MTG Salvation

The Forum is down, and the Engine is Dead.

Quote from tstorm823 »

Mimic Vat


This card is good because it give you easy recurring etb value. This card is amazing because it hoses things like persist entirely by accident.

The last truly dumb thing I did with the Vat was Coretapper and Magistrate's Scepter

I can't see a single change to the rules ever bringing down this format outside of some of the truly sweeping bans that some people want for certain types of cards. This format feels rather flexible and at least where I play it the people I play with are too.

Also I would question utilizing any current breakdowns to try and infer what happens due to this change because the amount of Edgar decks probably stems from the fact that Edgar is a deadly efficient way to make aggro work in the current environment of commander, and while Edgar will still be very good if the life totals are lessened I would imagine people would also come to those games packing more answers for that same reason.

While I do not doubt there will also be people who only look at this change as numerical, I bet that number is smaller.

I think quarantining certain cards in cEDH-ville while you are thinking about Commander can also be disastrous.

I guess to go back to an older style of doing this so much of this post is people posting reasons why we should have life totals lower than 40 and why that would be good and people responding as to why those things are bad.

What are the reasons other than it already being at 40 that it being at 40 is a good number?

Quote from DirkGently »

Lowering the effectiveness of necro and other cards that exploit the high life total is just one aspect of lowering starting life totals. It's not even close to my primary reason for wanting to do so. My primary reason I think is best summed up here:

right now a LOT of people put combos in their decks as a "safety valve" for if the game is going too long. And I think this safety valve mentality is what's increased the prevalence of combos in otherwise noncompetitive metas, and made those combos faster and faster. With lower life totals, ending the game without an infinite combo becomes less difficult, and people are less likely to resort to infinite combos as their only reliable option.

Right now EDH has a reputation for creating games so long that they wear out their welcome, and then keep going for another two hours. Cutting down the absurd starting life totals would at least help put a dent in that.

it's pretty rare for someone to try to win except by a dedicated "I win" button, which I personally find very unsatisfying. Rarely is incremental damage relevant when other players are trying to win. Which is supposed to be most of the game. 30 life brings that incremental damage into sharper focus (not as much as 20 life, but baby steps).

I agree with this but also an increase in the relevance of incremental damage and life loss also hurts those cards.

Playing in formats where it is 20 recently has really nailed down my outlook that 40 is way too much and 30 might even still be too much but 20 is never going to happen in this format at this point.

Treating combo as a back door and not as an archetype that it is, is the problem in and of itself and expecting any length of game or 'story' to develop is also part of the problem IMO.

Not opposed to long involved games of magic, opposed to slogs.

Also the idea that if the opening comes up to play some cards in your deck and you choose not to is baffling to me, you put cards in deck to use them when the situation presents.

You can't play your normal form of Control or Tempo or Aggro in this format unless you have a back door because multiplayer + 40 life facilitates the need for ways to close out a game. People have a buffer and room to breath in the format it is no wonder that style of play flourishes. Every control deck I make the last question is how do I lock the game or how do I finish it because it is the only way to be sure when building.

If you don't the game just becomes 3 hour battlecruiser fests of board resets, which I would say generally are worse.

Quote from Jivanmukta »

Combos don't ruin games, players do. Literally every single issue in EDH is fixed by communicating.

This is where I am with the game.

There is another level to that though isn't there.

A commander whose whole job is to make other creatures into mana dorks has more investment than most to play the Engine.

Regardless of what or how powerful the outcomes with it are.

I bet the Reservoir likewise is good in all kinds of decks that gain life because unlike the traditional lifegain wincons you don't have to wait a turn around with it.

While I don't agree with Paradox Engine needing to be banned (or the other two cards needing to be banned) PoK was not banned because it was "unfun by itself".

PoK and PE are very similar cards in a lot of ways it is why the comparisons kind of work. There are games I have played against both of these cards and they have floundered and done little because they are both engines surrounded by bigger things.

The ease of accessing the power of those engines is what is being discussed here.

(also framing the differences between cEDH and not as purely a function of budget removes a lot of the history of MTG cards, it is how people build and play and not what they build and play that determines the style of deck)

It should be noted that any data for or against what you believe in a thread like this taken from a website is taken from a self selected smaller much more into the game group of people who decide they want to put their list of cards online and think about the game beyond when the game ends or when the store is left.

There is a huge bias in that data or any data of the sort.

I have bias, I hate bans, and I don't play infinite loops. I also cannot read Sheldon's mind, but I don't think the purpose of him bringing up "combo" was not to discuss the strengths/merits of individual combos or combo decks.

If you'll actually start by reading his "thoughts on combos" rather than the posts in this thread, Sheldon discusses how games seem to end too often or unsatisfyingly via an infinite loop. He mentioned how "games have to end" and how many players will pack an infinite to end the game as a back-up plan. However, in the end, that infinite combo that was initially just played as a back-up win-con just becomes the primary win-con because it's effective.

As he mentioned, the discussion shouldn't be framed around "demonizing combo," not whether a combo is "too good" or not, and not what to ban?

Ban all the tutors you want, but 2-card combos are still going to end the game without tutors. Ban one card out of a 2-card combo and players will just sub into a different 2-card combo. The means are different, but the ends are the same. Ban fast mana and people will still lose to 2-card combos. Banning never works and sucks. Save bans for Black Lotus and Balance.

So let's look at one the the problems that Sheldon is supposedly leading to the arms race: "games have to end." Due to the nature of EDH (multiplayer and 40 life), games are most effectively won through infinite loops. If you only address individual combos themselves, it won't change the nature of the format and combo will still always be the most effective win-con.

Now, combo being the leader in efficiently winning is not a bad thing in and of itself. After all, someone always has to be the leader. However, at the moment, combo is so far above everything else. That's why people will put seemingly useless combo pieces into their decks, cards with no synergy beyond facilitating a single 2-card combo (e.g. draft chaff like Village Bell Ringer).

It's not about combo bad unfair magic...attacking good fair magic. It's about how come so many players clutch unto 2-card combos are safety valves.

Players are worried about not being able to close out a long game. That's why they pack in these combos. But the "just-in-case" ends up being "all-the-time." Lowering starting life totals is just the only way to go. Games can end sooner through conventional methods (i.e. damage) and control/combo decks no longer have the insane life buffer.

While I still stand by that the RC as a whole should never cater to a specific bubble, Sheldon's personal experiences still always strike me that he's really stuck in a bubble (not that it affects his decision-making). I'll be blunt - what he noticed I already realized years ago and the context in which he states it sort of proves it - in these past few years I've been basically occasionally playing at my LGS, but I very, very seldom play with friends (when we do get together we favor Cube). Meanwhile, just from reading Sheldon's articles/posts/responses I generally assess that he plays the format mostly with friends.

Okay, to clarify it better... it's more of playing at the LGS with strangers or acquaintances-at-best VS playing at friends that's the real issue here, because you can play with friends at the LGS, so I think this might confuse some people. You can play with friends almost anywhere, but you don't usually play with strangers/acquaintances other than the LGS/Events. Not everyone has (or want) the luxury of having friends to play EDH with and they're perfectly fine with EDH being the "game we play with strangers/acquaintances at the LGS".

I know I'm harping on making these distinctions, but it's important because Sheldon's post heavily implies he's basically new to the "strangers/acquaintances meta", so to speak, if he's using Open Events and a NEW LGS as the examples.

Also very important is that with everyone talking about "social contracts/communication" and "winning the game is not the only objective", that the "LGS stranger/acquaintances meta" has to operate on a more nuanced/silent version of the rule. The RC encouraging the above statements does not automatically equate to everyone in the LGS automatically becoming "friends". Just like the RC has to adopt a minimalist approach to keep the game open to as many bubbles as possible, communication/contracts at the LGS are also minimalized to cater to various strangers/acquaintances dropping at different times.

Combine that minimalism with the "the only actual rule of winning is... winning the actual game", that becomes the silent agreement that is most easily accepted by most "stranger/acquaintances meta" players adopt by, which leads to the "natural progression" of things Sheldon himself said. As I read somewhere, it's easier to go infinite that it is to go 120 divided 3 evenly in the game anyway.

Before anyone points out "but my LGS pulls off communication and house rules successfully", let me preempt that not all LGS operate like that and considering the general turbulence/turnovers LGS are going through overall now, I daresay statistics would favor the silent agreement and those with vocalized different ones are actually the minority of exceptions, especially once you throw open events into the calculations as well.

Like I said at the start, this is not aimed at RC at any way, they're doing great keeping the minimalist approach so different type of "metas" can exists, I'm just baffled every time Sheldon cites his personal experience (years late at that) that he's surprised by the "naturally progressed silent agreement stranger/acquaintance meta" out there and I don't quite agree that it would get the format in trouble - every participant in said meta silently agreed to it and after years, I daresay it actually regulates itself somewhat, it doesn't actually outright (de)volve right into cEDH territory.

You get a double cast copy off ral and let that resolve, then cast your copy spell targeting the original double cast and get a copy of your copy spell. The copy spell is still on the stack. Copy it again. Repeat. Profit.

Quote from Hermes_ »

Ravnica at war will certainly be meta dependent,but I don't think it's bad per say (I plan to get one if not more since we have one God deck in my meta and I feel it's a good wipe in general for what it hits.) But let's looks at Ugin's "Exile each permanent with converted mana cost X or less that's one or more colors. compared to "Exile all multicolored permanents." there's also like i said the fact that R&D is looking at more wipes that are color dependent, as it stands it's easier and less rules to keep PS banned than wait to see how the new color wipe shakes out each time one is printed. But YMMV.

Ravnica at war is not even close to problematic with PS. Even if you could guarantee that it only hit enemy stuff and never hit your stuff, a 2-card combo that wipes enemy non-artifact non-lands is completely fair and fine.

Keeping something banned on speculations of future cards is a slippery slope. Any card could end up busted because of future interactions, are we supposed to never unban anything lest something be released next set that makes it too scary?

Also I have no idea what you mean by "less rules". Nobody is adding or removing any rules. We're maybe removing a card from the banlist, but that's not a rule. And yes, you SHOULD see how things shake out each time a new powerful interaction is printed. That's how banlists are supposed to work, not preemptively banning "just in case". And R@W just weakens your argument, since it's a cares-about-color wipe that's completely fair with PS.

Quote from Pokken »

Looting specifically is quite bad without a graveyard subtheme

Well that's utter bull*****. Looting effects are for card quality, letting you smooth out your draws and getting to the things you need now, rather than what you might need later, if at all.

How is Stax anti-political? From my experience, the opposite is true when I'm playing it. I'm always having to play politics. A stax deck cannot keep 3-4 other players down on it's own for the entire game. You need some help. Things like getting people to protect my stax cards that are hurting the other opponents more than them. I'm always talking to other players, trying to get them to support what I'm doing, pointing out how dangerous their other rivals are even if I'm the one with the annoying lock piece in play. That's more political to me than deciding who to hit with an 8/8.

In general, I view politics as less about specific cards, and more about your interactions with the players. And at a competitive level, while you do get some games where someone just rushes into a combo before anyone else can react, often, due to the high amount of interaction the decks run as a reaction to said fast combo, there is a lot of interplay between the players. Threat assessment is often pretty difficult when the biggest dangers aren't sitting obviously on the board, so there's a good amount of advantage to be gained through playing politically, talking to the other players.

Quote from Taleran »

That would be an entirely new design space I don't think there is an effect in the game that prevents the playing of lands.

territorial dispute comes to mind.

Oh god, why does that come to mind? I don't think I've ever played that card, or seen anyone play it, hell I don't know if any living human has played that card. Yet it came to mind in seconds.

I swear, if I could figure out how wotc made magic cards so easy to remember I'd be able to memorize the library of congress in a week.

The reason I call the bad matchup argument silly is because you are trying to use a fundamental aspect of the game, that cards beat other cards, as justification for excluding an enormous amount of additional cards for the format. Bad matchups already exist, they will continue to exist, and if you go all in on a card type as your strategy of course you will amplify the bad match up rate.

It's ridiculous to make this boogieman out of dack fayden specifically and use it as justification to exclude all planeswalkers as generals. My instant and sorcery deck has a tough time against gaddock teeg. Clearly GW commanders are problematic for the game.

Theros gods are actually more broad and repeatable than planeswalker effects. Like, much much much more repeatable. They are almost impossible to remove once they hit the battlefield and generals like purphoros, god of the forge and athreos, god of passage will be built around such that almost every card in the deck takes large advantage of the effects. Meanwhile you are wondering if your planewalker is going to survive even it's first turn on the table, let alone the many turns most walkers take to hit an ultimate that you might build around.

Walker effects are generally not edh scale. This needs to be repeated over and over and over and over again because so many people seem to think they are actually strong effects. Drawing an extra card? Destroying a single creature? For the mana you pay for planeswalkers, these effects are well below average for edh inclusion, even if you activate them multiple times. For 4 mana I'd expect to destroy every creature, or draw a huge number of cards. From a power level perspective, I believe there are only a couple walkers worth worrying about, the rest are just interesting for creative deck building in casual games.