I'm sorry if this is a mess of unreadable paragraphs I'm trying to make my arguments clear.
1) Playgroup issuecryogen wrote:
I can't comment on your specific experiences, only my own. I've been playing edh since 2011 in groups that all had players who could afford the best mana bases. Games didn't go as you described except when someone went out of their way to do precisely that. The situation you describe I can only attribute to player mentality, and the ban list can't fix that (at least not without having significant effect on the format overall).
I can only attribute to player mentality, and the ban list can't fix that.
I fundamentally disagree. The player mentality is to win, so if you remove the cards that make it so you win based off of chance god hands and by having 0 social interactions as their deck combos off, then they will make decks that capitalize on their ability to manipulate social interactions. This is exactly why you ban cards to shape a game to be enjoyable. Magic the Gathering bans cards with this philosophy in mind, aiming for "deck diversity".
Nexus of Fate was recently banned also, and not for deck diversity- though the reasons for why it was banned are up for debate (I'm implying why here there, it had an unfun interaction).
Look at Me, I'm the DCI implications aside, they have a philosophy for banning cards. EDH has a philosiphy also, and decks that skirt around the philosophy should have the cards that allow them to skirt the philosophy dealt with.
That vision is predicated on a social contract: a gentleman's agreement which goes beyond these rules to includes a degree of interactivity between players.
2) Player Issuecryogen wrote:
I'm not trying to paint them as "bad people". What I'm saying is that if a group of people get together to play football and two of them decide they're playing full contact and everyone else is playing flag football, you're going to have a bad time. I don't disagree with any of this though.
When I hear a series of descriptive statements that someone is doing something wrong, I tend to think that the normative statement that the person is bad. That is why I parse you describing the people as being bad, because of a series of descriptive statements.
When you play flag foot ball you create rules against having full contact when you play flag football. You do this by banning actions that make the game full contact in the rules.
I feel it's more like people are playing full contact, but most of the players don't really want to play full contact they just can't change the rules themselves because there is an existing body that defines the rules of the game- the people who shows up to play the game is constantly changing and are hosted at different spots so trying to talk to people locally to get them to change their gear doesn't work because new players show up and only have the gear to go full contact.
The full contact people are having their expectations set by the governing body.
cryogen wrote:
Agree completely, which is why I'm in the "ban Sol Ring" camp.
Part of your issue here is that you're in an "Expropriate should be banned" thread but youre using the card to illustrate an issue you're having that has very little to do with the card itself. You could replace ban it and then the exact.same thing would happen with Tooth and Nail, or Narset, or a number of other cards you mentioned and others you didn't. But the issue isn't the actual card that ends the game, it's the other cards that got the player there (on turn 3). So you've left other users the choice of either responding to that, respond to Expropriate, or simply not respond at all.
I'm trying to highlight why people think
Expropriate should be banned.
You go about making arguments about why a card should be banned by relating it to the philosophy of the game and to the other cards in a game. I've also highlighted a number of times and agreed that
Expropriate could be casted turn 4 for better effect, or turn five, but what
I'm trying to high light is that it's not the card alone that people mind, it's the situation that it is being casted in. The turn doesn't really matter- the fact that it can be casted turn 3 with relative reliability is the problem, it doesn't really matter if its turn 4, 5, or 6. It turns the game into a game where counter spells are the only resources that matter and player interaction is kept to a minimum.
I tried to avoid looking at specific play groups, and instead highlighted EDHRec and youtube deck techs to demonstrate how the card is being used. I'm not hearing anyone even using the card in any deck that doesn't ramp hard with broken rocks (besides Jodah).
So yes, Ban the rocks, are ban the cards that become explosive because of the rocks. That's the real heart of the argument of whether Expropriate is a banworthy card because it's the only real context it's being used. I'm trying to breakdown the situations that make it feel like it's against the spirit of the EDH.
1)Ban the cards that allow Expropriate to