MAY 2023 QUARTERLY UPDATE

[Venedrex]

Whatever Dirk said above, I disagree with, I'm not going to read it though because then I will say something specific, then he will respond, then I will respond, and so on for eternity. I'm also very confident that I could refute his arguments, and that he can refute my arguments refuting his arguments, so I'll end it here.

Lol.

[Ruiner]

I think Gifts Ungiven would 100% become a format staple; but it would do so in a largely inconsequential way;

...

3) It has a lot of fun casual appeal of giftsing for value engines and reanimator packages...

4) it provides a low cost alternative to Intuition which is super nice (yay)


Here's the bottom line: The game is already insanely busted. It gets more and more busted every FIRE set. Vampiric Tutor is *significantly more problematic* than Gifts Ungiven will ever be and it's not getting banned. There is negative chance that Gifts does anything but let me play more stupid loam decks. Release the kraken!

I totally want Gifts un-banned to be a 2nd Intuition for my Kess reanimator deck.

[duducrash]

Ships passing in the night problem

Sometimes I'll take a 20-30 minute drive to the LGS to only find like other 5 folks playing and have weird ass pods for the whole night.


I like the weird ass more than the *extremlly* casual ones though

[Hermes_]

And afaik we don't have the ear of the RC in any meaningful sense.

define meaningful because I interact with them a lot on the RC discord, I even get answers to questions from them

[DirkGently]

I think it'll balance out in time. cEDH is a pretty crappy competitive format, and while it's hot now, I figure eventually the truly competitive among the playerbase will eventually find it trite and migrate back to actually balanced competitive experiences (an end to which WotC has openly dedicated a huge amount of effort). Sure, they'll leave a lot of damage on their way out by quickening the format and encouraging netdecking to an unprecedented degree, but over time I think things will settle and EDH will by and large return to a much more casual homeostasis as it regains its place as a rejection of the competitive ethos.

while I'd love to believe this, I think the theory makes the incorrect assumption that cEDH is a hive mind that will all go the same direction at the same time. When the reality is that it's a bunch of individual people who aren't in tune with the goals of the format. Even if every cEDH player left for standard tomorrow, the next day new people would replace them. I think likely many cEDH players have already left for exactly that reason, but there will always be more.

Glad that im not alone on the fact of CEDH been an issue in hurting casual format. Still think both should be seperated with different banlists.

I wonder what would happen. I love the idea of reestablishing the border fence between the formats, and adding some barbed wire and combo-sniffing dogs, but you'd still have a gradient of power among non-cEDH lists and some people will keep pushing at the upper end. I worry that long term it would only fracture the format while accomplishing little.

[RxPhantom]

Ships passing in the night problem

Sometimes I'll take a 20-30 minute drive to the LGS to only find like other 5 folks playing and have weird ass pods for the whole night.


I like the weird ass more than the *extremlly* casual ones though

I complain a lot about how much product comes out and the subsequent volume of new legendary creatures, but the byproduct of that has been a lot of diversity at my LGS. There's all kinds of weird stuff there and I really like it.

[toctheyounger]

I for one never had an issue with Flash, I literally never saw the card played not even once but I can tell you I have lost to Dockside and Thassa's dozens of times from different players and its literally horrible because those cards aren't even 2 card combos they are 1 card combos. For the record I have lost to T2 Thassa's Oracle and while its true that the setup for that is slightly more than a Flash combo I don't think its any different.

I also agree with you that low level Dockside is questionable if its even playable but if a card is essentially not played on the low end and breaks the game in half on the high end I would say that is a card that has no consequence of banning. I don't agree that we need to have wincons that bleed over to every deck that can run them. The problem with Dockside is that it has almost no downside to playing him out at any point. If your opponents aren't playing a competative enough deck then fine you get to win because they don't have the right tier of deck to make Dockside good but the rest of your deck combos off on them anyways. Dockside over performs when he is played against good decks and he doesn't need to be paired with anything to have a completely insane result. He is ramp, wincon, value engine, clone and flicker target. I don't think its remotely healthy how he is being played and the role he fills.

Yeah, Flash was a pretty specific thing that, in a competitive sense, did one thing, but very very well. It's probably not that surprising that you've not seen it, unless you were at a straight up cedh table you just wouldn't, would be my guess. Lots harder for that to masquerade as high power to get a game in at a lower level.

As far as Dockside goes, it's not exactly the silver bullet people proclaim it to be. It can be answered on the stack. You can remove it's enabler. There are multiple stax and control pieces that nullify its trigger or slow it down, and all of them are viable at any scale of play. These are just some, there are like, a ton more. And the fact it very much scales to board state, I believe, is kind of the nail in the coffin for any moratorium on it. There is no real basement on it. I don't know why you would but it can be totally cast for 0 treasures, even if the ceiling is a pot of gold. The results, over the entirety of the format, are too variable to say it's always a problem.

It's definitely a ubiquitous card, and I totally resent that a bit too. If you're on red, you're actively not being competitive to not include it. But in terms of actually finishing the game, it can totally be neutralised. As with any combo, infinite mana is not enough, you still have to apply it to something. And there are tons of legal infinite mana combos. Keeping this one on the books, much like Gifts, really doesn't change much. If we're looking at the actual culprit, I'd say Underworld Breach is probably more of a problem. Even then I don't think it's up for a ban. It takes some building around, and even though it's hard to take down, it rarely sees play at casual tables and diversifies things at the top level anyway.

Anyway, do I regret mentioning Gifts?



Nah, card is cool and we deserve it. I should get a copy with that sweet original art just in case.

[duducrash]

A separate banlist would fix the cEDH power creep in the casual format? What are some band that would make regular edh healthier?

[RedCheese]

Is an artificial way to seperate both types to hopefully stop spilling CEDH's mindset to regular EDH. Hopefully could work

[RxPhantom]

A separate banlist would fix the cEDH power creep in the casual format? What are some band that would make regular edh healthier?

Is an artificial way to seperate both types to hopefully stop spilling CEDH's mindset to regular EDH. Hopefully could work

Been saying it for years. Both formats would be better off, but a lot of cEDH proponents think it would kill the format. While I haven't been overly affected by it, I'm still concerned about cEDH's growing influence on the format at large.

[pokken]

The problem with a separate ban list for cedh is that cedh is intrinsically tied to edh. Cedh means competitive edh. So if it isn't the same format it's not cedh it's that other format. There will always be people who want to play as competitively as possible commander. There's no stopping it.

If you split the format half go half stay and the ones who stay are an even bigger problem since they'll have to mix to find games.

It's not impossible that people gravitate to a competitive banlist and that becomes default edh either. Not super likely but hey people love prophet of kruphix and prime time and those are gonna be legal in cedh.

I don't think it's a good idea.

Even in the superset mode where cedh doesn't legalize anything (which is the least risky model) I think you wouldn't be able to get critical mass.

[toctheyounger]

A separate banlist would fix the cEDH power creep in the casual format? What are some band that would make regular edh healthier?

Strong doubt this will work. If you splinter you're just going to have your remaining players spread towards the newly established maximum power. It's a natural progression in the lifetime of a player and a deck. It's just up to the player to manage their impact on others for the negative and keep it to a minimum.

I personally don't see the prevalence of cedh as a problem at all. Those players aren't interested in crapping on casuals, and most of the bad blood generated by intermingling is from tryhards who want a quick win but can't cut it at the top. They're not thought of well in the cedh community either.

Honestly whether cedh is there or not there are always going to be spikes in edh. Seeking a schism is a fool's errand. And honestly I know no one means it to be but it's probably a little insulting to cedh players. They're not out there trying to make anyone miserable.

[Chromaticus]

Had a pregame talk with a guy recently, was 2 of my playgroup and him. I said, we're looking for a casual game, none of us are running infinite combos, games usually end with combat after a big buildup.

He brought out Colfenor, the Last Yew and I'm like, okay good this guy gets it. Then he prepared to combo out on turn 4, my friend had a piece of interaction, and he pouted the rest of the game, especially when we went after him.

The next game we were playing the same decks - he brought out a pubstomp Azami, Lady of Scrolls I could tell because he was one of those guys that has a system for swapping in staples, and he boarded in Force of Will, Jeweled Lotus, Mana Vault, etc

I swapped decks to Phelddagrif to try and deal, but he went off on turn 2. Congrats sir.

Going forwards I've just avoided the player, but it was kind of wild to see the depths to which someone will go to win a game of magic.

[pokken]

but it was kind of wild to see the depths to which someone will go to win a game of magic.

The competitive nature of humanity at games is just one of those brain tricks -- like our fervent desire to hoard virtual loot on video games. Marketing & culture have hacked our brains to make thinking winning at casual games is important, that we need to acquire the next piece of our gear set, etc, etc. (and the same with all kinds of junk we're sold in many respects).

One of the most fundamental powers humans have is the ability to question the nature and value of a dopamine rush

[3drinks]

[This post has been deleted at the request of the original poster.]

[TheGildedGoose]

I feel I'm a competitive player

cDH chodes

[toctheyounger]

I feel I'm a competitive player

cDH chodes

Didn't see but seems best left unsaid. Perhaps we're done with this debate for now.

No ragrets in opening this can of worms lol