I probably should have said that my play group doesn't use instant speed field wipes, and just about everything in that situation that could have gone wrong did. Melek was the commander for the person using Blatant Thievery, and he took Nicol Bolas at the only time since that nobody had anything with flying out. I had the idea that playing Aeon Hub early would help me, and that backfired. He had also copied Blatant Thievery, and took my Lightning Greaves. I don't remember when the double Traumatize hit us either.

We didn't ban Blatant Thievery, we just decided that not letting someone take control of another player's commander would make things more fun then....what happened. We did house rule ban Traumatize though. Though our reasons were different, I didn't want to have a reason to use Keening Stone.

Mostly, we just sat down and had a 15 minute discussion regarding what cards we should ban in house rules. Most of our list is the more extreme anti-fun cards. We don't use most of them, but we agreed things like Darksteel Reactor, Door to Nothingness, and Decree of Annihilationshould be on the list. We mostly just don't like anti-fun cards.

If I listed all the cards I could think of banning in order of brokenness, Darksteel Reactor would be at least the 400th position. Helix Pinnacle and Felidar Sovereign would come way before it. Even Azor's Elocutors would be higher on the list.

Only real house rule my playgroup has besides a few certain cards being unbanned (Balance, Prophet, and Tinker) is that we have tweaked he cast rule on generals. It's basically;

"If you cast your general from the command zone, treat it as if you would if ypu played it from your hand."

This allows us to use phage or the Myojins are commanders.

Did anyone in your group try to break balance? How common is it in the white decks?

Im curious because I've always liked balance but it being so easy to abuse means I would only want it in a group I trust not to do terrible things with it.

No, really not. If I remember correctly, it's hatred comes from its easy recursion, low mana cost, and land destruction. All of our decks run well enough rocks to not make it much of an issue, graveyard hate is extremely common after C15, and only two people have bothered getting it anyway.

We also just personally banned Deadeye Navigator. Too many of our decks run the Deadeye+Pali infinite mana combo.

Our houserules:

After +15 years of playing we have decided on the following

Starting life, depending on how many colours you play with.

1= 20 life
2= 25
3= 30
4= 35
5= 40

And you cannot gain more life than your starting value + 20

Neverending combos, like conspiracy + Turntimber Ranger, no more than the amount of lands you have / each turn.

Exsanguinate is set to 5 life.

Double strike - only if unblocked, if blocked, the creature itself has to have or another effect has to give, first strike in order to get the desired effect.

Infect, a creature without the ability, cannot get the full value of it from any other source, its set to 1 poison counter, rest is regular damage.

Old mulligan rules apply, with 1 card less each time you take a new hand.

Prolifirate is set to 1 / populate likewise

To this day we have no other cards than the offical commander banlist, banned, although we are disussing the 3 new gods that comes with Hour of Devastation if they are going to be allowed as commanders.

Hmmmm... a couple questions:

Why not just add the card to the ban list? Also - why is Brightflame not also restricted?
Ummm why? I'm not understanding the potential balance effect you're going for here.
Do you mean you can only proliferate a single card/player?


You may not have any specifically banned cards -- but you have virtually banned some (such as the ones that grant infect to a creature -- you've significantly neutered them to the point where I don't see why many players would even consider them for a deck except in extreme situations.)

Why is starting life tied to number of colors in a deck that way? I'd be interested to hear your case for mono decks being more dangerous than multi...

One card targets only opponents life, the other targets only creatures, I for one, do not compare the 2.

This card was missused in our group, a restriction of it was the only solution.

The reason for creating "Houserules" differ for all, I guess?

We use it to promote diversity in the decks you make, since we implemented the rule of colors / life and maximum life, in order for that to work, we had to make some adjustments to certain cards.

The "Official Banned List and Format Philosophy Document"that follows, is the actual mindset of our group.



This is why Exsanguinate is restricted at our table when we play, because as it was, all decks that had black in it, contained this stupid card, Mana geyser (or similar mana boosting card) + Exsanguinate = game over, each and every time.

Epic? Yes the 1st time it was played (but only then)
Fun? , Nah not so much after the 10th or so combo and with up to 8 players around our table, this was one of the most common combos you would see a couple of years ago.

This is also why we have made some houserule changes on certain other cards, as they are way overpowered for our games, not saying that we have weak decks, but theres like +10000 cards and we have restricted a handful of them.

People at our table still play with the restricted cards, I mean there are other cards that lets you copy spells, there are creatures that when they are target, lets you copy spells to any other creature, when it comes to infect / double strike etc, so its really not such big obstacle to overcome.

Prolifirate, set to 1 time regardless of how many times a turn you actually do that.
Populate likewise.


Edited for spelling stuff - english is 2nd language

All decks are dangerous, however, a monodeck is faster than a 2/3/4/5 color deck, especially since we use the mulligan rules where you draw 1 card less each time.

Okay, how about Debt to the Deathless then?
Not exactly true. You could have banned the card. Or talked with the players and said "hey, this isn't fun, lets stop running it."

Also - what issues were you finding with double strike that you felt you needed to alter it -- but only when blocked?

Not to be rude but...
How about that I just write, that we have restricted Exsanguinite to do only 5 on each opponent.
And you in turn, just try to accept this horrible fact?

I do not know if you have any houserules on certain cards, nor do I really care in the same extent that you do, anyway.

But in theory, if you play with a group of 7 other players, its most likely not you and 7 penguins, it is infact, you and 7 other individuals that you try to reason with, to ban a card is easy in theory, in reality though, it opens up pandoras box.

If you haven't already, try it, just for fun and see what that the end result will be.

I have no issue with double strike, it wasn't my call, I cannot at this very moment recall what was said about it, but I will find out and get back to you.

We have done local bannings (as part of a previous group) .. it was fairly easy. We put stuff up for consideration, we voted, majority vote decided the cards fate.

And, the reason I'm "prying" on this -- is that I find it odd that only exsanguinate got the max x=5 treatment ... while other X spells that could end the game didn't. I would expect more of a "X spells that cause players to lose life, or deal damage to players have a Max X value of 5" rule ... covers the basis better, and you're also protected in case someone decides to use the next card that is just like exsanguinate but with a different name.

Basically - it looks like you're curing the symptom, not the actual problem. I'm much more of the opinion that finding the real problem and fixing that is better than just making the symptoms less painful.

I'm confused by this sentiment. I don't want to assume your personal motives, but it seems pretty reasonable that posting in a thread like this is done either to invite constructive criticism or to say "hey, this works for me/us and it could work for you too". In both of those cases, points like the ones Carthain is raising are not improper or over the line at all. In fact, I'd argue it's almost the kind of thing to be expected.


I personally have had the exact opposite experience, especially in regards to soft bans. Just last week my LGS had a Superfriends player drop Sorin Markov after everyone explained to him why it's generally an antisocial card. We also don't see too many extra turns, infinite combos, or mass LD for similar reasons. On the other hand, I don't ever remember being able to successfully propose card-specific errata.

I am going to make a leap here, so I am sorry if I am wrong, but I have to guess that English is not your main language. In which case I understand you dont intend to be rude.

We accept you have a restriction, and we are not asking you to change your house rule. It's your group and your house rule and it works for you. The motive behind the questions Carthain is posing is to understand, not to change.

It would make sense to say "people used exanguinate and we didn't know about debt to the deathless". That would explain why one is restricted and one is not, maybe if more players started using debt to the deathless it would get restricted too.