Today we got our quarterly update to the format's banned list, included three card changes:

Full Text and explanation here.

Personally, I'm pleased with all three of these changes. I've been arguing that LED could be safely unbanned for a while now, and I don't think anyone is crying over the loss of Erayo. I've never had problems with Shahrazad in any of my playgroups, but granting her a unique exception of legality always struck me as unnecessary.

What are everyone else's thoughts?

The admittedly competitive and cutthroat Commander events at Gen Con were absolutely dominated by Erayo, many flipping on turn 1 through 3 for a hard lock or combo win. Very glad to see it go.

Lion's Eye Diamond won't affect 99% of EDH players, because the card's out of reach financially, can't be reprinted and will only rise in value with another format to play it in.

And I'm happy I won't have to kick anyone in the junk over Shaharazad anymore.

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE! THE GAME IS RUINED FOREVER!!!!!!


^ Now that it's been said, all those people have been saved the trouble of posting it over and over again.


I like the changes, especially Erayo's ban. Nothing else on the list affected my EDH playtime but Erayo... and it SUCKED. Glad that it's gone.

So... is Kokusho forever damned to be on the banned list?




I like the other changes though. Great to see LED unbanned and Shahrazad finally get axed.

I would assume that Koko will eventually come off the banned list, but I wouldn't hold your breath for every single quarterly update.

Honestly, I imagine that part of the problem is that, "Unban Kokusho!" has become some sort of rallying cry for the people who constantly and publicly attack Sheldon and the RC. I think there are legitimate reasons to unban him, but the most commonly espoused ones demonstrate a severe lack of understanding towards both the banned list and the format itself.

None of these affect my play group in any way, so I'm all indifferent and stuff.

I approve of the changes since no played erayo or sharazad in my group anyways and it will be interesting to see what LED does. Though they could have put the official DFC ruling in there just so we didnt have to send people to a 10 page thread to find it...

THANK YOU FOR REMOVING SHAHRAZAD.

I asked for that a few times, so thank you to everyone else that agrees with me on this and leant weight towards this decision. Especially all those players who never post in forums online, thank you guys the most!

A thread I made about this. Admittedly it was a long time ago and hence I don't believe it had an impact on the decision, but it shows why I'm happy to see this change.

I am happy with the overall theory behind why all of these changes were made, because I have thankfully never been a full victim of any of them.

LED caused some confusion among certain players of our group and less amongs others as to why it was banned in the first place. Though the infinite damage Comet Storm may now be plausable more easily.

Erayo: while I never had to face up against her, there was a person here in the city that ran her because he is kind of obssssessssed with winning, especially via blue control.

Sharazad: nobody here had the balls to play it. Before I got back into the game, someone once cast this and the table scooped without a second though due to the stupidity of the card and it got banned at pretty much any table here because of the ire it drew.

Give it a rest, man. Whether or not you're right, if I was an RC member, the cost/benefit on unbanning Kokusho would be somewhat influenced by my dread of your I-told-you-so's. If you want to win them over, less is more.

@Kokusho...the fact that the RC occasionally asks for people to test it, and keeps getting the same feedback (usually a combination of "It was broken.", or "As soon as it hit the table, the game became all about it and nothing else.") is pretty damning. But I digress...

@LED- Seems like a fine change, especially in light of the Worldgorger unbanning; what's good for the goose and whatnot. I haven't had to deal with Worldgorger combo yet, so that bodes well. We'll see if this follows suit. FinalLogic has it right as well that the price spike will tend to put it slightly out of reach for many players, which also helps to mitigate it.

@Shahrazad- Again, this works in two different ways, as Geno stated in the breakdown. It does serve to streamline the lists, which is good; to boot, this card is never *ever* mentioned in a positive light anywhere I've played, and the name does nothing but elicit groans. Good call here.

@Erayo- While it hasn't hit locally more than once or twice, I was hit by two of these decks *at the same time* at GenCon. The games were akin to watching paint dry. I chronicled this in my Star City article tomorrow in more detail, but I'm *completely* good with this ban.

--->DJ

@Shahrazad: In some sense, it really had to go, it was only used for griefing people via copies or Hive Mind, etc. Worse, it wasn't even used to win the game; it was sheerly to waste people's time with pointless subgames with half consequences. Is it a waste of time? Yes. It is exactly like playing a real game, without the fun of winning and losing (however marginal that is for some people, though I think all must admit it exists).

@Erayo: "In some sense, it really had to go, it was only used for griefing people." On the other hand, I actually have and play an Erayo deck, and play it against people who have decks of similar power (of which there are many). I want to stress that I didn't use my Erayo deck to grief people, or that tired old line of 'teaching someone a lesson'; I only played it when people asked for my most broken and best, and they would bring it to match. One of the complaints is that she makes for boring games, though this is inherently subjective; I found games with Erayo very exciting, though I usually had adequate 'narrow' answers. If the argument were, "the games are boring because they are linear and stupid because it does the same thing every game and all the decks look the same", I would agree, but a great many commanders fall into that category (I'm looking at you, Zur, Sliver Overlord). I guess it gives me an excuse to build something new for the competitive arenas I play in ("... Zur? Buddy? HOW are you doin'? It's been so long. No I'm not busy Sunday, come by and we'll shoot the shit.") Maybe it'll be fun to get the modern moxen, mana crypt and other busted stuff into other decks.

Erayo wasn't for everyone, but it was definitely for some people, and we mourn the loss.

@Lion's Eye Diamond: Buh. This is exciting. When I first started on these forums (and with this format in general), I created a thread asking about why LED was banned, not even realizing that you could pay for your general with it (link). People seemed to think it was only good for infinite combos (with Auriok Salvagers, even though you still don't have a hand when you have infinite mana), turn 1 Charbelcher activations, or turn 1 WAkromas, even though I only wanted to use it for Madness and reanimator jank. Are those things still possible? Likely? I feel pretty justified months later that it will go in a Dralnu deck I build very soon.

I gotta be honest, I have mixed feelings about this one.

Erayo I think needed the commander ban. I have only played against her once as a general (and beat her at that), but it still struck me as, much like Black Braids, a deeply anti-social general.

Lion's Eye Diamond I am genuinely conflicted about. I own a playset. It is going STRAIGHT into Sharuum, and possibly Scion of the Ur-Dragon...but I am not sure thats a good thing. In most Sharuum builds it is a Black Lotus with literally no downside. "Discard my hand?...Okay, I wanted to cheat Forge into play turn 3 anyway...". It will be less-bad in Scion I imagine though still...I don't know this unbanning makes me a bit nervous. And I am usually in favor of unbanning cards.

The deep irony is that when I played Erayo, they were some of the most social circumstances I've ever played in. It took a fair amount of discussion and recognition to actually play Erayo (because, anything less than full disclosure and agreement that you're playing finely tuned savage decks is pretty much griefing), and the post-game discussion was always interesting, as we discussed our decision trees, why we did X or Y, or whether we had answers or not in the decks.

The rest of the time, people small-talk while slinging cardboard; it's a social game too, but I really felt the depth and connection to the other players. The pretext of competition in a vintage-lite singleton environment was often a better facilitator for social interaction than playing with people in typical commander games where people played the more friendly generals.I don't see it being a big deal for Scion. It doesn't really power him out onto the battlefield because of colour commitments (at least, no more than Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox or even Lotus Petal). The Sharuum point is definitely well taken; that's going to be a (mitigated) shitstorm.

Thumbs up to all three changes.

Unlike many other powerful commanders (Sharuum, Azami), Erayo is both extremely unfun AND extremely linear.

As for the other two changes, they're both things I've argued for in the past, so yay.

Sharazad is, to be frank, a silver bordered card masquerading as a black bordered one. And yeah, it can be fun in VERY specific situations; but so can all the other silver bordered cards. And same as them, you can still use them, you just have to ask your group first.

LED is simply not that broken... It's a pretty good (but not great) combo piece; but unlike most of those combo pieces, it acually DOES have other uses. Allowing expensive commanders to come out sooner (but at a pretty steep cost) is perfectly fair. Yes, it's quite good with Sharuum... but don't pretend they're no disadvantage. You lose your entire hand; if your opponents can deal with whatever you grab, you're at a huge disadvantage.