If its in your color identity, Mizzium Transreliquat is a mana rock early and whatever you need later.
I like this, but is it really a mana rock early? A mana rock after you've spent 6 mana on it, maybe... at that point, unless you've got specific targets of your own in mind to copy with it, I'd rather have e.g. Commander's Sphere and turn it into a card later (and Commander's Sphere isn't even that good these days).
Yeah, Crystalline Resonance is, like, nothing like Copy Artifact.
I'm not sure if I would replace a mana rock with Copy Artifact, as it's slightly unreliable (and costs blue)... but then, if nobody has any rocks out, chances are you not getting your rocks at least isn't as bad as it could be. The plus side is that it might let you copy something really brilliant later in the game. Sculpting Steel is pretty much just a more expensive Copy Artifact (I don't think the U cost or being an enchantment matter enough to justify the cost difference) and Mirrormade is basically the same thing again, less good as a rock, but more flexible. Honestly for any of these copying a rock is probably the floor of what they can do, though getting an early/second Sol Ring never hurts.
Mirage Mirror is an awesome card but, again, totally different. You can use it as a mana rock if someone is playing something big, but more likely you're using it for all the other cool things it can do.
I am thinking about Vazi, Keen Negotiator ...
Most Vazi decks I see are group slug trying to ping people to death but I feel like that isn't going to be that effective.
I like Vazi a lot. I didn't exactly go for "group hug", though, more politics, which generally involves shooting yourself in the foot less often. I can say though that Mayhem Devil does win games.
Just get any old goblin card and draw some glasses and a fake moustache on it, and write "Dockside" at the top. Boom, problem solved.
That said, Dockside is a bit of a double-edged sword in Vazi. I mean, it's brilliant everywhere, but if you get 10+ treasures at once you probably want to win, or at least do something big and swingy. If you give someone else 10 treasures, they'll probably just win. And yes, you'll draw like one card off Vazi, but you'll be dead. The best card for this deck is really Bootlegger's Stash, though it's pricey at 6 mana. Aside from the base advantage of being able to store up treasures, this lets you give people exactly as many treasures as you want by tapping a couple of lands, then activating Vazi, whilst still letting you make the rest. And, of course, it's pretty much a wincon with Mayhem Devil.
If anything, though, Vazi wants to be less of a group hug deck and more of a stax deck (or possibly a bit of both).
Anyway, to go back to your original question: how do group hug decks win? How do any decks win? You've really got plenty of options.
Quite often, group hug decks are combo decks that are trying to dig for their combos really quickly, hence all the drawing of cards and stuff. Sometimes they're mill decks. You don't have to do that, though... but ultimately you're aiming to break parity somehow. Otherwise, why are you playing group hug? You've just got to make sure that you can make better use of the resources that you're giving everyone than anyone else. So, give everyone mana, but play bigger haymakers than everyone, or draw everyone cards but have better mana generation, whatever. Remember: group hug decks aren't really choosing to give people stuff. The giving people stuff is either a roundabout way of killing them or it's a drawback that you consider worth it because it comes with benefits for you too.
For returning to hand there is, of course, the classic Temur Sabertooth, and any deck can use Sanctum of Eternity for commanders specifically.
If we want to get more elaborate, rather than blinking one Etali, you can also just make more Etalis. Helm of the Host is a bit too expensive to be practical in reality in most decks, but it's cool if it goes off. Mirrorpool works. There are many one-shot/temporary cards in red that do this, like Heat Shimmer, Mirror March, Jaxis the Troublemaker, or sac Etali and let Feldon of the Third Path do his thing. And, if you want to get really convoluted, use one of these ways to make a token copy and then let Esika's Chariot copy it (and/or use Doubling Season type effects, or populate).
Nobody is ever going to figure out how to communicate the power level of a deck to a pod succinctly, because it isn’t possible. It’s not even possible, in general, to compute a deck’s power level (should such a thing even exist).
It’s also not really what people care about. They say they do, but actually in a multiplayer game one deck being a bit more powerful doesn’t matter that much. People get moody over specific cards or whole strategies. What they actually want is things like “no extreme stax” or whatever.
Then, of course, there’s the variance. I can make a deck of astonishingly low power level that can win on turn 1 with the right hand. What then do I say is it’s power level? High because it can combo right away? Low because it almost never will? Take the (geometric?) average?
So, you know the bit where it says “all” creatures must block? It means all. Not some, all.
When you block with multiple creatures, the attacker (usually) assigns the damage. Therefore, they could kill your 1/3, or three 1/1s, or whatever. You would need something like banding to prevent this.
This means that Lure can often be used kind of like removal, on top of the fact that it (usually) makes everything else you attack with unblockable - which is usually the bigger deal, since it might mean damage triggers or, more likely, just flat-out killing someone.
So, apparently once upon a time Siege Rhino was a house in Standard. However, that was (a) a long time ago and (b) this is Commander. This guy looks to do... very little, frankly. In the nicest possible way, I think the Rhino is a truly terrible choice for this. (And if you don't believe me, consider that all other things being equal you would need it to enter the battlefield fourteen times to kill everyone; unless you have some sort of cloning, Panharmonicon/Yarok, infinite-blink combo, whatever, that's way too slow)
If you're going to the effort of just having a single target in your deck for the Bridge, why a 4-mana dude with a mild ETB drain? Why not, say, Koma, or Sheoldred, Jin-Gitaxias, or Ugin? Also, since you have many very powerful options, most people are happy to put more than one in. You don't really want to be drawing these, probably, but if you're fortunate enough to get a second upkeep you may as well get a second bomb out. I think that if you are building this to get a specific creature it's because you need exactly that creature, which probably means it's part of some kind of combo win or, perhaps, is absolutely key to some crazy jank strategy. However you still have to get an upkeep with the Bridge, which most people are going to try to prevent, so it's still not the easiest thing in the world.
I'm surprised to see Sanctuary Warden so low. Yes, it's expensive and this is a format where that much mana can do frankly silly things, but a 5/5 flier is still pretty relevant in commander, it's pretty hard to get rid of, and you don't seem to have taken into account that it only has to remove a counter to draw (from any creature or PW!), not necessarily one of the shield counters. Cantripping at 6 mana is eh but it's better than having your cool thing entirely blown out, and this can be drawing you a card per turn. The draw is even on attack, not damage, and the shield counters mean the odds of surviving to do so are higher than normal. That's not even counting funky combinations like Lost Auramancers.
I'd certainly rank her higher than Elspeth (who I do like, but who isn't really card advantage and maybe counts as five-mana ramp - for these purposes, pretty poor) and Jailbreak (a really cool card with a really interesting design but which, let's be honest, isn't going to be super practical very often).
As a slight note on Sky Crier, drawing everyone 1 instead of one person 3 is hardly preferable... the nice thing about this is that it lets you choose either. 4 mana per card is just way too much though. I would take Secret Rendezvous instead any day.
Master of Ceremonies also looks like he can do a lot. I haven't tried him yet but I've heard good things from others. Most likely, you are playing him in a token deck (e.g. with Skullclamp or whatever) so that choosing the tokens is still really good for you. But even if not, like all tempt cards, the player who is tempted by the card draw whilst everyone else is getting sucky tokens is winning, which incentivises them all to take the cards. Worst case, you're still getting a lot more creatures than anyone else.
I don't think that Smothering Tithe is a fair comparison for Smuggler's Share. This seems like it will only grant treasures rarely, but will grant cards far more often. It's a lot less reliable than something like Phyrexian Arena (unless someone else has a Phyrexian Arena out) but has a much higher ceiling, plus the odd treasure along the way as a bonus.
1. You ask if people think that there is too much reliance upon online resources for EDH.
2. You ask if Wizards might consider releasing another physical book with all of their cards in it.
3. You reveal that the reason you want a physical book is because the presence of cyberattacks shows that the infrastructure of the internet is weak to the point where failure is imminent (while simultaneously claiming that nobody who could verify your claims is able to "look under the hood", as it were), assert that the collapse will be done not as part of a cyber attack from an enemy nation but for the express purpose of showing us how vulnerable our infrastructure is for the purpose of driving us toward a "new internet", predict that nobody would want a new internet that more effectively monitors and controls us... and report that you would still want to be able to brew commander decks effectively under those circumstances.
I've gotta admit, I did not expect this twist!
I thought this was just another "oh no the internet is ruining EDH!" thread (understandable, but fallacious IMO) and then, bam! Nope, it's a tinfoil hat thread! Brilliant!
Also, Sir Tim is inventing a new internet? I'm dubious, but maybe he will do a better job this time. I mean, have you looked at HTTP?
Also also, humans are... psychic? So we don't need the internet in the first place?
10/10, this is the best thing I've heard since they claimed the Earth was round.
I kinda have to echo everyone else. Deck price is completely irrelevant. Talking about it is neither necessary nor sufficient when trying to establish a good, fun game of Commander. At best, it's somewhat correlated with power level, but a more expensive deck is not always more powerful, nor more anything-else-that-matters. It's about as useless as asking for "power level 7".
Also, I play online, on Cockatrice. Sometimes people complain about me playing "expensive" cards, when I've spent a grand total of $0. (Side note: $100 for a deck is crazy-talk! I could buy entire games for that, not just one person's pieces!)
I've started to think that splitting EDH is the only thing that makes sense. A game where you're supposed to handicap yourself in some unspecified way doesn't really make sense; I've had too many games where people have gotten mad because I played a particular card or whatever and, conversely, games where I've had no fun because the game wound up being too competitive. As far as the rules are concerned, all EDH is cEDH since all those strategies are legal; people try to say "oh but that's not power level 7" or whatever, but that doesn't actually mean anything.
Like others, though, I would question your proposed banlist.
Banning cards based on price doesn't make a lot of sense. Certainly from a game design/mechanical point of view, price is irrelevant.
Banning cards with combo potential is really hard. Yes, a lot of the cards you list can be used in combos but a) many of them are fine on their own and b) I'm pretty sure you can fine "worse" combos than those listed. Knowledge Pool for example is an awesome card that just happens to have a degenerate combo with a couple of others; honestly you'd be better off banning those things, IMO. Also, 6 mana! Why not Isochron Sceptre and/or Dramatic Reversal? Same with Doubling Season - it's pretty mana-intensive as combos go (and actually the more sensible thing there would be for it simply not to work with planeswalkers somehow). It's widely regarded that Exquisite Blood combos are pretty tame, too. Personally, I'm not a fan of combo in general, but I think you just have to accept that it's part of the game, and combos will exist; I wouldn't be too sad to see Exquisite Blood so, but it's non-trivial to pull something like that off and I don't think it's oppressive. Heck, I would kill Craterhoof way before that!
You're also listing cards like Expedition Map(!) or, say, Deadly Rollick there (I get the whole "free spells" thing, but a one-shot removal is hardly gamebreaking), but not Sol Ring (one of the biggest offenders!). And, does White really need to lose Smothering Tithe?
For the record, you're talking about "all this madness", but a lot of the biggest offenders IMO are very old cards. Yeah, they made a few questionable design choices recently (*cough* Hullbreacher) but I think you may have some rose-tinted nostalgia there. Honestly, games in general I find to be more fun when you don't really know what you're doing, and you may just be remembering days before you or the people you played with really knew about the more powerful strategies.
Almighty Brushwagg - The mightiest card in Ikoria, which you know because it's the only one with "almighty" in its name. Also, just look at him!
Shark Typhoon - Pretty much my only wincon in my ranked deck for a long time.
Escape Protocol - The little-known core of a whole bunch of janky decks, it's actually potentially really good and opens up hilarious combos with things like Midnight Clock and Wishclaw Talisman.
Extinction Event - A one-pip sweeper which always hits at least half their value (usually more) and exiles to boot! It usually doesn't hit everything, but it would be way too good if it did.
Unpredictable Cyclone - As janky and fun as Escape Protocol, if not more so, but lower down the list because it's sadly just not that good. Still awesome, though.
Chevill, Bane of Monsters - He is the dude (usually at least functions like a Revitalize - so replaces himself in your hand - which also trades for a creature, and often a lot more).
Alert Heedbonder - A surprisingly solid defensive card, it's a 2/4 blocker with vigilance and capable of pretty good lifegain even with no other vigilance cards.
Honourable mention to all the tri-lands (because multicolour jank for the win... I just wish there was an Esper one) and all the Ultimata, which are if nothing else pretty darn cool.
I do like Sea-Dasher Octopus, too, and Parcelbeast.
I still haven't grokked even half the new cards but, OK, I'll give this a shot. Thinking Standard here.
Coveted Prize - There aren't many tutors in Standard right now so you have to compare this to Grim Tutor, and with 0-1 party members it's not really as good. However it's totally still playable and the ceiling is pretty high - it's a one-mana tutor and play any 4-mana card for free (and it doesn't even have to be the card you tutored for!).
Lotus Cobra - Given how rampant ramp is at the moment, this will definitely see use. Also being able to play Beanstalk Giant for free on T3 is pretty neat.
Nullpriest of Oblivion - I just think that this is cool. Lifelink + menace is nice and the kicker is a four-mana return-to-the-battlefield which is cheaper than pretty much any equivalent card (you do also have to spend the 2 mana for the creature itself but conversely it's not costing you an extra card). Plus the effect is a later-game one anyway, when you'll actually be able to afford it.
Zagras, Thief of Heartbeats - Flying, deathtouch, haste on a 4/4 is a nice body, plus deathtouch for all creatures? Obvious combo with Hooded Blightfang. Wants a party, but is hardly necessary; it will be easy to play him for 5 rather than 6 and he hardly seems unfair for that, and if you can play him for 4 or 3, awesome!
Zareth San, the Trickster - Ninjustsu is cool but, also, given the crazy amounts of mill in blue/black Rogues you will pretty much right away be able to steal something useful from someone's graveyard.
Feed the Swarm - Yes, it's targeted enchantment removal in black! Also really flexible as enchantment removal which can also be used vs creatures. Comparable with Mortify, I guess.
The six modal two-colour lands - a cool design, a way to fix mana without playing taplands, so a fair trade for the shocks. But, why only six? Does anyone know what the actual pattern is here? Why three for white and red? Where are my blue/white and black/green lands?
The other modal lands - I think that actually most of these will not be relevant in most decks, because coming in tapped they can't really replace regular lands, and the spells themselves tend to be a lot weaker to compensate. I do think it's a cool idea, though, and the flexibility to play a card as a land at least gives you a worse-case-scenario backup if you're mana-starved and might occasionally be useful if you don't really need the land right then but have better things to play. The ones which can come in untapped for 3 life will probably see use; that's a hefty cost, but it's worth having the option.
Ancient Greenwarden - If you're doing landfall you probably have the ramp to play this guy anyway, and he'll be pretty mental with Fabled Passage/Evolving Wilds as you can replay one of those every turn for four landfall triggers.
Murasa Rootgrazer - Just because it's nice, with landfall, to have a way to return lands to your hand; this essentially gives you a guaranteed landfall trigger every turn and potentially e.g. a scry or just a bonus mana (tap, return, play, tap again). Plus you can ramp with it too.
Honourable mentions:
All the new planeswalkers, obviously. Nissa could be pretty mental, letting you play huge creatures for free (kind of Fires of Invention-esq, even), potentially even on the turn she's played (thanks to landfall). Nice that she's in green/black and not just green, though. Tajuru Paragon will see a home in pretty much any party deck that can afford to play green. Lithoform Engine can probably be abused; watch this space.
All the "snap-on" equipment looks interesting, and Akiri has a fun synergy (attack with an equipped critter, draw a card, remove the equipment to give it indestructible - at a minimum, repeatable card-draw every turn even if they have strong blockers). Skyclave Shade looks a bit like Silversmote Ghoul and can be kicked from the graveyard. Shadows' Verdict is not quite a Ritual of Soot replacement, but close. I would probably top 10 this if we'd been in the same block as War for the Spark to get rid of all those annoying 3-mana planeswalkers in control decks. Nighthawk Scavenger is definitely going to show up in some horrible aggro-type decks. Deadly Alliance just because it laughs in the face of Finishing Blow and, like some of the other party cards, potentially has a pretty high ceiling. Less good because you are just saving mana when you likely need it less but, still, unconditional removal is good.
Some thoughts on the mechanics...
I really like Party. I see it as a more difficult (and therefore sophisticated) form of something like tribal; you're rewarded for actually being smart about deckbuilding rather than just stuffing it full of cards of the same type. I fear it won't be worth it outside of specific decks as compared with "dumber" but more powerful strategies.
Landfall is cool - I had a lot of fun with the Evolution Sage/Fertilid combo which is essentially that - but with the amount of ramp in Standard at the moment, I suspect it may just be kind of busted, in an un-fun way (plus that thing about "dumber" strategies again). It seems a bit crazy, after banning Growth Spiral, to then add a bunch of ramp cards in M21 and then a bunch of cards which make ramp even better in the very next block.
There seems like there's a lot of mill in blue/black, especially Rogues. On the one hand, why is mill even a win condition, and why would you want to print more of it? On the other, there are lots of cards this time which actually make use of stuff being in the graveyard (without it being an all-or-nothing wincon), with the "at least 8 cards" thing showing up a lot more. In conjunction with things like Thieves' Guild Enforcer and Drown in the Loch this could make for some fun enemy-graveyard-based strategies (shame that we are losing Mnemonic Betrayal, though).
Kicker doesn't seem like anything special but it strikes me that between it and the modal lands, they are making a specific effort to make cards a lot more flexible, perhaps changing one of Magic's biggest long-standing "quirks" which is the whole mana starve/mana flood thing. This is possibly a very stealthy but very major shift in the design of the game! Honestly, I think this is a good thing, as Magic's pretty luck-reliant as it is. It will be interesting to see how this pans out, anyway.
Honestly, Cat Oven is the one I find most obnoxious, especially on Arena where you have to click through all the triggers.
But I also just find rush strategies and really fast ramp ones less interesting - the game is often over before it's even possible to cast any of the cool spells, and for aggro especially it's mostly just about dealing damage quickly. I might also be a bit bitter about getting done over by a turn three Nissa, Who Shakes the World then her hitting her totem with an Evolution Sage on the board.
(I was playing a slow deck with few creatures and, frankly, poor planeswalker removal - but still, there was not a lot of time to respond to that)
It's interesting that Growth Spiral seems to be considered so great but the mana crystals are not. I guess a big difference is that you can play Growth Spiral on turn 2. If you don't have a spare land in hand, though, it's pretty useless.
I'm not sure if I would replace a mana rock with Copy Artifact, as it's slightly unreliable (and costs blue)... but then, if nobody has any rocks out, chances are you not getting your rocks at least isn't as bad as it could be. The plus side is that it might let you copy something really brilliant later in the game. Sculpting Steel is pretty much just a more expensive Copy Artifact (I don't think the U cost or being an enchantment matter enough to justify the cost difference) and Mirrormade is basically the same thing again, less good as a rock, but more flexible. Honestly for any of these copying a rock is probably the floor of what they can do, though getting an early/second Sol Ring never hurts.
Mirage Mirror is an awesome card but, again, totally different. You can use it as a mana rock if someone is playing something big, but more likely you're using it for all the other cool things it can do.
Just get any old goblin card and draw some glasses and a fake moustache on it, and write "Dockside" at the top. Boom, problem solved.
That said, Dockside is a bit of a double-edged sword in Vazi. I mean, it's brilliant everywhere, but if you get 10+ treasures at once you probably want to win, or at least do something big and swingy. If you give someone else 10 treasures, they'll probably just win. And yes, you'll draw like one card off Vazi, but you'll be dead. The best card for this deck is really Bootlegger's Stash, though it's pricey at 6 mana. Aside from the base advantage of being able to store up treasures, this lets you give people exactly as many treasures as you want by tapping a couple of lands, then activating Vazi, whilst still letting you make the rest. And, of course, it's pretty much a wincon with Mayhem Devil.
If anything, though, Vazi wants to be less of a group hug deck and more of a stax deck (or possibly a bit of both).
Anyway, to go back to your original question: how do group hug decks win? How do any decks win? You've really got plenty of options.
Quite often, group hug decks are combo decks that are trying to dig for their combos really quickly, hence all the drawing of cards and stuff. Sometimes they're mill decks. You don't have to do that, though... but ultimately you're aiming to break parity somehow. Otherwise, why are you playing group hug? You've just got to make sure that you can make better use of the resources that you're giving everyone than anyone else. So, give everyone mana, but play bigger haymakers than everyone, or draw everyone cards but have better mana generation, whatever. Remember: group hug decks aren't really choosing to give people stuff. The giving people stuff is either a roundabout way of killing them or it's a drawback that you consider worth it because it comes with benefits for you too.
Let's not skip on Voyager Staff?, either. It's not repeatable by itself, though you can recur it e.g. with Salvaging Station, though. You can do something similar (but more awkward) with Synod Sanctum or Endless Sands.
For returning to hand there is, of course, the classic Temur Sabertooth, and any deck can use Sanctum of Eternity for commanders specifically.
If we want to get more elaborate, rather than blinking one Etali, you can also just make more Etalis. Helm of the Host is a bit too expensive to be practical in reality in most decks, but it's cool if it goes off. Mirrorpool works. There are many one-shot/temporary cards in red that do this, like Heat Shimmer, Mirror March, Jaxis the Troublemaker, or sac Etali and let Feldon of the Third Path do his thing. And, if you want to get really convoluted, use one of these ways to make a token copy and then let Esika's Chariot copy it (and/or use Doubling Season type effects, or populate).
It’s also not really what people care about. They say they do, but actually in a multiplayer game one deck being a bit more powerful doesn’t matter that much. People get moody over specific cards or whole strategies. What they actually want is things like “no extreme stax” or whatever.
Then, of course, there’s the variance. I can make a deck of astonishingly low power level that can win on turn 1 with the right hand. What then do I say is it’s power level? High because it can combo right away? Low because it almost never will? Take the (geometric?) average?
When you block with multiple creatures, the attacker (usually) assigns the damage. Therefore, they could kill your 1/3, or three 1/1s, or whatever. You would need something like banding to prevent this.
This means that Lure can often be used kind of like removal, on top of the fact that it (usually) makes everything else you attack with unblockable - which is usually the bigger deal, since it might mean damage triggers or, more likely, just flat-out killing someone.
Also, Benefactor’s Draught.
If you're going to the effort of just having a single target in your deck for the Bridge, why a 4-mana dude with a mild ETB drain? Why not, say, Koma, or Sheoldred, Jin-Gitaxias, or Ugin? Also, since you have many very powerful options, most people are happy to put more than one in. You don't really want to be drawing these, probably, but if you're fortunate enough to get a second upkeep you may as well get a second bomb out. I think that if you are building this to get a specific creature it's because you need exactly that creature, which probably means it's part of some kind of combo win or, perhaps, is absolutely key to some crazy jank strategy. However you still have to get an upkeep with the Bridge, which most people are going to try to prevent, so it's still not the easiest thing in the world.
I'd certainly rank her higher than Elspeth (who I do like, but who isn't really card advantage and maybe counts as five-mana ramp - for these purposes, pretty poor) and Jailbreak (a really cool card with a really interesting design but which, let's be honest, isn't going to be super practical very often).
As a slight note on Sky Crier, drawing everyone 1 instead of one person 3 is hardly preferable... the nice thing about this is that it lets you choose either. 4 mana per card is just way too much though. I would take Secret Rendezvous instead any day.
Master of Ceremonies also looks like he can do a lot. I haven't tried him yet but I've heard good things from others. Most likely, you are playing him in a token deck (e.g. with Skullclamp or whatever) so that choosing the tokens is still really good for you. But even if not, like all tempt cards, the player who is tempted by the card draw whilst everyone else is getting sucky tokens is winning, which incentivises them all to take the cards. Worst case, you're still getting a lot more creatures than anyone else.
I don't think that Smothering Tithe is a fair comparison for Smuggler's Share. This seems like it will only grant treasures rarely, but will grant cards far more often. It's a lot less reliable than something like Phyrexian Arena (unless someone else has a Phyrexian Arena out) but has a much higher ceiling, plus the odd treasure along the way as a bonus.
I thought this was just another "oh no the internet is ruining EDH!" thread (understandable, but fallacious IMO) and then, bam! Nope, it's a tinfoil hat thread! Brilliant!
Also, Sir Tim is inventing a new internet? I'm dubious, but maybe he will do a better job this time. I mean, have you looked at HTTP?
Also also, humans are... psychic? So we don't need the internet in the first place?
10/10, this is the best thing I've heard since they claimed the Earth was round.
Also, I play online, on Cockatrice. Sometimes people complain about me playing "expensive" cards, when I've spent a grand total of $0. (Side note: $100 for a deck is crazy-talk! I could buy entire games for that, not just one person's pieces!)
Like others, though, I would question your proposed banlist.
Banning cards based on price doesn't make a lot of sense. Certainly from a game design/mechanical point of view, price is irrelevant.
Banning cards with combo potential is really hard. Yes, a lot of the cards you list can be used in combos but a) many of them are fine on their own and b) I'm pretty sure you can fine "worse" combos than those listed. Knowledge Pool for example is an awesome card that just happens to have a degenerate combo with a couple of others; honestly you'd be better off banning those things, IMO. Also, 6 mana! Why not Isochron Sceptre and/or Dramatic Reversal? Same with Doubling Season - it's pretty mana-intensive as combos go (and actually the more sensible thing there would be for it simply not to work with planeswalkers somehow). It's widely regarded that Exquisite Blood combos are pretty tame, too. Personally, I'm not a fan of combo in general, but I think you just have to accept that it's part of the game, and combos will exist; I wouldn't be too sad to see Exquisite Blood so, but it's non-trivial to pull something like that off and I don't think it's oppressive. Heck, I would kill Craterhoof way before that!
You're also listing cards like Expedition Map(!) or, say, Deadly Rollick there (I get the whole "free spells" thing, but a one-shot removal is hardly gamebreaking), but not Sol Ring (one of the biggest offenders!). And, does White really need to lose Smothering Tithe?
For the record, you're talking about "all this madness", but a lot of the biggest offenders IMO are very old cards. Yeah, they made a few questionable design choices recently (*cough* Hullbreacher) but I think you may have some rose-tinted nostalgia there. Honestly, games in general I find to be more fun when you don't really know what you're doing, and you may just be remembering days before you or the people you played with really knew about the more powerful strategies.
Honourable mention to all the tri-lands (because multicolour jank for the win... I just wish there was an Esper one) and all the Ultimata, which are if nothing else pretty darn cool.
I do like Sea-Dasher Octopus, too, and Parcelbeast.
Honourable mentions:
All the new planeswalkers, obviously. Nissa could be pretty mental, letting you play huge creatures for free (kind of Fires of Invention-esq, even), potentially even on the turn she's played (thanks to landfall). Nice that she's in green/black and not just green, though.
Tajuru Paragon will see a home in pretty much any party deck that can afford to play green.
Lithoform Engine can probably be abused; watch this space.
All the "snap-on" equipment looks interesting, and Akiri has a fun synergy (attack with an equipped critter, draw a card, remove the equipment to give it indestructible - at a minimum, repeatable card-draw every turn even if they have strong blockers).
Skyclave Shade looks a bit like Silversmote Ghoul and can be kicked from the graveyard.
Shadows' Verdict is not quite a Ritual of Soot replacement, but close. I would probably top 10 this if we'd been in the same block as War for the Spark to get rid of all those annoying 3-mana planeswalkers in control decks.
Nighthawk Scavenger is definitely going to show up in some horrible aggro-type decks.
Deadly Alliance just because it laughs in the face of Finishing Blow and, like some of the other party cards, potentially has a pretty high ceiling. Less good because you are just saving mana when you likely need it less but, still, unconditional removal is good.
Some thoughts on the mechanics...
I really like Party. I see it as a more difficult (and therefore sophisticated) form of something like tribal; you're rewarded for actually being smart about deckbuilding rather than just stuffing it full of cards of the same type. I fear it won't be worth it outside of specific decks as compared with "dumber" but more powerful strategies.
Landfall is cool - I had a lot of fun with the Evolution Sage/Fertilid combo which is essentially that - but with the amount of ramp in Standard at the moment, I suspect it may just be kind of busted, in an un-fun way (plus that thing about "dumber" strategies again). It seems a bit crazy, after banning Growth Spiral, to then add a bunch of ramp cards in M21 and then a bunch of cards which make ramp even better in the very next block.
There seems like there's a lot of mill in blue/black, especially Rogues. On the one hand, why is mill even a win condition, and why would you want to print more of it? On the other, there are lots of cards this time which actually make use of stuff being in the graveyard (without it being an all-or-nothing wincon), with the "at least 8 cards" thing showing up a lot more. In conjunction with things like Thieves' Guild Enforcer and Drown in the Loch this could make for some fun enemy-graveyard-based strategies (shame that we are losing Mnemonic Betrayal, though).
Kicker doesn't seem like anything special but it strikes me that between it and the modal lands, they are making a specific effort to make cards a lot more flexible, perhaps changing one of Magic's biggest long-standing "quirks" which is the whole mana starve/mana flood thing. This is possibly a very stealthy but very major shift in the design of the game! Honestly, I think this is a good thing, as Magic's pretty luck-reliant as it is. It will be interesting to see how this pans out, anyway.
But I also just find rush strategies and really fast ramp ones less interesting - the game is often over before it's even possible to cast any of the cool spells, and for aggro especially it's mostly just about dealing damage quickly. I might also be a bit bitter about getting done over by a turn three Nissa, Who Shakes the World then her hitting her totem with an Evolution Sage on the board.
(I was playing a slow deck with few creatures and, frankly, poor planeswalker removal - but still, there was not a lot of time to respond to that)