General 2 Card Archetype [Shitpost]

The problem with EDH's banlist is that it's apparently supposed to be an example banlist, with the idea that your local playgroup would curate your own banlist over time as your local meta evolves. You're supposed to read the banlist, see that (for example) Upheaval is banned, and intuit that Cyclonic Rift should probably be banned as well.

The issues with this approach should be bleedingly obvious to anyone with eyes.
The problem isn't even so much that the banlist is supposed to act as a guiding star to help players ban cards in their own playgroup, but rather the unpolished example is the rule of the land for sanctioned gameplay.

So even if your playgroup allows Sylvan Primordial (like any sane person would) and bans Cyclonic Rift, it doesn't matter because if you sit down at a Command Fest or something those cards will be banned and legal, respectively.
 
Gifts I would have to guess due to ease of assembling combos with one card at instant speed.

Sylvan Primordial ban I understand. Repeatable field-wide one sided land destruction combined with hard ramp can get pretty lame. One ETB is nothing to cry over, but a lot of decks would ETB it 4, 5, 8, etc times

Worldfire being unbanned is by far my biggest WTF with the list, but there are plenty of cards (like Sol Ring) that are close.

I would have to learn more about how Braids is abusable in EDH to understand why she has a ban. Unless it's just "she slows down games"
 
Honestly, I like Commander, but WotC is pushing cards for the format too hard (we really didn't need Jeweled Lotus... or Dockside Extortionist... or Hullbreacher... or any number of other straight to commander prints), and the Rules Committee makes the weirdest decisions. Super fast mana is okay, but hoo boy, that naughty Sylvan Primordial sure ruins commander games! Better ban it! It's certainly responsible for a bunch more nongames than Sol Ring! Or Necropotence. Or Cyclonic Rift. Or Armageddon. Really, the ban list is just a hodge podge of some broken cards and cards they personally dislike.

Fun fact I discovered while scrolling past the Commander ban list: Mirrodin block and Urza Block together are responsible for 17/26 card on the Block Banned Cards list. That's two blocks responsible for 65% of all block constructed bans :') (And all but 1 of those 17 cards can be found in Urza's Saga, Mirrodin, or Darksteel!)

It’s funny because I was playing competitive Standard when those two blocks were live. The deck Raffinity was the strongest aggro, control and combo deck in the history of the game. All in one deck. It even beat decks that were constructed as counter-decks with the sole purpose of beating Raffinity. There was no in-meta solutions. Only the banhammer. And even after Wizards banned half of the deck (literally) Affinity was still the best aggro and combo deck in Standard, Extended and Legacy using almost only Mirrodin block constructed cards.

In Urza’s block we had the only card to ever get banned before it was released because Wizards realized what it would do to the best deck in Standard.
 
It’s funny because I was playing competitive Standard when those two blocks were live. The deck Raffinity was the strongest aggro, control and combo deck in the history of the game. All in one deck. It even beat decks that were constructed as counter-decks with the sole purpose of beating Raffinity. There was no in-meta solutions. Only the banhammer. And even after Wizards banned half of the deck (literally) Affinity was still the best aggro and combo deck in Standard, Extended and Legacy using almost only Mirrodin block constructed cards.

In Urza’s block we had the only card to ever get banned before it was released because Wizards realized what it would do to the best deck in Standard.
Yeah, but look at the cards which were in the GrimJar deck.

I think the fast mana was the culprit. One tournament sealed the fate of the wrong card and it got retroactively added to the previous ban list. This deck was actually legal for a few weeks.
 
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Which one was that? And why exactly?

I know Rusje answered above me, but I believe I made a mistake. I think I have had a memory in my head for over 20 years that was wrong the entire time.

I thought Memory Jar was banned before it was legal in Standard. But I don’t anymore think this was ever true.

Urza’s Legacy was released in february (15’th) 1999. It was emergency banned on March 1st 1999.

The way I remember it there was no tournament to play it in but that might just have been at my local game store (Faraos København)
 
One time I was playing an Azusa deck and pulled off the combo of Emrakul, High Market, Eye of Ugin re-serach Emrakul.

Someone was all mad cus Emrakul was banned and I didn't realize it. Like, bro, I'm hard casting Emrakul as part of a 20+ land combo. That's kind of the spirit of EDH. I later removed it, of course, but it didn't seem like a very abusive usage of Emrakul.
 
One time I was playing an Azusa deck and pulled off the combo of Emrakul, High Market, Eye of Ugin re-serach Emrakul.

Someone was all mad cus Emrakul was banned and I didn't realize it. Like, bro, I'm hard casting Emrakul as part of a 20+ land combo. That's kind of the spirit of EDH. I later removed it, of course, but it didn't seem like a very abusive usage of Emrakul.


That is an argument but imagine if you didn’t remove it from your deck. In a future game, would you choose not to cast it if you had in your hand and could cast it?

That’s the reason why it’s banned. Not to stop a fun, low-powered, shenanigan combo at 20+ mana but to stop it ending games earlier than that. I don’t agree with the banning but that is their reasoning.

Was the person actually mad? Were the person not just pointing out that you were cheating and ruining the fun for the rest of them for cheating.
 
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Was the person actually mad? Were the person not just pointing out that you were cheating and ruining the fun for the rest of them for cheating.
The one person was definitely kind of mad and the rest were like "ya, it's banned, but nice combo."

Why is it banned? As if getting annihilator 4'd off reanimation is ok but the annihilator 6 is game ruining somehow???
 
I don’t think that is true. I think there is a logic behind it and you might not agree with that logic.

Here is what they wrote when they announced the Emrakul ban

“BANNED
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

This is one on which we listened heavily to what the community was saying, and nearly without exception, everyone hates Emrakul. It’s a card that makes the game devolve into a war over a single card whenever it hits the table. Add to that the fact that its combination of abilities made is seriously unfun to play against. We had already had our eye on it, and when the community spoke, we listened…”

 

landofMordor

Administrator
Shower thoughts from this week, for a new Commander deck:

me: "I forgot to mention this before taking my first turn, but my deck isn't commander-legal, strictly speaking. Is that okay?"
them: "yeah! rule zero and all that. what's different about your deck?"
me: "well, it uses some silver-border, playtest cards, and gold-border"
them: "oh yeah no problem"
me: "and my commander isn't actually legendary"
them: "tamanoa is fine"
me: "no, my commander is lightning bolt"
them: "sure, but... why did you play Crop Rotation turn 1?"
me: "well, this deck doesn't follow the color identity rule. Also, it's only 40 cards. And I'll be playing with mana burn and damage on the stack. That's still cool with y'all, right? I'm going to get into character as my commander now, ok?" *make electricity noises over my opponents' protests*

Some of my favorite games are the ones where my opponents don't realize they're playing.

Unrelated note, did anyone else like I Think You Should Leave on Netflix?
 
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