Sheldon wrote:
I'm curious as to how we've been negligent. And feel free to enlighten us of the "actual issues" you mention.
From your point of view, my negligent would be your "keeping the ban list as small as possible" and that's fine. It's your format, you decide what you think is best for it, but that doesn't mean everyone sees it that way. A lot of the people I play with feel like the rules committee is out of touch with at the very least the needs of the upper end of the format, I tend to agree. I think most of it comes from the fact that in our area, our LGS is full of people with very finely tuned decks that are about as strong as you can get before you get into the "combo you out on turn 2" meta of decks that include things like Hermit Druid, Ad Nauseam and Doomsday.
Despite that, none of us feel like we're "Competitive". We still run goofy tribal decks, decks themed around +1/+1 counters, token spam, decks that copy and clone everything, enchantress decks. While our area isn't full of U/G or U/G/x goodstuff players or constant 2 card combo decks, the cards that make those decks so oppressive are the cards that start to blur the line between competitive and casual and they don't just show up in combo decks. When people run a casual list that wants one of those game breaking cards, it gets thrown in because pretty much everyone accepts there's no reason not to if it's not banned.
It's an interesting dichotomy, because a lot of the players around my area won't run cards that generally get extreme personal hatred directed at them, like MLD, Stax cards, Vorinclex or Iona and the like because of the reactions they get. Still, we pretty much all run the power cards when the deck calls for it, and constantly complain that they're not banned.
I honestly think the reason that we don't move away from them is that no one can agree on where the line starts.
In other formats, you look to WotC or the Duel Commander Committee or what have you to decide when cards cross that line. You expect that they have the format's best interest in mind and when a card or deck gets out of control, they deal with it. In essence, they look to the controller of the ban list as the final authority on that format's rules, and with EDH when a bunch of passionate people look at the rules committee, and see seismic changes in the power level of the format ever since Avacyn Restored came out and see so little actions taken to deal with it, there's going to be a large subsection of the community that views it as negligence regardless of the rules committee's actual intent.
Hell, even the announcement of the WotC magic online ban list seems to have started to show signs of a schism, and some of the attitudes towards the current EDH ban list are actually even surprising to me:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magi ... dds?page=2 and
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the- ... he-greaterAs far as what I think the problems are, I've posted most of them before, but I'll just hit on the really major one, which is an additional ban critera.
Cards that combo far too easily and also produce too much value outside of their combos:Players Cannot Take Extra Turns - Extra turn effects are absolutely counter to the point of this format, I've believed that for a long time. A single extra turn essentially skips three players worth of chances to interact with whatever insane thing you're trying to set up with the extra time. Even something as innocouous as using Time Warp, Temporal Manipulation or Walk the Aeons to draw a card and drop a land could either spiral into more turns or simply set up a late game easy win because time spells interact very badly with regrowth effects. Now that every single blue deck can take up to three turns or more in a row simply by virtue of having Archaeomancer and Mnemonic Wall, and skipping as many as nine players worth of possible counterplay, the value proposition of extra turns is simply too high. This rule is really the only way to efficiently deal with the massive issue that extra turns create.
Deadeye Navigator - I still to this day cannot fathom why this card isn't banned. Even outside the realm of combo, spending two mana to repeatedly recur ETB effects is simply too much power in the hands of a color that absolutely does not need it. The amount of value generated by deadeye navigator paired even with a simple ETB cantrip effect is enough to bury your opponents in card advantage. Now pair it instead with
Jace's Mindseeker and cast half your opponent's deck for free, or Puppeteer Clique to psuedo insurrection everyone's graveyard, or Zealous conscripts to steal someone else's creature, blink and pair it with deadeye navigator and keep it permanently. Deadeye Navigator with six mana on the table is the swiss army knife to end all swiss army knives. Deadeye Navigator with twelve to twenty plus mana on the table is unstoppable.
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker - While less spammable than deadeye navigator, the raw flexibility and power of kiki-jiki puts him on the same level. Even barring the fact that he goes infinite with every creature with an ETB untap effect and Intruder Alarm, simply having access to instant speed creature copying for no mana is unbelievably powerful. Add in an Illusionist Bracers, Panharmonicon, strionic resonator or one of the few untap effects that DONT go infinite with kiki-jiki and you're quickly going to approach the same level of unstoppability as deadeye navigator. On top of that, kiki-jiki's immediate copy effect can create extroaordinarily devastating one sided plays, like playing and copying Terastodon and nuking six permanents, Angel of Serenity, exiling six creatures, Chancellor of the Spires casting two copies of a bomb spell from someone's graveyard. And much like deadeye, his effect early on copying utility creatures like solemn simulacrum or Burnished Hart can very easily accelerate that player to the lead position.
Mikaeus the Unhallowed - Mikaeus is honestly just too strong. In addition to infinite combos with triskelion, walking atlas, and persist creatures, Mikaeus can create massive value simply by being on board at the right time, completely blunting a sweeper, or casting wake the dead, spamming Corpse Dance to resurrect a bunch of ETB value creatures, only to sac them or have them die at end step and come back in the case of wake the dead. Mikaeus's mere existence is backbreaking, as he is in the one color that has zero issues recurring him, and by proxy allowing constant spammable recursion of every other creature in the deck while also making exile effects the only real way of dealing with him, but the second you have a mass reanimation spell. sac outlet and mikaeus, There are almost no ways to get rid of him if the player behind him knows what they are doing.
Protean Hulk - Good god why? There is almost no fair way to use this card outside of MAYBE mono green, but even then, protean hulk is just too much value. There are so many ways to sacrifice creatures for value, Life's Legacy/Momentous Fall/Disciple of Bolas, drawing six cards is usually strong enough, but also tutoring for 6 CMC worth of dudes on top of it is game warping as all getout. That's not even counting what Natural Order, Birthing Pod, or Eldritch Evolution can do with hulk. And if you want to get out of mono green, there are even more insane ways to break protean hulk. Sac hulk to Diabolic Intent, Karmic Guide + Viscera Seer fetching hulk out of the yard grabbing (who else) dark mike and getting 12 CMC worth of creatures and a free demonic tutor. Or we could go into red green instead, pick up sneak attack, sneak out hulk for Eternal witness and Feldon to get bakc hulk and sneak it in again, get kiki-jiki and start going ape. Blue green, mercifully might actually be the most mediocre color combo, but still has access to Flash, so besides that you still get all the green sac for value cards as well as Body Double to copy him in the yard and a whole lot of value creatures you can grab with hulk, and oh yeah, you're playing blue. I cannot understand this decision, but I hope to god it gets reversed quickly.
While there may be more cards that would fit this critera, these are quite clearly the worst offenders by a country mile, and they show up all the time for various reasons even in the casual setting, and they quite often take over games.
Maybe negligent wasn't accurate, but because i'm passionate about the format I still can't help but interpret the rules committee's desire to keep the ban list as small as possible as inaction. With the slow speed of updates to the format I can't help but feel frustrated and that's a lot of the feedback I seem to get from those I play with when it comes to the ban list. On the flip side, do I want wotc to take control? absolutely not given their recent actions and decisionmaking, but I do want SOMETHING to happen.