Again, pretty sure the issue has to do with how many cards work differently with Painters.
-Iona locks everyone out instead one color.
-Ugin Spirit Dragon wipes lands with -0.
-All is Dust wipes the entire board instead of (mostly) non-artifacts.
-Mother of Runes completely protects creatures instead of partially.
-Mana Maze becomes Arcane Laboratory.
-Akroma’s Memorial (and the Akromas) adds unblockable and shroud.
-Pyroblast/REB turn into the best counters and spot removals in the game, instead of good but narrow answers.
-The “Spells of x color cost {1} stones” become one sided Helms of Awakenings.
And theres probably more cards that see play that deal with color and I’m forgetting about.
The issue is not necessarily you playing Painters with any of these cards, if it was all two card combos would be banned, it’s that someone might play one of them into a painters because they have to (the boardwipes) or because suddenly its very advantageous to them, and thus ruin the game ‘accidentally’.
The only similar card is really Mycosynth Lattice, who costs twice as much amd instead of accidentally breaking colored repated cards it just shuts them off, and makes all artifact removal better.
Someone mentioned Enchanted Evening, but that one would only make enchantment removal better... unless someone epse was randomly running an Aura Thief in their deck for no real reason.
If Iona was the only issue, Painters would likely not be banned, she’s just the first thing that people think of.
Except you aren’t done against Avacyn (unlike iona w/o colorless answers if she picked your color). You can keep playing the game and doing things, you just can’t destroy it or attack into her (probably).
My disdain for Avacyn comes from the same place as my disdain for Iona in that she can basically lock out some mono-color decks from ever doing anything meaningful against that player again. How does mono-red get rid of Avacyn? They can't. Avacyn leads to unfun game states and limits interaction to the point where I feel that she's bad for the format.
Various ways to deal with avacyn in monored, mostly from the top of my head.
Chaos warp, warp world, stingscourger, decree of annihilation, aligned hedron network, brittle effigy, duplicant, helvault, and scour from existance.
Yeah, obviously it isn't an improvement at all which was my point a few posts back, but Sheldon just said:
The main baggage sideboards carry for me, at least personally, is that they are inseparable from competitive Magic
Which to me says that sideboards not existing doesn't have anything to do inherently with the wish cards. So basically what I want to clear up is if:
A) The RC just doesn't want wishes to function as intended because it'd be annoying, which is fine by me
B) The RC would probably allow them if side/wishboards actually existed, but they don't so wishes don't work
C) Something else entirely.
The main baggage sideboards carry for me, at least personally, is that they are inseparable from competitive Magic, and that's not a weight we care to load Commander with. The association is enough to want to keep the streams from crossing.
What about just having them work as written, like what the person who revived the thread was asking?
In terms of sideboard, on their own they don’t really make sense in commander regardless of competition. Technically it’s a “best of 1” format since there aren't any rounds. That said, nothing stops people from having a pack of cards on hand and switching up cards based on what they just played against. I’ll sometimes do that if I’m somewhere new and notice there’s some literally dead cards in my deck, but that’s about it.
Found it, turns out it was an SCG article and not a post here, whoops.
Quote from = Toby aka Papa_Funk »
Hien Nguyen asks, "I would like the Rules Committee to explicitly state their criteria for banning cards; and for the RC to be consistent with bannings. If you want it phrased as a question: Why are some cards banned but other similar cards aren't? (such Gifts Ungiven is banned, but Intuition isn't)."
Card banning is binary (it's banned or it isn't), but cards themselves aren't so cooperative. They fall on a continuum that stretches from completely safe to never ever. At some point along that continuum, there's a ban threshold. No matter where you set that, there will always be cards that fall just on one side or the other, and cards that may be superficially similar have enough differences to affect their placement. So while it might appear that we ban a card while endorsing another, that's just the binary overlay.
I'm always interested by the choice of "inconsistent" as an epithet. There isn't a science or a formal logic to be inconsistent with. (If one day we ban a card that has an identical-except-in-name alternative, then objection withdrawn.)
In the case of Gifts and Intuition, I'll note that the highlander nature of Commander makes Intuition weaker than it is in normal Magic play (where the most common scenario is to get three of the same card), while that same nature renders Gifts' drawback irrelevant. I believe Gifts is stronger in Commander, and they end up on different sides of the line.
Anyways, yeah, intution is also a 3 card tutor, but a) it's always a three card tutor, and b) Gifts puts two cards in your hand vs just one, which is automatically a lot stronger. If it's just combos that they're worried about then Gifts could easily come off, but if it's just the CA then nothing has changed in it's texts to change it.
Personally I don't think it's a big deal, reanimator decks don't even have that many good cards to set up their things to begin with, and combo players gonna combo. I think it just depends on how the RC is looking at it.
The fact that -you- use Intuition fairly is pretty meaningless.
Quick examples with Kess
Intuition for:
Mystical tutor
Doomsday
Gush
If Mystical, cast it during upkeep to put a cantrip on the top of the deck, use kess to cast doomsday, break pile with cantrip win.
If Gush, cast doomsday with Kess, break pile with Gush, win.
If doomsday, cast mystical turor with kess during upkeep for a cantrip, cast doomsday, break pile with cantrip, win.
With Kess and a cantrip in hand you can also do
Tainted Consultation/Pact
Unearth
Laboratory Maniac.
If tainted, exile your deck, unearth labman with kess, cast cantrip, win.
If unearth, unearth labman, cast tainted from grave, cantrip, win.
If labman, cast labman, cast tainted from grave, cast cantrip, win.
In general you can do X card you need with Yawgwin, Regrowth, Noxious Revival, Past in Flames, ect piles to guarantee your card, and depending on what that card is, win.
With Gifts you can do any pile and look up a Pact, FoW, Swan Song or any other interaction and now the combo is harder to disrupt or easier to cast no matter what pile you make.
Anyways, on wether or not it should be banned, most piles it makes can already be made with intuition, so banning it for combo seems silly and like hulk, it doesn’t combo by accident.
If it’s because it creates a big resource inbalance for four mana at instant speed, on the other hand, it should probably stay banned. For most graveyard decks the piles themselves won’t matter much and tutoring for that many cards will be back breaking.
I’m not sure why their opinion is any less evidentiary/relevant than yours.
The reasons why this is banned and intuition arent are literally in this thread posted by RC members themselves.
As for piling, it is as easy as it is for intiution... except you get up to two cards to hand. Basically anything intution can do Gifts can do, but twice as well and for one more mana... oh and with somethings that intuition can’t do.
I’ve always felt like Painters Servant isnt a problem of being a two card combo, but of how many two card combos he enables.
Since Ugin is decently recent it’s pretty expected that Servant will enable even more things in the future, similar to why Pod was banned in Modern.
Except Biorythm on a stick has a tap ability and condition to activate him. Griselbrand works exactly the same as bargain except with a body + lifelink.
Would it have been nice if they had waited a bit more? Sure, but why would they. If they released Worldfire on a stick (ie some creature with some stats and “sacrifice ~: do worldfires effect”) it would likely be banned as soon as the next rotation hit.
In a word, dumb. While there was no need to emergency ban him, it was clear from the get-go that he was getting axed at first opportunity.
This kind of explanation makes me wince a little. You make it sound like you had already made up your mind without giving him a chance to see how he is played. I don't contend how stupid strong he is and probably should have been banned ASAP (I say probably because I dont honestly remember if I ever saw a game with him before getting axed), but when almost every card on the list gets into heated debates based on actual experience, this feels like an odd exception. I would much rather the official explanation be that you anticipated how broken it would be and had discussed it as something to keep a watch on, and sure enough the feed back you got was instantaneously negative.
With Bargain already solidly banned, why would you expect a version of it that not only enables itself but is also easier to cheat out and recurr to recieve anything less than “instantaneously negative feedback”?
As a commander, he was horribly well suited to abusing the format - not only was there enough fast mana to get him consistently T3, and sometimes T2, but you generally then had the life to immediately draw 35, usually hitting some more mana to immediately then combo or tutor for combo, or gain even more life to draw more. Basically, it was a very, very good "counterspell or die" deck. He wasn't quite so bad in the 99, as, unless you're building around him, you don't have either the consistency or the ability to combo off so easily from the draws. He was still centralising in a PrimeTime way though - the game became about him.
That said, I do wonder somewhat how bad he would be in this day and age. I suspect he would still be a bit to consistently good as a commander, but CEDH wasn't nearly as well developed as a format in Grisel's brief time in the spotlight and as such, there wasn't the overall power level at the top end of the game there is now.
Since you're using cEDH as an example, you are aware that the 'best' mono-black deck is a Razaketh deck that uses Sidisi, Undead Vizier as the commadere, right? Just reanimating a Grislebrand is 100x better than the additional hoops that the Razaketh deck needs to jump through.
Regardless of cEDH though, pretty sure that in general you can cheat out a Griselbrand faster if he's in the deck than if he's in the command zone. Tasigur can cheat him out with Eldritch Evolution very early in the game and any dedicated reanimator build shouldn't have much issues dumping him into the graveyard.
-Iona locks everyone out instead one color.
-Ugin Spirit Dragon wipes lands with -0.
-All is Dust wipes the entire board instead of (mostly) non-artifacts.
-Mother of Runes completely protects creatures instead of partially.
-Mana Maze becomes Arcane Laboratory.
-Akroma’s Memorial (and the Akromas) adds unblockable and shroud.
-Pyroblast/REB turn into the best counters and spot removals in the game, instead of good but narrow answers.
-The “Spells of x color cost {1} stones” become one sided Helms of Awakenings.
And theres probably more cards that see play that deal with color and I’m forgetting about.
The issue is not necessarily you playing Painters with any of these cards, if it was all two card combos would be banned, it’s that someone might play one of them into a painters because they have to (the boardwipes) or because suddenly its very advantageous to them, and thus ruin the game ‘accidentally’.
The only similar card is really Mycosynth Lattice, who costs twice as much amd instead of accidentally breaking colored repated cards it just shuts them off, and makes all artifact removal better.
Someone mentioned Enchanted Evening, but that one would only make enchantment removal better... unless someone epse was randomly running an Aura Thief in their deck for no real reason.
If Iona was the only issue, Painters would likely not be banned, she’s just the first thing that people think of.
Various ways to deal with avacyn in monored, mostly from the top of my head.
Chaos warp, warp world, stingscourger, decree of annihilation, aligned hedron network, brittle effigy, duplicant, helvault, and scour from existance.
Edit: nearly forgot about All is Dust
Which to me says that sideboards not existing doesn't have anything to do inherently with the wish cards. So basically what I want to clear up is if:
A) The RC just doesn't want wishes to function as intended because it'd be annoying, which is fine by me
B) The RC would probably allow them if side/wishboards actually existed, but they don't so wishes don't work
C) Something else entirely.
What about just having them work as written, like what the person who revived the thread was asking?
In terms of sideboard, on their own they don’t really make sense in commander regardless of competition. Technically it’s a “best of 1” format since there aren't any rounds. That said, nothing stops people from having a pack of cards on hand and switching up cards based on what they just played against. I’ll sometimes do that if I’m somewhere new and notice there’s some literally dead cards in my deck, but that’s about it.
And link: http://www.starcitygames.com/article/36937_Ask-The-Commander-Rules-Committee-Other-Than-Me.html
Anyways, yeah, intution is also a 3 card tutor, but a) it's always a three card tutor, and b) Gifts puts two cards in your hand vs just one, which is automatically a lot stronger. If it's just combos that they're worried about then Gifts could easily come off, but if it's just the CA then nothing has changed in it's texts to change it.
Personally I don't think it's a big deal, reanimator decks don't even have that many good cards to set up their things to begin with, and combo players gonna combo. I think it just depends on how the RC is looking at it.
Quick examples with Kess
Intuition for:
Mystical tutor
Doomsday
Gush
If Mystical, cast it during upkeep to put a cantrip on the top of the deck, use kess to cast doomsday, break pile with cantrip win.
If Gush, cast doomsday with Kess, break pile with Gush, win.
If doomsday, cast mystical turor with kess during upkeep for a cantrip, cast doomsday, break pile with cantrip, win.
With Kess and a cantrip in hand you can also do
Tainted Consultation/Pact
Unearth
Laboratory Maniac.
If tainted, exile your deck, unearth labman with kess, cast cantrip, win.
If unearth, unearth labman, cast tainted from grave, cantrip, win.
If labman, cast labman, cast tainted from grave, cast cantrip, win.
In general you can do X card you need with Yawgwin, Regrowth, Noxious Revival, Past in Flames, ect piles to guarantee your card, and depending on what that card is, win.
With Gifts you can do any pile and look up a Pact, FoW, Swan Song or any other interaction and now the combo is harder to disrupt or easier to cast no matter what pile you make.
Anyways, on wether or not it should be banned, most piles it makes can already be made with intuition, so banning it for combo seems silly and like hulk, it doesn’t combo by accident.
If it’s because it creates a big resource inbalance for four mana at instant speed, on the other hand, it should probably stay banned. For most graveyard decks the piles themselves won’t matter much and tutoring for that many cards will be back breaking.
The reasons why this is banned and intuition arent are literally in this thread posted by RC members themselves.
As for piling, it is as easy as it is for intiution... except you get up to two cards to hand. Basically anything intution can do Gifts can do, but twice as well and for one more mana... oh and with somethings that intuition can’t do.
Since Ugin is decently recent it’s pretty expected that Servant will enable even more things in the future, similar to why Pod was banned in Modern.
Would it have been nice if they had waited a bit more? Sure, but why would they. If they released Worldfire on a stick (ie some creature with some stats and “sacrifice ~: do worldfires effect”) it would likely be banned as soon as the next rotation hit.
With Bargain already solidly banned, why would you expect a version of it that not only enables itself but is also easier to cheat out and recurr to recieve anything less than “instantaneously negative feedback”?
Since you're using cEDH as an example, you are aware that the 'best' mono-black deck is a Razaketh deck that uses Sidisi, Undead Vizier as the commadere, right? Just reanimating a Grislebrand is 100x better than the additional hoops that the Razaketh deck needs to jump through.
Regardless of cEDH though, pretty sure that in general you can cheat out a Griselbrand faster if he's in the deck than if he's in the command zone. Tasigur can cheat him out with Eldritch Evolution very early in the game and any dedicated reanimator build shouldn't have much issues dumping him into the graveyard.
They already did some testing on Modern and other Eternal formats, it is most certainly not "really good for magic in general".