Lets go back to that game, and hypothetically the blue player never played Evacuation. Would that not turn the game into a (positive) memorable game (for most players)? And wouldn't Iona in fact be key for making it a memorable game?

Just thinking of that, I'm not sure "helps make memorable games" should really be anything to consider when talking about a card to be banned or not.

I don't think that Iona being used against her owner is the norm. I would also argue that if creating memorable games (I that they were a negative memory) carries weight when evaluating whether to ban a card, then it stands to reason that creating memorable games should also be a factor. See: Sol Ring.

Would I be frustrated if that happened to me? Sure I would. But the health of the format has to supersede that. Plenty of people spent a fair amount of money to get cards like Primeval Titan or Emrakul, the Aeons Torn while they were legal. I know a guy that bought a foil Gifts Ungiven literally the day before it was banned, and yes he was pissed. People losing money when cards get banned applies to all formats. And so does the principal that the health of the format is more important than the wallets of a percentage of the playerbase. I'm pretty sure this quote will never appear in an article - "We were going to ban TotallyOPCheatyface, since it's clearly overpowered, but then we realized that lots of people had spent money on them, so we decided it was better to let TOPCF continue to ruin the format indefinitely."

In other words, I feel confident in saying this is beyond my opinion. "Players bought those cards" is NOT a factor when determining what should or should not be banned, in any format.

Likewise, the delay in people learning of a ban is simply not a consideration. Whether people know yet does not change whether a card needs to be banned. The message will get out in due time.


Perhaps it was unintentional, but the way your post is structured appears to be labeling me a closed-minded jerk for pointing out the above, which I really think is unfair. I'm not closed minded. I'm not saying what I'm saying because I can't sympathize with people who might potentially lose out or be disappointed by a ban. I'm saying their spending money on the card or having a bad day when they find out the card was banned and they didn't realize it has nothing to do with whether that card is bad for the format. If your doctor tells you "Stop smoking cigarettes right now or you'll die", you have every right to be pissed that you just bought 12 cases of them and it's non-refundable. It doesn't change the reality that they're killing you.

I have a suspicion one or all of these was true:
- The player who played Evacuation was playing blue-white (or more) and felt they could not win or play effectively with Iona on the field naming white.
- The board state was developing such that the blue player felt under threat, and Iona's presence was basically holding the board state hostage. (“Sure I have a Hellkite Tyrant and fifteen artifacts and I'm attacking someone who owns four more, but you can't drop a board wipe because Iona!”)
- Nobody had an exile wipe, especially not the player who played Evacuation, at the time a board wipe was needed. (Destroying Iona would leave it available to return with Reya Dawnbringer, Emeria, the Sky Ruin, and a couple of other cards.)
- The Evacuation player may have considered it was unlikely their colors would be named by a replayed Iona.

There's a lot of hypotheticals we could consider but when it comes down to it here's what actually happened: the game was awful, Iona appeared, table-argument awfulness occurred specifically because of Iona, and then the game was even more awful afterwards than it was before specifically because of Iona.

----

Back on the central topic: I was discussing Expropriate with some others yesterday and one of them described that unlike the other council's dilemma cards it is fairly asymmetrical. Let's put aside for a moment that its caster will almost always vote Time and get at least one extra turn. Instead we'll consider how everyone else votes. Everyone who votes Money always has something bad happen directly to them (they lose their best permanent), but if you're the last voter you can sometimes vote Time on a gamble that nothing bad will happen to you: nothing of yours gets stolen and while your opponent is getting two extra turns those turns might not be used to do anything bad to you specifically (you might consider yourself the least likely target or the least at threat).

Compare that to Capital Punishment where something bad is always going to happen to you, you just have to choose how. Compare that also to Selvala's Stampede where the opponent is always getting more good stuff, you just have to try to figure out the least advantageous way to give them that stuff: e.g. if they've got 2 cards in hand and 2 players have voted Free, you should vote Free too.

So it bears mentioning all the other formats are competitive, i.e. if your playing for a different reason than winning you are "doing it wrong." If I take my vintage deck to a tournament and it is 20 Kavus and a prayer... I am basically just a bye for the opponents.

Why do I bring this up? Because I read a quote by Sheldon that I think is appropriate: "Good in Commander" and "good for Commander" can be two different things. Cards that limit other players' ability to do anything have the greatest delta between good in and good for, but Chris' point is well-taken. I think the format would stand a good chance of being better with a permanent Stranglehold for everyone (but don't panic; there's no plans to move it that way). Blanket tutors like Razaketh and Demonic Tutor carry the biggest negatives, since they mostly lead down the same paths (not always; some folks love to tutor for answers, not combo pieces). Obviously, there's no reasonable decision that gets rid of all of them (or even some) and it'd cause quite a revolt if we tried. We'll continue along the road of sharing our vision that folks think about both the good in and good for sides of the equation."

I'd like to highlight ther eis no "Reasonable decision" that would work without a revolt. That is really the point of all this. Can they ban allt he cards? Sure... is it a good idea nope. Let me explain why I feel that way:

Claiming that Expropriate or Iona are equivalent to cancer seems like a significant streatch. There is a big difference between something that is not good for you (maybe that 3rd cookie assuming you are not diabetic or allergic to the ingredients?) and a cigarette. Cigarettes are not healthy for anyone, known to cause cancer 100% of the time if you smoke enough and even hurt others through second hand smoke. Eating too many Oreos on rare occasion will not be the reason I eventually buy the farm.

Going back to my example of Vintage, if I bring a Shops deck and I play against someone's "used to be standard" Marvel deck it won't be much of a game either. But this often happens in EDH, someone will bring a deck that is far more powerful than the opponents. Are the individual cards at fault or was there a lack of honesty or communication? I believe this is the true issue in EDH, there is a huge range of power levels.

I sold a big chunk of my collection almost a year ago, but before I did that I had about 40 EDH decks, even in my collection there was massive power range. That was intentional as I wanted to be as close to the same (or average) power level as the group. The best games are when everybody can contribute and feel at the end they could have won. The worst games are when someone says "I am totally casual" and then wins on turn 4 (or sooner). If they had been honest I could have pulled out a deck that would be closer in power level and I could have had eariler interaction that could have slowed them down. That would have been a much better game for most if not all involved. Currently I have 4 decks and I am currently skewed more towards the fun catagory than the singleton legacy catagory. I would not be able to kill a table before maybe t8 without serious help. That is the types of games I prefer.

Since we are not playing for prizes, shouldn't we be able to play EVERYTHING? I argue we should be able to play more than we currently are able to, not less. If you have a miserable time playing against Expropriate you would likely have had a miserable time playing against that opponent regardless of what he was playing. Adding another 40 cards to the ban list won't fix the actual problem.

Now I agree there are some people (really everybody) that will misevaluate a card thinking it will be fun to play and then they find out it is not, but if they had gone to a different shop or even the same shop different pod they might not have had such a negative reaction. Some people will try to claim that certain cards are univerally hated (Iona, Deadeye Navigator, etc.) but that simply is not the case. If EVERYBODY hated those cards they would either be banned or simply never be played. Some people like them, some people play with them and the group has a great time. I have had Iona in a few decks and when she showed up she did slow down people for a few turns, then a board wipe happened and it was done. Could someone have reanimated/cloned/stolen her? Of course, but the group was more interested in doing that to something that would further the game rather than slow it down. I do not, nor have I ever owned a Expropriate as I did not open much Conspiract: TtC and I don't play a lot of extra turn cards in EDH.

I have only ran into Expropriate a hand full of times, and it did end the game most of the time, but it was on turn 14 or so when the game kinda needed to end anyways. Once someone powered it out on turn 5, stole some stuff and got 2 turns... but it didn't make much of a difference as the next player wiped the board and then his advantage was really he got 2 land drops (which he missed anyways) and 10 damage split between 2 people.

Now I will be the first to say that I rarely get the chance to play in paper any more, so that will skew my opinions as well. Are people really adding U to their deck to play Expropriate? Is it showing up in every other game and ending the game quickly? I know that $35 for a single card is not in everybody's budget but I doubt people would call it a barrier to entry either. Seems like this is not at all worthy of a ban in my opinion.

Now to address this:



This was not targeted at you at all. I know that we do not always see eye-to-eye, but I personally feel that is a good thing. I do think that people are entrenched in their own opinions and far to often listen to respond rather than listen (or in this case read) to understand. Far more would be gained if everybody was open minded, sadly that just is far to rare these days. I am sorry if feelings were hurt.

I think the bigger trap with Expropriate is when the newer player votes time instead of money because they don't want their permanent stolen, and everyone becomes mad at them when they weren't even the one playing the card.

I think Expropriate would have been more acceptable if it was just Blatant Thievery + Time Walk, because it wouldn't cause this situation and also would have another way to meaningfully interact with it by sacrificing or removing some of the targeted permanents.

I don't think it is ban worthy because it usually gets hated out of tables where it isn't appropriate, but I wouldn't be sad to see it
go.


I would be so on board for this format. The only out-of-game resource I can lose to in-game cards is time, and both tutors and Time Walks are two of the biggest culprits of this. Recently I have started scooping to two or more extra turn/Mindslaver effects, and it has really improved the overall quality of my gaming time. I would rather sit and watch the other game where interesting things are happening than "play" in a game where someone is hogging all the time to themselves.

Did you watch Command Zone response to the Sheldon article? They pretty much agreed 100% about getting the tone right for your meta, however they personally had no problem at all with the kinds of cards that Sheldon highlighted. One big YMMV.

I'm fairly sure that particular variant has existed in the past.

I appreciate that. The problem stems from the fact that you quoted me, and (I know I'm way oversimplifying this) said "That's your opinion" and then the next paragraph ranted about people ignoring opinions that don't match theirs. There was an implied connection.


Technically you can - with permission from your opponents. We don't have a banned list to balance the competitive decks. We have a banned list to try and encourage fun games for the majority of players. By virtue of not being a sanctioned format played in a tournament structure (at least for the most part), that banned list can't truly be enforced by anyone but the players at the table. But go back to Spacemonaut's point - as you worded it, there are cards that are good IN EDH but not FOR EDH. Cards that someone can look at and correctly evaluate its power level (high) without correctly evaluating its general reception (poor). So the question is, if the banned list is meant to guide players away from anti-social, game-ruining stuff, why the heck are cards in this category not on said list? I get that there are some players that like this kind of game, but why do we make the average player, who doesn't put up with such things at random, rather than banning them and making the minority that enjoys such things house-rule it for themselves? To continue with the cigarette references, we ban smoking from public areas, but we don't outlaw it if you want to do it to yourself. Why are the rest of us forced to smell the smoke?


Actually, I was present for this play (not involved in the game, just observing), and sadly, you are wrong on all accounts. The player that cast Evac was playing U/R (Mizzix, specifically). The other involved players were Gath (U/B) and Trostani (G/W), so blue was very likely to be named when the mono-W player got it back (and it was named). There was no especially threatening board state, so no wipe was needed, nor was the Iona holding the board hostage. The caster literally decided to put Iona back in the mono-white player's hand out of apparent sympathy, despite the facts that A: He (the mono-W player) is the kind of player that wants to make it so no one can play the game but him, and B: It was almost assuredly going to be shooting himself (the U/R player) in the foot. It was truly one of the most idiotic moves I have ever witnessed, right up there with casting Rude Awakening entwined with an active Nevinyrral's Disk on the table, except this one managed to screw over not only the idiot but the rest of the table too.

Oh, no. I'm so sorry about that.

I'd feel bad for a person being locked out of the game too, just not bad enough for that particular person to free them. "You don't get to play meaningfully or at all" stax decks reliably make up my worst experiences in EDH.

Second

And then there would be 15 more that people complained about.

That's a non-factor. The amount of complaining won't even go up overall: people complain about Expropriate while it's unbanned, and they'll complain about its ban while it's banned. (But the ban would prompt a wave of complaint, as it always does.)

People complaining about things isn't a reason to ban or unban anything: things that are negatively impacting format health get banned, things that aren't don't.

I don't expect my complaints about Expropriate to lead to a ban, even. I just expect that my reasoning might get considered (however briefly). It might shift things or it might not, but if what I've said shifts things it would be my reasoning not the mere fact I complained that did anything.

Sure. My comment was more geared towards the ambiguous "15 other cards". There was an old article Sheldon did of a 500 card ban list that was in response to a thread someone made wanting Stonehorn Dignitary banned and he jokingly said there were 1000 cards he would ban before SD. His list was largely summed up as everything anyone has ever complained about.

Point is, people will always complain about a card. It's only when a lot of people across a broad demographic of players start complaining that serious attention should be given.

And so we hope this begins now about Expropriate.