Inkeyes22 wrote:
spacemonaut wrote:
Shabbaman wrote:
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.
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.
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.
Inkeyes22 wrote:
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.
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.
Inkeyes22 wrote:
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.
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.