We React to the Official Ban List Official Explanations | Commander Clash Podcast 134

[@MrMartinSchou]

Suggestion - play an entire season with NO ban list. That should give you a good feel for which cards need to stay on the ban list.

[@BloodMoonGo]

Do itttt

[@jcdb2582]

I second this. Everyone play high power degeneracy for a season and see what is actually the most broken. My bets are one ring

[@AustinMerfeld]

I see 2 issues with this: 1) it would all just be about moxes/lotus/ancestral, and a majority of the cards wouldn't really get to shine. Like sure that primeval titan took over the game, but that is because you black lotus it out turn 1. 2) They would need to do the entire season in paper with proxies (which is maybe fine, but I enjoy the MODO games as well). I wouldn't mind seeing a season where each person came up with their own ban list for an episode, and everyone abided by that.

[@jcdb2582]

@@AustinMerfeld i guess yeah keep fast mana out. Fast mana leans towards cedh. I want just high power midrange casual. Thatd be the entertaining part. Using everything strong but not necessarily making it cedh. Would be very interesting to see imo

[@filiphorvath8932]

I'd say it'd be good to play no-banlist EDH with these contentious cards like Primeval Titan or something, not the Moxen or like Limited Resources.

[@Zentenski]

I'm glad Phil is here to pump the breaks when Richard throws out wild statements like "Trade Secrets? Bah, that's basically just Secret Rendevouz" :)

[@ElmoTheRed]

Thanks for the shout out Richard but the user name is Elmo The Red lol.

[@andyspendlove1019]

I like how you changed the capitalization of your name after this 😂

[@valmar2889]

Looking at Iona as a 9 mana angel is fundamentally misunderstanding the way people used the card, Emrakul isn't on the ban list because anyone was humping it all the way to 15 mana and hard casting it. it's a windmill slam card you cheat onto the board to shut 1-2 players out of the game on turn 3-4 in reanimator or some other cheeky deck.

[@PsychoDiesel48]

Was looking for this one

[@williamshie4326]

As someone who played Ionia on Kaalia when it was legal, it's way more toxic than having protection from a color like Serra's Emissary. With Serra's Emissary,etc you can try boardwipes, sacrifice strategies, etc or just interact and politics with other players. With Ionia on the battlefield you simply can't play any card, and usually you would put your hexproof, indestructible equipment, etc on it to keep it alive making it way harder to interact with it. It's not broken by any mean, but it just makes the game super unfun for one or two players. Also, it doesn't straight win like Avacyn Armageddon or something liek that. It just stops one player from playing the game

[@TheSentientTuba]

As someone who has been a bystander and on the receiving end of Iona, I completely agree. As a bystander there isn't any reason to remove it because it effectively knocks out one player and as the mono-color player it effectively prevents you from playing the game completely. While the other cards mentioned are powerful, they all follow the 'dies to doom blade' mentality where you can still interact with them. Unless you are running colorless removal (which in most decks is in small amounts if at all), you can't do anything other then use what you currently have on board which is often times not enough.

[@MainTopmastStaysail]

Yeah, Iona is in the sweet spot of not immediately winning the game while also arbitrarily making it awful. If it won the game on the spot it would be less miserable.

[@PaulGaither]

As someone who loves to play mono black and played in California with highly competitive players, I learned to live with it for years. There are enough colorless answers that each cost about 7 mana to cast/activate that answer Iona and many other problems before she was banned. From memory, there was unstable Obelisk, the Eldrazi spell, and Karn. I think there were more. Iona 💯 is a "feels bad" card, but by being a mono black player, I dove head first into the lore of being the evil bad guy at the table [in character] and built my deck with answers for the problems the "hero" decks tried to use against me.

[@MihaelGeng]

?? "It just stops one player from playing the game", and this makes her deserve to be banned??

[@afonsosolano5274]

​@@MihaelGengYes

[@VRanger100]

I love how Richard called last week's top comment "Elo-Mother" and I had to confirm it read "Elmo-the-Red"

[@inulukpalluq-cloutier7855]

i read it as El Mothered lmao

[@VivBrodock]

capitalize your tags kids

[@Hinaguy749]

Seth I could see but Richard?

[@AWESMATHEGREAT]

Iona was banned at the same time Painter's Servant was unbanned. It seems like every time this discourse comes up, people omit that.

[@Jethro_Wilkins]

Not only that, but it's a prime reanimation target. This is the 2nd or 3rd time Goldfish has had an in depth conversation regarding Iona, yet everyone fails to mention reanimation as an option.

[@wolfspirit12223]

@@Jethro_Wilkins Really just any way to cheat it out. i played it in a Kaalia deck and if it hit the battlefield it just shuts off a fair amount of interaction. Happened to hit it on a friend while he was playing a mono deck and he was absolutly miserable for the rest of the game being shut out.

[@Akagami_98]

Should have kept Iona instead of unbanning Painters 😂

[@MakeVarahHappen]

@@Akagami_98 The issue with that is getting rid of Painter gets rid of the combo but not the times when someone just plays Iona and screws over a mono color deck. The typical use case for Iona is still bad by that metric.

[@DarthChocolate15]

It was also banned after the formation of the CAG iirc. The CAG doesn't ban cards, but they do advocate for things. And Shivam was very vocally anti-Iona.

[@Superangeldemongirl]

Iona's mana cost doesn't mean crap since reanimator is a really common deck type. And an Iona on turn 3 is super oppresive and annoying to play against even if you aren't playing mono colored. I never want to see that card unbanned.

[@JoshRudis]

You are incorrect. They banned it because they merged the "banned as commander" and "banned in the 99" together. Iona being in the command zone cannot be reanimated for 3 mana and isn't a problem. Similarly Braids in the command zone is a problem but in the 99 is fine. #freebraids.

[@jolteon345]

I faced someone who ran Iona and semi-consistently got her out turn 5. He’d pick a mono color player instead of what had the most players. I don’t want to face Iona with today’s fast mana. It’s not fun to, quoting Tomer for a second, be a sad sad boy waiting for someone to remove it.

[@judge489]

... Why were all of the arguments for Iona based on her being in the command zone? This was one of the top things to cheat into play with Reanimation and effects like Show and Tell. It wasn't turn 9. It was turn 2-4 shut down players.

[@Jethro_Wilkins]

Also not a huge fan of the "Blood Moon" argument (which I think someone else mentioned the last time the crew talked about Iona). Yeah, it's a kind of lock, but they are diametrically opposed in how they lock players. Blood Moon taxes greedy mana bases with no basics, while Iona decidedly locks a mono-colored player out of the game (unless they politic around that somehow, like Phil mentioned).

[@JR-xv6mv]

Also combines nicely with Gifts

[@spoopyboi1882]

Ban list conversations are rarely actually thought about critically, it always just ends up like "but what about this card?" instead

[@neros_soren]

@@Jethro_Wilkins It's the right argument. A turn 3 bloodmoon can ruin 3 peoples gameplan, because who plays more than a couple of basics in a decently powerleveled EDH deck? Except for mono colored decks obviously. So...a turn 3 bloodmoon can be even more devastating than a cheated in Iona. ANd that's what the argument is about. If Iona is a problem and needs to be banned, why not bloodmoon (which is btw harder to remove than Iona)? Why not NEO Jin? Thalia? You can name so many cards, which can just ruin entire decks from turn 2 onwards.

[@Allanvre]

right, this would get sped out by kaaalia of the vast. no one wanted to spend 9 on a mono white commander ;D

[@thegeardude]

I know Richard didnt just compare Open the way to Prime time 😭 Open the way is Random ramp where Primetime is tutoring for your two best lands or land combos on ETB for current game state. Sometimes feels like Primtetimes ramp is just the bonus of being able to get your two best lands for any situation of the game.

[@Blacklodge_Willy]

Yeah that was wild. I was surprised the other two didn't react to him saying that.

[@Dragon_Fyre]

I don’t think he was implying they are equal but just commenting that you can similarly put the game away with other broken ramp like Open the Way. What are people going to do to slow you down when they have like 6 mana and you have like 15 from casting an Open the way, recur it and cast again next turn… in a Simic Deck, where you likely draw cards for all those lands… It’s probably GG.

[@Blacklodge_Willy]

@@Dragon_Fyre but Open the Way is not even close to being "broken" ramp.

[@kylegonewild]

@@Blacklodge_Willy Neither is prime time. He's not broken when just being used to ramp and if Gaea's cradle is in your pods then the power level is presumably high enough to deal with a prime time. What makes him broken are lands like Field of the Dead. If someone paying 6 mana to grab 2 random 1-mana generating lands that's a fair rate. They even come in tapped.

[@Dragon_Fyre]

@@Blacklodge_Willy It can be…

[@KykyJyky]

Phil is right, y'all are trippin thinking Sylvan Primordial is even close to ok

[@DiscardatRandom]

How is it any worse than terastodon?

[@Dioliolio]

@@DiscardatRandomone mana cheaper and it ramps you? Or are you just trolling?

[@wedgearyxsaber]

​@@DiscardatRandom one mana cheaper, no reward to opponent for destroying things, can potentially net ramp +3 and -1 everyone else

[@GoDzJtFr]

They didn't play during that time period and it shows. They're so focused on the flicker aspect that they're missing the fact that it strip mines everyone else while putting the caster up 3 lands, which that alone could change the flow of the game. The moment you start flickering or reanimating it and it was over. Especially brutal if you cheated it out turn 2 or 3, which i saw happen a lot

[@thatepicwizardguy]

yeah primetime could easily be taken off the ban list but primordial is degenerate AF.

[@Kevrik]

Just something to add to the talk of power 8, there is a bit of context missing that Seth actually touched on that really exaserbates the problem of expensive beyond that of other cards. It is the fact they would be auto includes in so many decks, unlike a lot of expensive reserve cards or expensive cards in general those cards really do fit in any deck that can run them, a quick efficient cheap red creature is great but it wont go in every deck that has red in its identity a mox ruby will. Also in terms of no where to play them you can play them in canadian highlander but even there to stop it from being auto include problems they had to point them which does show to some degree how ubiquitious they are when not banned.

[@laytonjr6601]

Gaea's craddle would be an auto include in any green deck if it wasn't 2000$ and it isn't banned

[@joes3444]

I think the main problem with Sylvan Primordial is that it’s land destruction that ramps you, and if you flicker it, it’s just snowballs its owner into the most dominant position without doing anything to “win the game”. Non-creature permanents include land cards in play. Addendum: the other problem with Sylvan primordial is that people aren’t going to play it where it might be fair in mono green decks, it’s gonna see play in the Simic/multicolored decks there 80,000 ways to break the card. I think this card is banned purely from the perspective of, this card lends itself to degenerate play patterns and we can’t expect people to play this card fairly so we’ll ban it.

[@neros_soren]

And the point is: You can say that about MANY cards. There so many cards that if flickered are just super degenerate. So many cards, that if played/reanimated are super degenerate.

[@donb7519]

​@@neros_sorenyes and they normally win the game. Its like a deterministic combo versus nondeterministic. One wins the game the other makes you take 30 mins playing with yourself

[@neros_soren]

@@donb7519 Nah, there are so many combos that just prolong the game or cannot win deterministically. And because of it...why are those okay but not others?

[@donb7519]

@@neros_soren name 3 then

[@dariocampanella7992]

Every storm -klark the tumbless deck is one. Any other roll a dice and flip a coin is not deterministic depending of the stipulations.

[@bennettpalmer1741]

The difference between Iona and the other stax pieces is how easy it is to defeat. Blood Moon-pretty much everyone plays basic lands, so you might be set back a lot, but you'll draw out of it eventually. Elesh Norn - sure it cuts off your synergy, but everyone runs board wipes/removal, so you just need to draw into one of those and you get to start playing again. Serra's Emissary - they can only name one card type, and most people play interaction spread across multiple card types, so you'll draw a removal spell eventually and get to start playing again. Iona - if you're playing a mono colored deck, and the opponent resolves an Iona, you literally have to sit there and wait to lose the game, because there is not a single card in your deck that can do anything to remove it.

[@infernaltrys]

There, especially nowadays. But yes, having to put suboptimal colorless removal cards in a mono colored deck just in case you get Iona'd isn't fun.

[@laytonjr6601]

Plus, it's not gonna be the commander. In the 99 it will hit the field for way less than 9 mana

[@daxamlhant7285]

When it comes to Iona it is also is a case where either it is banned or painter's servant is banned. Between the two, painter's servant has more interesting and game ending use cases

[@raedien]

The issue with Prime/Primordial is the play pattern. The green deck doesn't play them on turn 6/7, they play them on turn 3/4.

[@wedgearyxsaber]

It's also gonna be played in the majority of decks WITH green, meaning the 2 and 3 color decks, maybe even 5.

[@MarkChaney-b8k]

It’s also LD and they want the player base to have fun and some folks think LD is not fun

[@Dragonspeaker]

for Richard, there are Flash alternatives but they're either more mana or are a sorcery. Through the Breach and Footsteps of the Goryo

[@FearOgre]

Along with the sacrifice is not immediate.

[@andrewkelley6039]

Iona was easily the most toxic card ever, especially when almost every pod had a Kalia deck getting it down on turn 3-4

[@lovelylemonfactory]

Yeah, I don't get why they are talking about the mana cost like people aren't able to cheat creatures in.

[@TheeRedNight]

@@lovelylemonfactory or we dont have a ton of 1 or 2 mana rocks causing this to just come out t4 or 5 consistently with moderate ramp, theyre acting like this only comes out turn 9

[@firestormingfox4169]

Master of Cruelties make Kaalia go brrrrrr

[@samwalter940]

41:58 As someone who's first experience with EDH was playing against a Kaalia the Vast precon +1 Iona, I was not sad to see it go. Yeah, usually there was a way to play around it but it was just always miserable being the person shut down, especially 10 years ago when I was playing mostly 1 color budget decks.

[@infernaltrys]

Honestly during those times I rarely encountered mono colored decks, especially because Iona was a thing. Most people I played against who ran mono color decks were either pure control, tried to combo early, or focus aggro'd players out of the game one at a time. I'd say at least 40% of the time, people either didn't care or were glad that I dropped an Iona. But I agree that this means the rest of the time it was oppressive and unfun, and it's a valid ban, especially since it gave us Painter's Servant.

[@jo_ken]

I feel as if we need a part 2 to cover all the cards they didn’t go over on the ban list.

[@jyomi7506]

Sylvan Primordial is a nightmare... Had someone play it 'not knowing it was banned' and we just let it slide for the game and he flickered it every turn... the game went on for 3 hours because it got removed, reanimated against him, stolen back and fought over constantly... but it never once attacked... so the game just kept going with everyone going down lands more often than they went up.

[@redwave1666]

The way they talk about Prime Time and Sylvan Primordial every time they talk about the ban list drives me a bit nuts. I remember when those cards were legal and yes they completely took over the game, every deck with green ran them and the thing I think is the most important is that I never EVER saw them played for 6 and 7 mana, at most they got cheated in for 3 mana, often less on really early turns as they where the best possible reanimation or tutor target 99 times out of 100. Then you get what happened to you and have the game last ages as everyone at the table uses them. Both cards are nightmares to play against.

[@jwnrwd]

I stopped playing commander when Sylvan Primordial was legal for like a year, it was such a miserable card, it would always be cloned, flickered and reanimated. If you had no way to stop it or join in on the misery then you would be left with nothing in play.

[@Dragon_Fyre]

@@jwnrwdWasn’t it banned before blink decks were even really a thing ?

[@josephpayton7522]

Sol Ring is worse.

[@blakey9869]

​@@josephpayton7522this gotta be bait

[@darkflame9410]

@MTGGoldfish Commander Something y’all seem to constantly forget is that the other part of the RC’s banlist philosophy is “would unbanning the card ADD ANYTHING POSITIVE TO THE GAME”. For Sway of Stars vs Worldfire, the answer was Worldfire added something: it gave red-based burn decks (an archtype that has historically struggled in the format) a finisher. Sway of Stars doesn’t do the same for blue. Same for cards like Coalition Victory, etc… they might be “safe” today, but they don’t actively ADD anything to the game, so there’s no reason to unban them.

[@dariocampanella7992]

Sway of the star can be a finisher in a blue deck: assume you phase a big creature (or any exile until end of turn) and you cheat the sway of the star. Also commander is the format where most of the cards are legal so making them playable is more important than it sounds.

[@darkflame9410]

@@dariocampanella7992 you know, fair enough on the sway of stars with phasing/exile. The argument there I guess would be that blue doesn’t really *need* a finisher, it already has plenty. But Red Burn decks didn’t really have anything, thanks in no small part to commander having a collective 120 life you have to burn through instead of 20.

[@ichliebebrot3773]

Let me guess. The explanations are full of inconsistencies/contradictions.

[@_claymore]

& outdated reasoning. that's pretty much the brunt of it.

[@Morphling92]

Yep. Bang on.

[@onlyRicky_x]

Primetime: we want people to win with a big spell Coalition Victory: we don't want people to win with a big spell

[@johnathanrhoades7751]

Yeah, it’s cobbled together from stuff over the years. Things have definitely changed over time but it’s hard to revisit without stirring some pot or other.

[@discoviolenza1984]

Yeah it's the same thing they said the last two times they made this video

[@nick42724]

I feel like the main point of the ban list is to give players (especially new players) general guidelines for which cards may be too strong/not suited for the format. The reasoning for the bannings of cards might not include everything of that type, but it nudges players against using certain card types to help explain the format's overall identity. A a casual format you don't have to exactly follow the official ban list, but it gives a good starting point for every pods personal ban list to grow/shrink from.

[@VexylObby]

I love that they just brush aside the fact that Sylvan Primordial can just destroy lands. And green DOES have way of making this trigger happen more than once accessibly. And it doesn't just require flickering.

[@dashkatae]

Conjurer's Closet or Panharmonicon come to mind.

[@jerryseinfeld6283]

They explicitly mention multiple times that it can destroy lands and even said that it's more oppressive than primeval titan

[@VexylObby]

I only heard once, then they didn't really regard it as that much different. They kept equating them, as if the land destruction did not matter.@@jerryseinfeld6283

[@jaspertenhaken9751]

So i feel like you are misunderstanding the argument for power 9. They didn't get banned because they are expensive, they got banned because they are expensive and if people would see them when they would think they need it to play the format. The problem is how expensive it is combined with how iconic and how strong it is. You can pint to other cards that have some of these but not allof these problems. Sol ring is iconic and strong but not expensive, Dual lands/ time twister are expensive and iconic but (relativly) not that much stronger then the next best thing.

[@jaspertenhaken9751]

Adding on to this i can kind of see why the rules committee bans cards, what they kind of do is ban the cards that are really powerful but look casual. Yes obviously really efficient cards are way more powerful but people kind of see that its not casual. So things like thassa's oracle and dockside don't get banned but things like golos, primeval titan, coalition victory do. Like these second ones seem really casual, big splashy value cards. But as you've seen with golos, it didn't really matter what you did it was the strongest at the table and the best 5 color commander out there. So they try to operate in this grey area of not banning things just because its powerful from a competitive standpoint. They try and ban things that look casual level but aren't.

[@Welverin]

I recall Sheldon also explaining once that at the start they wanted to somewhat distinguish EDH from what would become Vintage as well.

[@ajaxender12]

@@jaspertenhaken9751 This is a really good way of explaining it, yeah. Ban cards all players will want to play with, but that only the highest power or most competitive players will want to play *against*

[@ericaschner3283]

Have a season of Canadian style Highlander where you start off with nothing being worth any points. Then after every game every player can assign a point to a card in each person's deck. Whatever card peeved you off the most, gets a point. After ten games or so you'd probably have a pretty functional ban / "restricted" list.

[@moniker980]

Sway of the Stars and Worldfire are very different in how they affect the game. Sway restarts the game to T0. Worldfire removes every card that has been played. You no longer have the Sol Ring/Dockside start available because those cards are in exile. Green player searched up and played all but 2 land from their deck? Now they only have 2 lands available for the rest of the game. Worldfire adds 1-3 turns to the game. Sway adds a full game to the game.

[@Cangaroombi]

I'm happy to see so many comments in favor of the Iona ban. It was truly miserable card to play against. The worst thing is the asymmetry in the effect. When someone plays Blood Moon 3 other people usually have interest in removing it. If you are the only mono-B player at your table and an opponent plays Iona, the other 2 players have no interest in removing her and your only hope is drawing one of your artifact removals (if you have any). Also the countrrplay to Blood Moon is much easier, don't play a greedy mana base with only non basics and play some form of enchantment removal. Also even if you have only non-basics when the opponent plays a Blood Moon you can flood your mana and disenchant it, while if you are a mono-coloured deck your only chance to interact with Iona is on the stack. You can't remove her in response to her ability since it is an "as it enters the battlefield" effect.

[@TMidander]

The shade they throw on Seths shuffling will never get old :)

[@kurowasanabe]

I'm just glad the mic doesn't pick it up in the new setting

[@sglied1320]

Flash lets you get blood pet, spellseeker and Thassa’s oracle. Spellseeker finds consultation and you sac blood pet for black and consult with the thoracle trigger on the stack. If Gifts ungiven is banned so should be Intuition. That’s 2U tutor three cards opponent gives you one to hand 2 to the GY, which is possibly even stronger as it’s one mana less.

[@_z3i]

Hulk also lets you get Thoracle + Nomads En-Kor and Cephalid Illusionist which lets you win without casting any more spells. Still, based on the few tests cEDH players have done with trying out Flash Hulk even though it's banned the takeaway is that in 2024 Flash Hulk is probably fine because we have so many good compact wincons now with essentially zero bad cards... but of course that is hard to tell while it's banned. Also, I 100000% agree that it makes no sense that Gift's Ungiven is banned and Intuition is not. I feel either both or none should be banned.

[@FearOgre]

Intuition doesn't let you choose the exact two cards you want in the yard, gifts does.

[@ThePurpleGM]

I think the cost of these larger creatures is overlooked in a format that has dozens of ways to return creatures from the graveyard or from hand. Iona may be 9 mana, but when my table use to have her she'd always come from reanimation or show and tell. She's just super salt inducing. Especially since she doesn't end the game that turn and you're stuck there for the next 3 to 4 turns in the hope someone kills it so you're allowrd to play again. Iona's ban imo is a good thing and I know they point out bloodmoon, but you can play around bloodmoon with basics or enchantment removal or having artifacts, but you can't respond to Iona if you're monocolored. Maybe I'm bias, but that's my hill to die on.

[@laytonjr6601]

Jut put a meteor golem in every monocolored deck to deal with Iona /s

[@G3M333]

Inconsistency and outdated reasoning are valid things to question about the formulation of the current banned list, but ultimately I think the only question that matters with regards to unbans in a casual format like Commander is "Will my games be more or less fun where this card is impactful?", and my answer for nearly every card currently on the list is an easy "Less". Obviously that's completely subjective, obviously many of these banned cards would hardly show up in games, obviously there are legal cards just as miserable as many on the list, but I think shrinking the banned list only satisfies some aesthetic desire and doesn't improve the format in any way.

[@occrats479]

It would be so frustrating if the CRC was consistently banning and unbanning cards though. Imagine having to constantly update your decks to play at your LGS with new players. People get weird when you bring out an attraction deck. Not to mention being surprised by a coalition victory or a primetime would be brutal.

[@timbombadil4046]

My position isn't that I want the RC to be notably active, but consistent. If they want to keep a light touch it's fine, but they eventually need to do a pass over the ban list and pull some of the questionable bans off.

[@stevendefeo8424]

Sway of the Stars is like Fiber Jar in yugioh. It does the exact same thing as Sway does. It’s also banned in yugioh. I guess this type of effect in any card game is banned

[@akihitokoizumi2474]

It should be a finisher since blue has phasing and exile until the next end step cards. It is a high cast card and such should be fair.

[@stryk55]

The very first large-scale event I went to was a MagicFest in 2018...I had just gotten back into the game after a loooong time out and really loved commander. The first table I sat down at - casual table, random entry, paired with strangers - first player plays Lotus Petal, Island, Flash/Hulk combo to win on the spot. Was 100% not what I signed up for, and really pissed everyone off at the table.

[@totakekeslider3835]

Did they cheat to get that opening hand? lol

[@stryk55]

I don't think so, but if recall he mulliganed 2-3 times@@totakekeslider3835

[@stryk55]

It was a tuned up deck, he even bragged it was like $3k-4k worth of cards

[@ultratog1028]

@41:30 Iona was banned as Painter's Servant was unbanned. The logic was they didn't want both in the format and chose Servant to be legal as it is the more interesting and fun card.

[@MihaelGeng]

"More fun"? I haven't seen a 2-card infinite combo with Iona in it that kills all 3 opponents.

[@danielporisch2676]

Why does the entire goldfish crew forget about reanimation when talking about Iona? They keep referring to turn 9, but nobody is paying 9 mana for it.

[@Keyarchan]

They're probably just thinking of her as the commander where reanimating isn't really an option since there's no good way of getting your commander into the graveyard. But yeah, she's stupid with any "normal" reanimate strategy. She should have "If you played it from your hand" added to her, then she would be more balanced.

[@michaellogan2780]

To me the commander banned list feels a lot like the Modern banned list. There is a bunch of cards on it, banned from years ago that made sense at the time, but as the formats have gotten faster and more powerful, rather than go back and revisit those cards it is just easier to just leave them banned rather than pull a "Golgari Grave-Troll" and have to re-ban a card. If you never try you can never fail

[@danielmartin3739]

The main combo is remember being abused with Flash was using Hulk to find Blood Pet, Spellseeker, and Thoracle. Use Spellseeker to find Consultation and sac Blood Pet for the mana to cast it and win off Thoracle trigger. There are so many combos with Hulk though, as recent as Sam and Caldron Familiar

[@ketchumall8243]

I looked at hulk while watching this video and realized it can find two whole infinite combos at the same time that are in my Azban combo deck. Card is wild.

[@FearOgre]

Another highly popular grab was: nomads en-kor + cephalid illusionist + Thoracle

[@markusrows1096]

I think, I am actually ok with coalition victory being banned in 2024 magic, it kinda got too easy to fulfill the win con, so that the card basically now reads: "Pay eight mana, you win the game".

[@ajaxender12]

Agreed. Thematics matter. Most 8 mana spells do something within the mechanics of the game. Crazy creatures, powerful spells, overwhelming resource engines, whatever; it all still involves actually playing Magic, whether any opponent can do much about it. "I win literally right now if no one counters this, just cos the card says so" is not a mechanic. That said, the ideal of the card is that you have to set up the conditions for it to work, and that was at the time thematically interesting. But as you point out, that no longer is the case.

[@finnkoepke2250]

Yes, Richard kept saying it was banned because Wizards "don't like combo wins", but that's not the problem at all. The problem occurs when people just chuck it into a random casual 5 color commander deck and then proceed to win in the most anticlimactic way possible.

[@Zarbon000]

Like Craterhoof. Or the Cavalry Flier. Or Expripriate. Or…

[@markusrows1096]

@@Zarbon000 No, these are not even comparable at all, like not at all.

[@kristiandahl1310]

the new leyline basically means CV will never get unbanned now. One land and a creature just needs to stick with it in play...yes you need to be able to pay the WUBRG but still not that hard now a days.

[@AtlRopeGuy]

Re: Iona. As a mono black chainer player, it was brutal. Needed to be banned. Flash stays banned too, 2 mana instawin in sultai is dumb.

[@MihaelGeng]

"As a 5-color player, Blood Moon, Back to Basics and Ruination (and the upcoming Winter Moon) are always brutal. Need to be banned." See the problem?

[@AtlRopeGuy]

@@MihaelGeng No, I don't. You don't comprehend balance

[@MihaelGeng]

@@AtlRopeGuy Ah so you think mono

[@AtlRopeGuy]

@@MihaelGeng Read the ban announcement jackwaggon. It's all about mono

[@MihaelGeng]

@@AtlRopeGuy LOL who said it's not about mono? So THIS is all you're arguing about?? 🤣Have you ever heard of the phrase "double standard"? To multicolor decks, Back to Basic is their Iona. Was BtB banned? This is double standard. RC's ban list is full of this - Mirari's Wake is WAY stronger than Primeval Titan! Guided Passage is a "one mana cheaper and you get to keep one more card" Gifts Ungiven! Insidious Dreams can let you tutor any amount of cards provided you discard the equal amount, without colluding with an opponent!! Were these banned? The whole list is an insult to any sane player's logic, while there're dumbarses like you who would willingly defend it. Just because RC banned your most hated card doesn't mean the whole list is 👍, you know? 🤣🤣🤣

[@Kplon12]

sylvan primordial is the most ban worthy card on the entire list, honestly every game turns into who can ramp it out clone it blink it re-animate it its just the best target for all these affects all the time.

[@robertcollura7236]

A part two on this would be fantastic. I would love to hear on what you guys think about more of the banned cards like grislebrand, braids, etc.

[@MarsIsDead86]

Play Canadian Highlander... You can play all the moxes, recall and lotus in that format

[@someguy1ification]

just not all at once :P

[@througtonsheirs_doctorwhol5914]

@@someguy1ification EVERY ONE !!!!!! - Senor Chang

[@dontmisunderstand6041]

The difference between Sway of the Stars and Worldfire is that Worldfire leaves everyone with nothing and 1 life, and Sway of the Stars resets the game with 7 starting life. They aren't even remotely similar in function, because of the massive difference between shuffling things back into the library and drawing 7 vs just exiling everything.

[@redram9]

You can also float mana and deploy before everybody else

[@blakezekin553]

@@redram9 Another thing is that you can easily combo with worldfire if you have an oblivion ring effect, but sway shuffles all cards owned by players, which includes exiled cards

[@MihaelGeng]

@@redram9 Not 'also". This is the sole reason that Sway of the Stars and Upheaval get banned. OP missed the point hard for there're many permanent sweeper out there.

[@TheMonochromaticGent]

When looking at unbans, the question isnt "is it safe to be unbanned", it becomes "what does it add to the format" A lot of unbans might not affect top cedh tables, but it can make casual play experiences worse, and simply just not add anything meaningful to the format.

[@shadogiant]

Power9 can be played in canlander, the best eternal format.

[@theSHELFables]

I think looking at Iona and saying it's "just a stax piece" misses the fact that Timmy Casual is more likely to jam them into their decks because its on a huge angel. Stasis and Winter Orb don't have the same kind of draw to them that a huge cool creature does to new and casual players. That ban imo is there to stop a player who may not want to ruin games but isn't evaluating what the card actually does outside of it's huge dude status.

[@ElisaKaysCauldron]

Prime Time isn't necesarrily toxic on it's own, if you have self control when building your deck... if you don't it devolves into Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Cabal Coffers and degenercy quickly follows. It also doesn't help theres Thespian Stage/Dark Depths, Field of the Dead and more. If the text on the card was "basic lands" and not just "lands" it would be a totally fine IMO.

[@JD-gk7eh]

The *entire* reason for laws and rules is that people don't have self control. We wouldn't need to make murder or theft illegal if everyone exercised control not to do these things!

[@Dragon_Fyre]

For the 0.1% of players that play it with self control, there is Rule 0 😅

[@baconsir1159]

That’s weak sauce ngl

[@ElisaKaysCauldron]

Which is, unfortunately, why it remains banned. @@JD-gk7eh

[@kylegonewild]

Coffers is the worse way to play it with Field of the Dead being legal in the format.

[@JD-gk7eh]

The reason no one cares that cards like Chains of Mephistopheles and Tabernacle are ultra expensive and not banned is that these cards aren't autoincludes. Chains isn't even especially good in most decks as it shuts down all your card draw as well; Tabernacle sucks if you're also playing lots of creatures. Ancestral Recall and the rest of the power though, you're _daft_ not to include these cards if they're legal. In fact, they're so good it would shift players to want to play more decks that include blue. This is exactly what happens in Old School Magic, where people splash for blue by adding 8+ dual lands just to include Time Walk and Ancestral Recall. For the Moxes, playing more colors would be an even bigger advantage than it is as you'd get access to more pieces of fast mana. Further, a lot of players just don't know about some of these things. We would probably be having more discussion about Mishra's Workshop and Bazaar of Baghdad because those are bombtastic autoincludes in their class of decks but with the price so high, people feel a little hesitant to include them via proxies or just don't know how utterly broken those things are.

[@riukenavatar8625]

Richard hating on farewell, equating it to sway of the stars, like it doesn't leave all your lands and cards in hand.

[@neros_soren]

/woooosh The point is, Farewell, Upheaval, Cyclone, Sway of the Stars all have the same text: prolong the game instead of winning it. Also, Worldfire doesn't, and is not banned?

[@totakekeslider3835]

I'm totally with Richard on that one. I can't stand Farewell because of the hour tax it adds to the game. The worst part is it's usually getting cast by the player who is furthest behind and needs to catch up, so it effectively does reset the game. Sure you have lands and maybe some cards, but all the progress everyone made before then was invalidated. I'm a huge advocate that if you're in that position, just don't cast the Farewell and we can finish and move onto another game.

[@lobbynotlob]

Honestly there isn't even a card on the banlist that I would want to be unbanned.

[@claudeducharme007]

With wotc being cool with proxy I would say the power 9 could be unbanned since reality is they cost a few pennies

[@LokiTrister]

While Green doesn't have traditional flickers, it does have a lot of "return to hand" type effects, which can situationally be better anyway. Temur Sabertooth, Roaring Primadox, Stampeding Serow and Stamping Wildebeests come to mind, which is exactly the type of support Sylv Primordial uses to flicker in mono Green. When we play kitchen table commander, a friend of mine runs a deck with a lot of ETB and effects like these and Sylv Primodrial is usually game ending if he ramps into it quick enough. Even if not it becomes a massive problem if it gets more than 1-2 triggers.

[@laytonjr6601]

They are even worse in multicolored decks. Golgari can reanimate them and cheat them into play for 3/4 mana. Simic and Selesnya can flicker them as many times as they want

[@PalPlays]

I reanimated a turn 5 Iona against three black decks. The mono black player laughed, sighed, and then topdecked a Duplicant. We all laughed as they killed me.

[@jamesc.7216]

I remember most of these recent bannings. Flash hulk threatened a turn 0 win. Sylvan Primordial created games where one person was goldfishing with 3 other people held captive. Iona was miserable, not broken, but they wanted to unban painter's servant. Grislebrand is just stupidly powerful no matter where you put him. Braids was super brutal, similar to Sylvan Primordial, because you can just keep recasting her to make everyone else sack a permanent every turn while you are progressing your board.

[@Sevifor]

I was there for the Primordial Wars. Deep, deep in the trenches...never again... Something to keep in mind is that the bans were a product of their times. Back then, everyone and their father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roomate was playing Clones because the Legend Rule made clones into flexible removal, even for indestructable or hexproof commanders. Cloning a Sylvan Primordial two, three, seven or more times was not uncommon. Richard Garfield help you if you were the player to the right of the original cast; you'd be lucky if you still had mana to play the game with after untapping. (Likewise, Sway of the Stars tucked people's Commanders into their decks while shuffling back then)

[@syndicate5357]

Back in those days it was also a better format where decks didn't always have commanders in the CZ and chaos warp and oblation effects ticked them away so decks had to be more resilient and built for midrange+ games or combos that didn't rely on commander as a piece. And yeah any clone effect was a great removal+ options package those were the golden days of the format. Now it's everywhere but watered down and oversimplified

[@charlesplass]

The banning of flash was heavily related to the printing of Thassa's Oracle. The cephalid breakfast hulk pile gets thoracle, nomads en kor and cephalid illusionist. This led to turn 0 wins off of gemstone caverns and instant speed fast mana such as elvish or simian spirit guide.

[@MstrCorrin]

I remember grumbling over price when I picked up my duals around 60 a piece

[@Cjtip26]

Why do they keep thinking Iona is 9 mana in the 99

[@AdamJohnson-h3c]

I miss Prophet of Kruphix... :P

[@TheSpunYarn]

I don't think comparing Prime Time to Dockside is reasonable. I know a lot of people think Dockside is worse, but Dockside requires something to be going on to be good. Outside of high power, it doesn't make all the mana people assume it does. Prime Time is different. Also, I appreciate Phil's level headedness evaluating Prime Time - "I don't think we should ban things, but if you did this makes sense" hell yeah Phil

[@kyler1045]

I was going to comment this as well. Dockside’s power comes from leveraging your opponents board state. Prime time’s value is independent of your opponent’s board state. The best anti-treasure card in the format is Dockside.

[@Tvboy777]

Dockside should just be banned already, thats the actual problem.

[@TheSpunYarn]

@Tvboy777 I disagree. I think the RC are correct in saying that it's power scales with the table, and it's unproblematic for mid to lower power levels

[@Jug_or_not]

Nice to see Phil on here again

[@whoopsmymeds]

Nice to see Phil generally 👀🔥🔥

[@kozaklee9838]

So back in the day Iona, Shield of Emeria was a 2 card combo with Painter's Servant. The initially banned Painter's Servant. But then they wanted to unban Painter Servant, but felt that Iona was too oppressive so they banned it instead

[@watery2211]

11 mana combo where 1 cards doesn't do anything without the other. If you are playing that why not play thoracle + forbidden tutor

[@kozaklee9838]

@@watery2211 this combo pre-dates thoracle over 10 years.

[@watery2211]

@@kozaklee9838 Of course, so why still ban it? Either way someone on the rc said that this wasn't the reason Iona was banned anyway

[@brningpyre]

Richard talking about Prime Time is just blowing my mind. YOU DON'T PLAY PRIME TIME TO RAMP. You play it to grab Glacial Chasm and Strip Mine (with a Ramunap or similar effect). Or Field of the Dead + Vesuva. You play it to tutor 2+ absurd utility lands every single turn, and you can't interact with those lands short of Mass Land Destruction. Every other example he tries to give is just WAY off the mark (like Farewell), or is something you can interact with.

[@akihitokoizumi2474]

imagine if mass non basic land destruction or if you could force players to not be able to pull lands out of deck. Green always has the advantage with ramp and draw. Every other color has hate against what it can do.

[@mikemsucom]

The saddest thing about the coalition victory ban is with the new leyline from MKM it will never get unbanned.

[@acaelusstormbringer2664]

In my opinion I 100 percent think Iona should be banned. I myself have never had a bad experience with it so I am not biased just because I got done in by it. I think the biggest problem I have with it is the fact that there are so many ways to cheat out creatures on super early turns. I have been playing magic for about 15 years or so and in all my commander games I have played most times you will have 1-2 people at the table running mono or duel colored decks so you are almost guaranteed massive value from this card. For the players not affected by this card they are not going to mind it severely hindering one of their opponents even if they are going to take 7 damage every turn. And if you are affected by it you better hope you have some way to get rid of it that is not the chosen color (unless you have something already on the battlefield). Even if another opponent gets rid of it after a few turns that just puts the people it was affected so far behind that they are probably just out of the game. The card also gets so much worse if you have things like spark double or just copying it while having something that makes the legend rule not apply. In most cases the card would just guarantee to take almost all interaction (except for things they already have on the battlefield) away from people who are running the chosen color and turns into them just playing a land and skipping their turn. I'm not one to defend extra turn cards but at least with them you have the ability to interact with them even if you don't immediately have something in your hand, as opposed to Iona which completely takes away the ability to interact if its the chosen color. Again this is just my opinion and I would love to hear others thoughts on this :D

[@webbc99]

It's a fair comment but there are so many other cards that fit this description that aren't banned. I'm not saying unban it, but there needs to be consistency or they need to give solid examples of common play patterns that are not being discouraged enough via Rule 0, so it needs to be banned outright for the health of the format. If you stick an early Jin Gataxias and start copying it, it's going to be just as gross. This is a 9 mana triple white card.

[@acaelusstormbringer2664]

​@@webbc99 It's more so the fact that in most cases it makes one player just unable to do anything and probably hinderers another player. An early Jin Gataxais is definitely tricky to deal with depending on which one it is but at the end of the day at least you have the ability to deal with it. If its the one where each opponents hand is reduced by 7 or the one where it counters an artifact, instant, or sorcery, or even the one that flips you still have the ability to do things and deal with it. Yes you might take some form of card loss to do this but it's the fact that you can. It's also important to note that the 2 "main" Jin's I see (card draw one, and counter one) played the most affect all of your opponents, so each of them is incentivized to try and deal with it. With Iona unless all of your opponents are playing the chosen color and are affected by it a lot then they don't really care about it being out. For example a 4/5 color deck might hurt a little with an Iona out but if it completely locks one of their other opponents out of the game they will wait until it is absolutely necessary to get rid of it. It mainly hurts the 1 color and 2 color decks. So it essentially reads "if you are playing a mono colored deck skip your next x turns." and "if you are playing a duo colored decks remove 50% of the cards of your deck from the game". It makes the game to where 1 person at the table has 0 fun just because they decided to play a mono colored deck. They are at the complete mercy of other players taking pity on them and removing Iona. Yes there are many other cards that are not banned but you will be hard pressed to find a card among those that punishes a player to the extent Iona does for the sheer fact they chose to play a mono colored deck. I'm not saying that Iona is super busted and would be run in every game (cough cough the one ring) but by unbanning it you open the door for people to use it whenever they want and open up the conversation as to why other super annoying cards should be unbanned too. Thank you for your comment btw and I would love to hear your thoughts on this :D.

[@SS4Inferno]

Oh man, Reserve List over $100 shuts down my Sliver deck. I'd complain about the Serra's Sanctum in my Estrid deck but for some reason I never draw it anymore

[@maxfrisch5565]

Because dockside was printed in a precon first so it cant be too powerful!

[@QuietlyHere666]

The habitual tomer slander for him to see later while editing is great

[@PensFan96]

GET THE RC ON THE PODCAST

[@meekrab9027]

Sylvan Primordial is banned because it doesn't end the game, Coalition Victory is banned because it ends the game... make it make sense

[@edhdeckbuilding]

as i said in my banned video, rhystic study is a better draw option in commander than ancestral recall.

[@webbc99]

Exactly, and with a much more "sigh-inducing" play pattern.

[@slymcfly123]

In the longterm, yes.

[@bensteinhauser784]

The best flash hulk is Thoracle, Cephalid Illusionist, and Nomads en-Kor. It's called breakfast hulk, no idea why though. Also, I was pretty sure Gifts Ungiven was banned because you can tutor up two cards and dump them both to yard. (Worded as up to four)

[@koloblicin9721]

You guys overlooked one major aspect of Sylvan primordial. It's ramps you 3 while setting your opponents back 1 or more mana each. And often in games that will plainly knock one player out of the game when primordial comes down early. It was a common occurrence when the card was legal and legitimately made games miserable.

[@lollerskates89]

They said this several times.

[@jonastigerstedt]

Primeval titan, sylvan primordial and sundering titan are all in the same boat for me. I don’t mind them but once they hit the board they become the number one target for copy, reanimate and clone effects. Essentially making the game revolve around them. At least this is how our games used to go back when they where legal.

[@slymcfly123]

Exactly. Was pure hell.

[@rmckinnes]

Sylvan Primordial was brutal to play against back in the day. When Soulbonded with Deadeye Navigator it removed every noncreature permanent while ramping to allow for more activations of the soulbond ability.

[@danlong3050]

"Should they have posted this?" Guys, all of this info was already available. All they did was consolidate.

[@IzzetTempo]

21:40 Lolol if Phil the simic value player is telling you Primeval Titan and Sylvan Primordial should be banned, y'all should probably listen. Also genuine question what green creature would be better to flicker than Prime Time / Sylvan Primordial?

[@nathand6467]

Love his expression at about that time. And he is correct. Theres too many combos with other good stuff cards in the deck that wants Sylvan Primordial that if it resolves, everyone else is probably down to half their resources before their next turn.

[@ClubbingSealCub]

atraxa? dockside?

[@IzzetTempo]

@@ClubbingSealCub I said green creature (meaning mono green) fam dockside is mono red and atraxa is 4c

[@ClubbingSealCub]

@@IzzetTempo cloning and flickering in mono green, lmao

[@IzzetTempo]

@@ClubbingSealCub My man. The deck doesn't have to be mono green. But in commander, the same decks that could access Prime Time could access other mono green creatures, so I'm asking, are there creatures in mono green that are better to flicker? You haven't named any yet.

[@Crawver]

I find it weird how they keep underestimating sylvan primordial. Like they compare it to open the way, which is for the record an amazing card. But having these effects tied to a not bad stats body, with reach is honestly huge. Like open the way for 3 costs 5 mana, and you ramp like crazy, but you are entirely open. You can get smacked, and as they said, that's the thing you do when someone does that. Primodial ramps, you get to remove major issue enchantments or artefacts to break up combos and setups, get an amazing blocker for defence, and ramp. Like as commander cards go, it's the near perfect card. One thing I don't like how they don't mention is ubiquity in deck construction. Does a cards existence warp the way decks are built, so that it just keeps on turning up. And sylvan would probably do that for green. If you're playing green with any semblance of ramp, sure of course you'd play primodrial. Why wouldn't you? Even if it isn't the win the game on the spot card, it does everything so cleanly, that you would just have it as a top end regardless. No one part of the card is the problem, but the overall collection of what it does is frankly obscene. Brought to you by someone who owns 3 copies of it, and does selfishly hope it gets unbanned.

[@51gunner]

Well put about Sylvan Primordial. The 6/8 Reach body on a creature in THE color that ramps - With even just a mana dork and a ramp spell, Sylvan Primordial is coming down turn 5, it's kicking my opponents back to 4 mana or less, it's ramping me to 8, and I'll keep a lock on the game from there if possible. Flickering is the obvious mechanic, but reanimating is another; green's not bad at getting cards out of the graveyard itself, especially creatures. If one wants to get really degenerate with it, it's not hard to imagine something like: T1 Land & Llanowar Elf, T2 Land & Dork & Ramp spell, T3 Land & anything at all to mana accelerate into a T4 Primordial at a point in the game where other people have probably just been ramping & mana rocking. Primordial resolves and I ramp myself to 8+ mana while also putting a big body into play, and undo a land, rock, value enchantment or anything else. It never needs to swing, it just sits there as a big dumb blocker that can tank even a lot of the dragons of the game, grinds away your opponent's mana base or other things, and then pushes its controller further ahead. It's just a race to resolve it before someone else can.

[@randywright7764]

Primordial and prophet are two of the most unfun cards I’ve played against. Ramp isn’t the issue, blink and removal was.

[@danlong3050]

Again, you presume. No one puts Iona in the Command Zone. It's in the 99 of, usually, an angel deck. You build your defenses and wait to play Iona when a single player and you are left, then play Iona. Players often concede because they can no longer play the game. Or if a majority of players are playing a color, hose that color, shutting off half their deck. Again, not everyone plays cards the way YOU do. They certainly don't play them the way I would.

[@matthugenberg8869]

9:36 Oh god no. Seth, I picked up Naya duals for 150$ in 2014. FOR ALL THREE OF THEM. Duals were actually pretty cheap back then.

[@NKMitch42]

In 2005 I was offered a full 40 revised duals for around 300 bucks. They were pretty cheap for a long time.

[@patriciaboggs8882]

I agree with most of the comments about sylvan primordial. I don’t mind primeval titan at all but sylvan primordial was way more game warping. I didn't play sylvan primordial myself but I started adding forests to my 5 color deck because of how many opponents were playing it (above 50%) and how often it was just the best thing to bribery or clone. So after about 10 missed forest searchs, I added forest specifically for that card. Rite of Rep on it was insane but usually even a couple triggers would put the game away. Also it was annoying because it wasn't a may and it felt bad when you played it to slow down the guy in the lead but had to also blow up a land of the guy stuck on 4 lands.

[@malikileefred6011]

Dockside is one of those cards that scales with the power level of the table. With some notable exception (artifact or enchantress decks being the big ones) dockside gets worse as you scale down the power level, and gets better as the power level scales up. That's why in CEDH and high power EDH its really good, and in very casual EDH you might make like three treasures. Of course there's variance to this, sometimes dockside does nothing in CEDH and sometimes it goes off in causal, but on average it scales positively with the power level. Prime Time is the opposite. Prime Time gets worse as you get to higher power because combos and fast mana start to matter more and Prime Times land ramp starts to matter less. Whereas in more casual meta's the land ramp matters way more, and it's way less easy to interact with it. You basically have to counter Prime Time or bust. And the same could be said for Sylvan Primordial, these are just oppressively good cards meant for a casual meta which usually doesn't have the tools to adequately respond to them. This leads to a situation where if you're running green there's no reason not to play both of these cards, and unless your playing at a high enough power where these cards aren't even that good, your opponents aren't going to have the density of removal and counter spells needed to answer them and as a result games with green in them become way more repetitive, especially considering greens density of creature tutors, all at a mainly casual level.

[@endermeap6488]

Excellent explanation of why those two are problematic for a largely casual format

[@another505]

No it doesnt scale. Ppl can play lots of low power level artifact and enchantments. Even in lower power games, it can give a lot of treasures.

[@kongthao5933]

Casual player play more mana rock 😅

[@syndicate5357]

Well here we see people crying about dockside when you explained it perfectly

[@guillaumebasch2688]

I think the difference between cards like coalition victory and biorrythm to other much better combos is that it is kinda cool to see several cards assembled to produce an unintended consequence, it provokes a reaction of ‘wow that’s neat I didn’t think of that way to use these cards’ vs coalition victory which doesn’t feel clever or ingenious, it just says win the game, it doesn’t require imagination. I’m just saying that’s the impression I’ve seen those types of effect in other games as well leave newer players, not that putting say oracle consult into ur deck is in any way actually more creative, it’s just about the feeling imo

[@NKMitch42]

20 years ago it wasnt impossible to get a full 40 duals for 300 bucks.

[@Dragon_Fyre]

I fortunately have 20 from those days that I held onto; They were $10-12 each $CAD. Too bad I didn’t play Blue too much so no Volcanic or Tropical Islands.

[@bryanprillaman1857]

Sway vs worldfire. Sway restocks your library and draws you seven cards where worldfire just exiles all that

[@d.barrett578]

Richard: Should Farewell be banned? Seth & Phil: (Silently) Yes. People need to be less afraid to talk about how problematic Farewell and the play pattern it encourages is.

[@FearOgre]

"problematic" lololol

[@d.barrett578]

@@FearOgre uh what?

[@sonchezz]

The thing that's strange about Iona, people were calling for it's ban almost immediately after the first commander precons were printed by wizards. At that time there were considerably less legends and Kalia was extremely popular coming from that first precons and being designed for 3 extremely popular tribes. Seeing people cheat Iona in was very common in the early days of commander. Why they banned it in 2019 though, the reasonings sound like they come from 8 years before and just took that long to hit the RC.

[@Tvboy777]

They banned Iona at the exact same time they decided unban Painter's Servant.

[@christianharris730]

I love the idea of a blanket ban on the reserved list cards. Fixes a lot of the feel bads in both casual and competitive edh.

[@syndicate5357]

No! cEDH is proxy friendly and if playing in a store that doesn't allow it to be proxied I'd question that store and find a local scene because it's not a sanctioned format anyways

[@FearOgre]

Still one of the worst ideas people still parrot.

[@azarite7932]

@@syndicate5357 more and more stores are going proxy-less as commander becomes the dominate format, with wizards choosing to make commander the flagship format as well this will only increase over time. 2 of the 3 stores near where i live now have a no proxy rule for commander.

[@TheSpunYarn]

Seth Worldfire was unbanned because it ENDS games, and is easily combod with Sway of the Stars adds like another 1.5 hours to the game. Misery

[@akihitokoizumi2474]

Sway of the stars is blue and blue has a lot of ways to have creatures that exile until the next end step or have phasing creatures. If they are playing it without having a way of next turn winning then they are just bad. Players should be shamed into playing cards like sway of the stars and Armageddon where they have a winning follow up.

[@Brodysseous]

The new leyline would increase the use of coalition victory if it was unbanned for sure

[@burnsboy101]

Doesn’t change why it shouldn’t be banned

[@DiscardatRandom]

Two card 8 mana combo

[@akihitokoizumi2474]

not really. Leyline is weak unless it is in your opening hand and most 5 color is using a lot of dual or triomes and a lot of land ramp. By the time you have 8 mana, you have all the land types out. If your deck requires the leyline to pull it off then it makes the combo easier to stop and less likely you even pull it off leaving that spell dead in your hand.

[@FearOgre]

@@DiscardatRandom 4 cards

[@jonathangitter1311]

Iona was banned so they could unban painters servant. An actually fun card

[@pixelbomb97]

A blanket ban to protest reserve list cards sounds good to me. Honestly in today's game, with creatures being as good as they are Gaia's cradle is better than Tolarian Academy.

[@Dragon_Fyre]

Debatable.

[@blainerodgers5294]

So when I started had a friend who played Iona. Not a commander it was Avacyn commander I think. I played mono black a lot and he would play it and choose black and no one else cared so I just sit there or fold. This was also before we cared about rule zero or power level discussions

[@almogdov]

Something that's missing for me is that you haven't mentioned if you've had the chance to play commander before the bans. I remember the days when Titan and Primordial were legal and it was miserable. The game devolved around them, copying, blinking, reanimating etc. it was a horrible and repetitive play experience and I'm glad they are gone.

[@jacobhirsch9762]

As opposed to the one ring, tergrid, atraxa, or any combo piece? The game has changed significantly since titan and primordial were released. There are more powerful cards that can be put in the command zone. Aesi is 6 mana and gives you up to 2 lands a turn. They might have belonged there at one time, but it's not the same game anymore.

[@almogdov]

@@jacobhirsch9762 True, but I don't see how adding more fuel to the fire make it easier to manage.

[@philmelo468]

You guys should try a game without the ban list, or without some of the cards you really think shouldn't be in it, just to check out if they really are a problem

[@jturn314]

On Prime-Time- Sometimes pulling far ahead and NOT winning on the spot produces the best games.. Sure usually you’ll win from that position but on occasion when the other players can team up to dig their way out of the mess you’ve created and turn the tides back against you those games turn out to be the coolest and most memorable ones… I’d rather that slim possibility being there than always just losing instantly to Craterhoof again. End Game would have been a crap couple of movies if Thanos was banned from ever actually getting all five stones just because it “put him too far ahead and centered the movie around beating him”

[@Beocaleb]

The talk about Sylvan Primordial and Prime time just shows that Richard and Seth have never played against anyone playing the card in commander. Both of these cards are so oppressive in any casual commander game. If they think it isn't an issue just unban it for their commander clash games and see if it holds up. They have the power to do that, it is their show, their games.