I've always tried to make sure that a Time Stretch would be enough to win the game, though I don't often play time stretch.

I have had the opportunity once to use it as a Divination. I was just so far behind with my gameplan despite have mana. So of course my friend to my left casts Wild Ricochet... I've never forgiven him.

Two years later, I really have to ask this:

Has this card ever created memorable moments for anyone here? Is there anybody else who thinks this card should've been banned ages ago? Because in all the games I participated where Expropriate was cast, one of these scenarios happened:

1. The entire table protests and concedes in response.
2. Someone doesn't understand how powerful extra turns are, votes time to avoid their permanents from being stolen, then an argument ensues after everyone gets tired of waiting >10 minutes for the owner to finish the turn.
3. The table actually lets the spell resolve, and the owner wins the game immediately or a couple turns later.

(Ok there was actually one game, just one, where I witnessed the owner actually lost after casting Expropriate. It was glorious to watch. I only wished it had been me defeating him)

What is everyone's opinion about the card now? Or am I alone in wishing this card was banned from existence?

Expropriate falls into the same category as Craterhoof Behemoth or Omniscience; you pay a bunch of mana and you win the game. Yeah it's annoying, but that doesn't make it ban-worthy (or put another way, if it did make it ban-worthy, the banlist would have to grow by 15 or more cards that are just as bad)

I don't see it that much, but the usual way it goes is the caster grabs all of the generals.

I think something like T&N into craterhoof tends to provide a warm nostalgic glow as you shuffle up, but Expropriate is never welcome.

Far from banable.

This is one of those cards that cost a lot of mana and ends the game. Granted this can be powered out on turn 4 or whatever, but then your grabbing some pretty tame permanents or your taking several extra turns with a bunch of mana rocks only.

Now I know that my "Ban Worthy" Threshold is much higher than everybody else, but come on... you pay 18 million mana and you don't win or significantly affect the board?

I'd welcome Expropriate and 15 or more cards that are just as bad getting banned.

But but but... the meaningful vote? The will of the people?



I can appreciate a combo of two random cards (none of which are the general) or more (especially if including the general in convoluted combos), but I don't like these big splashy spells as an end of a game.This card makes you want to play counters, and well, more than the occasional counter doesn't tickle my casual senses. Basically this means "don't be a douche, don't play it more than once".

That's why I wouldn't mind seeing it and some others banned. If it's enough of a problem you shouldn't do it more than once, well, let's help the crowd out with that: ban it. Then you definitely won't see it played more than once (zero is less than that).

There's some cards which push against the barrier of format power level and which are pushing into the realm of antisocial behaviour. They are frequently bogeymen and get addressed by social pressure and shame. As a casual for-fun format, I'd prefer the banlist take the burden of addressing them.

If they're unbanned they exist as social traps: someone walks into them by putting them in their deck because they seem fun/good, and now they cop a hefty dose of shame and hate for it.

"You can play this card. But don't. But you can if you want. But you're not allowed to do it twice. But you can build with it. But you must change your deck right after to remove the card or get another deck out if you can't. But this is a fun format so you can use the card if it's fun for you. But you must stop using it because it's not fun for others ever. But you can still put it in a deck and use that deck. But you shouldn't because others won't like you for it."

(In before "you can say the same about combos": sure, but cards that in and of themselves are antisocial and/or unfun even on their own are an easy ban target. The banlist doesn't involve combos, it does involve cards, it could ban these cards.)

I mean even I've run into it just mentioning the idea of using such a card before I knew it was so bad, and wow that did not feel good when I bumped into that.

While I see your position, I believe the opposite is true. By having this banned and not that, you have basically two types of players: (1) Those that say if is not banned it is fair game, and (2) those that say if X is banned and Y is close you shouldn't play Y either. Granted you have new players that play Y because they do not know of the social implications, but they will shortly join one of those two camps.

If we had a ban list that only has the absolute worst offenders we have two options, we can house-ban or we can accept that players newer to our group will play cards that we do not like. When they do that I would prefer that they end the game, rather than drag it out more, but that is my personal bias. The other option, and which I feel is far worse, is we stop playing with that person. I feel this should only be done on extreme circumstance. I rarely play paper magic these days, so when I do get an opportunity I want to have fun. Playing against a Stax deck without a reasonable win condition is not fun for me, others hate mono-U counters or other types of decks, and so I jump into a game at the lgs and it turns into something like that I will bow out of the game and try to catch something else.

Now one of the reasons I am so anti-ban list is because we are playing for fun, there is no other reward in a true EDH game. If you think that mono-U control or Stax is fun, then play it, but if I am not having fun I won't be wasting my very limited time with you. I have done the "Let's play for second" and the "Focus fire the Jerk who plays that card I hate" and ultimately those are not fun for me either. I would say some people enjoy the Arch-Enemy without the extra deck, and that is fine, but I won't be there. If the person lies and says my deck isn't Stax anymore and is proven false that will be the last time I play with them. I am lucky that there are 5 lgs within 45 minutes of me. I have no qualms about going to a different shop even if the envirnment is toxic.

We already have that though: people will always see things close to the ban list as things they should avoid.

But there are a lot of things nowhere near any banned cards that are unbanned and treated as bogeymen or antisocial cards: Vorinclex, Consecrated Sphinx, Iona to name some common ones. Thus, the social trap.

Perhaps if the ban list drew its borders more diligently around bogeymen and antisocial cards we wouldn't need to be so vigilant in calling out similar things as bad, because the individual cards to avoid will be banned.


Fun is the reason why we ban the unfun cards. We can't stop all the toxicity, but we can stop some of the obvious cases that start and end at "this card creates toxicity." If these cards really are pretty much always awful, surely it's better for everyone to ban them: nobody has to wander in and discover they built their deck with unfun cards that are near-universally despised, nobody has to face those cards in opposition, nobody has to beat anyone else with the shame-bat for card choice alone or be beaten by the shame-bat.


Indeed you are. I live in London and there are two shops within about two hours of my home. (Just two! In one of the most populated cities in the world! Admittedly high real estate prices is a good part of why.) If I move back to my hometown in Australia, same again.

I guess I should have included another point in my previous post, if I just spent $12 on Vorinclex (which is one of my least favorite cards), and am told that it sucks and to switch it out, I am going to be pretty sad. If I get ZERO games with it I will be pretty upset. Now if I go to a lgs and buy the Vorinclex and the cashier does not mention that it is an anti-social EDH card and it also does not get played in anything else... well I will be pretty upset at that shop. If I buy online then I probably got a better deal and I just don't expect that same level of customer service.

I think people should be able to play with the cards they bought/traded for/opened in a casual envornment. I am not a masochist and so I won't keep repeating those experience though. Now I agree to some extent that banning cards may raise the Expected Value of Fun (EVF) of a game, but since this is a very subjective matter to begin with it is hard to quantify the EVF when you factor in the person that quits EDH after game one when he is villified because he thought [card]Iona, Shield of Emeria[/card] was cool, spent the $10 for her and probably another $20-50 for mono-W Angels Tribal deck. They just spent a non-zero amount to build what they thought would be fun, but nope... they get at best dirty looks and at worst several "Nope, not playing with you"s. It really doesn't matter who is blamed for that, but we just lost a player. If this happens often (which it likely does) we are all playing fewer games than we could potentially. Would banning Iona fix it? Maybe, but probably not.

Yes. Banning Iona would fix the player being lost, because they would not have bought, played, and been villainised for having played Iona (or Vorinclex).

This thing where I'm upset for being told I can't play a card and other players are upset if I can, is the exact social traps scenario I initially highlighted and which Expropriate fits into. It's a staple bad experience of the format. If the card is really that bad that it regularly leads to this experience, we can reduce the number of these experiences by banning it.

A few people will be upset if Iona gets banned just after they bought it, but that's never a reason not to ban a card because there will never be a time nobody bought that card last week. A lot of people bought Prophet of Kruphix and a Simic deck the week before it was banned too.

I feel that a for-fun game's rules should minimise opportunities for players to get upset at each other, such as by filtering out elements likely to do that.

Gotta rub salt in that wound, huh? I had just gotten the promo Prophets less than a week before that unwarrented ban.

I am sorry to hear that.

Funny story, I've been on the outs with the format for a month or so now because I'm just sick of having things like this pop up all the time. The one week I decide to go back I end up sitting down (mostly out of necessity and not out of actual desire to play with this first person) with "I am a literal Nazi" eight and a half tails stax, myself, another blue deck, and a G/W deck. About halfway through the game we're mostly locked out by mono white since he has 30 mana as is typical until I pull out Bribery and target the Iona in hitler's deck I knew he had and then reanimated his Linvala to shut off eight and a half at which point the load angry hypocritical groaning from stax player begins even though he admits he did it to himself.

Then the other blue player decides, "hey, you know what I should do right now? CAST EVACUATION!!" because reasons... and gives the white player back iona and we promptly spend the rest of our game with our thumbs up our asses. Even the G/W player who had been locked out by me, was pissed at him for making such a stupid play because it basically handed the game to the fuhrer and we all ended up pissed at each other for the next 30 minutes, exactly what I was trying NOT to have happen by shutting out the stax player.

You know what would have fixed 90% of that game and all of the other past games I've had like it? A good old rousing round of actually banning cards for once.