And how much is ∞-2? Most mathematicians would agree it's still ∞ ;)

It's the timestamped order.

Locust Miser: opponent's hand size is now 5.

Then, Reliquary Tower: opponent now has no hand size.

Then, Winter: opponent's hand size is now set to 7 - 4 = 3

Now if you'd somehow kill and reanimate the Locust Miser, then your opponent's hand size would be (7-4)-2=1, with the timestamps reapplied.

Adding or subtracting from a hand size does not work with a Reliquary Tower in play, no hand size minus 2 is still no hand size, but Winter's effect overwrites the Reliquary Tower as long as you have Delirium. And Reliquary Tower overwrites it right back if it's played after Winter.

It's already there, it's Ancient Tomb and it costs you your land drop, which somehow balances it a bit.

The argument literally is that there's a critical mass of these effects, and we need less of them for the casual tables to not swing the fun too far a single player's way and improve the game experience for the full table of four.

If more of them will be printed, I will expect the ban list to be expanded. Now that they've shown they don't fear controversial bans in favor of balance, I would expect no less. The flagship one is still Sol Ring, you get one, stacking up more of them will break stuff. And if you play casual tables at LGS's, you'll have to ask to use the other ones. If everyone enjoys that, all the better. Keep a replacement sideboard to switch them out if not everyone does. Sounds like the healthiest way to deal with it to me.

Mortlocke You're missing the point. Those cards match a pushed power design philosophy that has emerged relatively recently in Magic. All of those cards were chase rares included in premium products alongside Mana Crypt as a crown jewel to better market those products.

You were trying to convince people Mana Crypt wasn't an ancient relic of power, remember? The fact that it's been a chase rare doesn't tie into the fact that there's almost 25 years in design development between Mana Crypt and any of the cards you mentioned, that I was arguing still did not come close to the actual power of Mana Crypt, which is the reason it did get banned.

Wrong. Mana Crypt isn't a relic - it was the poster child of chase rares in Commander.

This is also not true though, Mana Crypt has always been a poster child of promo's. Promo for buying a book, Kaladesh Masterpieces, Ixalan Special Guests, Eternal Masters, Double Masters, Vintage Masters (online).

Until last week, Commander and Vintage were the only popular constructed formats you could play them in. You chased it to play it in commander, that doesn't mean it's a poster child voor the format. It was, as you said right after, a poster child for premium sets and series. None of those sets were printed specifically for Commander.

You can list a bunch of 3+-drops with conditional alternative casting costs, but those are not at all similar to a zero cost artifact that will start you 2 full turns ahead of everyone else.

Mana Crypt requires nothing in play, costs nothing, and does nothing but get you ahead in your game plan the earlier you play it. None of this is true of the cards you listed. They're strong and cheap and high value, but not at all free (except maybe Rograkh + C20 free spells, but that's also a restriction on deckbuilding). Which is probably why they didn't get banned. Jeweled Lotus also ticks 3 out of 3 though.

Cutting the chance on a broken opener by 2/3rds, I find probably a healthy change in the format. Not completely eliminating the chance by leaving Sol Ring is probably a good move too, the multiplayer aspect of the format is capable of compensating for that, up to a point. But the more broken zero/one mana plays, the bigger the chance you go past that point.

It sucks that I lost money off this ban announcement, but the games where these cards mattered most, are the games I enjoyed the least. I've been through enough Standard bans to know that the gameplay experience will probably improve significantly when cards this ubiquitous in the meta can't be played anymore. The same was true for Golos, Tireless Pilgrim, the last card to be banned in commander before this week.