Myr Superion and a Tale of Two Magics

I’ll catch you up to speed: Myr Superion is currently bugged on MTGO. Normally, you can only cast the card when using mana generated by creatures, as opposed to lands. Currently, you can cast the card with any mana. This turns it into a two-mana colorless 5/6. We normally need to work harder for our Tarmogoyfs, so you can see why this would be an issue. Great. Now we can move on.

My goal here isn’t to point out how awful MTGO is. At this point in time, that should be self evident. Wizards has shown complete disdain for their customers in the 14 years since it’s launch, with service and quality that has been a decade behind the curve at every iteration. Any Magic player continuing to give money to Wizards through MTGO at this point should be ashamed of themselves. It’s not worth discussing that today though. The Myr Superion bug shouldn’t exist in the first place, but it does, so here we are.

What is worth discussing is how Wizards has handled this incident. With Myr Superion bugged beyond belief, the inability to fix it in a timely manner, and a MOCS three days away, they chose to make an announcement that players who cast Superion in an illegal fashion will face consequences, the details of which have not yet been made clear. It has also not been made clear how this will be enforced - will Wizards run a report after the event to find everyone who played Superion? Are they relying on players to report their opponents? What happens if I get paired against a player who is casting Superion against me, and that player defeats me? Will I end up knocked out of the tournament because Wizards failed to act quickly enough against someone they deem in violation of the rules?

Even with Wizards’ declaration in place I wouldn’t feel safe dedicating my time to this event, given that I have no idea if I’ll end up knocked out by a player doing things they aren’t allowed to be doing. If you do decide to play in the MOCS this weekend, keep in mind that the governing body you’re trusting to make sure you don’t get completely hosed by Superion is the same governing body that allowed this humongous bug (and atrocious software) to exist in the first place.

Superion’s bug is strictly and expressly Wizards’ fault; nobody else’s. They’ve chosen to address this by handing out a dictate that if you do this thing which is allowed within the current constructs of the game, you will be punished. One wonders why they wouldn’t simply reschedule the event instead. Clearly there are no “good” options in a scenario like this, but is moving the event and turning off all pay-to-play Modern events less ideal than policing a competitive-level tournament for people breaking this rule? Wizards has failed their customers miserably with their software, and rather than take the responsibility and fallout for that, they’ve chosen to shift the burden to the playerbase, warning us all not to capitalize on their mistake. From a business perspective, this is about as bad a reaction as it could be, probably second only to ignoring the bug entirely.

While the initial conversation that led to this post was about how Wizards is handling the problem, it’s not what I find the most compelling argument about the situation. Through their own negligence a major problem has arisen, and they’re placing the burden of this problem on the shoulders of the players, not themselves. Further investigation of this is really just a question of how much salt they’ve decided to pour into the wound they opened.

Instead, I’d like to address another, deeper topic hidden beneath the incompetency: should you be able to cast Myr Superion with basic lands this weekend?

From a practical perspective, the answer to “should I do it this weekend” is no. You may or may not be found out by Wizards, and if you are, there will be some level of punitive action. It’s not ideal.

How about from a higher level perspective? There is a bug in the game. A card is castable in a fashion it was not meant to be.

Should I be allowed to take advantage of this?

An issue of this type is hardly new to video games. Bugs and glitches of this nature have been out there since games were first developed. Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ) is a large, multi-day fundraising effort based on these glitches.

Competitive games aren’t immune. Plenty of games, be they fighters ala Street Fighter, FPSs ala Counter Strike, or MOBAs ala League of Legends have dealt with these same problems. Frequently (though not universally), the response from the developers is hands off. Yes, we know there’s a problem. No, we can’t fix it in time for [event]. Yes, you’re all going to have to play with that glitch in effect. A character’s sweep attack having too many invincibility frames or a gun reloading too quickly is simply a component of that tournament. It’s not ideal, of course, but how would a Street Fighter tournament react to a character having an attack that is too strong? Tell people not to use that kick? Not to use that character? It’s an ugly situation all around, but “everyone needs to live with it” is a common response.

An argument some Magic players will make is that regardless of what MTGO does or does not allow, there is a superseding set of rules that make this a non-issue. Under the oracle rules which govern Magic played with paper cards, Myr Superion can’t be cast using mana from lands. MTGO is Magic. Therefore, Myr Superion can’t be cast on MTGO using mana from lands. Yes, you can technically do it, in that the software allows you to perform that action, but it’s still against the rules of the game, so you shouldn’t be allowed to.

Since there’s no question under this argument that players shouldn’t be allowed to cast Superion with lands, it’s not unreasonable for Wizards to tell players not to do that in the MOCS.  After all, it’s the same rules we play under when we show up to FNM or a GP, so why should it be any different online? This just happens to be one real life rule that didn’t transition perfectly to the digital realm, where it would be ideally be enforced by MTGO’s code.

Here’s the rub: MTGO (Magic: the Gathering Online) and MTGP (Magic: the Gathering Paper) are not the same game.

If that is true, then the rules that apply to MTGP do not necessarily apply to MTGO, since they are different games.

If MTGO is not beholden to the rules of MTGP, then it must use its own rules, which we will understand to be what the software does and does not allow, as would be the case with all video games, e.g. Street Fighter or Counter Strike.

If MTGO allows something to happen, it is not against the rules.

Therefore, if MTGO allows Myr Superion to be cast from basic lands, then players should be allowed to do it. If this is unintended, then the onus is on Wizards to change the rules (i.e. update the software).

Just for a moment set aside the first point, that MTGO and MTGP aren’t the same game. The rest is a slightly fuzzy logic structure, and I’m sure you could pick apart any one of these lines if you went after it feverishly. They’re basically “as we understand it” arguments. They’re not the point of all of this though; that distinction belongs to the first claim.

MTGO and MTGP aren’t the same game.

Once we come to understand this, everything else should make sense. How can I make that claim?

For MTGO and MTGP to be the same game, they need to follow the same set of rules. Not just similar rules, mind you, but the same rules. Given that games are essentially nothing but a set of rules which we all agree to abide by, a difference in rules is a fundamental difference.

Of course, MTGO and MTGP are strikingly similar games. They are alike in 99.95% of ways. However, there are key differences. If you feel that they look too similar to somehow be different games, consider the game Xhess. It’s played using chess pieces, and it’s played on a chessboard. Players follow the same rules as chess, and the pieces have the same movement restrictions. However, there is a rule that at the start of the game, a player may swap the position of their king with any of their other pieces. Xhess looks a lot like chess, but any chess player would tell you that it is decidedly not the same game.

How are MTGO and MTGP different games? Let’s start with the most obvious one, the clock.

In MTGP, players are expected to play at a reasonable pace. If they don’t, they receive slow play warnings. Receive two in one game and you receive a game loss, and possibly a disqualification if the judges think you’re cheating. There is no turn clock as their is in chess (or Xhess) though. The sum total of seconds that your priorities take are not measured against the sum total of seconds that your opponent takes. If I’m playing a complicated deck with many triggers and actions every turn, and you’re playing a deck with 20 lands and 40 Lava Axes, I’m going to spend a lot more time doing things and being the active player than you are. That doesn’t matter though. As long as I’m progressing the game state and making decisions in a timely manner, it’s completely within the rules that I take up 40 minutes of our 50 minute round clock.

Compare this to MTGO, where there is a clear clock each player plays with. We both have the same amount of time, and if one of us uses all of it, we lose. That’s it. No questions. It doesn’t matter if I’m up a game and half a turn away from winning the second; if my 25 minutes runs out 2 seconds quicker than my opponent’s, I lose.

Every deck in MTGO has an invisible restriction placed on it: the sum total of the actions required for you to win two games cannot exceed 25 minutes. If they do, you lose the game. The repercussions of this are dramatic. Consider Mindslaver and Academy Ruins. I can set up a “Slaver lock” under which my opponent never once has the ability to take a meaningful action again, a condition that virtually always leads to a game win in MTGP. Yet, in MTGO, it is definitely not a foregone conclusion that the Slaver locked player will lose. If I’ve got 15 creatures on the battlefield that all have lifelink and there’s no removal in my deck, you may find it exceedingly difficult to kill me fast enough, in spite of controlling my turns, even though you’re basically guaranteed to win the game so long as enough draw steps occur. Similarly, your method of success could be simply to let your Slaver-locked opponent draw themselves out, while you shuffle your graveyard back in with Elixir of Immortality. This is a scenario that in MTGP is a victory for the player with Mindslaver, yet is a loss for that same person in MTGO.

Priority clocks place a dramatic set of conditions on MTGO that do not exist in MTGP. Some decks are made more viable, and others are made less so. How meaningful this is in daily constructed Magic is irrelevant; it’s a question of whether MTGO and MTGP are the same game. There is a clear and distinct difference in the way players can win and lose the game between the two. That, very blatantly, demonstrates that they are not the same game.

Continuing from this, we also see that MTGO does not permit infinite loops, while MTGP does. If I stick a Splinter Twin on a Deceiver Exarch in MTGP, I can demonstrate my knowledge of how the loop works, and declare that I have an arbitrary number of hasty Deceiver Exarchs. I can then declare them all attacking, and force my opponent to either have an answer to a million billion faeries or lose. I don’t need any significant physical representation of this; simply pointing a Splinter Twin at a Deceiver Exarch in play is sufficient.

The rules of tournament MTGP state that if a player can demonstrate knowledge of how to perform an infinite loop, they are allowed to repeat said loop as many times as they wish so long as their opponent doesn’t have any interaction. This is used in a wide swath of tournament viable decks in every format.

MTGO, however, does not allow for this. There is no way to demonstrate knowledge of a loop and perform it as many times as you wish. Can you make infinite Deceiver Exarchs? Great. Start clicking buddy. The inability to do this means that, once again, some decks are significantly weaker than others. This ties directly into the first point, since it’s not uncommon for you to be unable to kill your opponent even though you’re capable, simply because you can’t perform the loop quick enough within the allotted time. An opponent at 100,000 life is absolutely beatable with Splinter Twin in MTGP, yet in MTGO there is no possible way to win that game. (Of course, actually performing the loop to get to 100,000 life is similarly unlikely.)

The clock and the infinite loops are hardly the only ways in which MTGO and MTGP are distinctly different, but they are certainly two of the most glaring examples. These differences constitute material rules gaps between MTGO and MTGP, and as such, can’t be considered the same game. Since they are not the same game, MTGO cannot be expected to be governed by the stated rules of MTGP, and as such, is responsible for its own implementation of rules, which is expressed via the allowed functionality of the software.

Paper Magic and MTGO are not the same game, and as such, you can’t expect one to be governed by the rules of the other.

If MTGO lets you cast Myr Superion with mana made from basic lands, then dammit, you should be allowed to do that.

Daraprim, A Jackass, and the Failure of the US Health System

Recently Turing Pharmaceuticals, led by CEO Martin Shkreli, acquired the AIDS/HIV drug Daraprim. He raised the price by 5,500%, from $13 a pill to $750. Unsurprisingly, there's been a lot of outrage directed at Shkreli on my Twitter timeline regarding this action. Given that we're in the midst of an epic unveiling of Johnson and Johnson conducting business in the pharmaceutical industry in the most egregiously offensive manner imaginable, it's no doubt that people are calling for Shkreli's blood. I find this topic interesting enough to warrant writing down my thoughts but not so controversial that I need to spend days crafting a well-edited post.

Let me quickly address the very question I had myself upon first hearing of this. The reason a generic simply doesn't spring up at 1/10th the price is an issue of economic scale. Vox does a reasonable enough job explaining it; check there if you're curious.

What makes this a compelling topic of discussion is the fervor of the protest against Shkreli's actions given that what he did, is not in the strictest of terms, wrong. In fact, what he did may even be "right." In the purest ideologies and philosophies of capitalism, he would in fact have a moral imperative to do what he did. The idea being that under pure capitalism, ruthless pursuit of profit by all agents eventually finds a balance as the best society possible. Shkreli then is one of those most adherent to our beloved system of capitalism, touted constantly and from the highest soapbox by those on the campaign trail. A more glowing condemnation of capitalism I've never seen.

The vitrol over Shkreli is of course that his actions are reprehensible. A drug that helps those with an incurable disease is now about 5,000 times more difficult to acquire, and people will undoubtedly suffer because of it. (I can't help but wonder if this public outcry would be so loud if it were for a designer or luxury drug, such as Viagra or something related to plastic surgery. Would people care about a major price hike that makes it tougher for wrinkly enlarged-prostate-ridden geriatrics to bone their mistress?) To claim that Shrkeli shouldn't have done what he did is inherently flawed though. That's an argument of what he should or should not have done, which is not a reliable, meaningful, or helpful way to discuss matters of public policy.

Under many, many systems of morals are Shkreli's actions offensive. I don't disagree with the public that what he did is, in a word, shitty. Morals are not the direct system by which we govern though, a fact evident in our nation's defense of the first amendment so vigorous that at times the Viagra is hardly necessary. Rather, we use the law to govern, and the law is black and white. Here is what you can do, and here is what you can not do. To make a case for what lies in between is simply arguing shades of grey, and that will ultimately be fruitless. After all, what one person considers entirely acceptable another will assuredly find distasteful. Attempting to draw a line between can and cannot that the public should be beholden to will only leave you disappointed, and it will do so repeatedly. Even if you manage to shame Shkreli out of the business, a fool's endeavor I'm sure, there will be no shortage of those willing to take his place. And quite frankly, there (hah) shouldn't be.

A component of game theory, and other doctrines as well, is similar to that of capitalism. Not only does it encourage agents within a system to maximize their expected value, it is essentially required of them. To do any less is immoral or unethical. Shkreli's actions, and anyone that would follow the same path, is merely seeking the most value they can within the system they operate. 

Following that arises the ultimate point: Shkreli isn't to blame. We can publicly lynch him for his choices, unscrupulous as they may seem, but scruples are relative to their framework, and he's merely operating at a more "pure" framework than the rest of us. I'm reminded of the Patriots having employed people to steal discarded playbook pages from hotel trash cans after an opposing team has left them behind. Does it leave a bad taste in your mouth? Possibly. Is what they did technically legal? Yep. So does that make Belichick a filthy cheater, or the NFL's coach most committed to his convictions? Yes.

Instead of directing your anger towards Shkreli, an act akin to tilting at windmills, focus it on where it more appropriately belongs: the system. The pharmaceutical industry and regulatory environment, to more specific. 

It is within this system that Shkreli, and every one of us, is compelled to do exactly what has happened. They are playing by the rules. If that upsets you, don't change the player. Change the rules. Only then will people be forced to behave within our agreed set of moral guidelines. Deciding what is legal is deciding the question of when should not becomes can not, a far more industrial behavior. Instead of ultimately condemning a single individual, only to rehash the argument the next time someone steps up to the plate, we can instead draw the lines where we as a society are comfortable with them. Then there's no need for moral outrage at Shkreli's actions, because we have something even better - legal recourse.

Of course, legal recourse is only as effective as the system that enforces it.

Activate Aether Vial, Challenge Your Morality

In advance of Grand Prix New Jersey Drew Levin wrote an excellent article on Legacy rules interactions on the 12th. A great deal of useful information is contained within, and I highly recommend reading it. Important topics covered include things like Delve and Thalia, Bridge from Below triggers, and Engineered Explosives and basically anything else.

One particular section of the article struck me in a different way though. It was this line that caused me consternation:

Failing to follow the first step is technically legal and also a classic scummy thing to do, so feel free to run that if you're not plagued by pesky things like "moral compunction."

This line was written in reference to this situation:

If you want to cast Stifle, it will be after they tap their Aether Vial and before they show you if they have a creature or what it is. If they activate Aether Vial and show you their creature in one fell swoop when you prefer to Stifle their activation, you should do the following:
- Try your absolute hardest to not see what their creature is

Your opponent controls Aether Vial. They tap it and immediately place a creature into play from their hand with no delay to wait for a response from you. Drew argues that you should try not to look at the creature they put into play, and that while it is technically legal to do so, it would be “scummy” and immoral. I take issue with this point.

Before delving into this particular instance, let’s take a quick moment to understand morality and ethics, which I will use fairly interchangeably throughout.

Laws and rules exist as a framework for what you can and cannot do. Laws are black and white. They are a line drawn in the sand that details exactly what is allowed and what is not allowed. There is still room for discussion within these laws - hence, lawyers - but the end goal is to markedly delineate between acceptable and forbidden.

Laws cover what you can and cannot do. Morals and ethics govern what you should and shouldn’t do. Here’s an easy example. You can spout heinously racist and sexist rhetoric, as it is your right as someone living in America. However, you definitely shouldn’t do these things. Yes, it’s legal. Yes, it’s within the rules of the system. But there is moral compulsion not to do so. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Morality is inherently subjective. It governs the grey areas between illegal and inoffensive. There is nothing objectively moral or immoral. Decisions about complex morality questions often made in light of context and subtlety. This lack of objectivity is obvious in everyday political discourse on topics such as the death penalty and abortion, where there is no clear consensus about right and wrong. We all have our own ways of developing our moral code, and as such we approach topics with different sets of morals, the end result being that we arrive at different conclusions on some topics. This is important, so I’ll repeat it - morality is subjective.

With that out of the way, let’s take a look at proper behavior in a few different situations relating to Magic.

Situation 1: You’re shuffling your opponent’s deck prior to a match at a GP. You accidentally drop a card onto the table from their deck face-up. Looking at this card would almost universally be considered unethical. You made a mistake (or took an action intended to appear as a mistake) and are now attempting to profit from it by gaining information you shouldn’t have. You’ve gained advantageous information through your own action, whether on accident or purpose. Looking at the dropped card is unethical at best and cheating at worst. In fact, it has its own ruling - 2.2. Game Play Error — Looking at Extra Cards. You took the action, you made the mistake, and the responsibility is on you to avoid gaining an advantage because of that mistake. Don’t look at cards you drop from your opponent’s deck.

Situation 2: Your opponent accidentally drops a card onto the floor. Is it immoral to look underneath the table to see what that card is?

Looking under the table with the intent to gain information you shouldn’t have access to is sure to have consensus as a scummy thing to do. Your opponent made a mistake with their physical manipulation of the cards, but by default their mistake doesn’t provide you with additional information. Sitting as you are in your chair, you can’t see the face-up card on the floor. It requires you to make a conscious decision to change your physical posture to see the card. The necessity of voluntary agency on your part has intentionality that the later situations will not. You don’t have to “opt-out” of the information, but rather “opt-in” with your actions. I would hope that most players would consider this unethical.

Situation 3: Your opponent is shuffling his own deck and accidentally drops a card face-up onto the table. Is it immoral to look?

This situation differs from the first because it is no longer your action that provided the information, but rather your opponent’s. He made a mistake so you have no liability in the matter. You are within the rules of the game to look at the card. Doing so is technically legal, but I think most would agree it’s not the most moral thing to do.

Consider a twist to the situation: your opponent has a neurological disorder that results in his or her having shaky hands. Should you gain free information because your opponent has a physical disorder that occasionally results in them flashing you a card they didn’t want to? I would hope there’s a clear consensus that your opponent shouldn’t be penalized for having physical difficulty manipulating their cards.

Restricting our compassion to only those with neurological disorders would be shortsighted. How about severe anxiety? Perhaps they’ve just got a lot of adrenaline running through their system? Whatever the reason, they had an accident during physical manipulation of their cards, and you don’t deserve free information by virtue of sitting there. Sometimes it happens and you see it and there’s nothing you can do about it, but if you can avoid seeing the card, you should make the effort not to.

Situation 4: Your Elves opponent casts Cabal Therapy. They tap the black mana, put the card on the table, and say “Cabal Therapy for Golgari Charm.” They’ve run together the casting of Cabal Therapy and the resolution of the Therapy. Is it unethical to back them up to casting the Cabal Therapy, then cast the Golgari Charm in your hand with Cabal Therapy on the stack?

Drew discusses this point in his article, and while his opinion is not explicitly stated, it certainly seems that you are well within your rights, both within the legal framework and moral framework, to cast the Charm.

That's because your opponent is still allowed to respond to your free-information Cabal Therapy, and now they can do so with the knowledge that you would be forced to name your announced card if they don't respond. If they have a Brainstorm, then they know to cast it or lose it. If they don't, they can let your Cabal Therapy miss.

Your opponent, whether because they don’t understand their own card or because they jumped the gun, has made a mistake. Unlike scenario three, this isn’t a fault in dexterity but rather a mistake in judgment or a lack of rules knowledge. These types of errors are incredibly common in Magic, and completely legitimate ways to win games. Once you start trying to decide what errors of judgment are ok to capitalize on and which aren’t, the game of figuring out what is ethical spirals out of control. Should you not attack for lethal because your opponent failed to count your on-board power when taking his or her turn? Should you back your opponent up because they attempted to counter an Abrupt Decay? Of course not. These are mistakes we as disciplined players train ourselves not to make, and to capitalize on when our opponents make them. Once your opponent is making errors within the context of the game, arguing that something is unethical becomes untenable.

Naming a card as you cast Cabal Therapy isn’t an accident, it’s an error. Games of Magic are won and lost on errors. It isn’t immoral to capitalize on your opponent’s error.

Situation 5: You have a Stifle in hand and a blue mana up. You set your hand down face-down on the table, say “your turn,” and then pick up your water bottle as your opponent begins his turn. After drawing his card for the turn, he drops a Lord of Atlantis onto the table, and with two splayed hands taps his team and his Aether Vial. The entire process takes under a second. Should you or should you not look at the card he put onto the table?

We arrive at the situation Drew takes issue with. Examined closely, it’s very similar to situation four. Your opponent ran together actions in the game - technically breaking the rules - without giving you a fair opportunity to respond. There is no agency on your part here. You aren’t choosing to act in a way that gains you advantageous information. You aren’t mind-tricking him into telling you something he doesn’t need to. You simply passed the turn and put a water bottle up to your mouth while your opponent jumped through multiple phases and blew through a trigger. Every mistake that occurred was his. Should you go out of your way to deny yourself useful information - “opt-out” - that your opponent willingly handed to you through violations of the game state?

The difference between situations two and three and four and five is that the first two were predicated on an accident. They didn’t break any rules and they didn’t judge a situation improperly. An accident occurred outside the confine of the game. Situations four and five were not accidents, but mistakes. The opponent made a conscious decision to do something that broke the rules of the game. Once they have taken a voluntary action that breaks the rules, they have shouldered liability for the fallout of that error. In these situations, that fallout is you getting to know something you wouldn’t normally. You can’t be held morally responsible for the actions your opponents take, and it’s unfair to ask you to deny yourself information your opponent handed you on a silver platter because of their own carelessness.

I must stress that all of these situations are in the context of competitive environments, such as a PTQ or GP. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had opponents make these sorts of mistakes (and far worse) at FNMs and I went out of my way not to look, or to point out that no, you can’t counter that, or to make decisions as if I didn’t already know some key piece of information they inadvertently supplied to me. The goal at store events isn’t to crush people, but foster an environment of enjoyment and learning. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone for capitalizing on cards named in haste with a Cabal Therapy at Sunday Legacy, although I am unlikely to do it myself. At a GP though? The rules enforcement level and the expectation of play from opponents is higher. You have an obligation to be moral, but you shouldn’t be afraid to capitalize on mistakes either.

From Intimidating Alien to MTG 2.0 Digimon: The New Slivers

Wizards has just this week announced the return of Slivers in M14, and they’re a bit different than the Slivers we’ve come to know and [love/hate]. The two big changes are that they only buff your own Slivers instead of all Slivers now, and their style guide got a pretty significant update. We’ll be talking about the second change.

The first point, the mechanical change, was hashed out publicly between @conley81 and @meddlingmage for the most part. I won’t revisit it entirely here, but the general idea is that the mechanical complexity of having buffs apply to all Slivers instead of just your own is not worth the nostalgia factor, especially when you consider that the core set is aimed at new players. Plus drafting old-style slivers would likely be miserable.

The change to the art, however, is something I think that warrants a bit of discussion. Or more accurately, complaining.

Doug Beyer touched on exactly this topic in his tumblr . I take issue with his description of their reasons for the change. I understand where they come from when considering the adaptability of the style guide moving forward. The original design of “big angry worm” does not lend itself to a multitude of visual changes as well as some other designs could. This is a legitimate concern to address, but ultimately I feel that there are ways to expand on the original Sliver visual concept without such a distinct departure from their known form.

Its Doug’s (and the creative team’s) feeling that Slivers need to be more relatable that I find distressing. I was particularly irked by his statement that Slivers should be able “to generate facial expressions.” Part of what makes Slivers so distinct and visually powerful in the multiverse setting is how completely alien they feel, both to the universe they exist in, as well as to our human sensibilities. The faceless, insectoid body structure is one that we as humans have trouble understanding. It is very difficult to empathize with a creature that shares no physical similarities with you. As creatures of a hive mind, we already are constrained to an incredibly dim understanding of how Slivers function and process information. The concept of the hive mind is one which we can only make wild, uninformed guesses about, but none of us can ever truly begin to understand or even grasp. The featureless visage and unique body structure help convey that gap between our concept of our own consciousness and whatever form of awareness they possess. With no face, there is no emotion to read or anticipate. There is no window into the soul in which to gaze. There is only the sheen of the plating that hides the creature’s intentions from your inquisitive and fearful glare.

It is this complete lack of ability to connect with Slivers on a physical level that makes them such an emotionally evocative creature. By giving them eyes and faces and human morphology, we are better able to grasp the reality perceived by the creature – something that Slivers, as a hive mind, should deny at every turn. Slivers are one of very few species in the multiverse that deviate from the normal fantasy-grade material, and it’s unfortunate to see their visual identity being stripped away from them and reduced to angrier-looking pokemon.

If you read this post I may be banned

Recently, Alex Bertoncini had his suspension extended for providing alternate commentary, most of which was demeaning to players, during an SCG live stream. Andrey Yanyuk’s article (http://www.draftmagic.com/2013/04/30/the-end-of-an-era-and-the-reach-of-the-dci/), discussing his own ban and the reach of the DCI, stirred up more discussion about the DCI’s role in punishing conduct outside an event hall. It’s obvious that the DCI tends to treat the landscape of social media quite seriously when considering inappropriate conduct, and it is well worth considering the ramifications of these decisions.

The community has had two major reactions to the DCI’s behavior. The first is that the DCI can and should protect its brand in any way possible, and that the suspensions handed out are appropriate. The not-exactly-opposite viewpoint is that it’s unacceptably Orwellian and a breach of privacy to monitor our social media outlets for anything they may find inappropriate and hand out punishments as they see fit.

We need to clarify first that it is absolutely within the DCI’s rights, and realistically, their obligation to ban and suspend players for offensive or inappropriate behavior outside of a tournament setting. This may seem unfair to you, but remember that Magic is first and foremost a business. The DCI exists to manage the competitive community of Magic, and part of their responsibility, as with every organized body within Wizards, is protecting the brand. (Also remember they are not beholden to additional US jurisdiction, so none of this is illegal, as some seem fit to claim.)

What does that mean,” protect the brand?” In this context, the brand is the public perception of the organization. For reference, consider the brand of DOTA (Defense of the Ancients) or COD (Call of Duty.) When I mention those names, what comes to mind? A lot of you probably have reasonably negative connotations with the two properties owing almost exclusively to the behavior of the people that play them. Both titles have considerably vitriolic communities where all sorts of terribly offensive slurs are not uttered, but shouted and trumpeted with vigor in every available channel. Very clearly the brands of these properties have been damaged by the people playing them by sole virtue of the fact that we so strongly associate this behavior with the online experience. You know that if you venture into a public game, there’s a good chance you will be exposed to an environment you want nothing to do with. There is assuredly a real number of people that have been turned off of these titles for exactly this reason.  These games have flourished commercially, but they have done so in spite of their player base’s behavior.

For a company like Wizards, it’s vitally important that this type of association does not occur with Magic. Magic needs to be a safe haven for its players, as the nature of the game requires far more investment in terms of finances, time, and even intimacy than many others. Players spend substantially money on Magic than they do on DOTA and COD, incredible amounts of time, (often measured in years, or now, even decades,) as well as social intimacy – if you are being ridiculed at a Grand Prix, you can’t just turn off the computer and walk away. You have bought into the experience with your physical presence, something online gaming does not ask of you.

We now understand that the DCI needs to ensure that the Magic community is safe for its customers, who are typically more vulnerable and sensitive to ridicule than an average consumer base. That community includes Facebook, Twitter, Twitch.tv, website articles, and any other public forum. Gone are the days where there was the “public” image of a game that was observable through first party advertisements and media, and the “private” image that was entirely different and essentially unmoderated by the company. Wizards has a presence in all forms of social media, and they encourage their players to connect and share through these same channels. This means that Wizards now needs to make sure those communication channels are safe for mages everywhere. The conclusion we draw then is that your Twitter account and public Facebook messages are fair game for the DCI. They need to do a reasonable job of keeping the community, in all of its forms, sufficiently friendly for younger, newer, and vulnerable players. If you’re broadcasting information and opinions that Wizards doesn’t like to a public audience, they are completely within their rights to say “this individual’s behavior in public is damaging our brand and threatens the atmosphere of our events, and we do not want them showing up to our events and making players feel uncomfortable.” It may feel like an overreach on Wizards’ part to monitor your social media, but calling a player a faggot to his face at a GP will certainly get you booted, and your Facebook post exclaiming the exact same thing can easily reach hundreds or even thousands more.

There is certainly something Big Brother about the silent monitoring of public media by Wizards of the Coast, however. The real issue is not the action of their observation, but rather, that we don’t know who they’re watching, when they’re watching, or what they consider to be crossing the line. Part of the fear is that all of us, with the exception of perhaps Reid Duke, has said or done something that could probably warrant suspension. At this point some of my more gentle readers may be thinking “surely I would never commit such a heinous act against a fellow mage!” Ask yourself, though, have you never referred to poor players as “shitties,” or similar nomenclature? Complained to your friends that “that fucking [demeaning term] topdecked his 2-outer” or similar? If we’re honest with ourselves, we’re all guilty of behavior that could warrant DCI action.

What constitutes sufficient audience and content for your transgressions to qualify for penalization, though? Obviously people like Brian Kibler and his Twitter ilk are under scrutiny, given the quantity of their followers and their position as ambassadors of the game for newer players everywhere. As the number of eyeballs decreases though, we find it more difficult to determine if an individual’s actions have enough reach to attract penalization. From what I understand, Alex’s stream only had roughly 50 viewers, which is hardly a notable number given many no-name streamers can easily break 100 or 200. 50 is a very low floor. Likewise, shouting vulgarities and slurs in a crowded room at a PTQ would certainly qualify as unsportsmanlike conduct, but what about saying the exact same things while sitting at a table in the corner talking under your breath to a friend? Again the same insulting and inflammatory remarks, but this time spoken at reasonable volume amidst a group in the middle of the same room as a judge happens to walks by? Recall @dr8sides on Twitter. His remarks had an initial audience that was quite small, but it was only after a series of retweets by quite a few players that his actions came to be known by the DCI, and he ultimately received a rather harsh punishment for what most of us would consider fairly benign commentary (perhaps it could have even been construed as constructive criticism.) Meanwhile, I could probably get away with writing some pretty scathing remarks on this tiny blog without the DCI caring, unless it got picked up and spread across Twitter.

While Wizards of the Coast needs to make sure that the public discussion and action involved with their property is within their decided acceptable limits, none of us really know exactly what’s public and exactly what’s acceptable. Further clouding the waters is that we’ll never get anything explicit about what you can and can’t say, and what constitutes public or private. Wizards can’t just draw up a list of bad words you’re not allowed to include in a tweet that mentions card names. It’s an entirely contextual decision.

I don’t claim to have an easy solution to any of this, and I don’t think you’re likely to find one. Wizards has made it clear that they’re willing to nail you to the wall if you step over the line, and they’re not telling us where that line is. Moving forward all I can do is urge caution, and before you send that tweet, ask yourself if you’d be willing to say the exact same thing to a head judge.

Get out (of Legacy) while you still can

Legacy is going to die.

Admittedly, it will never actually die die – someone, somewhere will be playing it. Rather it’s going to go the way of vintage, relegated to its own tight-knit, late-20’s, financially secure old guard that spend more time thinking, discussing, and goldfishing the format than actually playing in sanctioned events. It’s not going to happen overnight – SCG is still supporting the format at their open series, and while there were rumors awhile back about them switching it over to modern, nothing on that front has materialized. There’s still a reasonably large contingent of players who loudly voice support of the format online, and that will likely never really change. Additionally SCG, as well as other vendors to varying degrees, still have a huge stock of legacy staples that if the Open Series suddenly ceased to exist would see a drastic devaluing and become considerably less liquid virtually overnight. This stock of Legacy staples means that SCG has a vested interest in ensuring the continued support for the format.

However, in spite of all of this, the writing is on the walls. The inevitable heat death of Legacy became something of an axiom once the reserve list was solidified, and on numerous occasions Wizards has sworn up and down that it isn’t changing (and we’ve all been told time and time again to stop asking.) In spite of this, for a brief shining moment, players had hope that it could be revitalized and renewed as a relevant format to more than just Open grinders. As Helene Bergeot said the words “fourth pro tour” during live coverage, everyone’s collective heart skipped a beat – was it finally coming? A Legacy pro tour? Seconds later though, Rich Hagon asked the question on everyone’s mind and the dream was dashed just as quickly as it had formed. No, the format wouldn’t be Legacy. Helene claimed that there simply weren’t enough cards out there to support the format. She didn’t want players on the pro tour to discover the best deck, but then be unable to play it because there weren’t enough copies of the necessary cards on the market. Just imagine for a moment SCG Blue team discovering the best deck included 4x Candelabra of Tawnos or 4x The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale. Enjoy finding 40+ copies of one of those. And that isn’t even considering the implications of a Legacy PTQ season. If Wizards was going to back Legacy, this would have been their chance. They would have announced the fourth PT as a Legacy event, and they would have made strides to increase accessibility to the format in any way they could, with things like snow-covered duals or what have you. They chose not to though, and what they didn’t do says more about Legacy’s long-term viability than what they did do.

Aside: I expect the first sign of changing times will be SCG lowering its buylist prices on most of their Legacy cards. As they slowly run out of stock, they won’t be in any hurry to fill back up. Once their Legacy reserves are depleted, that’s when they may announce an end to Legacy opens. When they finally cancel Legacy opens, SCG doesn’t want to be left holding the bag on hundreds of thousands of dollars of now mostly-irrelevant stock.

Wizards has thrown their weight behind a different format at this point. It is obvious; both through their actions and their words that Modern is what Wizards envisions as the eternal format of choice in the long-term. When the player that’s been enjoying FNM and Standard for 6 months decides to branch out into another competitive format, Wizards wants him picking up Kiki-Jiki and Karn Liberated, not Force of Will and Brainstorm. They’re bending over backwards to provide the support through the community, through tournaments, and through product such as Modern Masters. Legacy’s chance at becoming a “full-fledged” format has come and gone. Modern has supplanted Legacy as the WOTC-approved eternal format of choice, and that isn’t changing.

So where does that leave us? Well the format is obviously still quite popular, with seemingly more articles written about it than Modern on a yearly basis. In spite of its following, though, the end result is unavoidable. The pool of dual lands that exists is what we have, and we aren’t getting any more. Physical card availability and quality can only decrease. As fresh players crack their first booster and move through the stages of MTG involvement, they’re going to take up Modern in far greater numbers than Legacy. And as players filter out of the game, there will be a drastic disparity between the number of players no longer playing Legacy opens and the number sleeving up Lion’s Eye Diamonds for the first time.

Finally the point of all of this; what to do with our Legacy collections? Legacy cards command some of the highest prices of tournament-viable cards, with a wide swath of cards in the $30 to $100 range. I believe that at this point, we should start moving some of those cards we have stashed at home into trade binders to begin to liquidate while we’re still able. Pick a deck or two you’d like to keep together and start considering whether everything you have set aside is something you can trade away. All the cards like Natural Order and Mox Diamond, which are considered Legacy staples but are not actually played too often are the best candidates for this. Why are these optimum cards to move first? They’re still fairly liquid at large events, so it won’t be tough to move them. When the cascade of movement out of Legacy occurs though (an event which will snowball and occur fairly quickly) they will rapidly lose their liquidity. They aren’t terribly popular casual cards, and there is very little EDH demand for them. Their price is supported by their pedigree and Legacy playability, and when one of those all but disappears, they’ll be the most valuable cards you own that you couldn’t give away if you tried. You also don’t need to be very worried about them skyrocketing anytime soon and kicking yourself over lost value. Their prices have been quite stable for some time, and there is no indication that they will be seeing substantial increases in value at all. It’s highly unlikely you’ll see them worth more than what you trade them away for ever again. If all of the sudden you need them back, it won’t be difficult to reacquire them for what you got rid of them for (or even less.) I’ve personally sold my Natural Orders recently, moved my spare Judge Karakas to my trade binder, and plan on doing a full sweep of all my Legacy cards soon to see what can go. Similarly, I would also recommend putting extra Forces into your binder. Their spike came and went. They’ve been pretty stable for a while now, and I’m quite sure the days of the $100 Force of Will is behind us. Remember also that the card isn’t on the reserved list. While we’re probably not seeing it in a core set anytime soon, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a promo copy before the end of 2013. It’s not a major EDH player, and there is close to zero casual demand for it. This is a card whose value is completely supported by Legacy playability.

All the smaller cards you’re holding – Daze, Submerge, Sword to Plowshares and the like – can probably all be moved to the trade binder as well. Keep a set for yourself, but extras are not going to do you much good any longer. You’d rather trade them now for retail value than get rid of them in three years at half price because you’re glad you could get anything for them at all. The odds of Submerge tripling in value is far, far less than the odds that you sit on them for years and find they’ve depreciated by 70%. I’d also ship all your non-vital non-foil Onslaught fetches, but that’s because I think we’ll see them before the end of 2015, and quite possibly 2014. (The foils are worth keeping – just look at old foil shocks. We’ve seen that the original printing of cards can still command a solid premium, especially in foil. When you consider that the original printings of those fetches will also be the only foil old-border ones, it’s probably reasonable to assume they would actually go up when they’re printed in standard again.)

What should we be keeping? Anything in that ultra-staple reserved-list tier 1 is likely a very safe hold. I would probably hold onto Duals, as people will always want them, even if there isn’t really a reason to have them. Other cards like Lion’s Eye Diamond are pretty safe. Cards that have tremendous value due to rarity and collectability rather than high playability – Candelabra of Tawnos, Tabernacle – are also fairly safe holds. Tabernacle isn’t $300 because of Legacy play.

“Well,” you may be angrily tweeting to me, “if I’m getting rid of all of these Legacy staples that have been such safe holds for all of this time, what am I supposed to trade into that’s safe?” I’ve been pondering that myself for the last several weeks. Trading Legacy staples into more Legacy staples isn’t really the direction we want to head. If you can pick up Duals for your Intuitions then by all means go right ahead, but you won’t have that available to you at all times. However, trading into anything not on the reserved list obviously has the inherent risk of being reprinted.

Aside: if we’re trading mostly out of reserved list cards and into reprintable product, that implies we’re going to need to do some real shifting of our trade collection strategy. When almost everything in your binder is under threat of reprint, the basic timeframe for which you can hold any particular card and have it remain profitable becomes finite. This means that the savvy trader needs to be aware of when every card in their binder was last printed, and its likelihood of reprint in new announced product. This creates some subtle urgency to be constantly flipping older, higher-value cards that are prime reprint targets into stock that is relatively safe for middle and longer term. This is a departure from the old standard of feeling very safe in reserved list holdings. Large collections will become inherently more risky, as there will be a real price ceiling on anything Wizards can reprint, especially cards legal in Modern.

So what’s a safe pickup now? I’d avoid things like Kiki Jiki, Vendilion Clique, Karn Liberated and other Modern staples that are in vogue unless you plan on moving them in a relatively short time frame. All three are subject not only to reprints, but the waxing and waning of seasons. Instead, look for cards that will be reprint and PTQ-season resilient. Old-border foils are probably fairly safe, since a reprint will not infringe on the aesthetic value of the card, and in fact could cause it to rise in price (Rancor did exactly this.) For this reason I think foil Onslaught fetches are a great (albeit expensive) choice, while the non-foil Onslaught lands are not what I’d be trying to get into. Look for cards that would be tough to reprint outside of special promotional material – things like Sakashima the Impostor or Eldrazi are not just going to be slipped into core sets, so those are fairly quite safe in both foil and non-foil. I’d also look for popular lowish and middle range casual favorites that are standard-rotation-resilient that you can move reasonably quickly if you have reason to fear a reprint. Beyond that, I don’t have any great suggestions at the moment. This is relatively new territory, and insightful traders are going to have to do some digging to insulate themselves from market forces further down the road.

While the end of Legacy as a major format is basically undisputable, the time frame in which that occurs is very much open ended. I highly doubt it will occur in the next year, and it could easily be five years. Given that, I wouldn’t be in a rush to get rid of your stock of Legacy reserves. You have plenty of time to decide what you want to hold onto and what you think could be worth still having assuming demand drops significantly. Don’t put your cards up at fire sale prices, either. There’s enough time to make good trades with those cards. It isn’t like the fall rotation where right around this time of year everyone is suddenly dumping thousands of cards into a market that isn’t all that interested in them. Keep in mind too that price fluctuations can still occur between now and then. Those Diverts you’re sitting on could very easily experience a spike before all is said and done. Also remember that even as the format dwindles down, it’s not going to disappear completely. Vintage still sees play by some number of people, and that format is considerably more exclusive than Legacy is. This discussion isn’t so much to get us out of Legacy completely, but rather reduce our vulnerability to eventual market shifts.

Good trades everyone.

Building a Better EDH

EDH is all about doing big and awesome things. However, sometimes those things are big, but not awesome. In a recent 5-player game, I was running Riku. I untapped with 13ish lands and only one nonland permanent, a Survival of the Fittest. I proceeded to win the game on the spot. (It involved an Avenger of Zendikar, Maelstrom Wanderer, kicked Rite of Replication, and Gaea's Cradle.) That sounds pretty nifty in theory, but a 7 minute turn where the guy who hasn't done anything all game just wins out of the blue isn't an enjoyable experience for anyone. So we set out to change the rules.

In the last few weeks, our play group has had more fun playing EDH than we have in quite a long time. After getting sick of the same games over and over, we decided to create our own ban list. We took the existing official ban list, and just added cards that we felt were making the games overall less fun in a variety of ways. The goal of this new ban list was to make the games more interactive with fresh cards we weren't all sick of seeing. We began by establishing guidelines.

1. Get rid of the cards everybody plays all the time. What exactly do I mean by this? When was the last time you saw a black deck not run Mikaeus the Unhallowed, or a green deck not run Woodfall Primus or Terastadon? This cards are phenomenal in EDH. No question. But every color has several cards that are essentially auto-includes regardless of your general and goal, and then a great deal more that are almost-always-auto-includes. We were getting tired of the same creatures matching up against the same spells over and over and over. We wanted variety. By removing the obvious answers in each category, people had to go looking for new solutions, and they had to make actual decisions about what to use.

2. Reduce stale gamestates. Anyone who plays a good deal of EDH knows how tiring tutors can be. When casting a tutor, there is often a very small number of cards that you repeatedly search for. This means you start seeing the same cards every game, which leads us back to rule 1. (The time it takes to tutor starts to add up as well.) If you play with a 99 card deck and no search effects, you're seeing whatever your deck decides to give you out of that 99. If you're playing a 99 card deck with 10 tutors, you're effectively playing a 30 card deck, because you're just going to get the best choices over and over.

Tutors aren't the only thing that lead to repetitive/stale gamestates though. Heavy graveyard recursion is another. Remember when Primeval Titan was legal? One guy would cast him. Prime Time would die, then he'd get reanimated, then rite of replicationed, then killed, then body doubled, then reanimated, etc etc. I think one game we had something like 26 Prime Time ETB triggers occur. Primeval Titan may be banned, but the same thing was happening with whatever the best creature at the time was. As a group we would deal with a creature, and then spend 6 or 7 turns dealing with it over and over again until a new Best Creature popped up that game.

3. Obnoxious/unwieldy/unfun effects. Time Walk effects. Vorinclex. Myojin of Night's Reach. Insurrection. Rhystic Study. Etc etc. This is more of a personal preference section. These are just cards none of us enjoyed playing with, whether dealing with it or casting it.

You'll notice that "power level" is not a direct guideline. Our goal wasn't to depower the format, but rather, increase the variety of spells that were cast. Depowering may have been a side effect, but there were very few cards that we axed simply because they were too strong.

It's important to remember that the definition of fun is very much subjective. What our group enjoys or dislikes could be quite different from your group. In general, we are seeking interactive, non-combo oriented games with attacking and blocking. Things we tend to dislike are large hasty armies out of nowhere and combos that can kill any number of players (think Triskelion + Mikeaus type of thing).

Now that you can see how we started, I'll go through the current list as of 2/5/2013, and explain our choices a bit.


Green

Skyshroud Claim, Ranger's Path, Hunting Wilds (all the ramp-2's.) - Aaron Forsythe once said that EDH changes the game of Magic so that instead of being about resource management, it's about resource acquisition. Huge amounts of mana go a long way towards helping you win EDH games, and when you have twice as much as the other people at the table, you just become very difficult to deal with very fast. We didn't want to get rid of ALL of green's ramp, just the severe ones. In every EDH game we played there was a subgame of seeing who could ramp the hardest, and we wanted to pull back on it a bit.

Terastadon - In every single green deck ever.

Woodfall Primus - In every single green deck ever. Ever see him in play next to Mikaeus the Unhallowed? Ugh.

Tooth and Nail - Tutor that is in every single green deck.

Eternal Witness - Witness plays right into the "reduce stale gamestates" rule (Chord of Calling for Eternal Witness, get back Chord of Calling). You will notice that Regrowth is not on the list, however. We felt that witness, being a creature, was overall more abusable than Regrowth. We've discussed this one recently, and we may allow it back at some point. We wanted our green players to try Regrowth and things like Deadwood Treefolk first though.

Avenger of Zendikar - In every green deck.

Praetor's Counsel - This started out as someone's pet peeve that we were fine with adding, but we've become convinced that the unlimited hand size is actually very toxic for enjoyable EDH games. I'll discuss it more with Reliquary Tower.

Chord of Calling - Very powerful tutor that is in many green decks and leads to repetitive games. We decided to ban this but allow GSZ. We felt that GSZ was more restrictive in that it could only get green creatures, and wasn't as easy to abuse by regrowing it constantly. So far, we've been happy with the choice.

Survival of the Fittest - Violates both rules #1 & #2.

Seedborn Muse - This pretty handily violates rule #1, and is also a bit of a pet peeve for a member. On its own it's not a big deal, but pair it with something like Capsize and it gets out of hand quickly. Your group may have different experiences.

Vorinclex - Miserable card for everyone.

Mana Reflection - Doubling ALL mana - meaning Sol Ring taps for 4 instead of 2 - has just been too much. This is the type of card that leads to Genesis Wave for 40 on turn 7. That sounds cool, but it's just not a fun to take a game that had an ebb and flow get demolished in one turn because someone suddenly had insane amounts of mana. Mirari's Wake is still legal for the time being.

Sylvan Primoridal - This is actually just a better Primeval Titan, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it officially banned in 2013.


Blue

Chancellor of the Spires - Very repetitive, especially when it targets a Rite of Replication and you can pay the kicker, targeting the Chancellor.

Jin-Gitaxis - Making everyone discard their hands is not fun.

Mystical Tutor - Another tutor. Personal Tutor is still allowed, however. The idea is that while Mystical is obviously fantastic, Personal Tutor won't nearly as prevalent. Nobody has played Personal yet though, so the jury is still out.

Consecrated Sphinx - We went after a lot of the cards that drew you lots of cards very quickly, because they tend to violate rule #2. When you see a lot of cards very quickly, you have a lot of options, and you cast the best card from among them. The best cards tend to be the same ones. Also violates rule #1 pretty handily.

Body Double - Very recursive, especially with Karmic Guide/Reveilark.

Rite of Replication - Take the best creature on the board, and then add 5 more. Also a top priority to be regrown or cast out of graveyards.

Bribery - A tutor that will basically always get the best creature still in any of the decks. Also a bit of a pet peeve card.

Spell Crumple - Hinder is obnoxious, but at least it goes to the graveyard, and with reduced graveyard recursion, it's not as repeatable. But with Spell Crumple being fairly easy to dig up again out of your deck, combined with just how awful having your commander crumpled is, and the reduced creature tutors to get back crumpled commanders, we decided it was just an effect we wanted much of.

Rhystic Study - Did you pay for it? Did you pay for it? Did you pay for it? Did you pay for it? Did you....

Capsize - Capsize that. Capsize that. Capsize that. Untap all my lands with Seedborn Muse. Capsize that Capsize that...

All extra turn effects - A lot of people will likely scoff at this, but honestly, when was the last time you didn't win after taking an extra turn? The effect is absurdly powerful in EDH, and the type of thing that typically results in people getting up to get get a drink and saying "Let me know if I either die or it's my turn."

Diluvian Primoridal - Basically a better Chancellor of the Spires.


Black

Sheoldred - In every black deck ever.

Demonic Tutor (and tutors in general.) - Demonic Tutor is outright banned, and we have a soft limited of 3-5 per deck. Straight tutors like Diabolic and Increasing Ambition should be played in very limited quantities. More restrictive tutors, such as GSZ, Jarad's Orders, etc are allowed in slightly higher quantity. We didn't want to set a hard number on this, so the guiding rule is "don't go overboard."

Pupeteer Clique - Violates #1 and #2.

Mikaeus the Unhallowed - Violates #1 and #2.

Myojin of Night's Reach - Ever have fun after an opponent resolves this? Yeah, me neither.

Geth, Lord of the Vault - Definitely #2, and probably #1 as well.

Sepulchral Primoridal - Far more graveyard recursion than we're comfortable with.


White

Enlightened Tutor - A good bit of #1 and #2. Idyllic Tutor is still allowed, but it's not nearly as pervasive.

Academy Rector - Bumps up against all three guidelines. We decided we were happy not having to see it anymore.

Stonehewer Giant - It was either this or Stoneforge. Ultimately we felt that in the context of EDH, Stonehewer was probably better, especially if he's got Lightning Greaves or Swiftfoot Boots on.

Cathar's Crusade - This is partly a pet peeve card, and partly a preemptive strike. When we looked at our ban list we realized that token strategies had lost almost nothing, and were very strong already. We didn't want them to overpower the new format, so we decided to take one of their better cards.


Red

Insurrection - I hate this card in EDH. I think it leads to the least fun games imaginable. Everyone has developed a good healthy board state with lots of creatures and interesting things happening? Good, I'm now going to cast this spell and win the game on the spot.

Reiterate - See Capsize.


Lands

Reliquary Tower - This is the most important card on the list, to the point that I kind of want to axe it in normal EDH games as well. The issue with Reliquary Tower is its insidious ability to wreck a game. All of those draw effects - Consecrated Sphinx, Rhystic Study, Recurring Insight, etc - are not that terrible on their own, because at the end of your turn, you are left with only seven cards. They may be a great seven cards, but you're still limited. With Tower in play though, your hand quickly reaches 15, 20, 30+ in size. Your turns are minutes long. This is where games get awful. You now will just continue ramping and making land drops for the rest of the game, drawing even more cards, and answering everything everyone else does. The entire rest of the table has to devote all of their resources to stopping one player because they have an endless stream of game-ending threats, until eventually you either exhaust their resources with massive threat #14, or you have enough mana to just plow through their permission and removal. If multiple people end up with huge hands, then it becomes a boring slog until one person finally manages to put together a combo or giant hasty attack to kill the entire table in one turn through permission. Reliquary Tower makes EDH games suck.

Maze of Ith - The only EDH decks without Maze are the ones who don't have $30 to drop on it. It invalidates the best attacker at any given time, and since we're trying to encourage games where people win in the red zone, in is at odds with how we want games to play out. Find another way to deal with attacking threats. Mystifying Maze. Brittle Effigy. Whatever.

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth - This and Cabal Coffers is on the level of Mana Reflection. We had to break it up, and we chose to go with Urborg. All Urborg does alone is fix your mana. Coffers gives you some benefit for playing it if you have enough swamps, but doesn't get truly broken. We wanted people to be able to play Coffers and get some advantage without being too much.

Gaea's Cradle - Same league as Mana Reflection and Urborg.

Volrath's Stronghold - Violates #1 and #2, and is a brutal combo with certain other cards.


Colorless/Artifact

Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre - Violates #1, and mostly just causes a lot of feel-bads. We found that if you untap with this guy or he has haste, we were often uncomfortable attacking with him. Unless someone has a swarm of tokens, that annihilator 4 is a beating, and it only punishes one person at a time. Being indestructible is also very obnoxious and makes him quite difficult to answer in a timely manner, AND he shuffles in to make sure you can cast him again if he gets sacrificed. We do allow Kozilek, however. He's much easier to answer, which we felt was the dividing line between him and Ulamog. He's also the only big (and good) Eldrazi that is legal, so we don't see him too frequently. So far it hasn't been an issue, but I could see others having a different experience.

Artisan of Kozilek - #1 and #2.

It That Betrays - Would have immediately replaced Ulamog and Artisan and just been the next best Eldrazi everyone is playing, plus #2.

Thran Dynamo - #1. As soon as this went, people hand to start making decisions about what type of ramp they wanted. Khalni Gem? Dreamstone Hedron? Now there is actual variety in artifact ramp. Mission Accomplished.

Lightning Greaves - This went, Swiftfoot Boots stayed. Greaves being free was a big reason for it being chosen over Swiftfoot. Having to pay the 1 makes Swift much more fair. It also means that instead of 8 copies of this effect in a 4 player game, it's now only 4 copies, which has gone a long way towards making spot removal effects more playable, which is a good thing.


Multi-Colored

Gisela, Blade of Goldnight - This one is a recent addition. On the one hand, she doesn't immediately do anything to the board and she is completely vulnerable to almost everything. On the other hand, she warps the game state very hard, and it becomes a race to control her. If she just doubled damage that would be fine, because anything that rewards players for hitting each other is good. Halving the damage, however, means that everyone wants to control her so that they don't die to her. Ultimately we didn't like this warping effect. We're aware that there will always be a 'best' creature, but we'd prefer it to be something that didn't have such a drastic effect on player behavior so quickly.


Watch List - These are cards that are currently not banned, but we're watching them in particular to see how they behave in this new territory.

Oracle of Mul Daya

Sylvan Library
Greater Good
Lurking Predators
Doubling Season
Omniscience
Phantasmal Image
Phyrexian Metamorph
Spelljack
Draining Whelk
Spelltwine
Gilded Drake
Liliana Vess
Living Death
Phyrexian Arena
Grave Pact
Stoneforge Mystic
Karmic Guide
Alchemists Refuge
Wurmcoil Engine
Duplicant


Notable Exclusions

Sensei's Divining Top - This is definitely a violator of #1, but the issue is that certain decks really need the help. RW decks, for instance, suffer from having very little in the way of card draw or mana ramp. We are allowing top in order to provide those decks with the ability to keep up with Green decks. We recommend that you use a forgiving Top policy - you can spin it anytime and make your decision while other people are taking their turns, but you have the right to change it depending on how the board changes. This obviously doesn't apply if your decision matters at some point between your turns.

Sol Ring - Bannable on turn 1, but acceptable for the rest of the game. Sol ring is not allowed on turns 1 or 2. After that, it's legal.

Serra Ascendant - 6/6 flying lifelink on turn 1 is incredibly obnoxious. So we modified it to match the DotP oracle text - it's no longer if you have more than 30 life, but if you have 10 more than your starting life.

Mind's Eye - Violator of #1, but non-green/blue decks need the draw badly.

The Red and White Primoridals - While the Green, Blue and Black Primordials are incredibly powerful in a 4 player game (and will lead to recurring themselves frequently, for instance the black one will be reanimating the green one quite a bit,) the Red and White ones are pretty fair. Both are strong effects, but we are welcoming to both. Threatening a few guys (not all of them) and attacking is a good thing, and removal, especially exiling, is something we are happy to get behind.

A lot of combo cards - Nobody in our group runs Arcum Dagsson or Zur or Sharuum or anything really like that. I'm sure there are probably cards we would ban if these commanders were running around in our group, but we just don't know what they are at the moment. Feel free to make additions if these types of combo commanders are giving your group trouble. (Our group consists of Brion Stoutarm, Isperia, Supreme Judge, Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord, Niv Mizzet, the Firemind, Rakdos, Lord of Riots, Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper and Zedruu the Greathearted.)


There may be other cards that are just as bad or worse than some of these, but we simply haven't encountered them. This list is by no means exhaustive, complete, or correct. It's very much in flux, and was instituted only a few weeks ago. I will say that so far we've been very happy with the games it has resulted in, and it's the most fun EDH we've had in quite some time. I highly recommend giving this list to your playgroup and having everyone build decks that follow it. You'll get to see some cool cards you aren't used to playing with, resulting in fresh interactions and board states.