It was news to me.

Why is Balance banned in EDH?

Can someone explain the rationale?

i dont know for sure, but my guess is that people thot it would have too damaging an effect in a multiplayer setting...which it prolly could. at the same time tho, its called balance.. and its effect, while annoying to most, does balance the game out a bit. i would like to know what makes balance so unbalanced too..

In the right deck it's a turn 1/2 mind twist for all of your cards or an armageddon for all of your lands. Worst case they'll play a lot of fast artifacts/enchantments into an early balance that clears everyone's hands and lands.

It's the poster child for mana to game-effect ratio being way out of wack. 1 white and 1 colorless for that effect is just too dominant in EDH. Not that I agree, personally I've never thought balance was unbalanced, but that's the kool aid we're serving currently so drink up. When you think about what will totally dominate an early position and secure victory balance is an easy card that can do that. Because its casting cost is beyond cheap (turn 1 play) I "guess" you have to keep it banned to keep the format from degenerating under its influence.

But...personally...I love the symmetry and I'm a big fan of all the badass lockdown pieces in EDH (sundering titan/braids/GAAIV) because in my mind that is a strategy that needs to be viable in EDH and needs to be competitive. Breaking balance is too demanding of the deck and using it in a deck not constructed to break it means the card will actually be decently balanced when played. The one shitty thing is that a zur player (or any white player for that matter) can play out their hand, use balance as a mind twist reset to hand size zero button(and wrath), and then attempt to combo you out with you having minimal opportunity to disrupt them seeing as you have no cards and probably no creatures. So in that sense the highest broken capability of balance is the mind twist into some degenerate combo with your general or cards on board...and for two mana it's always an available option... Anyway I'm probably biased because I want my monowhite deck to compete with the other monocolors and it's definitely the weakest color...friggin' white...friggin' peaceful white... Too many people are afraid of the mind twist aspect to reasonably unban it though.

? really ?

balance = break the game in favor of you at a time of your choice, let alone the number of locks it allows..

I'm not denying its a poweful effect. That's why I play with it.

But is it really worthy of being banned in EDH? Is it really that degenerate?

Yeah its brutal, but its power ranks with other EDH power cards. Everything is a huge beautiful balance.

1W.

That's why.

Who casts Balance on turn 1? Or turn 2?

The problem with balance isn't that its undercosted, its that the nature of the effect is overpowered.

It'd be broken at WWW, it'd be broken at WW4.

And it's not like Upheval where you can float mana and replay everything. If you float mana through a Balance to play things after, you lose the advantage of the forced discard on your opponents.

Very efficient 5-color or U/W decks would be my answer. I don't really see why it's banned either, I think it's a great multiplayer super-wrath effect.

it can be broken in edh... .i had a deck ready just aimed to abuse balance
but then someone pointed out its not allowed

i do want to see it unbanned, but for the fun of it, for 2 mana.. its still broken

I think the problem with Balance is that you could use it to wreck everybody's mana, creatures and hand, then cast your general.

Ok. That's plausable. Anyone seen this in action?

heh I remember the hate I used to get for my land equilibrium / balance deck -- z-orb ftw !

I have no reason to believe it would be banned at 4WW.

at 4WW Balance is too slow and too many Wrath variants far outclass it.

balance is not good enough to ban...it's a group format... you wreck other peoples hands and boards yes but what are you going to do with your wrecked hand and board.... you would have to win faster then anyone else finding an answer... just not good enough in my opinion...unban it it's a FUN card to play with and the point of the format is to have FUN