Edit: As of December '06, the rules on general damage have been changed to count only combat damage. As of that change, there are no legendary creatures banned as generals. (GD 2006-12-18 )

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Currently, Niv Mizzet, Rofellos, and Heartless Hidetsugu are banned as generals, for various twinkness.

Momir Vig and Sisay are on my personal watchlist.. the latter has proven to be highly abusable if not squished quickly.. the former might be, but probably isn't.

Any other suggestions or comments?

Rather than ban generals, it may be better to simply have everyone in a league (or all leagues) agree on a "Errata cost" to the general. This not only makes every Legendary creature playable, but (more importantly) prevents the unfortunate problem of destroying someone's entire deck, and their hard work in making it. Would Niv-Mizzet be fine at 8 mana? 9? What if someone only had a Niv-Mizzet deck that they used in another league, and wanted to play a game in this league? This solves these issues.

It would also be good to have people in a league vote on, or otherwise decide in some non-autocratic way, what changes should be done to the format. How many people decided that Rofellos is "banned", for example? Some people might feel that his cost of 6 is OK for a mono-color, fragile General.

Having made my very own Niv-Mizzet deck, I'm quite convinced about the need for a fatwa against him. He is drastically abusable, often making for a win as soon as you can untap with him on the table. Making him cost more just doesn't seem fun. Obviously if someone has a Niv-Mizzet deck they want to play anyway, your group can selectively allow or disallow a particular deck. He also makes a good tool for bashing irritating people.

Cheers,

Paul Dickinson

Out of curiousity:

1. What card combinations let you win the game with him so quickly? I am trying to think of something that would deal that much damage so quickly- even with the duo of him and Curiousity, wouldn't you just run out of cards before all of the opponents were killed?
2. Do you think he would be less abusable if he cost more than 6? How about 8? 12? Making him cost more would just delay whatever plans its controller has, but if the deck is just dedicated to this card drawing, that gives everyone else ample opportunity to do something- and would be a good solution to people who've made decks with him.

Keep in mind you only have to do 21 with Niv Mizzet. Thus just curiosity should take out about 4 people. Note that I've mostly only played it against a single opponent.

However, the degeneracy seems to come from playing timetwister, wheel of fortune, time spiral, memory jar, windfall, and winds of change. Mind over matter is another instawin like curiosity. Having card-draw double as either board control, or (General) damage to the face is just brutal. Eye of the storm is easily made into another win card, particularly with any draw 7 (and most disgustingly with time spiral). Then there are the draw Xs; read the runes, invoke the firemind, braingeyser, stroke of genius. A whack of free spells, artifact mana acceleration, and mana flare, high tide, extraplanar lens, the blue tutors, and draw fixers like brainstorm (doubles as lightning bolt!), top, and intuition, it's gross. I put dream halls in for extra degeneracy. Otherwise, it's filled out with a bunch of permission, random big guys (bringers, tidespout tyrant, gilded drake. palinchron) and a few goofy combos (future sight/helm of awakening and such), some board control (capsize, evacuation), fork, twincast, and extra turn things

Since it IS highlander, it does sometimes get stuck without brokeness, but it manages to be broken the vast majority of the times I've played it. Very often it kills one opponent the turn after it plays niv-mizzet (usually t5 or t6). Very often, it could kill more. I'm sure there are better ways to build it than I have, but I don't feel the need to go looking for them. It's unfun enough as is!

Thanks for the summary!

The question, though, is that do you think he would be fairer if he cost more- like 8, 10, or even more?

The reason I'm trying to suggest this, is that outright banning a general can be really devastating for someone who's already spent a lot of time putting together a deck with said general. It's a nice clean way to "fix" a card without destroying someone's entire deck- if the idea works.

Maybe fairer in the sense that you'd get longer to deal with it... but not more fun (esp. to play against). The point is, it does very little until it's ready to go off, and then just kills everyone. To me, the point of EDH is to have fun turns with whacky things going on, and this misses the point.

Sheldon confirmed on IRC the other day that Rofellos is not supposed to be on this list - the "generals cost six" rule is what deals with him. I don't see any problem with making him playable as a general.

I'm not sure how it got there either. Ask Genomancer.

Is Rofellos really the only reason why this rule exists? I wonder if things would be more interesting if this rule was relaxed slightly to a smaller maximum or no maximum, and just make individual generals more expensive if there's a power level problem (e.g. Rofellos, Captain Sisay...). It would certainly open up a lot more playable generals. Tibor and Lumia would each cast one vote.

Playing the "real" rules (original Alaskan magic) with restricted basic lands totally solves any problem there. Really makes mono-coloured decks hard, it's definitely the worst part of my Kamahl, Pit Fighter deck which is built this way. Mostly I like this rule because the alternative - 30 or so mountains - just begs to play Price of Progress and Blood Moon, which totally belong on the banned list as far as I'm concerned.

This format probably works out well with some play groups, but, in our play group (and probably others) we have a large number of new players who simply wouldn't have the right land cards to create a deck for that particular format.

I don't think we've ever had anything remotely coming close to an issue with nonbasic land hosers in our games. We almost always have decks with monocolor-nearly-all basic lands and no-basic-lands play off against each other, and there are many cards that are effective against both strategies (hello, Wake of Destruction!). We would definitely be lowering the "banned bar" quite far if we started to ban hosers of any type.

While I haven't yet actually seen him played as such, it really strikes me that Kaervek has easily the potential to overshadow Niv Mizzet in the broken general stakes. I think we're going to ban him premptively here in Princeton, anyway...