Reason for Unbanning:
--Chaos Orb: We feel that this card would be inconsistent enough to limit its' power level and we don't want to ban it only due to the flip mechanic. The ruling states that once the card is announced the board positioning cannot be changed which was initially a concern with the original ban.
--Coalition Victory: This card is ubanned due to it being sorcery speed and having a large amount of requirements in addition to being a 8 drop. It was originally banned due to us not wanting cards that just say "I win." However, if we want to be consistent with this philosophy we would need to ban
Test of Endurance and
Felidar Sovereign (which is silly).
--Dig Through Time:
Dig Through Time requires a reasonably full graveyard to be maximized which means it's basically inactive in the early game.
--Food Chain: Infinite mana enabler. Doesn't win the game unless you have CREATURES that you can cast from
exile/win with. Basically a 3 card combo that you need to hope no one has an answer for.
--Gaea's Cradle: Very dependent on board state and is very susceptible to board wipes in addition to spot removal.
--Griselbrand: Has a very difficult casting cost to hit and also generally you won't use the ability more than once due to how much life is lost and needing to discard down to 7. Unless you're winning off of drawing 14 then you're probably only using the trigger once.
--Humility: Was originally banned due to it being "unfun." Would mainly be used with control/planeswalker decks that want to slow down the game. The reason for the unbanning is because of 2 things: 1) Can be destroyed with the majority of board wipes or any sort of removal, 2) it's symmetrical. If it protected itself more or only effected opponents/target for 4 cmc, then this would absolutely be banned.
--Library of Alexandria: While this card may be banned on the other lists, there is no consistant way to have Library and 7 cards in hand without having it in your opening hand. Even if you tutor it, you'll be using cards that reduce your hand to less than 7 and therefore will not be able to use the secondary draw ability. Even in wheel decks, where you can consistently get 7 cards in hand, you'll only get a few draws off of it before you go under 7 again. The reason this is banned in other lists is because the card is powerful in formats with smaller deck sizes and has been historically been banned/restricted due to its' perceived power level in those formats. 1/99 that has to be in opening hand to be worth the slot, otherwise have fun with a colorless mana.
--Mana Crypt: About the same power level as
Sol Ring and at least has the chance of bolting you each turn if you flip wrong. Banning Crypt and not
Sol Ring is pointless.
--Mana Drain: Will often whiff (if you don't have a spell to put the mana into) or just give you a few mana if you need to counter an essential cheap casting cost spell. Also, the mana is in colorless which can be trickier to use.
--Mana Vault: Less powerful than both
Sol Ring and Crypt as it stays tapped and damages you most of the time since you have to spend the 4 to untap during your upkeep, which sucks for control decks. If you don't drop a big bomb off it that sticks then you'll get pinged each turn and probably won't untap it more than one time.
--Mishra's Workshop: Its' mana can only be spent on artifacts so you can't activate abilities. If you're not running an artifact based deck then you'll frequently hit hands where you're either using it to play good 1 or 2 drop artifacts or you just plain have nothing to dump the mana into. Also, it's difficult to make a deck that reliably gets Workshop out. While still powerful, it's far from a slam dunk win.
--Necropotence: Difficult to cast at triple black and you can get locked out of the game if you run low on life while drawing off it. Also, the cards drawn don't go to hand until the end of your turn so you can't over draw and do super cheap things with it as you would need to discard. A powerful effect but you need to set it up properly as a combo to be truly broken.
--Protean Hulk: Generally requires a 3 card combo or more to be good and that would be discarding it, reanimating it and killing it. If you can do all 3 cards and then not have one of the combo pieces still be in your hand you can win off it but that's the nature of combos. Besides getting a super lucky hand with
Flash and
Protean Hulk it's very very difficult to consistently get wins off Hulk.
--Survival of the Fittest: Swapped with
Loyal Retainers. We have tested this for almost 6 months and found that although it is powerful, it is very limited to what you have in your hand and there isn't any "I win" combos without
Loyal Retainers. It may give you a big advantage at times, but other times it is playmat ornament.
--Treasure Cruise: Requires a large graveyard before it's good which is more difficult to achieve in EDH compared to other formats that can run larger numbers of fetch lands and 1 drop cantrips. Due to this, the card usually doesn't really turn into an
ancestral recall until the mid to late game making it less unfair for not giving an early game card advantage.
--Vial Smasher the Fierce: It has no protection and is still a 3 drop. I believe the initial banning was done more due to French commander moving to a 20 life format and the
fear that this card could do too much damage in that format too quickly, however with a higher life format this card is less threatening.