cEDH ban speculations

[ApothecaryGeist]

I feel like the casual community is in agreement that Flash should be banned.  This is why it isn't played much in casual circles.  We recognize the degenerate things it can enable.


This site seems to be predominantly populated by cEDH fans.  At least as far as the folks who post prolifically.  I have a question.  Why do you object to cEDH breaking away from Commander and becoming its own format?


In Charlotte Sable's post on the topic, she even mentioned that cEDH players do not want that to happen.


What defines a Magic format is its card pool.  Sure, there are sometimes other rules that are different among formats, but it starts with a different card pool.  (Brawl isn't just a 60-card Commander format.  It's a Commander format with a vastly different card pool.)  The Commander RC has stated that they aren't concerned with making bannings for the cEDH segment of the community, nor regulating cEDH in any way.


So why do cEDH players object to breaking off into their own format with a banlist that will work for cEDH and people managing the format who will listen to the player base and make decisions specifically for the good of cEDH?

[Morganator 2.0]

Up until recently I thought that cEDH should separate and have it's own banlist, with proper regulation. The past week has shown me that it's not a good solution. Even if people do make a separate format called "cEDH" it would suffer the same problems with Tiny Leaders, Pauper Commander, Brawl, and Oathbreaker; people just want to play commander.

There will always be people that will build decks as strong as they can, and making a separate format won't change that. Even though you can make stronger decks in Legacy, there are still people that like Pioneer. Same principle. I like playing commander, and making a separate "cEDH" format won't stop those overpowered decks from existing. There will be someone that wants to play Commander as strong as they can.

Also... I like being a commander player. I'm still a casual player and don't take things too seriously, even if I am always trying to win the game. I also don't like tournament play, but I'm happy being a side event, which is happening more and more with Commander.

In short, I don't want a whole new format, I just want the same format without Flash. I don't think that's too much to ask for.

[WizardSpartan]

It's hard to describe, but I think making cEDH a separate format would feel different. Like Morganator has said, splitting EDH and cEDH doesn't fix the problem, as there are plenty of people, including me, that don't play "cEDH" in its strictest definition, but they aren't playing absolute jank. I would feel a little stranded. By taking all the "competitive" players and giving them their own format, there's nowhere for me to go. I'm definitely not playing high tier cEDH decks, but I'm not playing laid-back, battlecruiser, "casual," etc. decks. Also, there's the confusion factor with 75% EDH players. Ex: Which banlist should I use? At one point is my deck considered "cEDH"?

TL;DR: It would leave 75% players stranded and confused, in addition to adding inefficiency, etc. that having multiple banlists brings.

Does this make sense?

[Marshstepper78]

No format should have separate ban lists depending on the level of play, i.e. casual or competitive. That would be a clusterf*ck.

[WWolfe]

GolgariFTW hit the nail on the head IMO. It would leave a high number of players in a weird position, myself included. While I don't play cEDH, my decks are pretty streamlined and efficient.

[robort]

I read and liked the article. I will start by saying that I have said this before and now will say it again. It is called the trickle down effect. It has happened in plenty of other formats. Where something warps the format to the point of where it is dominating a format. Such as certain card(s) that warp those other formats. So bans happen to restore balance to the format.

I will use a quote from the article to refrence what I mean. At any rate, these FishHulk decks are going to make the format stale and no fun whatsoever. In any other format, this is beyond the pale of what would lead to a banning for competitive balance
But we aren't talking about any other format though we are talking about EDH as a whole. Again not separate entities such as some may want it to be. You have the high echelon decks running FishHulk and decks at a lower echelon that just aren't.

She then goes and says "Commander isn’t like other formats in that its banlist exists for a completely separate reason to that of competitive balance. Rather, the Commander banlist exists to attempt to set a baseline expectation of what is and isn’t acceptable in the format and to remove elements from the format that players at an average power level would be able to abuse to the detriment of those they play with."
A separate reason to that of competitive balance says it all right there alone.

Then she says "but we have our own concerns about how making a ban solely for the benefit of cEDH players would be perceived by the broader community and if it would actually serve to “fix” that end of the format." I do agree with her here. Fixing one end of a format when we have an entire one entity format that doesn't need fixing.

However I can keep quoting and spouting along and I do care just like her ending statement "I want to find a solution to this issue that will work for all of the EDH community, both casual and competitive."


I figured I was finished but against the unopened mind that sent a negative my way without an open minded discussion on it. I will quote again from the article

"The one thing that is absolutely set in stone for the RC is that the banlist will never serve the purpose of attempting to regulate the format for tournament play. That isn’t what the format is meant to do and is antithetical to its goals. Magic is full of lots of other formats that revolve around tournaments and Commander is meant to be a haven away from the unfriendly elements of those events. (While many players enjoy these elements of the game, many others don’t and come to commander to get a break from them.)  In light of this, a ban for competitive balance isn’t likely to be allowed. Even if such bans did happen, they would reshape commander into a format unrecognizable to those who love it for the strange quasi-broken mess that it is right now."

[WizardSpartan]

Im curious, why is a ban for cEDH that doesn't affect "regular" EDH so bad. What does it matter?

[Red_Wyrm]

Im curious, why is a ban for cEDH that doesn't affect "regular" EDH so bad. What does it matter?

Yeah this is exactly my thinking. Flash isnt really played in casual EDH. There are better ways to give your creatures (and other spells) flash. RIP Prophet of Kruphix. You can run vedalken Orrery, leyline of anticipation, alchemist's refuge, winding canyons, I think a new vivian and some others I'm sure that are better than the one shot effect of flash. So banning flash doesnt help cEDH, but hinder casual play, it just helps cEDH.

I saw a post that I really liked, and I wanted to quote it because I do agree with it a lot, but at the same time, this isn't the intention of the EDH ban list, but I think that is a conversation that needs to be had. Okay, so I'll post Soren's post.

The entire point of a banlist is competitive. You can't say your format is solely casual and also have a banlist. I think the banlist should 100% be based around cEDH, because of the house rules thing. cEDH doesn't use house rules, and casual does. Therefore all bannings should be made for cEDH and casual tables can do whatever they want.

While I like this idea, there are some problems. We need to have a baseline, so when I invite Todd from school over for magic, I don't need to give him a printout of the 2 dozen cards that are house banned. Then poor Todd needs to change his decks to comply with our rules and potentially change them again if he wants to play in another pod. Also, the ban list has saved my ass. I was the first to drastically ramp up the power levels of our decks in the playgroup. building a decent Urza deck when it was released, and after the first night of playing him, there was a consensus that Winter Orb and Static Orb should be banned. Our strict adherence to the ban list stopped this, but if we were making our own ban list, then this absolutely would have happened, but now Urza doesn't completely stomp their faces in, in fact, it is no where close to a guaranteed win anymore. (I still get groans from Winter Orb, Static Orb, Back to Basics and Mana Maze. Surprisingly not Mana Web.)

So why do cEDH players object to breaking off into their own format with a banlist that will work for cEDH and people managing the format who will listen to the player base and make decisions specifically for the good of cEDH?

If you see some of my other posts, some even in this thread I believe, I thought like this, but as Morganator said, not everyone wants to play cEDH, they just want the best chance of winning. These are the people that make nearly cEDH level decks without realizing it so they can smash the crap out of their playgroups (guilty, but I've gotten better). The formats I know are Modern, Standard, Legacy, Vintage and EDH along wiith most of its variants. This frontier, pioneer stuff is new and i have no clue what they are, so I'll disregard them, but looking at the 5 that I am familiar with, they all have, as you mentioned, distinctly different card pools. They are all (except commander) competitive. The formats aren't defined by competitiveness, except for commander, again. Imagine being poor (don't have to, living it) and deciding to build a budget modern deck to play against your friend. When you say modern, you really just mean you are using the modern card pool and ban list. So you can make a poor person's modern deck that won't be competing at even FNMs, but are fun for you and your friend. It is still modern. It is the same thing for commander. cEDH is still EDH, but really with just a higher budget and more optimized decks.

We worry that it would just be a bandaid over a deeper wound and that we would all end up in the same position again in six months or a year.

This quote has been bothering me. I am not sure how to explain it, but I'll do my best to put it into words. I don't want to say that "bandaids" don't exist for these kinds of problems, but a solution is a solution. So first I want to discuss the difference between options and solutions. We have several options, ban flash, separate EDH and cEDH and do nothing are the big 3. Now I think an option becomes a solution when it solves the problem without making matters worse, but the problem, I don't think is clearly defined, so I will define it as best I can.

I am struggling a little bit here, so please help me out. This is what I have:

The printing of Thassa's Oracle makes a Flash Hulk pile that is nearly immune to disruption outside of stifling the Protean Hulk trigger. While powerful, what makes the combo broken is the ability to Flash out Protean Hulk as early as turn 1 and go off and win before anyone has even played a land.

So the options again are, ban Flash, separate EDH and cEDh and do nothing. Let's add a fourth, ban Oracle.

Judging from the cEDH and even EDH communities' responses to the issue, I don't think doing nothing and separating EDH and cEDH are solutions because these cause too many problems. In the case of the former, backlash from the communities, and in the case of the latter, well just read the subreddits. So we have ban Flash or ban Thassa's Oracle. Either of these options could be considered a bandaid I guess, but sometimes all you need for a flash wound (hahaha see what I did there) is a bandaid. Sorry, I just really want to fit that in. But back to my statement, "A solution is a solution." I think either of these solves the problem, so now it is a matter of picking the least worst one, which in 2016, turned out to be Donald Trump. I think the choice is simple. Flash just pushes Protean Hulk over the edge as it defeats the entire downside of having to get 7 mana. You are getting 6 mana worth of cards for 2 mana.

Okay so this last part was probably hard to follow, I digressed a lot and deleted stuff to digress less, and I think it makes sense, but I'm kind of confused in my head now, happens a lot. So the point was that doing nothing is an option, but not a solution, and banning Flash, while maybe being a bandaid, is the best/least worst option here. Maybe a bandaid is all we need, maybe this is the cure, maybe its poison, but it is not as poisonous as the other options.

Before I confuse anyone further, I am ending my post.

[Red_Wyrm]

I know no double posting,  but I think this should be it's own post, not combined with my last one.

A quote from the cEDH subreddit that I think has some warrant to it.

To be honest, it's comments like these which makes me feel a real dissonance with people I enjoy playing cEDH with. I don't mean to single you out, but these kinds of comments really make me think that *we're* not listening to the RC and not the other way around.

Every single article / post that talks about the philosophy of commander has always emphasized how it's not meant to be tuned to a competative space. Just look at the amount of time the article at the top discusses how great the atmosphere of people playing commander is. Not only is it great, but it's also significantly different than the other formats.

The problem with banning flash isn't about "net positives". It never will be. That should be clear or else they would've done it. The problem is that they can't ban flash without breaking the goals of what commander as a format was originally set out to do.

Whenever people say, "just ban flash and don't ban the next broken card, simple as that" they really don't understand the ramifications. Once you bend a rule that you put out, it is sooooo much harder to create good reasons to keep it in the future.

Imagine for a moment that flash gets banned. Everyone's happy. Now the next time a "statistically superior" strategy gets found, what are they supposed to tell people then? "We banned flash before because we wanted to but don't want to ban [powerful card] because it was a one time deal"? Can you think of how mad people would be? And don't tell me you honestly believe that wizards won't create a new busted card sooner or later. You see all the bannings that have been happening in other formats?

They're trying to solve this fundamental problem. They can't only cater to us once. So they'd rather not cater to us at all than all the time. If you have a solution that fixes that, I'm sure the CAG or RC would love to hear from you.

[Soren841]

Except there would not be another deck as dominant as Flash Hulk.. it doesn't exist, because if it did then Flash Hulk wouldn't be dominant

[WizardSpartan]

I mean if the goal of the RC is to keep EDH a non-competitive format, then wouldn't the banlist's purpose be to ensure the goal of the RC is kept true? I don't think it is as simple as this, but a diverse cEDH format with multiple top tier strategies is a lot closer to the RC's stated goal than a cEDH format with one top tier deck and a bunch decks built to stop that one top tier deck imo. Now that I have seen another side of the argument (thanks Red_Wyrm), I think the RC might need to adjust their ideology a smidgen.

Edit: @Soren841: The reason everybody is going crazy is because of Thassa's Oracle. Flash Hulk was top tier, but fishy pushed it to another level. What Red_Wyrm is trying to say is that Wizards will print another "OP" card that restarts the entire process again.

[Soren841]

Fishy didn't do shit. Flash Hulk has been oppressive since Hulk was unbanned. Fishy is just proof that without a banning it will continue to get worse.

[WWolfe]

Edit: @Soren841: The reason everybody is going crazy is because of Thassa's Oracle. Flash Hulk was top tier, but fishy pushed it to another level. What Red_Wyrm is trying to say is that Wizards will print another "OP" card that restarts the entire process again.

It sounds like you're saying the only reason people asked for Flash to be banned was because of Thassa's Oracle which is far from the case. People have been moaning about it since Protean Hulk was unbanned.

[Red_Wyrm]

Except there would not be another deck as dominant as Flash Hulk.. it doesn't exist, because if it did then Flash Hulk wouldn't be dominant

The point of my quote was that if they ban flash now, when there is another deck that becomes as dominant as flash hulk was, then they would feel obligated to ban that deck too, even if it isnt in the best interest of the rest of the format.

Banning flash has little impact on casual play, but what happens when the next tier S cEDH deck arises and those cards do see casual play? The RC would have set a precedent with the banning of flash that goes against their "mission statement" and are then faced with a tricky delima.

[Soren841]

I know that was the point of your quote, I'm saying that isn't true