I’ve already advocated for reoccuring nightmare, but I’m slightly confused with some of the older cards on the ban list. Most of them are big spells that reduce your life or win the game with alternate wincons.

I just would like someone to explain to me why they were originally banned and maybe take a new look in our meta as it is today to see if they could be unbanned.

Mostly because I want them to make room for flash and seedborn muse to be banned, but also because I don’t know if they deserve the slot anymore.

Biorhythm we have a creature that does this. So of course it’s not terrible as a creature but giving something flash/haste isn’t hard.


Coalition Victory maybe back in the day allowing someone to steal the game was an issue and you’d get the bad feels for tapping out when your opponent is sitting on this gem, but it takes a huge set up of every land, all colors and the spell it self. Their are easier ways to alt win with approach of the second sun.

Sway of the Stars weaker worldfire it’s a game reset which feels bad but so does all game resets in the game. How is it more problematic then the ones still legal?


worldfire Prob deserves the slot over the rest of them but still would like my to understand the finally reason why because it wasn’t widely played and is hard to generate a wincon off it. Maybe it’s totally unfun? Idk seen it resolve once and that person lost to a dyard arber.

I could see Worldfire or Sway in a very aggressive R/u deck as kinda last resort button. Most aggro decks don't do well in EDH because of starting life totals and multiple opponents so this might help out the Adeliz, the Cinder Wind et. al. decks finish something? 9 and 10 mana is a huge commitment, so even with some of the best mana rocks you aren't pulling it off until t4? with Green maybe you do it faster?

I don't think Animar, Soul of Elements would want either of those. Jhoira of the Ghitu maybe does it with some nasties suspended, but she doesn't really need help closing games right now anyways. So who would even play them?

Before I actually get to the point, there's something that needs to be said:

These two points are as irrelevant as any point can be. The goal of keeping the banned list as short as possible is a general one, not like they're trying to hit a quota or something. While bannings and unbannings do often happen in the same announcement, that's usually more due to the fact that each banning period is relatively long (and in the most recent case, literally a bunch of new members who all had their voices heard). And even then, if anything the pattern is that things don't often get unbanned without a banning to replace it, not the other way around.

Also, Flash and Seedborn Muse will never get banned. The banlist exists to adjudicate EDH, not cEDH, and those cards will never deserve to be banned in EDH.

But, on to the actually relevant points:
Coalition Victory: I think you vastly underestimate how easy it is to set up. Regarding the lands, virtually every deck is packed to the brim with shocks, fetches, bicycles, slow lands, and OG duals, and almost every deck that can even run it has access to 5 colors in a single creature, one that you have access to the whole game. In other words, all of the setup it requires is stuff you'd already be doing anyway. And while there is no data to speak of how powerful a deck built around it would be, it is literally the most boring and anticlimactic win con in the history of Magic. It cannot impact the board in any way. It cannot interact with your opponents. It isn't even that affected by anything else that has happened in the game. It literally either wins you the game instantly, does absolutely nothing, or gets countered. Those are the only options. It will never do anything else.

Biorhythm: Mentioning Shaman of Forgotten Ways as a comparison point is as much of a red herring as Arcanis the Omnipotent is to the legality of Ancestral Recall. The effect is the same, but everything else is so different that there's no room for comparison.
All that aside, Biorhythm's problem is effectively the same as Coalition Victory, just not as much. It's a win condition that is trivial to set up, and more often than not can just happen as a matter of chance. The one area where it is arguably more problematic than CV is its ability to not win you the game but rather knock out other players. As boring as Coalition Victory is, it makes everyone shuffle up and start a new game. Biorhythm more often than not will knock 2-3 players out and have them sit around while the remaining pair duke it out. Of the cards you mention, it's probably the one that would be the safest to unban, but still far and away not worth it.

Sway of the Stars, Worldfire: These both are banned for largely the same reasons, so I'll address them together. The first is that they affect life totals, hit everything, and get around almost all anti-removal that isn't named Ghostway or Teferi's Protection. This effectively erases everything that happened earlier in the game, making it as though everyone had just wasted their time.
But more importantly, they are almost never used as a mere game reset. Every deck that runs them will do so with a way to make the reset as asymmetrical as possible. The aforementioned Ghostway and Teferi's Protection are common ways, alongside Oblivion Ring targeting your own stuff, or just Jhoira of the Ghitu. But the most common tactic, one that is only possible within this format, is to just float a bunch of mana before the casting, and then cast your commander. This particular tactic was the main reason why Sway (and Upheaval) was originally banned, and the RC rightfully smelled a rat the instant Worldfire was printed as it was effectively the same card but worse.

I really hope you're right on that. I have suspicions that Flash will be banned soonish... but I really hope it doesn't.

Otherwise, I agree with everything you said about the banned cards.

I know Uktabi usually writes well, but that was an impressively well written post. I can do naught but agree.

The reasons for keeping Flash unbanned are:

• Some very tiny portion of EDH players use it 'fairly' as a bad version of Savage Summoning/Scout's Warning.
• Banning it doesn't fix the worst uses of it, as those are player problems rather than card problems. For the pubstompers who think it's great to take Flash Hulk into a game of EDH at an LGS with random casual players, banning Flash just means they move on to the next worst thing.
• The banlist should be kept small. If banning Flash would only change a tiny number of games overall, even if we could be completely certain that the overall result of that change would be positive, the fact that it would be such a small relative change makes it not worth the cost of adding to the ban list.

However, many of the cards on the banlist would only see play in a tiny number of decks if they were to be unbanned, so the third point above is effectively the same thing as saying "Flash isn't banned because it isn't banned yet."

It is also worth noting that Sheldon and the RC are making steps to be inclusive toward the cEDH community. Flash would be an easy token gesture toward that community that very few EDH players will miss. In a recent AMA on reddit, Sheldon said this:
(emphasis mine)
Interpreting that as "Flash won't be banned because it is only a problem in this tiny portion of our audience" and "Flash may be banned because doing so doesn't damage anyone but an even tinier portion of our audience" both seem like reasonable possibilities to me. Either way I trust that the RC will continue to exhibit care and forethought in their process as they have for as long as I have enjoyed this format.

Thank you for your well constructed answer. I’ve never had anyone actual win with worldfire before, but the way you payed it out makes sense. Harder to set up then just mass land destruction however still more oppressive.

As for what the cEDH community does or doesn’t want banned I think the RC should take a peak at what happens in that community every once in awhile. I only say this because Leovold, Emissary of Trest was a huge problem at cEDH way before it slipped into casual scenes. It’s one thing to say, “we shouldn’t give power to a loud comeptive minority” it’s another to ignore what will soon come to casual edh tables. Not saying flash hulk is that, but it’s definitely less fair then show n tell.

IMO

Idk too much of how the RC follows the community or how each group has solved problems, but I hope the feelers for the format are in place and we all have a voice on it...

I guess I should post this on another thread, but I had an idea for how to deal with the rules issue with emrakul. Just make anything exiled from the game to be outside of the game... you could use wish cards or even spells the grab back your general or whatever card was exiled. I think it’s a part of the game that’s missing and only green has any real way of getting cards back from exile. It makes them hard to cast unless you self exile your cards and they typically exile themselves.

Will prob post it later. It was just a thought.

Hmm, now I'm curious. Which would see play in only a tiny number of decks (obvisouly proportional to color identity gating)? I could see an argument for Worldfire being pretty niche, but others?

Ahh cool. I'd not seen that. That does allay my fears somewhat about it becoming banned as an olive branch to that group of players (which I don't think should be done.)

Also, thanks for linking to that AMA

I know that some of the following is Magical Christmasland/ worst case scenario, but...

I could see Biorhythm show up in every G/W or G/B deck. Gifts Ungiven and Recurring Nightmare will likely be the most often used as they have very little commitment "So you like having things in your blue deck that are good?" or "Your black deck runs creatures?"

Library of Alexandria probably will be the least used (and not just because of price tag) even though it is a land.

Channel would likely not make as big of an impact I think, because you really cannot Fireball for enough to win but Jaya's Immolating Inferno would help a little I guess? Maybe you could power out some stuff earlier than normal but then you are getting into 3+ card combos.

Limited Resources would probably be in every W/G ramp deck ever. Tutor for it and drop it when you have 4 or so lands and everyone else has 2.

I am not trying to be rude here, just curious too. Can't a lot of cards come off because things have changed so much? I understand that people can go online and buy cards, but how useful is a ban on a lot of old cards really doing? The odds people come across these relics of the past and wreck a game just seem low.

I'd say all the money cards can be unbanned because the odds anyone has them and wrecks games is just too low now. Also, if people have that stuff, they can house rule to play it so I am not sure what banning status really means anymore. Balance is bad. The other stuff in a Chromium old school deck is amazing to see. If you have a beta winter orb, I'd probably play that game just to see it and hope it happens on occasion and not regularly.

Its difficult to regulate how the whole world plays a game so I am not saying it is easy. I am just suggesting it might be an interesting conversation about how many of these cards would be a problem now. Who would play worldfire now? It had to go in its time, but now is a different time. It seems like an interesting discussion.

Forest, Forest, Turn 2 Eldrazi.

But when I follow up with Cyclonic Rift or Swords it would look pretty silly. I mean you still get the cast trigger.

Looking at the list, the RC could probably remove Library of Alexandria, Falling Star, and Chaos Orb. When Library was on there, there were a lot fewer good utility lands, and fewer good ways to remove them. The format was a lot more of a grind, with the incremental advantage being game breaking. Now? I honestly don't see the problem. And while Falling Star and Chaos Orb were banned to keep things balanced in a tournament setting, the list isn't supposed to cater to anything resembling balance, so I think they should both come out of the box as well.

Falling Star and Chaos Orb were banned because they are dexterity cards, not for balance issues. They’re effectively un-cards, rewarding skills outside the normal magic skill set.