and Nail absolutely should be. Of Sway of the Stars is on the list so should Worldpurge. But I'm more in favor of unbanning a few if the things on the list.
June 21, 2020 1:10 p.m.
None (for commander): banning is lazy, sets a bad precedent, & is unnecessary in a self-governing format.
June 21, 2020 1:52 p.m.
No more bannings. Some cards are annoying to play against, some cards are better than others. But thats part of the game.
June 21, 2020 2:17 p.m.
CaptainToll says... #7
The way I see it is that EDH is this vast sea of unending decks and combinations of cards. Hearing of those boogeyman cards or talking about them or even getting screwed over by them makes me appreciate and admire the format with a healthy amount of fear/respect of when you next might fall victim to a card/synergy never meant to see the light of day. This makes the format so untouchable, vast and unsolveable to me and taking away from this with bans more and more would "solve" the format kind of...you just keep on finding the next busted card once the predecessor is out. However aesthetically Stasis deserves a ban :D and while money should not be a reason for a ban on a card it sure as hell feels bad, when you win with the "money" cards over and over...I don't use cards, that far exceed 50 moneys for that reason.
June 21, 2020 2:32 p.m.
Omniscience_is_life says... #8
I would love to agree with you, smackjack, but when a card is so good that a deck built around it is objectively the best, it gets to the point where everyone is building around said card, and that sort of takes away the creative liberty of the game. Let’s think back to a recent banning, and the deck based around the card: Flash and flashhulk. For the period of time where those two cards coexisted, it was hard to escape decks built around them. It just gets a little repetitive once a card is so obviously superior in effect than so many others. One more example is Lutri, the Spellchaser. It was banned before release for the simple reason that no commander players in the Izzet colors had any reason NOT to play it. Why not have basically a free Fork in your command zone?
June 21, 2020 2:33 p.m.
Form of the Squirrel already is, but deservedly so! Imagine how warped the commander meta would become if the wrath of Mr. Chitters were to be unleashed!
June 21, 2020 2:40 p.m.
Timmy I never said I want those cards to be banned but given how other similar cards are banned those cards should be banned. I think you could probably take about half the cards of the b and r list in edh and itd be fine.
June 21, 2020 2:41 p.m.
CaptainToll says... #11
Was Flashhulk really such a big problem? I get the feeling most people kind of rocked up the issue through constantly connecting with others via reddit/tappedout/and the likes, while not actually having suffered an unhealthy experience themselves...that's what's been the case with me on the issue, but I don't want to impose this as the only truth.
June 21, 2020 2:41 p.m.
Omniscience_is_life there is always gonna be a best card and people are always gonna use the best card. If you ban the best card another card is gonna become the best card. Flash is no longer a "problem", now its Expropriate? or Tooth and Nail? Felidar Sovereign might be good let's ban it. Craterhoof Behemoth is really strong in EDH, hope it doesn't get banned :/.
CaptainToll NEVER BAN Stasis! Its the most fun card ever printed: Tipping the scale (Stasis) ;)
June 21, 2020 3:28 p.m.
Omniscience_is_life says... #13
smackjack with all due respect, there’s a hole in your logic. What makes a card bannable isn’t if it’s the best card or not, but rather how it affects the overall play experience, as TypicalTimmy explained quite well.
June 21, 2020 3:33 p.m.
TypicalTimmy While I agree with your analysis of Iona, Shield of Emeria, I absolutely disagree with your analysis of Vilis, Broker of Blood vs Griselbrand.
Vilis requires either mana or another card to provide life loss in order to get the draw engine going. Griselbrand is the entire engine all in one card. That makes Griselboi waaaay more busted than vilis because it completely eliminates the need for any other middle-man resource. Also life means nothing in commander, so Griselbrand more accurately reads "Spend 8, draw your deck" while vilis reads "Spend 8 and then find a way to lose a bunch of life, draw your deck". That extra step makes all the difference.
June 21, 2020 3:34 p.m.
TypicalTimmy sounds like your roommate are playing with dicks if they get mad over a scoop. My friend are playing a "taking turns" deck and i think he never got to win without his opponent scooping. I play Stasis and have rarely won any other way than a scoop. If you clearly won there is no reason to spend 20+ min on showing your opponent how, thats just a dick move.
June 21, 2020 3:38 p.m.
Omniscience_is_life i don't know about flash hulk since i never got to play against it. The only one running flash was me, in my Damia ETB deck (without hulk). See thats the problem with bannings, EDH is a casual format where problems like this should be solved by "hey dude, this is not fun to play against, could you change your wincon?". If not, don't sit at that table.. cEDH is by far the worst thing to happen to EDH, if its anything that should be banned its the C in cEDH.
June 21, 2020 3:46 p.m.
RNR_Gaming says... #17
If anything I want wizards to unban some cards. With the overall power creep of the format it would be nice for decks to get some new old toys. People will always find the next best thing. It is the nature of the game if Ad Nauseam gets banned we'll see an influx of Doomsday decks. If Isochron Scepter gets banned they'll just switch to Freed from the Real or Pemmin's Aura. Though if we ever get tournment data I'm sure the format will warp in a very unhealthy way but we'd have hard proof of what actually needs to go.
June 21, 2020 3:59 p.m.
WotC has shown, on rare occasion, a willingness to ban cards due to power level. Cards like Umezawa's Jitte in modern. However, more often cards get the axe when they're really not fun to play against, such as Second Sunrise which enabled eggs in modern. That deck took literal hours to combo kill, and had a small chance of fizzling which necessitated playing out the entire combo.
Honestly I think Flash fell into the former category. Instant speed 2 mana combo kill that only fizzles if someone has interaction is more of a high power issue than an "unfun experience which you have a small chance of surviving 45 minutes into the combo"
June 21, 2020 4:05 p.m.
RNR_Gaming says... #19
In pokemon's case the power creep is a good thing. Older cards become collectors items and have no place in tournment play making the game so much cheaper to play. Also, each pack gives you a pack online. It's so accessible that I wish wizards would adopt that model. It makes playing easy, affordable and you actually feel like you get your money's worth.
June 21, 2020 4:06 p.m.
RNR_Gaming says... #20
Also, TypicalTimmy I believe during gen 1 hitmonchan dominated the format lol at least from the lists I looked up to beat the old game boy game
June 21, 2020 4:08 p.m.
RNR_Gaming the secondary card market owns the majority of tournament play. Where Pokemon as a game is eternally stuck in a "standard" format because of persistent power creep, MTG is the living embodiment of "Card Stock". Your cards can literally appreciate in value significantly enough to qualify as investments.
WotC can't change their business model at this point. It would destroy modern, legacy, frontier, etc as formats. Everything would become standard.
June 21, 2020 4:13 p.m.
RNR_Gaming says... #22
Lol I meant the card game on the game boy. Was actually pretty good.
June 21, 2020 4:29 p.m.
lagotripha says... #23
Controversial, but I'd go for banning 'massive variance but uninteresting' 'you have to argue not to put it in your list' cards - so the same old sol ring, mana crypt, mox, duals.
This'll have the main benifit of making the format more accessable while reducing the 'feels bad' from people just getting to play more magic because they drew a god hand- it doesn't eliminate all high variance, but it does stop it being 'every deck has some random 'I'm two turns ahead' cards, especially when wizards have catagorically stated that they won't be reprinting them.
From that perspective, sol ring is the smallest problem, but its still pretty 'one guy got it turn one now he's on 4 mana turn 2', in every deck and therefore every game. Sure, you could argue that its a format staple at this point, but (and i might be showing my age here), before the first commander precons no-one played sol ring that played commander out of every player I knew. We were getting the decks and sliding the rings into other formats because it was effectively soft banned. But then it being in the precons meant that evrey new player was bringing it to the table, which meant that the soft ban was never going to be in play. Getting back to that jank when people were ramping with bop or the suspend tutor t1 might be a little nostalgic, but I don't think its unreasonable.
June 21, 2020 5:44 p.m.
Cards should never be banned due to their dollar value. I can understand that there are a lot of people who play MtG and will never be able to afford certain cards, however that's not a reason to punish people who can. And who decides where the banning threshold is?
Similarly with stax pieces, I get that players don't like to play against land destruction or stax, but they are completely viable cards in a completely viable archetype. And just banning an entire archetype because some people don't like it is short sighted and again, where do you draw the line? What's next - just banning everything but vanilla creatures because "hey, you could form a combo with those cards!"
Ultimately, a format is healthiest when the banlist is as small as possible. the more you start banning cards for arbitrary reason, the more the format suffers.
And in addition to that, big banlists just coddle players and encourage the behaviour of "My deck lost to your deck, rather than improving my list and myself as a player, I will just call for your key cards to be banned". This is something you don't want.
June 21, 2020 6:54 p.m.
enpc maybe the 1st time I can hop onboard one of your comments.. Yes, you basically described "bad precedent" - which is a business faux pas.
June 21, 2020 7:34 p.m.
FlashHulk enabled Turn 0 wins. If the first player in a game was playing FlashHulk and obviously had the right cards in hand, they could win the game before you even got a turn. It is a combo that can win without having any board.
The next question is, why don't you just stop it? Force of Will is a thing, just do that.
The response to that is, if you know someone is playing FlashHulk, how many cards are you going to mulligan down too to ensure you have the proper cards in hand to stop it?
This is the biggest issue. Someone can win before anyone else gets a turn and in order to stop it you will probably have to mulligan, a few times. Say you had to mulligan down to 5 or even 4 cards, you stop their combo. You are now on your very first turn sitting on a 3 or 2 card hand, while they still have a normal hand and can play the game out.
June 21, 2020 8:41 p.m. Edited.
RNR_Gaming says... #27
DuTogira if a format/game is destroyed because the dollar amount of an item in the game crashes than the game itself isn't very fun. Don't misunderstand I do like that my cards have value/fluxate in value and I do often speculate and try and raise my collections equity; but making the point of entry to formats like legacy and vintage cost more than a few morgage payments is insane.
June 21, 2020 8:57 p.m.
RNR_Gaming I mean the alternative is that if you take a 2 year break from magic, when you come back you’ll basically have to rebuild half your deck or more because powercreep will have made old cards obsolete. MTG has one format with a low barrier to entry price wise: standard. What I’m saying is that other formats need not conform to this model, and consistent power creep would unnecessarily enforce rotations when set legality (as seen in standard) can already do the same thing effectively.
June 21, 2020 9:08 p.m. Edited.
There shouldn't exist a ban list in Commander. There are a ton of cards that I hate to play against that aren't on the ban list. With that said, I have a lot of friends that love to play against those kinds of cards.* I.e., we shouldn't have a ban list in EDH.
However, there should exist a competitive EDH ban list. I consider cEDH to be a totally different format. When there are potential money and prices involved, of course, there needs to exist some balance in the game. Otherwise, everyone will show up with the exact same deck, and the format will die. And this is precisely why casual EDH shouldn't have a ban list.
Even without a ban list, people will bring very different decks to a game of Commander. Hence, a ban list is unnecessary in a casual format, especially in a thriving format.
*) Cards I hate: Cards that take over one player turn, which takes a lot of time, and usually destroys the game for that poor soul (just run a combo instead so we can shuffle up and play again). Cards that kill/stop one player from playing (e.g., Helm of obedience combo). I also hate to play against decks with no win condition (even worse if it also runs a ton of hate pieces and extra turn cards). I rather run into a Kozilek on turn 4, than a deck with no win con.
PS. There are so many 7+ CMC cards in Magic that pretty much reads "I win the game", so impossible to balance the casual format by using a ban list.
June 22, 2020 5:47 a.m.
SynergyBuild says... #31
Yeah, I know plenty of decks that use something like Nexus of Fate
and Planar Portal just use Grand Arbiter Augustin IV to beat them in the face over and over with infinite turns to get the win, it's suuper slow, and since they Cyclonic Rifted everyone's creatures back they can't stop it, but then like one player has an answer the whole time, but some stax can't cast it, stuff like that, or like the player winning has a Mana Crypt who just happens to have a chance at losing because of it, but has like 40 life and all so they just sit and wait forever.
June 22, 2020 7:23 p.m.
Metachemist says... #32
DuTogira if you think Standard has a low cost of entry I'd like to remind you of a deck that isn't even 10 years old yet. Caw Blade aka $1000 Mythics.
June 27, 2020 4:09 p.m.
Metachemist you misunderstand. I don't mean "low" in an absolute term, as in "everyone can afford this". I mean low relative to all other officially sanctioned competitive formats in MTG (EG: Not pauper).
June 27, 2020 5:11 p.m.
Metachemist says... #34
Fair enough, just wanted to point that even in the relative term unfortunately Standard and Pioneer both are rapidly catching up to Modern in terms of deck costs.
Omniscience_is_life says... #2
Felidar Sovereign, in the same vein as Serra Ascendant.
June 21, 2020 1 p.m.