Though you know this, because you were an active participant in the discussion before, and I hope that you're not just asking so to pick a fight. I remember that we made allowances for your group, because they did somewhat engage with resolving that contridiction, if I recall correctly.
I honestly couldn't remember. I haven't been part of a commander play group for about six years, so that discussion must have been a long time ago. As I said, I was honestly interested in an elaboration on why you think commander is a bad format. Now, as for the meat of the discussion...
The problem with EDH is that its supposed to be a fun casual format where anything goes and winning dosen't matter, but formats naturally trend towards a meta hierarchy of established decks where anything dosen't go, and the format texture trends towards a resolution of winning or losing.
So this results in a contridiction, that EDH groups tend to do a terrible job reconciling. This is not because its irreconcilable, but because a lot of EDH groups will simply deny that anything exists to reconcile, and this lie rots the format. It carries over into cards not being banned that should be banned, absurd rationalization of alienating, not-fun, or un-interactive sequences, and the structure of the format turns into something like a rotting house where everyone is too proud to acknowledge that maybe something was wrong or that anything is worth updating or repairing.
Its sort of an inverse of the above stipulations regarding cube design. Instead of overly focusing on structure at the expense of novelty, they overly focus on novalty at the expense of structure. Who needs to think about, or talk about, bad format texture, as long as you have the memes?
As you said, the problems you describe can be reconciled. To me this indicates that the format is not inherently bad, though, as in the concept of picking a leader as a build around card and having fun multiplayer games where anything can happen is a cool concept. Indeed, I have had fun in the majority of the commander games I've played, and I've seen awesome things happen that simply don't occur in other formats. There's a niche and huge potential there, and that is why commander is so eternally popular. As Aston pointed out though, more could be done to prevent the inherent tension / contradiction between what's supposed the spirit of the game and what it often devolves into.
For sure the official rules committee don't practice what they preach. They say that commander is supposed to be about fun and exploring weird interactions and awesome combinations, but they refuse to ban cards that time and again lead to skewed games. I have read more than one article
by figurehead proponents of the format that list a string of strawman arguments why
Sol Ring should not be banned, and I'm disappointed every time. Someone though
Ruination was a perfect card to reprint in one of the first commander decks, that card sucks the fun right out of every game. For the life of me, I do no know why they are so hellbent on keeping these cards in the format when their very first rule (on philosophy) states that they want to promote social and interactive games. Instead they rely on "the social contract", i.e. each play group has to decide for themselves where to draw the line. If multiple people in your group dislike the fact that you're playing
Armageddon, "you should not play Armageddon". Fact of the matter is that there are many different playgroups that like very different play styles. Some actually like playing the cutthroat cards, believe it or not. I think the committee is on two tracks of thought, where they want to accomodate both ends of the spectrum.
Sheldon Menery wrote
an article where he explores what a bigger ban list would entail, and comes to the following conclusion.
Our goal is to promote great games of Commander. That's different than ensuring them, which is a fool's errand. Without the madness of the Giant Banned List, there's no way to guarantee fun games, and even then it's a tall order because different people think different things are fun.
And then there's this great comment by a lady named Sue Louis which pretty much destroys the whole notion of catering to two groups.
I've been playing edh for 7+years. The playgroup which introduced me had been playing about 9 years and played 100 card singleton for a year before finding edh. The goal was to have greater variety in games and your ban list was taken to much greater extremes to insure this. Demonic/vamp tutor and like cards became discouraged as well as anything with "I win" written on it. Our list would look much like your cards which "don't let others play list" above. Generic goodstuffs decks also became discouraged, the result was the best edh games of my life. 3 years ago the group got a facebook page and alot of new players started showing up. It took a while but most people started to addapt to our philosophy, but others didn't care and games beacame unbalanced. Our group tried to addapt,and it became more of a goodstuffs environment. This of course was against what the original vision was. Two tears ago the two hosts and group leaders grew tired of similar game states and quit magic outright. These two have some of the best collections I know of (100's of dual lands,P9,full sets of arabian/antiquities etc.) and are some of the most skilled players I know. The constant discussions about philosophy and the lack of results wore them out and to this day I can't get them to do anything but cube. This forced me to find new groups, I still abide by ther philosophy and do quite well in public, but overall game quality is much worse. Combo is rampent and goodstuffs is basically all i see. When I ask players if they know who sheldon is they (<10%) have no clue. I'd say less then 1/3rd have even read the doctorine, also most have been playing less than 2 years. My take is that there r two ways to play edh, Competitive or casual. The problem is that unless you are part of a tight knit group it's very hard to find a common casual ground. I have on multiple ocassions suggested that the comittee come up with a suggested casual list. The gap between competitive and casual has grown quickly since the commander products and things like no more banned as commander as well as no tuck. With mtgo starting to promote edh this will probabely push that even further. I am of the opinion that less cards should be on the ban list, and that people should self police in casual environments. However if we had some pillars of the community endorsed a suggested list I think those in the know would gravitate towards that. Then others would catch wind of this and follow in suit. My favorite quote is "Be the change you wish to see in EDH". However if you tell this to someone who has only played for 2 years-2 months they will have no clue and can only speculate what that would be.
Simply put, competitive and casual commander players want vastly different things out of a game of commander, so why try to maintain a ban list that is built to accomodate the competitive player when that means the casual player will potentially have to stomach a rotten experience if ever he participates in a game where the competitive player also partakes? On the other hand, I believe a competitive player could still have a rewarding game experience using a more expansive ban list, because you can still try to build the best deck out there if more cards are banned, and you can still win games. Exept, you do so with a fair deck that doesn't destroy other people's fun as much.
Ultimately though, I don't think that the commander format is at fault here, but the way it is managed, and the way the rules committee so desperately tries to appease competetive and casual players with a small ban list and an unwritten "social contract" that effectively expands the ban list immensely without Sheldon and the rest having to take responsibility for alienating competitive players. Which, ultimately, lessens the experience for both, because the casual player doesn't get to do fun things with their suboptimal deck and the competitive players doesn't get to enjoy his free wins because of all the sulking faces at the other end of the table. When the play group is right though, and the social contract does work, commander can lead to some of the greatest games of Magic I have ever experienced.
There are a couple of reasons why I don't think EDH is a good format:
1. The "Social Contract" and the idea that in order to have a good EDH game you have to be playing for fun and not to win. Whenever the "fun" way to play a game and the "best" way to play a game are at odds, it's poorly designed.
2. Long games with player elimination. If you lose early on, you have to sit around watching your friends play until it's all finished. Losing a game in this instance could also mean being mana screwed or flooded so that you're not an active participant for a solid part of the game.
3. Magic is generally not designed with multiplayer in mind and some of its systems break down when it's played in that manner.
I talked at length about point 1, and I agree that the social contract is a piss-poor way of managing the available card pool. I disagree with your point that playing for fun equals not playing for the win though. Of course you want to win the game, you just want to be creative / thematic about it. What's in and of itself poorly designed there?
Point 2 is a very fair point, that is indeed a flaw of the format, but such is the nature of Magic. The pain is certainly amplified though because the games are multiplayer and take longer. We had one game (out of four) Saturday where one of the players didn't draw his black source nor a fifth land and did nothing for the entire game. I do think it is something that can be fixed though, if not officially than through a house rule. Maybe something simple like, exile a card from your hand and tick up your commander played count by 1 to
Lay of the Land.
Point 3 is mostly subjective I feel. I like multiplayer games, but I certainly can understand why some wouldn't. In and of itself, though, Magic works just fine in multiplayer with the standard tweaks (padded life totals, starting player draws a card on the first turn, mulligans are more forgiving).
All in all two enlightening posts. It's unfortunate the rules won't likely be overhauled any time soon under the current committee, because I do think a more expansive ban list.
PS. Another great comment (by an Aubrey White) from that article by Sheldon I wanted to highlight:
I don't understand. How is this proposal a bad thing? On Bruce Richard's article about this last week over at TCGplayer (see here:
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=13942...), I made the following comment:
"Commander is a mess. Relying on murky interpretations of the Social Contract to define a format is what leads to players leaving it in droves. Say what we will about banned lists, but at least that is enforceable and easy to understand. How do you explain to the Nekusar player that his deck full of wheels and time walk effects is too broken when there is a Prossh Food Chain player and that Oath of Druid player that can win on turn 1 with his best draw and turn 3 or 4 with its worst sitting at the next pod?
The banned list should have at least 100 more cards on it, but the RC thinks that will turn it into too 'competitive' of a format. Well, guess what? Players are treating it like a competitive format anyway, and if you're worried about what casual players are doing with cards like Food Chain, Deadeye Navigator, Oath of Druids, etc. at their kitchen tables, you have no idea how casual players approach Magic. These are the same players that build Vintage-light decks or Legacy 1.5 decks and run them into their friend's Angel-themed deck like it doesn't matter. They don't care what the banned list says and do what they want anyway.
The worst that can happen? At my LGS, a Vintage Storm player found multiple ways to play Storm in Commander and single-handedly destroyed my local EDH league, one that had run over a dozen successful groups. Most of these players don't play Commander anymore because half of them now can't fathom playing the format without playing the 'best' versions of their decks, but they don't want to ruin the game for everyone else. The other half? They still don't believe that the Storm player really broke the format and still complain about how competitive players ruined Magic and no one will play Commander with them anymore."
I still stand by everything I said here. Commander is suffering from the fact that as this game grows, you will encounter more and more people that aren't part of your social group and/or don't comprehend the spirit of the format. How do you interact with them? Via the official rules of the game and through the banned list. Unless you enforce the philosophy of the game through the means available, you will lose players.
