Why Aren't You Playing Sol Ring?
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- Опубликовано: 26 май 2024
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In today's video I want to talk about why you need to stop cutting Sol Ring for stupid reasons.
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#mtg #commander #edh 
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The only reason u wouldnt use it is if most of ur deck is colored, if u have such powerful mana ramp that it isnt needed and mabey in some hyper aggressive aggro deck where the likely hood of u drawing it before peaking out is low or lowwer and ur not as concerned about mana anyway so elf aggro, red humans or goblin tribal likely doesnt benifit
Sol Ring actually isn't in every precon. There was one that didn't have it, I think it was the DMU Painbow deck if I remember right.
With enough filterlands you can cast jodah turn 3 with only sol ring as ramp if that isnt reason enough to run it i dont know what is.
I intentionally don't play it out of spite. But I can't think of a single deck where I wouldn't play it.
I'm the opposite and always play it out of spite! If the RC isn't gonna ban the card and rely on this new trend that people aren't playing sol ring to balance their groups, I'm not gonna play into it.
I don't play it and I play pithing needle instead lol
Pithing needle doesn't work on sol ring
@@williamdrum9899 it's for annoying commanders
Sol Ring does not go in decks that have extremely low curves or are very color-intensive (so the colorless mana is not usable) or in creature strategies that want to do nothing but play creatures for the first three turns of a game. My Gallia satyrs deck is the perfect example of this - I need to play as many cheap satyrs as possible to start triggering Gallia, who herself costs RG, so I ended up cutting Sol Ring. That said, most decks do not fit these categories and can benefit greatly from fast mana that is so fast it is a ritual :p
I don't run it simply because I don't want to.
The Best reason
Same. My group of friends all decided we do not want to play it.
Gay.
Respect.
based
Love it, me too.
I don't play sol ring in my commander, mainly because I'm kinda bored of the same 30 staples being in basically every deck I want to build.
Same and everyone in my regular pod feels the same, we also rule 0'ed fast mana unless we play "strong efficient"
I see this sentiment often, but I honestly can't even think of 10 cards that I would consider auto includes unless we consider basics.
@@the_old_crimge74 depends on the color but on the top of my head i can tell you that One ring, sword of feast and famine, the great henge, rhystic study, esper sentinel, dockside extortionist are 100% an upgrade in any deck that doesn't run them
We did the same thing and rule 0 out and just play efficiently
@bigshun4301 I can agree on the ring, but sword, and great henge depend entirely on the deck (Great henge not being good in my etb deck because nothing has more than 3 power for example). And dockside depends on your meta, at my lgs it rarely does more than get one or two treasures, but I admit it often should get more. Rhystic and esper are obviously good cards and would have been on my auto include list
There is actually ONE preconstructed Commander deck that does not have the Sol Ring in it - the "Painbow" deck from Dominaria United didn't have one, presumably because the colorless mana was less valuable in a five-colour strategy.
Ironic because planeswalker commander are the easiest to get rid of so you're more than likely gonna be replaying the Commander at least one more time
@@jdsmall13 i play the Jenson Catharlion (alt commander of that deck.) i have about 15 cards that have at least 1 generic mana. there is like 25 WUBRG cards in the deck. i don't really like sol ring in the deck :)
Indeed, and a few payoffs (Unite The Coalition, Primeval Spawn, etc.) and many of the green ramp spells in that deck could be ramped into with colorless. Just interesting that they felt the precon deck would be fine without it!
I ended up cutting sol ring from my sliver deck for this reason. Added a 5 colour land in it's place instead
@@paulknight9181 Fair enough! Interestingly, the "Sliver Swarm" precon from Commander Masters does use a Sol Ring - I presume despite being five-colour, it uses a lot of monocolour cards. (It should be noted though that some peeps think the manabase in that deck is ass, but that's more about the lands).
The main reason, which I've heard from salubrious snail, is just, these cards that are bonkers insane but not expensive, really make your deck so very inconsistently powerful, and possibly too powerful for your pod when you have them, and just fine otherwise, or a worse case, your deck doesn't perform well enough without these cards but it's still too strong with them. It's already difficult to find a balance in your deck but when one or two cards are just so extremely more powerful than the rest of your deck, it's a bit of a nightmare. (That said, my pod just kinda agreed that yeah whatever sol ring is cheap so there's no reason we shouldn't all play it, so take all of this with a grain of salt)
Man I looooooooove salubrious snail, the videos are so well thought through
@@Bob-np2uc I don't like all his perspectives but the inconsistent power one is hugely relevant
I play his Radha deck, and it doesn't run sol ring because it can't help cast Radha faster, and cascading into it would be a waste 99% of the time.
I always like to think of aggro as a balancing aspect of our play group. If someone rocks up with a mana crypt or sol lands then you bet the rest of the group is gonna pile removal on top of that player.
PleasantKenobi: Why is your deck not playing Sol Ring?
Me: I am playing Pauper Commander... please don't be mad.
Different format so not really a problem edhrec only is for commander decks not for pauper commander
I got my ass kicked by an almost pauper commander last time I played lol.
The only rare card I saw this guy playing was the one that triples damage dealt. I Then got bolted for 9 damage. hahaha
In pauper edh sol cost 4 mana it's called Sissay's Ring. It is decent in non-green decks
I have decks that don't run sol ring simply because I like to put fun restrictions around my deck building such as "every card has blood on it" or "no activated abilities"
I am forever calling the Parun version of Mizzet
“Pip Mizzet, Parun.”
Our playgroup's been purposely avoiding Sol Ring for the past year and a half (along with any/all fast mana) and we've found it to be an overwhelmingly net positive for "pod fun" for our casual games. We've found in our setting that a player who plays a Sol Ring turn 1-3 usually takes off in such a lead that it often becomes a game of archenemy super early. For some, that's fine and more power to ya but our playgroup of 20+ friends has been having an absolute blast without fast mana for casual games (cEDH is a completely different conversation).
Though it's true nearly any deck will benefit from having a Sol Ring, as will they from nearly any net positive fast mana artifacts, avoiding certain pieces of power has been an enjoyable experience for us! ❤
Strong agree and +1.
In my group which is around 7 people and we banned it, along with basically all CEDH-tier gigapowerstaples. The game is straight-up better. And nobody says they want to play Time Vault, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, or any other card in that style.
MtG is soooo much better without absurdly overpowered design failures, it's not even comparable how boring and unfun the "only restricted by the RC rules" Commander is, once I experienced the pure pleasure of properly restricted Commander.
Yeah our playgroup has banned basically all fast mana, Sol Ring included.
Sol Ring is fun when you get the turn 1 Sol Ring, it sucks when anyone else does it. The game gets lopsided as hell, it would be banned if it hadn't been allowed to become an iconic part of the format (because it was junk due to being banned in every other format and thus all the original players had one).
The only reason I could think of before this video was if you had a deck with a programmed cascade win. If you want to be able to cascade into living end, you might not be able to run sol ring.
Yeah, decks that rely heavily on Cascade and Discover effects have to really weigh the costs of Cascading into that Sol Ring when you're trying to hit one of your free effects like Wheel of Fate. I had a First Sliver deck I wound up removing Sol Ring from for that reason.
I have a glass cannon cascade deck that when starting casting is a guarantee kill on the table, assuming no interaction. Endless going through cascade/discover
this is the only deck I have without it. It's a silly cascade deck that has a manadork commander and no cards that cost 3 or less
I started building my decks without Sol Ring a couple years ago as a challenge to myself. I basically replaced it with Coveted Jewel, and although they have nearly nothing in common, the jewel is one of the most fun cards every time it hits the table.
This video misses a lot of key points and overlooks a lot of important details of the arguments that it does cover.
I want to start by going over cascade - one of the arguments that for whatever reason was entirely overlooked. In a lot of cascade decks having a sol ring in the 99 is antithetical to the game plan as there is a high chance of hitting low-cost ramp like sol ring late game that overall is unimpactful. In a lot of cases it's more of a game-feel thing than a power level thing but in any case it really sucks to hit a card like sol ring off of a large cascade. Salubrious snail has a good video talking about their Radha, heir to Keld deck and why it doesn't run any low-cost ramp for this exact reason - it has a lot of high cost cascade cards and low-cost ramp in the command zone.
I'm not going to talk about deck restrictions seeing as we agree on that. Obviously a deck that's running a companion that prevents sol ring from being used won't run sol ring.
The second argument you go over in the video is the idea that sol ring won't pay for spells that have a high number of coloured pips in the mana cost. I get where you're coming from, and I think we fundamentally do agree on this point, but I think that opening by talking about Niv-Mizzet, Parun (a deck that can easily run a huge amount of spells that have no generic mana cost) was a misstep. The argument that sol ring is less efficient in 5 colour decks is a bad one, however if a deck is comprised of primarily low cost spells that have mana restrictions then sol ring starts to be a dead card more often than not.
One last thing about the last point I thought was odd too, in the video you state that sol ring is useful for paying for commander tax and that point genuinely confused me. If you're considering cutting sol ring for one reason or another it is going to be because the other cards in the 99 don't synergise well with it. It paying for commander tax is not a particularly strong argument assuming that that is sol ring's only job. Again, I don't disagree that most of these types of arguments are pretty weak, just that the specific rebuttals you made in the video wouldn't actually be very convincing.
Again, not going to go over stax as we agree there.
The next (and in my opinion most interesting) point is power-level. In case this comment wasn't long enough already, I have a lot to say about this lmao.
Specifically I want to talk about power-level in relation to deck consistency. The thing is, as I'm sure you're aware, power-level is bollocks. You can't just look at a decklist and given the cards included come up with a power level. This is for a lot of reasons, the main ones being that:
1. Attempting to go off of "vibes" can be useful, but is highly subjective (everyone's deck is a 7, etc. etc. so on and so forth). This means that talking about power-level gets tricky unless you're talking to someone you know and trust the opinions of.
2. Attempting to give each card a rating and judging power level based on that. Most people don't go through and assign each card a value, so maybe it's better to talk about power-level as a solely vibes based thing, but in any case when you're looking at a decklist and see cards like torment of hailfire, or craterhoof, you're more likely to think "this is a powerful deck. if it plays [insert flashy finisher] it can win on the spot" and yeah, it probably can, *but how often is it actually going to do that*.
A trap a lot of new players fall into when making upgrades is slamming a craterhoof into their clunky midrange deck. This doesn't seem that bad on the surface but it can do irreparable damage to how your deck is perceived. I'm going to dick ride salubrious snail a little more here as his take on deck consistency changed how I view the power-levels of decks.
In essence by putting a high power card into the 99 without any way of consistently tutoring for it you're changing how your opponents think of your deck. You might only draw that card 1/4 games, meaning that 3/4 games your deck could just be doing janky midrange things, but 1/4 games you completely pop off. Your opponents aren't going to be thinking of these fractions. They're going to be thinking "that guys deck popped the fuck off earlier. I should focus them now before the do scary things".
Ultimately this matters less with sol ring but it's definitely something to consider. Sol ring draws a lot of ire and, as much as most players would disavow the idea, edh players hold grudges. If I'm playing my low power jund creatures deck that just wants to swing in with haste-y creatures and make treasures then I'm not going to run sol ring given the warping effect it'll have on my early turns. I don't want my opponents thinking my deck is more powerful than it really is.
You did talk about how commander is somewhat self-balancing but I think that you definitely could have talked about inconsistency more as it's what most players (or, me at least) think of when they think sol ring. Fast mana that's generally accepted but will warp your early turns and therefore your opponents opinions of your deck.
The only time I don't put Sol Ring in a deck is when I can't be arsed to buy another copy
I built Etali the primal hunger, and slammed every good ramp spell, crafted the land base to have Levert dual typed land to get fetched by nature's lore and wood elves and the like, but every copy effect in the deck. Went to a game, stole a trinket mage off the the top... searched the deck 3 times... added the basic land typed artifact land because I forgot sol ring. Haven't been bothered to add one in.
I have exactly one deck where I chose not to play Sol Ring outside of the social contract. A War Doctor deck that is trying to combo off with 2 cost cascades or 1 cost discovers. The deck runs no cards of 1 mana so that the War Doctor guaranteed sees the entire deck get exiled one by one. It's a meme
Same! There are also Maelstrom Wanderer and Pantlaza decks that do basically the same thing, so no Sol Ring there as well
Still, even when not winning, a turn 1 Sol Ring can really skew the power level of your deck, creating a level of pressure and urgency not every player enjoy. I don't play it because I wanna preserve that casual experience.
Exactly , fast mana doesnt synergize with true casual magic. especialy if youre playing with less than 4 players like I often do
Also command zone has soft banned it from opening hands. If you look at their behind the scenes they say if you mulligan and have sol ring in that hand you either bottom it or mulligan again
@@ElmoTheRedhuh. That's actually wild.
Yeah. Even when the player that had a Sol Ring opener doesn't win, I don't think the game experience was made any better for anyone by the presence of that card. I don't particularly like those Arch Enemy situations. Those games usually end up with at least one person feeling bitter.
And also, it warps the perception of decks. Someone might be lucky and draw sol ring early often, which can hide the fact that their deck is actually pretty inconsistent, and in turn can create non-games when that player does not get graced with their sol ring.
I really dispute generalizing the what the command zone found re: sol ring turn 1. I think that's true in an environment with highly knowledgeable and skilled players, but I can tell you as someone who plays primarily with kitchen table players and at fnm, that most people do not in fact regard turn 1 sol ring as a significant threat. Most people do not believe me when I say it is as powerful or more powerful than many power 9 pieces. I have watched so many people, myself included, run away with games after playing sol ring on turn 1.
I agree, it's gonna be very meta dependent. Metas that aren't very good at playing interaction in general, will struggle more against a t1 sol ring
oh, ONLY 84 percent of decks are playing sol ring? crazy, i didnt know we had such a problem on our hands.
I don't play it in any "lands matter" decks because a land is going to be more valuable than a sol ring.
I also theorycrafted an Aragorn Uniter deck where I left it out because I was more concerned about fixing my color mana for all my multi-color, multi-pip cards that I'm trying to cast to get absurd value off of Aragorn.
That is exactly what I have with my Aragorn, the Uniter deck. I just checked and only 18 spells have colorless mana in their costs and most of them are just a single generic. Sol Ring is powerful, but not when you consistently go several turns in a row without having anything to pay for it with.
In that deck I think borderposts would be better since they count as 2 color spells
I play tatyova. Playing her turn 2 is pretty powerfull and gives enough value.
Even in lands matter sol ring is excellent. It casts the stuff that cares about lands. If there are vert very few generic costs in your deck, maybe.
@eacy7deacy if I play a sol Ring, I get fast mana, if I play a land, I get several landfall triggers. I'm probably also playing cards that get me multiple lands a turn.
The reason ii don't play sol ring in every deck, is because I try not to play staples. Commander is the format of "weird dumb cards that weren't designed to interact with each other". I'm tired of the samesy that EDH has become. cEDH is really the only place I regularly play sol ring
I hear you. You're loud and clear. Still never going to play it outside my cEDH decks. I hate super fast acceleration so I'll never play it.
My favorite thing with sol ring opening hand is... Turn 1 tapped myriad landscape. Turn 2 untap land to sol ring into sacrificing myriad landscape. That's my dream opening hand in every game. Just so much fun and isn't a turn one sol ring.
I prefer Krosan Verge to Myriad Landscape where I can use it.
@@kevinroberts3344 that would be good as well. I just don't play any WG decks though.
I actually havemore decks without Sol Ring than I do with, but it wasnt really intentional.
1 is because each card must start with the letter "M"
1 is because each non-land must be an enchantment.
1 is because each non-land must be mana value 2.
My friends and I choice different letters, card types, and mana values and built decks around them. I also have 2 Pauper EDH Decks so out of my 8 decks, 5 dont have Sol Ring.
My only deck that doesn't run Sol Ring is Niv-Mizzet, Supreme. Because most of the deck is cards that are 2 different colored pips and at most one generic mana and the majority is reactive. There's ~20 cards in the whole deck that I could cast with sol ring to begin with making it highly unlikely I could use it every or even just most turns.
ya, same here, i have a spell stinger deck that plays mostly single pips
It's amusing that there are 2 and a half companions that can't run Sol Ring: Keruga, the Macrosage (mana value is too low), Gyruda, Doom of Depths (mana value is odd), and Umori, the Collector (unless everything is an artifact, but not many options for that include golgari colors).
EDIT: I've checked and there are only 5 legal commanders that allow Sol Ring with Umori the Collector:
Codie, Vociferous Codex
Ramos, Dragon Engine
Reaper King
The Master, Transcendent
Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch
Of those, I think Codie and Ramos are unlikely to build a deck in a way that allows it. Reaper King and Urtet are the most likely to want Umori and have Sol Ring.
I've had an itch to build a Companion+Partner deck (aka "Oh Look, I have 3 Commanders lol") and Gyruda very much hits this. If the weirdo deck restriction bars Sol Ring, then don't use it. That said, Sol Talisman is kosher in Gyruda if a bit worse on average
I own exactly One deck that doesn't have a sol ring. It's basically pointless in Animar. It doesn't help push out animar any earlier, unless I also have a 2 mana rock that produces colored mana. I run with a pretty casual pod, so not every one has a way to deal with animar off the bat, and those two forms of protection mean even the heavily interactive players at the table have a harder time dealing with him. He doesn't leave the board often once he hits, and even if the board gets wiped once or twice, I will, courtesy of the land ramp thats baked into the deck, almost never not have the mana necessary to cast him again, and if he dies more than that, chances are good I will have more than enough mana to hard cast whatever I need. In theory yes, having the extra mana helps power other creatures out, but there is exactly two creatures in the deck I'd want to play BEFORE animar, and by the time I get rolling my deck will be curving out enough that two extra colorless mana is entirely useless. Animar does not need Sol Ring: As long as you can cast two creatures after he comes down, he himself is better than any sol ring could be.
You mention Keruga, but there's also Gyruda and Umori as companions that shut you out of Sol Ring
My one deck that didn't run Sol Ring was my Sarulf the Realm Eater deck. His ability has me remove all his 1/1 counters and then exile everything on the board with CMC less than or equal to those counters - which means he'll always eat sol ring whenever he activates. Theoretically Sol Ring would still give me good short-term acceleration... but its a green/black deck. I got a lot of rituals and land ramp which keep me afloat, so I'm generally not playing ANY permanents unless they're the kind with a high CMC and big discount they apply to themselves.
I don’t play sol ring the same reason why I don’t jam Mana Crypt in all of my decks. It’s fast mana and leads to unfun game experiences where one person at a table becomes the threat and the whole table spent their entire games trying to prevent that person from winning in an absurd manner.
the problem with turn one sol ring in commander is the broader play patterns it creates not necessarily whether or not it can be dealt with in any individual game. my playgroup has been discussing this a lot lately and its not that sol ring gives one player an advantage that can then be checked by the other three players that becomes a problem its that it creates this situation in the first place. that it constantly and consistently creates this game state that needs to be dealt with in this way and it skews how the games play out every single time. its unusual we don't have at least one game every time we play with a turn one sol ring and it always creates the same situation.
I don't like playing sol ring cause I don't like fast mana in casual commander. Sol Ring especially since it would often be the only source of fast mana in the deck, so the games where you draw it turn one make for weird games where one deck pops off and the rest don't. It would make literally every single one of my decks better though if I played it.
as long as sol ring is legal, commander is a 99 card format
98 with arcane signet
@@moedark4390 97 with command tower
97 with the one ring
96 with command tower
@@adoo765 65 with basic lands
I have 6 decks and only one don't contain Sol-ring. It's Animar. Reason one: I want to cast Animar as soon as possible, but sol-ring on turn 1 does nothing for this couse. Animar have some in-built protection, so he dies not really often. Reason two: Animar discounts all generic costs, so you actually don't need any colorless mana, but you need a ton of colored. Sorry, for poor English.
I used to run Animar without sol ring. Outside of the opening hand where it didn't always help, it was always a dead draw and would kill the momentum of the deck. It got cut in one of the earlier versions of the deck and I never found myself wishing I had it.
I could see Derevi not using it, but it'd be probably useful if you did, just for the other spells.
Anyway, I usually don't run it when I forget to put it in the deck. This is often quickly fixed.
ima timmy, all I have is nukes and I must play them all.
Jesse on Shuffle up & Play sandbagged a sol ring & got it wheeled out of her hand before her turn 2, lol.
*Thanks for the Content!*
I started playing Magic around Invasion Block, and most of my current playgroup started during the lock downs and are playing upgraded precons.
At the moment i have around 15 EDH decks, to make sure that the decks feel unique to play for me, and to off-balance my own card-pool I've build up over the last 20+ years, i only play sol ring if the deck has some artifact synergy, and try to tune the ramp package to what the deck is trying to do. For instance my Selesnia token deck only plays ramp cards that produce treasures, since they go hard with token doublers and there for add to the theme of the deck.
8:18 This argument applies equally to almost single card on the commander banlist. Revealing Lutri as your companion would encourage people ganging up on you in the exact same way.
This is a drastic increase in editing quality, whatever you did to this video, keep it up man!
One deck that doesnt want it is my favorite deck, and in my opinion one of best commanders ever- Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord. 2 reasons- (although there are a few more) *It wants creatures in the graveyard, not artifacts (the only artifact powerful enought to make it in is ofcorse, Mesmeric Orb) 2nd reason *it plays plenty of mana dorks that more than fill the shoes of not having s-ring, many tap for much more than 1 mana, and only cost 1-2 mana more. *3rd Jarad is one of the commanders he mentioned with full color pips GGBB, its not a deal breaker but is a contributing factor. Ive foiled out and fine tuned this deck for years, played with and w/o sol ring, and it just shouldnt play it. Yes, sometimes its helpful, but rarely, and not worth how far it brings down the overall synergy, or ability to sometimes play Collector Ouphe when I want to get serious. Any other decks qualify?
I love an early Vandalblast when an opponent shits out their sol rings and rocks in the first couple of turns. Lots of delicious sodium.
In my playgroup, we recently decided to try not running sol ring in our budget-event pods for a while.
So far, I think it's led to more fun games.
Shoutout to the Inferi shirt! One of the best band out there! :D
Commander is fun because of the alure of 100 singleton cards, and then you become enfranchised and realise its actually 60 card singleton, and then you go deeper down the iceberg and realize its really only 30 card singleton because of all the staples until suddenly you realize that only playing 15-25 actually unique cards and that makes you say f the staples im going jank
Sometimes my playgroup says "hey let's build some decks with restrictions" just to some different interactions on the table, and typically "no sol ring" pops up a bit
locally we have been doing budget restricted commander decks in competitive seasons that run for 12 weeks. we are about to begin season four and have banned sol ring for it, and our twelve members are really happy with the decision. off-season playtesting has been really good for everyone and we will likely continue to ban sol ring for future seasons where were not using a preconstructed commander deck.
Good choice.
The only reason I would really like to see Sol Ring banned is for a reason you mentioned - it's in every pre-con and in 84% of decks. If everyone is playing that card in every deck, then it's reducing the available spaces in everyone's deck for a more fun and interesting card. If everyone is playing the same staples, then we're all not playing batshit cards that make the game fun and interesting! I suppose it should be treated more like a cedh piece of crypt / vault.
I ended up cutting sol ring from my kethis deck because the deck never really struggled to get the generic mana to cast spells, and it struggled much more with paying colored mana costs, particularly in the early game where I want WBG as soon as possible and often be able to drop any double pip on the next turn to be able to drop stuff like Liesa, Forgotten Archangel, Storrev, Devkarin Lich, and the like, or to double cast 3 drops like Kunoros and Grismold. I found stuff like Avacyn's Pilgrim or Elves of Deep Shadow helped the deck a lot more with getting off the ground without immediately drawing everyone's attention.
Crazy editing this video 😲
I legitimately had an ink-treader nephilim prismatic bridge secret commander deck that I thought sol ring reduced the quality of. Sol ring didn't help me cast the bridge, and I'm sure the ratio of colored pips to colorless pips was somewhere in the 10 to 1 range. The deck had a few card archetypes that were very important - ramp/fixing (fixing was entirely necessary because the deck did absolutely nothing without the secret commander out), treasure generators, card draw cantrips, stealing peoples' creatures effects, and single target protection.
If a single draw spell was in hand (there were close to 20 in the deck by the way) and there were ~5 or more creatures on the field, then the deck won, period. Sol ring would've been a wasted slot because it would've been useless on the pop-off turn, and wouldn't help you get to the pop off turn at all. There are so many cheap red spells that would generate a ludicrous amount of tokens on the pop-off turn that the extra colorless mana just didn't cut it, especially since half the deck was 1 cmc colored spells. The only way sol ring would've been a valuable card is if your commander got removed and you needed to recast as said in the video, the problem is is that in 90% of situations a single green pip protection spell or white protection spell would've done the job and saved me a turn delay, effectively making the swap out a factor of winning this turn or next turn - a strict downgrade (of course there may not be enough of those protection spells to comfortably run and sol ring would be a backup, but personally I liked the balance of protection vs. other cards and didn't feel the need to add sol ring as a pseudo recast enabler). Heck even a fierce guardianship, which I didn't run due to budget, would've been a much better option in the majority of cses.
Fun fact, my first two paper commander decks were Kroxa and Kunoros and Keruga. Sol Ring was one of the only two ramp spells i played bellow 3 cmc, along with Thought Vessel
Excellent take on your part.
sometimes i (and others) just dont wanna have a sol ring in there ✍️
my first commander deck (slimefoot the stoaway) i specifically tried to build as cheap as possible so i didnt get any of the popular cards (sol ring, command tower, rampant growth [yeah even below natures lore/three visits/farseek], etc) where i could play something cheaper instead. I havent put any of those in the deck ever since and it's fine in my playgroup
Ive actually contemplated cutting sol ring from my Sultai Graveyards Matter deck, I don’t have much generic mana costs, my commander isn’t essential to play, and there’s other cards I want to put into the deck for survivability reasons (counters, life gain, etc).
Additionally I usually win from hand at sorcery speed, which means not being seen as the threat is often as important as actually setting up a board to win. I only need 8 mana to tend the pests a lord of extinction with an altar of the brood on the field, or 7 to alter of dementia it and kill one
Gyruda also says NO to sol ring… also Umori if you’re not playing with artifacts otherwise… companions are great for the format this way based on that tiny example
Jodah, Archmage Eternal effectively removes the any-color pips once you get it on the battlefield. So, if you keep it on the battlefield sol ring doesn't help you cast any of your expensive spells. Though it does help out when Jodah dies for the third or fourth time.
I mean, sure, but (and I don’t generally run sol ring, for the record) it does help you cast your less expensive spells. You still (hopefully) run 3 drops and whatnot in jodah
@@zacharyenglish2904 I guess it depends on how you build your deck. But I probably wouldn't run any 3 drops?
If you plan to ramp on turn 2 and you hit your first 3 land drops you'll cast Jodah on turn 3 and a ridiculous card of some sort on turn 4, assuming you hit the fourth land drop
@@zacharyenglish2904I had a Jodah deck for a while, and it only had something like 6-8 generic mana in the costs for the whole deck. Almost all the cards were pure colored pips.
I choose not to play it in casual pods. Turn 1 Sol Ring makes you the arch enemy, and it's just generally more fun to not play with it.
Someone kept a "greedy hand" (according to them) once because it had a turn 1 Serra Ascendant which I promptly Swords to Plowshares'd. Their hand was fine and they still won, eventually. They just didnt get to bully people with a Serra Ascendant.
The other thing you didn't mention is that Sol Ring early is great but topdecking it when you need some kind of interaction doesn't help.
Keruga companion deck owner checking in. I've got one deck where I'd rather have the guaranteed draw spell than stick that mana rock in the 99. It ramps aggressively but runs a ton of lands to make its curve-out work and because I'm in blue/green I'd rather drop all my cheap ramp & really full-send it to 6+ mana.
Otherwise, all my decks have Sol Rings because it's that good. I have decks where I don't run any other mana rocks besides Sol Ring, but Sol Ring is so good and so unique in what it does for your mana that it's hard to not run it.
In my "Jodah, Archmage Eternal" Commander deck the main strategy is to cast my commander on turn 3 and then cast an 8-drop for WUBRG, hence my deck is packed to the brim with low to the ground acceleration and a bunch of curve toppers. That is why I ultimately cut it from the deck since even if my commander dies, I usually have cards with a lot of pips and I found it to be a dead card more often than not.
Now I really wanna build a deck that has no generic pips
I initially pulled Sol Ring out of my first EDH deck, Elfball, which was so heavy in green pips, but then I reminded myself I was playing monogreen Ezuri, and yes, that commander tax.
I have 1 deck where I don't play sol ring, and that's my Sarulf deck where it may as well not exist.
I helped brew a Rakdos Lord of Riots deck and ultimately decided not to include it. Rakdos reduces costs of creatures anyway, but I do see where there would be benefits in running one for the noncreature spells.
I have 2 decks that I specifically don’t run sol ring in and both of them over utilize green ramp, shalai and hallar, and archelos lagoon mystic. Shalai and hallar has never had a problem standing tall with the high powered (I’d say 7-9) decks without a sol ring and I even had one instance where I summoned them 5 times in 3 turns with still mana to spare after tax. Archelos is a group hug/gates deck that can regularly get every land in the deck on the table by turn 8, it doesn’t need sol ring.
my mono black rat deck didn't have one until recently because when I made the deck Sol Ring wasn't in every precon under the sun and wasn't easy to get.
and after adding it, I've debated removing it again because I just become a target when I have 8 mana turn 3 with mono black rats, which happens often enough.
Because my commander is Codie, Vociferous Codex 😬
I currently have one deck that isn't playing Sol Ring, and there is a good mechanical reason for it!
The deck plays Madcap Experiment, and the way to make that work in commander in this case is that the only artifact I can reveal is Platinum Emperion. So no matter how many cards I reveal off Madcap, my life total doesn't go down. Not playing Sol Ring there bc that would turn it into a coin flip that just kills me half the time lol.
When updating old decks, I usually cut the Sol Ring just so I can play with new cards while helping to maintain the core of the deck
I don''t have Sol Ring in my Yuriko deck, it decreses the odds of finding or putting a high CMC spell on top of the deck, and it will literally never help cast the commander, as you're always using the commander ninjustu (blue + black mana), and all of the unblockable creatures are 1 or 2 CMC, which Sol Ring also can't cast.
I also have an Omnath landfall deck without Sol Ring, because on any turn you'd much rather be ramping lands than playing an artifact that's likely to be blown up on turn 5 or 6 (in my play groups at least).
I'm also building a Kibo deck based around giving everyone bananas and preventing them from sacrifing them with things like Karn and Collector Ouphe, which doesn't need Sol Ring, because I'm already making bananas to make mana anyway.
I have a few aggro decks that I ended up cutting sol ring because if you don't draw it in the first few turns it becomes a massive brick where you want to be drawing threats or interaction at every possible chance. Aggro in commander is just different 🤣
Also, I do think that sol ring gets a little too much credit just because most tables abuse the mulligan system way too far. The whole, shuffle until you get a good hand and lets have a full power game, that thing makes sol ring busted.
As I'm an advocate of not using fast mana, even if every player has technically access to it, I just stopped using Sol Ring when possible. It's objectively wrong to not have it in your deck if you want your deck to be optimized, your are completely right, but I will only use it in decks where the mana curve is very top heavy or where it meshes well with the theme of the deck.
My Windgrace deck had green ramp and a bunch of artifact hate, only deck I've played without it
My Sythis Harvest's Hand does not run Sol Ring because of how many colored pips it needs. Also, all the combos it runs to end the game only use colored mana.
I made a Pearl-Ear deck. I realized quickly the colorless mana is almost useless for my game plan. Since most aura ended up being free except for needing white mana. Also it had the problem of stopping my rolling into other auras.
I don't have it in my Atraxa deck because when I built it (~2019) I was hyper focused on playing her on turn 3 and sol ring didnt help with that.
I never got as many reps as I wanted in because it was the strongest deck in my playgroup and whenever i could play her early she'd eat removal or a turn 4 or 5 boardwipe. I thought that deck was around an 8.
Skip a couple of years ahead without going into the public to play magic, and when i finally got some games in, either because my playgroup is on the weaker side or just the insane card power creep (or both) and it felt closer to a 6.
I do need to go back and retool all of my decks, at least to add sol ring, but at the same time I'm not sure how to balance having my decks be competitive out in the wild but not always be arch enemy in my playgroup.
I feel the power level argument is just all over the place. You've made a good case for why you shouldn't play sol ring: it's on the same absurd level as things like rhystic study and smothering tithe, which are absolutely game warping at some tables.
I have a mono green elf deck that runs zero artifacts and plays cards like Hum of the Radix and Root Maze. I also have a Ramos deck that runs Jegantha as companion, and sol ring got cut from the deck so I could fit an extra talisman in it. There are enough reliable alternatives for mana ramp that a deck can be good without it. Putting it back in that deck wouldn't move the power needle up much (I think it would actually go down because of how valuable the colors are) even though it let's me cast ramos a turn sooner, because even if I cast him I still need all my colors and ways to protect him so I have to wait anyway. Sure Sol Ring is probably technically correct to play in most decks, but it's not enough stronger to make me want to take cards out I like more.
I play it in all but one, my OG Jodah deck. I need to be making colored mana with my ramp, and making WUBRG specifically whenever I can.
I have a single deck in which I am considering cutting sol ring from the list. It's a Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student/Seasoned Scholar deck using the MH3 flipwalker, and the reason I am considering cutting it is very simple. My turn 1 is always playing Tamiyo, and my turn 2 is trying to flip tamiyo. Sol ring doesn't do that, so I end up playing it later in the game when I already have enough mana to cast my spells. Also since the deck basically just +2's Tamiyo and passes the turn holding up fogs and counter magic, Sol ring's mana is so conditional that it barely feels worth it in the deck. Whenever I have an opening hand with it, the opening always feels way more clunky than it really has to be. I ended up playing Mox Amber instead because it doesn't force me to slow down my early game and can allow for turn 1 flips.
7:48 Wait, so if sol ring isn't actually all that good in commander and it makes me less likely to win then why should I play it?
I play Sol Ring even in my most multicolored deck, it's almost all charms and 5 color legends, because the Commander is Dragon Engine and I have 3 rocks.
I play indomitable creativity in my mono-red polymorph deck. I only play one artifact (panharmonicon), in order to ensure it’s the only artifact I hit (along with the only two creatures in the deck).
Pretty sure I could still play sol ring, but the randomness of drawing it, vs the predictably of my polymorphs led to the decision to cut sol ring.
Less sol ring means more jank. When commander is a way to express yourself and your creativity, adding a sol ring is shooting yourself in the foot
I will say, I don't play sol ring in Lathril, but I believe that makes sense. Every other EDH deck I play it.
I only have 1 deck that I truly feel no need to run it in. It’s an Izzet X-Spells wizard tribal control deck led by Kaza, Roil Chaser. Yes, it obviously helps cover colorless costs, but I’m not casting several spells in a turn as part of progressing the game and all of my ramp is mana reduction for instants and sorceries. The ring is good in it, but I’ve found better luck just adding another card that contributes towards consistency & redundancy. So I cut it for a second tutor effect that benefits from my overall game-plan and contributes to it.
My playgroup have stopped playing sol ring simply due to it catching removal. Too many players will ignore a SR when it lands on turn 1 but usually you can safely bet whatever hand they’ve taken will crumble if it gets popped. Eventually it just wasn’t worth catching the early removal
I have 4 decks without Sol Ring. 2 are for theme, and 2 because it doesn't cast much. The theme ones are an Umori companion deck (only creatures allowed) and a deck that has only colored pip mana costs in everything. No colorless costs anywhere on any card. Then the 2 decks I cut Sol Ring from not for flavor reasons is a monogreen devotion deck, again a deck with not a lot of colorless costs, so Sol Ring could only help cast about a third of the deck. And a BW Killian deck, where the cost reduction ability of my commander reduced the vast majority of the spells in the deck to only their colored pips.
I play it in about half my decks and there is such a minimal difference unless I get it out early. It is really powerful in decks where the mana curve is low.
...now I want to build Keruga EDH
I don't play it because I don't play fast mana. I'd probably throw in a colorless deck, though. A part of me also thinks it should be banned, but another part thinks only cEDH should have a ban list at all.
considering that a banlist for a casual format is non-enforcable, casual EDH already has no banlist. WOTC or the RC are powerless to stop anyone from playing whatever.
My thought is what truly is “casual play” in Magic. One could say “no fast mana”, but then you also have majority of every modern day card having a wall of text that do 101 things. So naturally there will still be an imbalance at a table even without sol ring involved.
Plus there are also things that speed up the game even without fast mana: Cost Reducers, Free Casting, Put into play style effects, Green having every land tutor under the sun. Cards that are also pretty cheap for budget style decks that can give you inherent advantages over your opponent. Are those also not allowed in “casual play” Like if it’s a matter of “if it speed up the game then it’s not casual” then that cuts out a lot of things, not just sol ring.
You really a sporting an Inferi tshirt? Nice :D
Legendary creature summoned : Malcolm Pugh
I have an old stick fingers deck where I need as many creatures as possible in my graveyard, so sol ring got cut
The only other reason I've heard that I can agree with is in cascade focused decks who play specific target cards at certain cmc for combo purposes
Yo, love the shirt!
Keruga is indeed one example I'd consider, same with me slowly working towards using Gyruda as a companion for my The Master self mill which bans the use of odd costs.
Other than that, playing my Lurrus companion deck has made my Sol Ring feel like a dud more often than not so there I would consider cutting it but that's the only example I have.
8:30 true I ended up getting frogified, imprisoned, and exiled before it got back to me
I want the challenge. Plus I love punishing artifacts in every deck I play because there are too many of them.