I think we all wish WOTC didn't control the format, I also think we need to recognize that it got way too big for five volunteers to run. If the rules committee had adjusted and adapted as the game grew I don't think we'd be in this position, but it stayed way too small for how big the format got.
People were already mad when WOTC made "for commander" cards. This gives them more reign to do so. As well as control the ban list. Nothing is stopping them from banning a card then 2 sets down the line offering something of a similar effect but just slightly off and making it scarce so people pay top dollar
Im curious to see how their new structure will influence the design phase of commander products. Hopefully it stops design mistakes like Yuriko/arcane signet/and so on.. earlier on in the process.
DO NOT CHANGE ANY BANLIST UNTIL NEXT QUARTELY UPDATE. Regarding the chaos that happened after the recent bans, it can be easy to undo things that led to the threats, but doing so can just cause more chaos. Please listen to the former RC members regarding the format. The last thing it needs is multiple overpowered chase cards (looking at you jeweled lotus) to incentivize players to buy cards. Try to keep balance in mind throughout every card. Powerful cards are great but needs reliable counterplay to prevent from being miserable to play against. Also STOP PRINTING WARD ON EVERY LEGENDARY CREATURE.
@@commandcast Really nice set up, but it bothered me a little that Rachel's mic covered half of her face most of the time. That's probably an easy fix, if there is interest in fixing that.
Josh is absolutely right. If you want to threaten people with violence over pieces of cardboard....you don't need to be playing this game and need therapy. 😬
It wasnt over cardboard it was over money and while it is gross to threaten people and absolutely unacceptable, people get violent over money all over the world every day, so it is sadly not suprising that this was the outcome.
No one made threats about cardboard lmao y'all need to be honest about it at least. Threats ain't cool, but pretending it's about cardboard makes me think this community based around a children's card game never actually grew up.
30:12 Saying wizard has wisdom or humility is wild, they set the dnd community on fire like what last year out of sheer greed and arrogance. They will make the financial call every time not the community interest or game health.
not to mention they're the ones that printed the cards in the first place, multiple times, as chase cards, lol. they may have some wisdom in design, but they certainly care about the bottom line more than anything else, even at the cost of the format at times.
Hazbro and WotC currently deserve no good will as they continue to prove that they dont show any. It doesnt really matter if the people at WotC have the good of the game at heart, they ultimately don't get a say on the decisions that could do the most damage.
The thing that people MUST keep in mind is that in the US all publicly traded corporations are legally *required* to put maximizing profits above every other concern. If WOTC is in charge and there is a conflict between their profit margin and the quality of the game they will pick profits every time. Not even because they’re bad people, but because they are *legally required* to do so and if they don’t make that choice they will be replaced by someone who will.
I'm all for "We trust the people at wizards" reassurance. But at the same time just an episode ago we were saying Dockside and Jeweled Lotus should never have been printed direct into the format - and Wizards did that. If wizards had been in control of the format when Ikoria dropped, would they have banned Lutri out the gate? It's great we trust the individuals, but I don't trust Wizards as a whole.
Don’t trust anyone. Talk is cheap, and people will tell you what you want to hear, especially in times like this. Look at the actions of wizards: always for-profit at the expense of the health of the game. This will never change so long as they are a publicly traded company.
Wizards of the coast employees have said jeweled lotus, dockside, and arcane signet were mistakes. The question is would they have banned the cards themselves? I don't think so.
@benvictim two things 1. Arcane Signet? I've never heard it said that WotC regretted making that. 2. This is the exact reason why I think WotC won't be quick ob the draw to ban anything. Their prime directive is to make money, not manage a format. The longer they can hold off on bans, the more money they're likely to make.
Blame Elrond musk. He has changed the twitter algorithm to push the most controversial and rage inducing takes to the center of our community discourses. A RUclipsr made a video this week where they made a new account and they only followed Pokémon artists. Yet Their feed was still full of white nationalist posts promoting racism and transphobia.
It hasn't, it has just made it possible for the worst people to reach the more people than ever before. I mean people use to burn people to death to saying a prayer wrong, social media wasnt around then.
@@wellwellwelp So you agree? Amplifying humanities worst traits would include setting people on fire for saying prayers wrong. I'm sure those people probably thought it was socially acceptable to do so.
When it comes to a large company like WotC, you CAN NOT give something to an individual team. If the "game design team" owns Commander, WotC owns Commander. If WotC owns Commander, Hasbro own Commander. The Game Design Team is not a separate entity. That statement should hold very little weight on the long term.
"Commander players arent like standard or modern players, we want to play the same deck for 15 years just upgrading a card here or there" 😭 thats what modern was supposed to be and what a lot of modern players *do* want tho
If modern were anything like that, I’d 100% play both. I love the 60 card formats as well, but with its inconsistency it always felt safer to play edh with a wider ranger of card availability.
If these cards were reprinted frequently enough to be reasonably priced, the ban would have happened a long time ago and nobody would have really cared.
@@dylanmayabb6594 As the local control player, i have had issues where i show up to an FNM look for a pod for an hour, then leave, because "Rule Zero" no one wants to play against a control deck. Rule zero is the DISEASE not the CURE. All cards could be unbanned, MLD and STAX would still be booed out of the LGS.
As a different channel said: "The best thing about the internet is that it gives everyone a voice. The worst part of the internet is it gives *everyone* a voice"
As a complete outside, I am not surprised Wizards said "don't ban these cards". But - I would also not be surprised in the slightest, if the RC has spent a long time begging Wizards to do something about those cards too. Reprinting them in far higher quantifies to push the prices down from astronomical levels would make a future ban far more palpable. Banning a $100+ card hurts. Banning a $20 card isn't nearly as painful. But I would also not be surprised in the slightest, if Wizards would shoot down such requests, because while they CLAIM that they don't watch the secondary market, it is also VERY obvious that they use those high value cards as chase rares to sell sets. And that should tell you which side I'm on here. I don't like that 10-year-old kids cannot buy cards. They can't buy a Sheoldred the Apocaplypse, because it's an $80 card. They can't buy a Gaea's Cradle, because that's a $600 card. They can barely buy a Field of the Dead at $40. But they can buy a Sol Ring, even though there are $800+ versions of that card. And those $800+ versions of Sol Ring will retain their value, because that version is rare, even though Sol Ring is basically a bulk uncommon at this point. Serialized versions of Sol Ring are similarly expensive. THAT is how Wizards should approach making chase cards to sell their sets. Print the staples into the ground to get the prices for them down, and print specialized versions (not foils - actually specialized) to keep the collector whales hooked.
I would agree with you if their weren't already people who payed $200 for a normal crypt in the past before the banning. It's a fine method moving forward, but in the end it still hurts those still dropped a lot of money prior
@@glassofmeat Having a rule that says "you cannot touch expensive cards - they can't be reprinted, they can't be banned" is just about the dumbest thing you can do.
@@glassofmeat "moving forward" being the operative term. So how would you solve things like an $80 Sheoldred the Apocalypse? Or a $100 Edgar Markov. And if we can't ban nor reprint expensive cards because it would drive down the price, then you can't make cards that overpower them either. So no "3 damage/3 life per card drawn" on a 4/5 with deathtouch, either. We already have a ton of expensive "staples" that are on the reserve list, which makes the format pay-to-win, and you're saying they can't be banned either, because it might affect the price.
afaik the RC asked WOTC not to make/print jeweled lotus. and they already told us that they talked with wizards about banning the cards more than a year ago, so it baffles me that people blames the RC and not WOTC... "THEY JUST BANNED THE CHASE RARE OF A PRODUCT WOTC JUST SOLD US!!!", yeah... and WOTC knew the ban was comming and just sold it anyway. And im 100% with you, people saying expensive cards shouldnt be banned are basically saying the game should have a expensive entry barrier or be pay to win. It is nonsensical
I'm with Rachel on just about everything on this, especially in the idea that Wizards should just leave the things banned as banned and reassess in the future. If wizards just changes a bunch of stuff off the jump, I'm going to be very wary of any future decision they make
I came here, from the most recent video with the Prof. I hafta say, Josh is spitting here. You can be upset with him but he's just telling it how it is. It's not victim blaming. The blame was fairly put on the evil threat makers and wotc for not printing cards to make these cards less expensive and thus less salt when they're banned.
I don’t totally believe that Wizards did not want control of the format. This is the most popular format in the multi million dollar game they produce. There is no way they want essentially random people in charge of something that can effect their profits.
I think it's corporate double-speak. They KNOW that if they had tried to strong-arm control they would have had a major problem. Otherwise they would have done it. They're 1000% happy that they get to "save" the format.
I think the non-executives didn't want control, and the executives did want control. This was the path of least resistance, where the executives didn't have to force anyone's hands to take Commander away.
Yeah that's complete nonsense. They absolutely wanted it. That's why these talks were in motion before the "threats", and that's why there were contracts in place and frameworks ready to go "day one."
Imagine you have a cash cow that feeds itself, doesn't need to be cleaned up after, and provides double the milk. Why wouldn't you want to just take the milk and leave it alone.
My least favorite part of the magic community is the sheer amount of emotionally unintelligent adults. They are impacting this game far more negatively than anything wotc could ever do.
I mean...isn't this more a result of the sheer number of immature adults in society/online, rather than specifically Magic: the Gathering? I'm not sure Magic has a disproportionate number of idiots.
Unfortunately it's not really an either-or with who's worse for commander. It's an ecosystem, and the worry is that the dumbasses who threaten violence are emboldened in the first place by an entitlement that's nurtured by wotc bending and warping the game to meet their wants over the last decade or so. Once theres decisions they don't like they think they're in the right to 'correct' decisions by any means because it's THEIR format. With wotc in charge my worry isn't necessarily that they ruin the rules of commander or even print horrible cards unchecked (I mean, I worry a bit but Im sure there'll be a natural ebb and flow), my worry is that wotc folds to the worst offenders because they spend more money and are more likely to be those financially invested in the product vs invested in the game.
@@shrouded8797it has though. Mtg has classically been a refuge for loads of people with very poor social skills that find a place where they can be the bullies. Of course a majority of the people is cool, but the percentage of absolutely abhorrent people to deal with is off the charts compared with anybother hobbie I've ever had.
@@victorperezurbano9504 I'd say that conclusion mainly comes from your own experience, which is not necessarily indicative of everyone who plays Magic. I would personally only feel confident in claiming that Magic has a disproportionate number of toxic people after some kind of objective analysis.
Where is the anger or the victim blaming in this video?? All I see is three pillars of the community having a constructive discussion about a major failure in leadership and management.
I’m pretty sure that podcast was just to make people happy. It almost felt like a dad telling you what you did wrong when you didn’t do anything but you just go along with it
For people who think commander is going to die (unlikely) its a community built format! If wotc starts dramatically changing things we can, as a community, just keep playing commander how we have been! You won't be ARRESTED for playing with the cardboard how you and your friends want. We can just make a format called commander classic or something lol
Exactly, while I like the bracket system (means you have to rule 0 if your deck is “mostly a 2 but runs a couple of 4s”)… if you don’t want to use it, just don’t. My LGS will just be playing as normal.
That's good with a tightly-knit friend group, but try telling that to people who can only go to a LGS to play Commander, and they rock up to a pod of Randoms with banned cards. It won't end well.
I agree with you, we can adjust rules, but playing banned cards always feels wrong (e.g. paradox engine). And for some reason we insist on buying the original cardboard instead of a good printer. Why don't we all play with proxied original duals and tabernacles and stuff like that?
On con #1, about Wizards being profit motivated, I think Jimmy makes a good point about Wizards already being in the position to squeeze Commander players harder if they need to. What's missing from that argument though is that an independent RC can make changes - like they just did, for better or worse - that fly in the face of WotC's profit motivation for the benefit of format health. What the whales don't talk about is that they benefit when Wizards creates expensive game pieces and keeps them legal, and that's part of why they're so mad at the RC for banning their expensive cards. Now, Wizards is incentivized to not ban those things...
Yea and the cards they banned were chase cards for some time. Very weird stuff. I just think wizards is going to mess it up like all of its other properties.
Unfortunately the RC proved time and time again that they were not interested in format health either, as every decision came out of left field with zero testing or logical impetus and the explanations were always arrogant and dismissive. At least now we'll have an entity that can be held accountable in charge.
@Morphling92 Honestly, I think they were in an echo chamber. There are a lot of people like "the professor" who make idiotic claims about Magic that completely ignore common sense, logic, and basic principles of economics. If you only listen to people like that, and not to people like JLK that emphatically say, "Don't do this!" you will make very unpopular decisions.
@pokelover02 I don't watch Prof anymore, but even in this video he talked about how they differed, so I don't know what you're talking about. Anyway, Prof used to say all kinds of dumb stuff about how cards are overpriced and NEEDED reprints to bring the cost down which is in direct contrast to what JLK said when he recognized Wizards needs cards to have reprint equity.
1:26:00 - Rachel just laid out the perfect reasoning why these bans were bad. They ramifications (financial, CEDH, and otherwise) were not worth it. Plus each playgroup can police themselves. Hopefully WOTC learns and doesn't replicate this type of decision.
I think a major portion of it is found in the section "How did we get here?". It's also a bit about knowing how Josh usually speaks and he's agitated and rapid-speaking for portions of the video, which can be picked up as Josh being angry. (Edit: Just to be clear it wasn't all that much, but it was there under the surface). I hope that helps understand the Mirror episode better. I still think Josh (and Rachel and Jimmy) did a commendable job containing that anger and disappointment. Personally I would not be as composed, but then again I don't run a business with public speaking.
@DoubleOhSilver I don't disagree about it being small and I too think the apology was blown a bit out of proportion. However it seems like Josh wanted to correct himself because that wasn't how he perceives himself. I can respect and appreciate that.
Came for the same reason, i wanted to see where exactly the anger was, and for me it just isn’t there to the degree that he was apologizing for. But if he feels guilty for some reason and an apology makes him feel better, then so be it.
tbh, while I'm not an MTG player, but I watch a lot of games on YT... Any card that is essentially a MUST in near all EDH decks, and not adding one would objectively make the deck worse, would be a good ban. Honestly, would have liked to see Sol Ring included in the ban list too.
Same here. I generally like the content Prof puts out, and I appreciate what he does, but the dude has come off as sooooo self righteous on multiple occasions. Not trying to hate on the guy, but he does make me roll my eyes sometimes.
@@OTAVify- No. I just came from the start of the same video and they both they were talking about this one. "Let's talk about the bans" was before the RC gave up control to WotC. They were talking about this video.
Commander is what got me into Magic the Gathering. It is relatively affordable and budget friendly to play and I love the idea of having a deck built around 1 card. I love playing commander and will continue to play the game. I am hopeful that the commander format will stay healthy and more importantly safe for those that want an escape from everyday life.
As long as you have good friends or a playgroup you'll be happy to keep playing bubba! Side note I have a tip for you. Don't always build your deck from the top down. Meaning built solely because you like the commander. Sometimes it's better to build a deck from the bottom up. Meaning find a strategy you like, or a play style and build from that finding a commander that really jives with that strat.
@@kementurhman, I’ve been to a commander “tournament” once. Again, the reason I went once is watching a grown adult scream at a teen because of some slight. Again, anything that has a competitive aspect can be dangerous even if unlikely
I feel like the people who aren't connected to the online magic discourse, and aren't tapped into the most up to date info, aren't the people who the abuse the power level discussions.
From my experience it's exactly those clueless people that are the worst offenders because they don't know what the word casual deck means. There are people that show up to my LGS that I have never seen say they are new and don't know what their deck is power wise then proceed to stomp the table and leave with their 1 win for the day. Or they think Voja is a perfectly casual decks and not innately high power when full of elfs. (I have a Voja deck, I even run a bunch of wolf's and elfs in mine and it's a high power deck). The people that don't know certain commanders are just broken sitting in pods with other people that don't know that commander is broken is where the most pub stomping happens. Iv had to tell plenty of new players that their deck is high power just because of their commander, Chulane with creatures is going to be busted even without combos, Prosh, and Korvold are going to be busted, Ursa, lord high artificer is going to be busted with artifacts. Etali is going to be busted. Atraxa (both) are going to be busted.
I really find this situation very interesting. I came from a Yu-Gi-Oh player background, so the reactions of the community to a ban is completely different. I'm used to see card value change rapidly and people are relatively chill (of course not everyone, but not like this level of situation). I was shocked to hear what happened in the magic community. It's a game and i understand the frustration of see your cards lose value, but i think if you play the game it's because you love it and not his money value. This event showed me how much this community love this game, but also its darker side😢
Yugio is NOT Commander! It's not even comparable. There's hasn't been a ban for three years and winning on turn two is highly unlikely, even if it's technically possible. It's apples and durians.
@@Tobi-ci3nsI play the game. I have one copy each of Jeweled Lotus and Dockside in my cedh deck that I rarely get to play, and I've been plotting to get my hands on Mana Crypt for years. I HATE THIS BAN! I wouldn't have minded so much if they had the balls to ban Sol Ring too, because that's the fast mana that actually shows up in like EVERY GAME, but I still would have hated it. I'm poor. My magic collection was built playing fnm drafts for years. It's probably my most valuable asset and all my cool old cards I collected 20 years ago have been reprinted, just so nooBs can get a footing in commander, and accordingly the overall value has tanked. But I was there, they weren't! That's that. I try not to let it bother me. But it does. Makes me feel I made lots of bad choices with my money. I bled for those stupid cards! I'm a wizard and those are some of the best spells in my grimoire, and now they're illegal and everthing was handed to all these whiney casuals on a silver platter and they don't really aprecciate what they've got or what's been taken.
@@stonedphilosopher2185Regardless, if a ban uodate hasnt been made in over 3 years, that doesnt justify the malicious reactions and threats players made. I too came from yugioh to mtg in 2015 amd started with standard and went to commander after building and spending money to it being worthless after the standard rotation. Commander is a great game because of its card stability. But its also a card game and to keep it healthy all players should be knowingly ready for any bans to be made.
My group has had a custom ban list for a while. The bans don't change anything. Wizards being in control doesn't change anything. If they start printing crazy stuff, then Sheldon-era Commander it is.
I feel bad for the kids experiencing "loss out of your control" for the first time. This is how life goes. Luckily i bought my cards with no intentions to resell.
Lots of people want to decide what fun is for other people too! You have fun with fast mana? There’s a space for you You have fun with battlecruiser slower games? There’s a space for you Should welcome all cards and self regulate, if you’re an adult you can use your words to communicate to the other players in your pod what your expectations are
Fun is subjective and divisive as it gets for example I had fun playing nadu while it lasted. My friend has fun playing Turgrid. Another friend of mine plays Armageddon in his yuma deck. I’m sure someone out there has fun playing stasis.
I liked what Kibler said about how commander wants to be everything for everyone. What a smartypants! I was telling my mom about my mtg habit and she said said something that stuck with me ever since. She said, "I can see how that could satisfy a lot of different things", and it's so true! People play to be social, they play to be competitive, they might have a hoarding complex, they like engineering the perfect machine, perhaps they're scummy investors, or gamblers, maybe it's all of the above in varying degrees, or something entirely different. Timmies, Johnies, Spikes, Vorthos, whatever! It's Magic! Whatever neurosis you have, here's your fix! Too bad the RC only seems to care about poor widdle Timmy, and was like screw the rest of you chumps. Was that supposed to be the "statement"? It came across like that to me, at least. Writing this it occurs to me that somehow they lost sight of the big picture, but I don't think it's because it's a dark room. Kibler sees it. Josh sees it even if he won't admit it. Even my mom who never played a game of magic in her life could see it for crying out loud! All it takes is the ability to step outside of your widdle Timmy shoes, or Spikey(sorry Spike, they threw you to the curb hard dude, then an angry mob showed up with baseball bats to finish the job, don't say you didn't deserve it!) shoes for a second, use your empathy and intellegence, and see that truly all is good and was never and couldn't ever be anything but.🎉😊
The statement as to how the RC wasn’t being held accountable bc they’re always excused for being volunteers and how the new setup will have more accountability is wild to me. Literally every decision the RC makes has been met with tons and tons of feedback. The community always holds them accountable and the fact that they’re volunteers is rarely acknowledged. Quite the opposite, they are treated as if this was a paid position and as if every decision was made for their personal gain.
How exactly would you propose unpaid volunteers be "held accountable" besides feedback? Put them in the stocks so we can throw rotting fruit at them?@@wilfulbuckle13
But they literally never were, in any way shape or form, held accountable? They made years and years worth of horrendous decisions, ignored all of the feedback because they're not paid and nobody is there to MAKE them listen, and this situation is the result. Arrogance has consequences, eventually.
The rules committee enjoyed their celebrity status, reaping the benifits until they actually had to do their job they asked for and received treatment that's on the same level as others regularly experience. They are cowards who lacked both the conviction and integrity to care for the format. Instead of voluntary stepping down allowing others to step up, they robbed us and left us in the hands of WotC.
@nickvanschaick6322 how has wizards been held accountable for printing mistakes like dockside and lotus? Nadu? Like you can try boycott but the walking dead secret lair was a massive success despite all the hate, at least the RC isn't in it for the profit
I literally bought a mana crypt 1 week before the ban happened because I try to have at least 1 of any card i proxy. It stung to have a $180.00 suddenly get wasted, but never at any point did it cross my mind to be crappy towards the RC or throw threats at them. I just wish the RC gave some kind of warning or watchlist.
If you are playing mana crypt then the people or type of commander games you play aren’t fun. Commander was always meant to be fun , and casual. Now if your group of players like broke a%# cards or that’s fun for guys awesome. But wizards see’s it different! Why would you be mad at wizards for trying to keep this format profitable and enjoyable for the majority of players.
It's not like it went from 180 to 10 though. If you look at tcg player there are like 2 copies under 100 after that it jumps back up to 120-150 pretty quick depending on the version. If the card is useless to you, you would still be able to get a pretty good part of your investment back. look at reserve list cards, a lot of them are banned in almost every format but they hold significant value even though they aren't commonly played.
@@MATTA74 Most subjective take I've seen, what's "fun" to you is irrelevant and shouldn't drive fundamental changes. Unless is format warping like flash, it shouldn't be banned.
@@MATTA74mana crypt is about the same power level of sol ring and both of those cards have been in the format forever. They can be fun. You just have to be in the mood for those kind of games. We need to best be able to identify the kind of games everyone wants to play. Maybe we will get there with the upcoming conversations.
@@MATTA74 Like others have said, this is a very subjective take. Furthermore you say Mana Crypt is a broke a$$ card and is unfun and not what Wizard wants. First of all, how do you know what WotC wants for the Commander format now that they have the reigns? Secondly, WotC printed Jeweled Lotus, which mirrors Black Lotus - the arguably strongest card in Magic's history - so I don't think it's true that WotC doesn't want to print powerful cards for the Commander format. WotC does not want to alienate part of their consumer base, which also consists of players who wants to play with very powerful cards.
Ugh even the statements of “oh all commander players have multiple decks” is too much a generalization! Just goes to show, nobody plays the same way. I got really 3 decks. And that’s the way it has been for nearly 10 years. I’ve probably played 200 of two of them.
Same. Got a few decks, not including stock precons. And I just swap out cards, take out ones not working, add new or old cards. Fine tune them, etc. I'm sure you're like me, and know those 3 decks so well we could play blindfolded (obviously sarcasm, but hopefully you get what I mean lol)
I'm curious, what will happen with the next Lutri situation? The RC didn't want that card printed (iirc), and then made the 'easy' decision to ban it because they had no financial incentive not to (and they could do it before people lost money on the card). Now, what check is there? Would Hasbro be happy with the Commander Team at WotC if they preemptively ban a card because it would be too desirable as an auto-include in so many Commander decks?
What check was there for jeweled lotus? The rc wasn't using their checks anyway for too long which got people in the mindset that they would never be used.
@@Wyrm7774 What do you mean? The RC regularly had ban announcements that offered possible considerations. If anyone was in the "mindset they would never be used", it was because they didn't read the quarterly report on the wizards website about possible ban considerations. The RC has posted multiple times about fast mana and dockside in particular being an issue, see the January announcement. They also mentioned considering banning it back in the November quarterly report.
@@Wyrm7774 As far as I know, the community wasn't privy to the discussion of cards like Jeweled Lotus within the RC or between the RC and WotC, but just because it wasn't banned doesn't mean there wasn't a check. Do I think it's a poor design? Yes, but it's not game-warping like Lutri as a companion. WotC is pushing dumb designs like Jeweled Lotus or Dockside Extortionist (or Hullbreacher, Opposition Agent, etc.) all the time, but the RC always had the philosophy of allowing these cards to enter the format before taking action, or not.
The irony of people complaining about card bans and the financial impact of them while Mana Crypt and Jeweled Lotus are still listed at 120+ dollars is something else.
I think it's because many people are anticipating those two being unbanned. Who knows if that will happen or not, but before the switchover to WotC Crypt had dropped to ~$80.
i think commander stopped being exclusively community-run when WOTC started selling commander products and hosting commander events this was inevitably going to happen
Tangent away from everything that's happened recently, my big concern with Commander as a collector of the game since its inception is that for me, and for the format, I feel like new cards "don't matter" anymore AND that because UB has been green-lit into the default version of Commander... we're stuck with it, whether you want to play against Ken from Street Fighter or not. With absolutely no rotation whatsoever it feels like the format is permanently entrenched to be largely the same experience going forward, with almost no variation in the overall structure of how players play the game or seek to win. In many ways the recent bannings could be argued as a response to a feeling like that, because the presence of fast mana is (I'd argue) the greatest divider between a casual-friendly experience and players aggressively seeking early and decisive wins. With no rotation, I also feel like the format has calcified on a collection of "staple cards" so long that there's very little room left in decks to innovate-and that most new cards printed are simply variations of these staples. There's nothing new under the sun. Infinite combos are the most efficient way to win in virtually every game, and ultimately its just deciding whether you play that way or not. It no longer really much matters which version of infinite you choose to pursue, there's so many that as new pieces are printed and people go "wow, that card is so cool and it goes infinite with-" I unfortunately have this feeling of, "That's all well and good, but these cards don't actually change anything about the game and merely replace pieces that already exist, if that strikes you as interesting." Whether my mana ramp spell gets me 2 lands because I paid life, or paid a kicker cost, I sacrificed a creature... obviously those minor variations matter from deck to deck, but we are SOOO deep into card design that I'd argue that most new cards today are just variations of cards that already exist. Second, I personally did not want Universes Beyond to be brought into the default Commander experience. I didn't want MTG to turn into the board/card game "Smash Up" where you jam together different hollywood tropes like Ninjas + Aliens VS. Dinosaurs + Cyborgs. That idea can be fun, but now it is permanent and I really don't like that. Because the community cooperates to bring their own personal game pieces to the overall experience, I also have no control over keeping Street Fighter or Fallout or Marvel out of my MTG game unless I'm going to be "that guy" and start yucking other peoples' yum... which I also didn't want to do. I know I don't seem like I'm fun at parties, but in some ways I'm wishing for something that can probably never be again. I'm wishing for a Commander format with a significantly smaller card pool, where I don't have to acknowledge that The One Ring is on board but so is a My Little Pony who is piloting a Transformer while equipped with the Capt. America shield... *shrugs and sighs* For my particular concerns, there will be no solution. UB's greatest selling point is that it can be brought into Commander, so that ship has sailed. The format is also never going to accept rotation even if that rotation was on the magnitude of decades, so that ship has also sailed. The bannings matter and they don't. There's still more than enough fast mana in the format to completely separate who's trying very hard vs. who's here to have a fun and relaxing game. The pre-game conversation is still "vital" to create the best chance for a mutually enjoyable game for the entire table. If the bans didn't change that in the slightest, maybe they shouldn't have occurred. I don't know... but we'll see!
This decision will not be felt in weeks, maybe not even months. It will take probably years before we realize that this was the turning point for the game and how bad the effects truly were by this. Another thing people don’t think about is while these people love the game, it is their livelihood. If their boss threatens termination if they don’t comply with anti-player game choices, they will make those choices. Love and passion are great, but that pales in comparison to survival. You CANNOT put the expectation of the health of the format being prioritized ever again. It is no longer a game managed by players, it is a business and we are consumers.
Everyone seems to keep forgetting that most recently banned cards, including format warping 1v1 constructed cards, were directly designed/tuned with commander in mind. Other cards like One Ring are begging to get banned, Companions had to be nerfed, the list goes on and on… WOTC owning the ban list is a bad idea
@@MarkAvothere's a really great interview on the professor's channel with the original founder of the format where he talks about the band's that they make being explicitly about the effect that they have downstream on the format, it's only once things start to have a wider impact or start to warp the play experience in general across communities that they want to take an action. And that tracks with the recent bands, as these things became more known and more available even though they were high price chase cards, they were showing up more and more in games. Commander at its core is a format about diversity of design and diversity of decks and when you start seeing the same things in every deck those are things that are asking to get banned if they are core and central to every game. Soul ring is brought up as a common example of something that should be banned except, soul ring itself doesn't generally make the game rotate around it when it hits the board even when it hits the board early
@@MarkAvo Assuming that the rc contribution was aways slow is nonesense. I remeber how much the prophet of kruphix and golos ban helped our playgroup an authority like the rc was what was required for our playgroup. I just know im gonna have to deal with someone saying my nadu deck only has one infinite combo piece. So its only a 2. No one wants to play against golos or nadu putting them in bracket 4 is only going to have people argue it down to a 3 or even a 2. Wotc modern horizons release has resulted in months to year long waits before banning hoggak,nadu and fury in modern. No wizards is way worse. At this stage I'll take any rc like group other then wizards.
I feel like we won't really see the impact this has until at least a year from now since cards that are coming out within the next 12 months are basically done. Once that period passes we'll really see what wizards designs and whether they're really about the community, or about their pocketbook in what they print that's broken.
"We are not great at separating ourselves from our emotions." Well said Jimmy. I would also add "We are not great at separating ourselves from our opinions." Consideration is a diminishing skill.
Aside from the point of the video, I do wish they'd stop endorsing ultrapro. Everyone I know knows that ultrapro products are awful, floppy plastic deck boxes where the art rubs off, sleeves where the art peels off the back, and unstitched playmats that fray.
Its not a dangerous decision. I have the Mana Crypt Card as well as a jeweled lotus. The ban happened, I don't like it (or any ban for that matter as I feel that it impedes on the creativity aspect of the game) but, it should NEVER be dangerous. We are not fighting a war where life or death is on the line, this is a card game...we should always remember that first. Under no circumstances should someone's life be wagered over a card game.... or any game for that matter. We do and should however, reasonably voice our concerns and see what we can do to fight the ban or future bans.
To be fair, the ban of 3 stamples (more in cdeh) foment the creativity, I have seem lots of list that are just 0 creative, just copy pastes with the same cards. Lot of cedh players now are happy because they can brew with those free spots
I really like the conversation but there's NO WAY these bans happened without wizards knowing or even taking part of the decision - which is how you sound for most of the episode. It feels weird saying this is RC's doing only
I'm disappointed in the lack of acknowledgement of people who might have been for the ban cause they couldn't afford the cards. Some people can't just drop $100+ on single card. I get people lost money but that was they got the opportunity to make. I know it wasn't the intent but it comes off as a bit elitist to clam someone's investment should be the deciding factor on what is and isn't banned
They didn't take the perspective of the average player because they're out of touch. They're successful content creators rubbing shoulders with Post Malone and Cassius Marsh. It absolutely is elitist to only take perspective of the players who could afford $200 cardboard and got salty about their ban.
Calling people in favor of the bans unempathetic while having little empathy for what the RC did to protect themselves because they didn't do it in a way you like is a bit laughable, don't you think? It seems like you are letting your own anger at the RC take over your good judgment.
1:13:00 Josh, Jimmy, and Rachel insinuate that players who liked the bans and said "Card games are not an investment" lack empathy for players who owned more copies of the cards. Jimmy says "try saying this to your romantic partner" First off, if my romantic partner makes a poor decision, I will tell them that I think it's a poor decision and how to make a better one. Isn't that the point of being close to someone and trusting them? To trust in their feedback??? I guess Jimmy disagrees Every Magic format, collectible card game, and most collectible games have bans of valuable cards that players collect. Yet when this is brought to attention, Josh, Jimmy, and Rachel feel the need to baby players who were extremely upset about the ban. This can be a fair criticism depending where this sentiment comes from. The Command Zone criticizes players not feeling sorry for other players that bought expensive cards never expecting them to be banned. But a few years ago, Josh and Jimmy fully dismissed the concerns players had years ago when the Walking Dead cards were revealed. I find it extremely hypocritical that they will berate some players for not feeling sorry about others making poor decisions (when the bans almost objectively improve the game), but completely dismiss other players' concerns about the health/vision/future of the game (in regards to universes beyond).
10 mins in and it feels toxic enough to stop. The conversation sounds like there's a lot of bitterness both at what was banned, and that you weren't listened to/consulted recently. Josh, if you're ALWAYS "no bans ever", why would your opinion be asked again? It is already known. Unless RC was sharing info with you and no one else, you don't know there's a "small" amount of threats. It feels like trivializing what the RC dealt with, which was huge enough for them to drop the format. Also the ONLY person saying 'hey someone from the inside told me WotC told them specifically not to do these bans'. Video feels pretty distasteful at this point, enough to not continue watching.
Gotta disagree on asking g ppl from the community to step up as new RC members. Seems irresponsible to receive viable death threats and then just hand that over to someone else whether they’re okay with it or not
@@GeneralDisarray666 do not believe a thing till a name and shame happens. Considering the politics of the RC and Wizards. For all we know. They're faking it cause the changeover was planned all along and they needed a contreversy to do so.
@@GeneralDisarray666 dude, this people don't even get paid for the work in the community rules. Now they have to show the evidence? I think you are a little confused
People hate people, hate being manipulated, love money. CMM and LCI were pushed hard with JL and MC being reprinted and DE being in the list of LCI, then shortly after a few volunteers pull the rug from under you.
I feel like some introspection was missed in this episode. I think there is a lot of talk about how the community "fans" failed the RC post the ban, but what about Magic content creators? Do you feel you commentary and the reaction to the bans contributed to this? I know when I saw Josh quit the CAG a day after the bans it felt appeared angry and reactionary, and I can see how that and other statements on line by these influencers in the community, made the RC feel like maybe no one was going to get their backs, short of saying don't send death threats.
1:43:47 And there it is. Josh and Jimmy lean on Rachel enough and she reverses her opinion that she started with. And now all 3 have a completely impractical take.
I respect Rachel enormously but not enough to listen to out of touch people victim blame those who were trying to make the format a better experience for the average LGS goer. These last two videos lack tact and ooze with petty passive aggressiveness. All this is doing is further fanning the flames and putting the crosshairs back onto the former RC members under the guise of "I told you so". When your entire position is "don't do anything", you have no position and thus bring nothing to any conversation about rule adjustments.
@@WiLDRAGE777 why do you think the casual lgs goer should determine what the sanctioned even player is allowed to play when rule 0 exists. If your decks a seven or below sit at a precon table it's that simple. There are so many precon players it's ridiculous. Sitting down at a table you know is high powered and asking them to play low powered shit to cater to you is why this is a thing. Sure there are some pubstomper dickheads that come in and play with casual players but it's a simple matter of not playing with them again. I actually liked the cards that got banned on competitive blue elemental blast is 50 cents literally stops dockside hushwing griff once again pennies to purchase and it shuts off all dockside etbs. Your inability to search for answers via interaction or stax is not the competitive sanctioned event goers problem yet I'm now subject to the banlist while you continue to rule 0. How is it fair I spend thousands on my cards and you buy a precon and your complaints shape the way I can play in tournaments recognized by wotc
I had time to mull it over. I agree the ban rollout wasn't well done. They should have given warning and time and did each card one at a time over an extended period with feedback. However, I just don't feel comfortable with just dumping EVERYTHING at the RC's feet. Let's use Jimmy's logic and go one step further. Why was it NOT safe to ban those cards? WotC made them artificially scarce, bred a predatory environment of FOMO and power creep, and it was allowed to fester. I agree the RC made mistakes. I may be on the wrong conversational layer or ignorant, but it feels like stopping there is still too shallow to address the issue of a community with severely toxic elements that can't handle a ban. I agree with a lot but that point knocks me off the wagon.
I think it’s worth pointing out that another tcg, Yugioh, does this all the time. A really expensive card gets banned, and they all shrug and move on (they’ll be upset) but never to this level. It’s unfair to put all the blame on the RC, especially for handing the reins to wizards. I understand being upset about not being consulted for the bans, that’s reasonable. Being upset for not being consulted for the handing over of rc when there’s literal safety concerns? That’s honestly ridiculous. Their safety is their priority as it should and they shouldn’t cater to the cag for it (bad wording makes it more negative but I couldn’t find another way to word it). The RC did make mistakes but it’s worth pointing out that their intention was for the health of the format, they just didn’t go about it in the best way. The RC is not at fault for the communities reaction, nor are they at fault for trying to protect themselves. They are not responsible for the wallets of players either. That argument I honestly find egregious, though I do feel bad for some.
1:29:15 All three say that the recent ban announcement has irrevocably destroyed all faith/trust players had in the RC due to the ban. Of 4 cards. This continues with Josh saying that if there was an outcry for the RC to resign, he would have supported it due to "failure of leadership"??? Really... I just have to reiterate. The Rules Committee, whose main purpose is to maintain the banlist for a format, has lost the trust of players by......doing their job??? I concede that there should have been more communication to players about an upcoming ban. But for making the ban announcement itself, there should be no grudges held. The sentiment expressed by the Command Zone here IMO is the type of sentiment that contributed to the vitriol sent towards the RC that made them resign. Poor show Josh, Jimmy, and Rachel
@@supachigga I don't wanna go as far to say poor show but there is a solid chance I'm trying not contribute to same style of energy that got the RC lit up. (Not saying you're doing it, I'm just trying to keep myself in check). IDK. This situation is weird. I just wanna play my funny cards and pretty angels but eh. I guess we'll see.
This was super disappointing. The unbanning of the fast mana pieces would make it so that the people sending death threats get the message that these tactics work. And if you guys think that the Rules Committee should have seen this harassment coming, then do you really not think YOU could have seen subsequent harassment of them coming about as a result of this podcast? The RC threw in the towel and is trying to get away from this, and you're spending a good chunk of this video redirecting blame towards them. We get it, but you seriously don't think that's going to make their lives harder while the flames are still hot? The discussion from these last 2 podcasts has been hard to stomach. Unsubbing.
I have to say that personally, i fundamentally disagree that the financial side should be a fsctor in any way when it comes to bannings. Magic is, at its core, a game. To take the financial value of the cards into account when making ban decisions is a dangerous decision that can lead to cards being "unbannable" on the basis of cost. It feels like the same kind of thinking that spawned the reserve list, which created this system that priortized card value over game access.
And this is what I get for commenting before I finished listening to the podcast. Because I definitely feel called out, and rightfully so, about the lack of empathy. Regardless of my feelings about the bans, and whether we should care about the financial aspects of things when making ban decisions, you guys are right in saying that people are allowed to feel hurt by what happened. Definitely made me look in the mirror a bit
I've suspected that Wizards was pushing for more and more control over the format for a long time. When the RC says they wanted to "make a statement," it was a statement to Wizards to stop printing cards into the format that are unhealthy for it. I imagine the frustration of trying to manage Magic's largest and de facto casual format against Hasbro's increasing desperation and greed put the RC into a bad spot where they thought they had to do this for the community. Then, when that same community turned around and stabbed them in the back for it, they gave up and said "fine, fuck it. Wizards can have it."
Strangers playing edh at LGSs and events are communicating very poorly about what type of game they want to play. Rather than redefining how to represent the power level of a deck is, we should define more clearly what type of games we want to play during rule zero. Maybe Wizards curating a set of questions to structure rule zero would have a more positive impact that player would also be more open to adapting because it requires less though on their end for ranking their deck's power level/bracket. They could even print something like this on the backside of tokens to help new players understand what should be discussed during rule zero. Examples of questions: 1) What turn do we want the game to end? 2) How much fast mana does the deck have? 3) How interactive are our decks? Does the deck run any stax effects? 4) What different ways can your deck realistically win games? Combat damage, Burn or Life drain, Mill, Posion counters, etc... 5) Can the deck go infinite? If so is the commander part of that combo, what is the earliest turn that can happen? Is a deterministic win-the-game combo or a non-deterministic win-the-game combo? 6) How expensive if the deck list? 7) What is the decks salt sum? Are we trying to play mean decks and we will not take ourselves too seriously? Are we just trying to have a chill relaxed game with less salt? By no means does these questions fix all of the issues present, but I think that structuring rule zero with a set of example questions that should be asked if players are not familiar with each other's decks is a much better way to try and address the social issues that led to the bans in the first place. Commander is the most expressive format which to me makes it the most interesting. The fact that we can rule zero to play with banned cards as long as everyone understand and is on board means that official bans do not really matter nearly as much as long as ALL players are on board with that game. Creating a more defined structure on what should be discussed for rule zero will help players understand what aspects they need to communicate about their deck for everyone to understand if they are all trying to play the same game. If the power level conversation has taught us anything, it is often better to discuss the type of game everyone wants to play rather than the explict power level of their deck.
Regarding threats: to those saying "it wasn't about cardboard, it was about money", investing in magic is a speculative investment and should always have been treated as such, putting down huge sums of money in something that's not regulated is your right sure, but you lose the right to complain about market fluctuations in the process. If your investments holding value matters so much you're going to threaten people's lives over it, put it in an index fund or something with legal backing. "It's about the money" is just "it's about the cardboard" with extra steps and a sprinkle of economics on top.
Feeling a bit uncomfortable with this one If people have received credible death threats to the point of forcing them to give away commander to wizards, I think every community leader and content creator priority should be protecting those people. I don’t know how saying things like “wizards told us they warned them” would help in that. I get that you all are angry and sad at what went down, but it feels like a bit more consideration should have been needed there. Plus some of Josh’ and jimmy’s quotes sometimes go a bit into victim blaming. The RC might have acted recklessly, but them having to give away the format didn’t happen because of that, but because there are some crazy people out there who made their life hell. I know you all people at CZ know that and are aware of that, I just thinking that devoting a big chunk of the podcast at pointing out RC’s errors isn’t really helping in calming crazy people down and bring the community in a better direction
It seems like there's no good way to handle the situation. I've started to really dislike the way death threats are handled on the internet. Like, what does the word 'credible' even mean when people on the internet can throw out death threats like candy on Halloween? Can we actually tell which death threats are credible? Are any of them credible? None of them? If some are and they're indistinguishable from non-credible death threats, how in the world is anyone supposed to react to that when the non-credible ones are so common? I have to wonder - is the way we spotlight verbal threats online actually helping? The last thing I want to do is victim blame - this isn't about any specific instance or person, but about how we collectively handle threatening words on the internet. It feels like, more than anything, calling it out in the abstract without action or consequence is rewarding the people doing it with attention and apparent influence while protecting personal reputation, allowing us to say we're not one of those people, we would never do that, we take this Very Seriously but it's not actually doing anything to solve the problem.
IMO, and I think this is a point that Josh makes in the discussion, is that discussing the problems with how the RC handled everything is more about understanding the situation and holding them accountable (in the sense of discussion) and not victim blaming. Victim blaming would be blaming individual members and somehow saying that they got what they deserved, but at no time does Rachel, Josh, or Jimmy say that the extreme responses were appropriate and they all condemn the extreme responses.
1000% what I said in my comments too! "They had this coming" and calling it a failure of leadership and horrible decision making is such an immature approach of someone like Josh who claims to have this huge platform he's responsible for
@@francescoarchidiacono5370 I very much felt the same on this one. But I do have to wonder how much of that might indicate a "special relationship" with WOTC.
What people often dont seem to mention when just saying 'rule 0', is how awkward that can be made. If you play in the one LGS near you house, with a £50 pile of random nonsense, where maybe 4/5 people turn up per week, are you just supposed to get up and leave if that one asshole refuses to take out his Crypt/Dockside/Lotus? I want to play the game. So when I sit down and ask a dude to take out dockside, and he responds with either 'no' or 'only if you take out your Kinsbaile cavalier', it just less painful to suck it up and have 4 shit games on the off-chance he doesn't draw his game breaking cards.
And nothing has changed with the banning of the cards, because there are still dozens upon dozens of pushed OP cards that still exist in the format (and some have become even moreso post ban).
Straight up. It’s easier to ask to include a card than it is to ask someone not to play something. Then you have to assume they actually have something to replace it or they brought another deck which I am sure could be infuriating if you are the one being asked not to play something. That would break up the community fast.
Why should I who prefers fast placed gameplay as well as my group cater to you who barely plays for one. Why do casual players feel the need to hinder my ability to play cards in sanctioned tournaments they don't play in because you refuse to find a group that fits your gameplay
@@kyriethaking why cant you find a group thats fits your gameplay? My point isnt that either is better or worse, just saying it adds so much unnecessary work to a game
I'm going to give you (Josh) the benefit of the doubt, to a degree, that when you blame the RC for WotC gaining control of Commander it's just your anger at how the bans were handled and not anything else. HOWEVER, given you also said WotC and the RC should have expected death threats and doxxing for banning pieces of cardboard it's really hard to justify your statements. And that you believed that the RC should have consulted others about what to do WHILE BEING THREATENED. So like- it's hard not to see a common denominator here? Similarly you and Jimmy were both talking about how WotC shouldn't do anything drastic, unless its unban a bunch of cards you like that'd be sick. Especially with all of this being over four (well, three) cards that were very clearly (and called such by you) design mistakes. Cards you generally don't allow on your show because it leads to bad gameplay videos for your bottom line. Taking a moment to call out the pro-ban people for dismissing the feelings of others when you just- forgot briefly, that your friends were being threatened with violence and how that might impact their decision making. Like- this is where I part ways with Command Zone, Game Knights, and Extra Turns. If this is your view on the game, I want no part in it.
Also, his announce about his retiring as advisor, he was part of the problem, he could wait a few days until people calm, but, he just gave more fuel to the hate. Also, i can see why they didn't talk with the advisors, it was a big thing, if some of then made the previous weeks some comment or buy/sell people could acuse then for controling the market (also, in his case, if he always say no, then, why question if they knew the answer?)
He didn’t say they DESERVE the threats they recieved; but it’s common knowledge that there’s a vocal, asshat minority amongst the MTG community and it was a safe assumption they’d lash out like they did. Pretty sure that was his stance.
@@chrismcdonell6816 WotC and the RC said they expected pushback, but not to this degree or severity, Josh's response to this is he would have expected this severity of pushback. Meaning that Josh expected that banning Crypt and Lotus would lead to Death Threats. Which is on its own a pretty fucked up thing to say in both the 'how he sees the community' and 'how he thinks about the bans' ways. I also have to push back against people being entitled to their anger. This is not a topic you're entitled to that level of anger, you're entitled to be miffed you can't play that card you like. You're entitled to think it sucks. But unless you tell me Gavin Verhey stole your Grandfather's soul and trapped it in an ancient Egyptian artifact and you needed that Jeweled Lotus to win it back in a game of Commander, that's as far as your anger takes you. And that goes for whatever weird nonsense trip of anger Josh is on being mad at the RC here. To the point that he thinks they should have 'learned their lesson to not act rashly' while their lives, and their family's lives, are in danger.
"They handed it over without asking if we should keep it community run" Bro. The community THREATENED THEM WITH VIOLENCE. They owe NOTHING. If a SINGLE incident resulted in that? I'd also wash my hands and say "ok fuck you were done" And then Jimmy saying "no, I'd send a threat of violence about giving it to wizards"? Damn guys. Really?
Exactly. This whole video is riddled with bitterness and victim blaming. Why the fuck would you want to keep volunteering for a group of people that threatened your life?
Ah yes because a minority of bad actors is justification for changing ownership of MTG's biggest format. You're so easily manipulated it's crazy. Every hobby of this size is going to have its lunatics, it doesnt justify the takeover.
I think the argument they were making was that people that (rightfully) no longer wanted to be on the RC could have stepped away and offered it to other members of the community/CAG that wanted that position - keeping it community-run while letting people step away from a position they weren't comfortable in. Also do you have a timestamp for Jimmy saying what you've quoted? Closest I found was at 14:38 him saying "I could totally see someone saying {...} 'them giving it to wizards? This is what I'm going to send a threat of violence about'", then immediately followed with an admonishment for such behaviour. Quoting him as saying he would threaten WotC staff seems quite disingenuous at best.
They owe no one anything. But the community is not theirs only. If they don't want the responsibility because the situation has gone very wrong, they can just say "I'm out". Someone else could try if that happened. But that's not what happened. The threats are bad but that doesn't solve them.
I watched this video because I thought I was going to watch another great video were JLK and Prof talk about business and general life stuff but instead it was a video about nothing. Josh is a good person. He should feel just in what he said because it is factual and he should feel ok about his feelings because they are valid.
Listening to you guys make me even more confident in my current thought process; don't try and make a system to accurately measure deck power because that's impossible. You CAN make a system to categorize individual card power level and use that as a measure for people to match up. Deck building is half the entire format, and most people aren't good at it. That's why they copy pasta EDHREC lists so often. Quit trying to measure unmeasurable stats and data. Use your data to measure card power, commander tiers, and make loose, easy to use tools to help people communicate basic info.
I just returned to watch this video again after watching the episode with Prof recently released. And I honestly can't see the lines that Josh supposedly crossed here. Let me start by stating that I personally disagree with him and think that baning fast mana is excelent for the format (and the game design principles behind any card game ban should never address any other factor other than the health of said card game format), but nevertheless he has all the right as a leader of the comunity to express his frustration and discontent, specially using his own plataform (youtube channel).
I highly doubt WotC understands that the Commander format moves glacially slow considering WotC churn out 25+ Commander Preconstructed Decks and 50-100 Commander-ready Legendary Creatures per year! :/
In some way, nothing's stopping the community from getting together and just.... doing their own thing irrespective of what WOTC thinks. Even in my own EDH playgroup we'd sorta curate our own power levels, figure out what was too obnoxious and unfun and build our decks a certain way.
Given the fact that all of this happened because of death threats to people. I'm disappointed in Jimmy saying he wants WOTC to now unban the cards that caused all this for the sake of gameplay. Whether you agree or not, that's rewarding them for bad behavior, and I expected better. But overall, you guys had a massive amount of responsibility making this video and well done
Considering Josh is talking about alleged unverified private conversations with supposed wotc insiders to try to prove he was right, it seems like the RC had pretty good reasons to not trust members of the CAG not to leak, didn't they Josh
If communication was there it could have prevented this. If leaks had occurred it could have prevented this. The one thing I disagree is the discussion that the RC could have or rather should have remained a volunteer regulatory entity. For If you believe the implementation for these Banning was correct for the game it's obvious to everyone that this regulatory body needs protections. ALL of the problems derive from mistakes made by WOTC either through design or marketing. But we had other people wholly tasked with correcting them. That doesn't make sense. The responsibility of correcting mistakes should be carried out by the entity that created them, along with the blame and anger. And if that anger manifests itself into threats then a company with resources can help in eliminating that with prosecution and at the very least lifetime bannings of players who are found guilty of these thing.
Sadly this is it for me on this channel, the complete disregard, victim blaming and how they talked about the CRC handing over the keys completly disgust me. I am so disappointed in both as I have really enjoyed the channel. These are your friends. Peace.
Regarding the conversation about just what proportion of people were on board with this, there's always been an issue with magic that the loudest people are the most hard core audience. The people who follow MtG content creators, respond to polls on twitter and post opinions on reddit aren't necessarily a good representation of the overall community of players who find out about things like this when they show up to their LGS once every week or two. Does that mean I'm speaking for all the more casual players and saying they were totally cool with this? No, but I am saying just like I shouldn't do that, it's too presumptive to assume the online frenzy is super representative, and we still could have been looking at most people being genuinely fine with and in favor of these bans. It's anecdotal, but I have never seen a player who does not own a Mana Crypt be happy when one comes down on the other side of the table.
The game changed when WoTC started to print specific cards and sets for Commander. It felt like, from my perspective, sometime after 2017 WotC really ramped up monetizing commander by printing more powerful cards designed to make commander players chase them.
Just watched the first 20 minutes and it's basically only been set up as a one-sided victim blaming conversation with no pushback at all. Trying to recontextualize the conversation and throw blame back at the RC like JW does around @15:00 is completely unacceptable. You are all pouring more fuel on the fire and adding to the divisive rhetoric that we have seen thus far. I've subbed to your content since near the start but this is honestly it for me.
18:03 Josh says that the level of backlash this week towards the rules committee "should have been anticipated". He continues by saying the RC was "naive" for being blindsided by the threats they received. Jimmy and Rachel agree with Josh on all points A quick recap: The rules committee received numerous online death threats, some of their addresses were doxxed, some members were intimidated/threatened in person face to face from Magic players, detailed and graphic threats were made with specific plans/intentions on how they would harm the RC members and their families, some RC members may have had players stalk them to their home addresses, local authorities had to get involved, and Wizards had to assist possibly by contracting some private security for the RC members. Josh, Jimmy, and Rachel are aware of all of this information, they talk about it right before this timestamp And Josh's response to this is: this was so easy to see coming, I would have 100% expected all of this from a ban announcement. Of 4 cards. For a children's card game fan-format.
I know sponsors keep the lights on, but there is something weirdly dystopian about how you talk about threats of violence to the RC and your feelings on the whole situation. You create this very emotional mood and follow it up by "btw guys check out our sponsors"
For the “Bracket system” I think it should include a number system for the number of:Tutors(except land searches), free spells, power of cards, ramp, Fast mana, etc. Examples: Tutor categories: Bracket 1 has 0-1 tutors, Bracket 2 has 2-3 tutors Bracket 3 has 4 tutors Bracket 4 has 4+ tutors-demonic tutor, vameric tutor auto Free spells Bracket 1=0 or low power free spell Bracket 2=1 Bracket 3=2 Bracket 4=3+
Serving the freezing cold take that threatening poeple is bad while giving indirecte validation of those behaviors on social media by throwing fuel to the fire for 2 weeks straight, the dissonance is palpable... You are partly at fault for all this. I would like to hope you would be able to be better judges of the impact of your words on poeple lives in the futur.
Honestly super disappointed in JLK. I think it is really tasteless to start talking about "they didnt consult me again" when they are volunteers that are clearly distressed and upset by death threaths. Ofc they didnt do the best thing. They did what they had to. Which was looking out for the safety of their loved ones and themself. Some CAG members and especially JLK just cannot step over their own ego and step up. Instead they call fire bad and turnaround to bring fuel to the fire.
The fact that the one ring isn't banned in modern for purely financial reasons (they want to reprint an in universe version) is a large part of what makes me not super trust them in the first place
I feel that the sentiment “this is the road we picked” is as naïve as the rules committee’s decision. The entire statement around “the format is better” is an ignorant one, because what is better for you doesn’t make it better for another and how they want to play. Who wants to play slow durdling games? Rachel apparently, and good for her for that. But, you are saying how you want to play is how everyone else should play. And let’s be realistic, JL and Mana Crypt are more accessible than Mox Diamond or some other fast mana pieces like LED. All they have done is make a bigger divide in access to fast mana. I feel like Rachel isn’t getting the fact that not everyone wants to play the way she does. I personally don’t think less options for how to play is better.
Well said. I'm tired of hearing "better for the health of the format" with no argument to back it up. Was the format sick and dying a month ago? Not at all! It was growing as fast as ever.
The problem is WotC printing overpowered cards and not the RC or somebody else banning cards! Nadu, One Ring, Companions, True-Name Nemesis, Mental Misstep, ... so many examples and I'm forgetting most of them ... they all were literal mental missteps of WotC!
@joeferreti9442 See, why exactly is True-Name a mistake? It's powerful, but the meta adjusted. It's barely played, let alone needing to be banned. If casual commander players would use the tools they have instead of begging mommy RC to make the bad cards go away, the meta would adjust and a lot of their problems wouldn't be an issue. But they're so sensitive that they get butthurt by taxing effects, land destruction, etc. A Null Rod would work miracles on "broken mana rocks", but they'd never allow you to play something like that.
Came here straight after watching the episode with Prof that was basically a super weird public shaming. I haven't seen anything close to what i expected given how hard Prof was raking Josh over the coals????
I don't know why this ban is considered controversial. All the cards banned needed to go whether you agree or not. Magic is supposed to be for everyone, but cards like MC and Dockside existing and being as powerful as they are, leads to high price on a secondary market by which wizards prints cards specifically for. When people play these cards, the power of the deck is amplified and it is hard to keep up with people who spend every cent they have on cards. Proxying is a solution but wizards actively makes it harder to do that, and is time consuming. Cedh players and collectors are just throwing temper tantrums because they see magic as an investment when it's not really supposed to be that. Because they threw their tantrum now wizards controls the format, which is in my opinion worst case scenario. Tldr magic is a fickle cardboard game, don't treat it like the stock market, and abolish the reserve list, magic is a game for everybody
29:27 the big thing is that commander isn’t the stuff in the room. commander is the room, but it’s a room with no ceiling and walls because you can do so much within the format, high power, causal, competitive, jank. even if there was a way to quantify EDH it would be too difficult to track. that scatter plot would be all over the place.
Josh came across as quite bitter, is he a bit angry he never got added to the RC? I love the absolutely show, and will continue to enjoy it, but definitely don't trust Josh's judgement here.
This and the last episode come off so disconnected from most players and the impact these cards and others have on the average table at an LGS. And also as blaming the RC in part repeatedly for how they banned these cards all at once and didn't just announce beforehand or do nothing. Just comes off as salty they weren't specifically asked on banning some overpowered cards that should not have been printed, and only were for profits as chase cards, and that they were finally banned. Josh even says they did speak to some who said not to ban them. If they kept consulting and reaching out and the ban ideas leaked it would've caused mass panic selling and further uproar the RC wanted to avoid if possible.
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
What do you think about Wizards of the Coast taking the reins of Commander? What advice would you give them on managing the format?
Bad,don’t get bullied by the secondary market, focus on the health of the game.
I think we all wish WOTC didn't control the format, I also think we need to recognize that it got way too big for five volunteers to run. If the rules committee had adjusted and adapted as the game grew I don't think we'd be in this position, but it stayed way too small for how big the format got.
People were already mad when WOTC made "for commander" cards. This gives them more reign to do so. As well as control the ban list. Nothing is stopping them from banning a card then 2 sets down the line offering something of a similar effect but just slightly off and making it scarce so people pay top dollar
Im curious to see how their new structure will influence the design phase of commander products. Hopefully it stops design mistakes like Yuriko/arcane signet/and so on.. earlier on in the process.
DO NOT CHANGE ANY BANLIST UNTIL NEXT QUARTELY UPDATE. Regarding the chaos that happened after the recent bans, it can be easy to undo things that led to the threats, but doing so can just cause more chaos. Please listen to the former RC members regarding the format. The last thing it needs is multiple overpowered chase cards (looking at you jeweled lotus) to incentivize players to buy cards. Try to keep balance in mind throughout every card. Powerful cards are great but needs reliable counterplay to prevent from being miserable to play against. Also STOP PRINTING WARD ON EVERY LEGENDARY CREATURE.
Just to say that the new set up in this episode with the 3 of you sitting comfortably is really nice
Thank you! We're excited to be trying something new!
@@commandcaststan comfy Jimmy
@@commandcastI agree feels more like I'm hanging out with you guys
@@commandcast Needs more fuzzy slippers
@@commandcast Really nice set up, but it bothered me a little that Rachel's mic covered half of her face most of the time. That's probably an easy fix, if there is interest in fixing that.
Josh is absolutely right. If you want to threaten people with violence over pieces of cardboard....you don't need to be playing this game and need therapy. 😬
That’s true for almost anything really, this is especially the case
It wasnt over cardboard it was over money and while it is gross to threaten people and absolutely unacceptable, people get violent over money all over the world every day, so it is sadly not suprising that this was the outcome.
@@jeremiahchamberlain4179 good point
No one made threats about cardboard lmao y'all need to be honest about it at least. Threats ain't cool, but pretending it's about cardboard makes me think this community based around a children's card game never actually grew up.
That's true but magic is massive if 0.5% of the players are asshats that's still to many people, just keep that in mind
30:12 Saying wizard has wisdom or humility is wild, they set the dnd community on fire like what last year out of sheer greed and arrogance. They will make the financial call every time not the community interest or game health.
not to mention they're the ones that printed the cards in the first place, multiple times, as chase cards, lol. they may have some wisdom in design, but they certainly care about the bottom line more than anything else, even at the cost of the format at times.
That was wild. Thanks for not printing the game in my main language anymore Wizards, so humble and wise
Hazbro and WotC currently deserve no good will as they continue to prove that they dont show any. It doesnt really matter if the people at WotC have the good of the game at heart, they ultimately don't get a say on the decisions that could do the most damage.
@@dbptwg I just hope that there is a splinter format that tries to keep *some* continuity as a fan format.
The thing that people MUST keep in mind is that in the US all publicly traded corporations are legally *required* to put maximizing profits above every other concern. If WOTC is in charge and there is a conflict between their profit margin and the quality of the game they will pick profits every time. Not even because they’re bad people, but because they are *legally required* to do so and if they don’t make that choice they will be replaced by someone who will.
I came here because of the apology video, um.... Josh is fully justified in his frustration and is being perfectly reasonable. I see no issue.
I'm all for "We trust the people at wizards" reassurance. But at the same time just an episode ago we were saying Dockside and Jeweled Lotus should never have been printed direct into the format - and Wizards did that. If wizards had been in control of the format when Ikoria dropped, would they have banned Lutri out the gate?
It's great we trust the individuals, but I don't trust Wizards as a whole.
Don’t trust anyone. Talk is cheap, and people will tell you what you want to hear, especially in times like this. Look at the actions of wizards: always for-profit at the expense of the health of the game. This will never change so long as they are a publicly traded company.
These people are on a first name basis with those at Wizards. Of course they are going to say that. You are 💯 right to not trust this
Wizards of the coast employees have said jeweled lotus, dockside, and arcane signet were mistakes.
The question is would they have banned the cards themselves?
I don't think so.
They literally covered that
@benvictim two things
1. Arcane Signet? I've never heard it said that WotC regretted making that.
2. This is the exact reason why I think WotC won't be quick ob the draw to ban anything. Their prime directive is to make money, not manage a format. The longer they can hold off on bans, the more money they're likely to make.
"What has social media done to us?"
Amplified our worst natures. Pure and simple.
Blame Elrond musk.
He has changed the twitter algorithm to push the most controversial and rage inducing takes to the center of our community discourses.
A RUclipsr made a video this week where they made a new account and they only followed Pokémon artists. Yet Their feed was still full of white nationalist posts promoting racism and transphobia.
And by design. All just for a few more cents in ad revenue. Probably the most harmful invention in all of human history.
It hasn't, it has just made it possible for the worst people to reach the more people than ever before.
I mean people use to burn people to death to saying a prayer wrong, social media wasnt around then.
@@wellwellwelp So you agree? Amplifying humanities worst traits would include setting people on fire for saying prayers wrong. I'm sure those people probably thought it was socially acceptable to do so.
@@wellwellwelpfor real to pretend threats only came out since the internet is hilarous
When it comes to a large company like WotC, you CAN NOT give something to an individual team. If the "game design team" owns Commander, WotC owns Commander. If WotC owns Commander, Hasbro own Commander. The Game Design Team is not a separate entity. That statement should hold very little weight on the long term.
WotC created Commander as a variant of EDH, and has owned the format ever since then.
Hasbro. Not just wotc. The guilty one has a name here.
@@RaptieFeatherswrong. Sheldon Menery created the format. Wizards owns MTG. The community collectively owned commander. NOW Wotc does own commander.
"Don't ban these chase cards!" -Seller of Chase Cards
Do you understand what a chase card is or no?
"Commander players arent like standard or modern players, we want to play the same deck for 15 years just upgrading a card here or there"
😭 thats what modern was supposed to be and what a lot of modern players *do* want tho
Yes we want extended essentially. Before modern
WoTC: but but...I can't monetize that!
@@ertai222extended was only 4 years of cards, so not sure what you mean.
I just got into MTG (I’m playing Brawl on arena) and I’m glad to know I’ll be playing my Kastral deck for forever
If modern were anything like that, I’d 100% play both. I love the 60 card formats as well, but with its inconsistency it always felt safer to play edh with a wider ranger of card availability.
If these cards were reprinted frequently enough to be reasonably priced, the ban would have happened a long time ago and nobody would have really cared.
No us cedh players are feeling it bc of casual players not wanting to have a rule zero conversation.
@@dylanmayabb6594 Yeah that always works at Friday Night Magic. Bans are easily enforced. Social dynamics are not.
@@dylanmayabb6594 As the local control player, i have had issues where i show up to an FNM look for a pod for an hour, then leave, because "Rule Zero" no one wants to play against a control deck.
Rule zero is the DISEASE not the CURE.
All cards could be unbanned, MLD and STAX would still be booed out of the LGS.
They likely wouldn't have been banned at all. This was clearly a finacial attack to the format, with one card being banned for legitimate reasons.
@@IIIHUSKIIIWhatever you’re smoking, clearly you should cut back on it
As a different channel said: "The best thing about the internet is that it gives everyone a voice. The worst part of the internet is it gives *everyone* a voice"
I'm from Brasil and today i learnd that quagmire is a a soft boggy area of land that gives way underfoot. and not a character of family guy
Por isso que o nome dele é engraçado! 😊
Yes funny enough I only learned it 5 years ago but that’s still late for me in comparison to how long family guy had been out
Josh : “Don’t do that, you suck” 😂
IF WE DO NOT VOICE OUR OPINION NOTHING WILL CHANGE, DO NOT DENOUNCE THOSE WHO SAW ACTION TAKE PLACE
I need a shirt of that 😂
@@leroygardner8529…so you’re ok with threats eh?
@leroygardner8529 what are you on about?
He says while also saying "we were never consulted" when they literally were
As a complete outside, I am not surprised Wizards said "don't ban these cards".
But - I would also not be surprised in the slightest, if the RC has spent a long time begging Wizards to do something about those cards too. Reprinting them in far higher quantifies to push the prices down from astronomical levels would make a future ban far more palpable. Banning a $100+ card hurts. Banning a $20 card isn't nearly as painful. But I would also not be surprised in the slightest, if Wizards would shoot down such requests, because while they CLAIM that they don't watch the secondary market, it is also VERY obvious that they use those high value cards as chase rares to sell sets.
And that should tell you which side I'm on here. I don't like that 10-year-old kids cannot buy cards. They can't buy a Sheoldred the Apocaplypse, because it's an $80 card. They can't buy a Gaea's Cradle, because that's a $600 card. They can barely buy a Field of the Dead at $40. But they can buy a Sol Ring, even though there are $800+ versions of that card. And those $800+ versions of Sol Ring will retain their value, because that version is rare, even though Sol Ring is basically a bulk uncommon at this point. Serialized versions of Sol Ring are similarly expensive.
THAT is how Wizards should approach making chase cards to sell their sets. Print the staples into the ground to get the prices for them down, and print specialized versions (not foils - actually specialized) to keep the collector whales hooked.
I would agree with you if their weren't already people who payed $200 for a normal crypt in the past before the banning. It's a fine method moving forward, but in the end it still hurts those still dropped a lot of money prior
@@glassofmeat Having a rule that says "you cannot touch expensive cards - they can't be reprinted, they can't be banned" is just about the dumbest thing you can do.
@@MrMartinSchou i didn't say that. don't strawman. read. i actually agreed with you moving forward
@@glassofmeat "moving forward" being the operative term.
So how would you solve things like an $80 Sheoldred the Apocalypse? Or a $100 Edgar Markov.
And if we can't ban nor reprint expensive cards because it would drive down the price, then you can't make cards that overpower them either. So no "3 damage/3 life per card drawn" on a 4/5 with deathtouch, either.
We already have a ton of expensive "staples" that are on the reserve list, which makes the format pay-to-win, and you're saying they can't be banned either, because it might affect the price.
afaik the RC asked WOTC not to make/print jeweled lotus. and they already told us that they talked with wizards about banning the cards more than a year ago, so it baffles me that people blames the RC and not WOTC... "THEY JUST BANNED THE CHASE RARE OF A PRODUCT WOTC JUST SOLD US!!!", yeah... and WOTC knew the ban was comming and just sold it anyway.
And im 100% with you, people saying expensive cards shouldnt be banned are basically saying the game should have a expensive entry barrier or be pay to win. It is nonsensical
I'm with Rachel on just about everything on this, especially in the idea that Wizards should just leave the things banned as banned and reassess in the future. If wizards just changes a bunch of stuff off the jump, I'm going to be very wary of any future decision they make
Also, it would validate all the people making death threats over those cards. Which would be the biggest L in all of this
I came here, from the most recent video with the Prof.
I hafta say, Josh is spitting here. You can be upset with him but he's just telling it how it is.
It's not victim blaming. The blame was fairly put on the evil threat makers and wotc for not printing cards to make these cards less expensive and thus less salt when they're banned.
Nah he victim blamed 100%.
I don’t totally believe that Wizards did not want control of the format. This is the most popular format in the multi million dollar game they produce. There is no way they want essentially random people in charge of something that can effect their profits.
I think it's corporate double-speak. They KNOW that if they had tried to strong-arm control they would have had a major problem. Otherwise they would have done it. They're 1000% happy that they get to "save" the format.
I think the non-executives didn't want control, and the executives did want control. This was the path of least resistance, where the executives didn't have to force anyone's hands to take Commander away.
Yeah that's complete nonsense. They absolutely wanted it. That's why these talks were in motion before the "threats", and that's why there were contracts in place and frameworks ready to go "day one."
Imagine you have a cash cow that feeds itself, doesn't need to be cleaned up after, and provides double the milk. Why wouldn't you want to just take the milk and leave it alone.
@@raymondweiss7393 yup. Imagine thinking Hasbro cares that Commander is a “community format”. They care about the almighty dollar.
The key takeaways are we're all in a dark room, there's an elephant in the room, but there's also a tiger. We're also blind.
This needs more upvotes!
yes, one too many metaphors for sure
And we're also oarsmen on a ship with squeaky wheels.
My least favorite part of the magic community is the sheer amount of emotionally unintelligent adults. They are impacting this game far more negatively than anything wotc could ever do.
Well said
I mean...isn't this more a result of the sheer number of immature adults in society/online, rather than specifically Magic: the Gathering? I'm not sure Magic has a disproportionate number of idiots.
Unfortunately it's not really an either-or with who's worse for commander. It's an ecosystem, and the worry is that the dumbasses who threaten violence are emboldened in the first place by an entitlement that's nurtured by wotc bending and warping the game to meet their wants over the last decade or so. Once theres decisions they don't like they think they're in the right to 'correct' decisions by any means because it's THEIR format. With wotc in charge my worry isn't necessarily that they ruin the rules of commander or even print horrible cards unchecked (I mean, I worry a bit but Im sure there'll be a natural ebb and flow), my worry is that wotc folds to the worst offenders because they spend more money and are more likely to be those financially invested in the product vs invested in the game.
@@shrouded8797it has though. Mtg has classically been a refuge for loads of people with very poor social skills that find a place where they can be the bullies. Of course a majority of the people is cool, but the percentage of absolutely abhorrent people to deal with is off the charts compared with anybother hobbie I've ever had.
@@victorperezurbano9504 I'd say that conclusion mainly comes from your own experience, which is not necessarily indicative of everyone who plays Magic.
I would personally only feel confident in claiming that Magic has a disproportionate number of toxic people after some kind of objective analysis.
Where is the anger or the victim blaming in this video?? All I see is three pillars of the community having a constructive discussion about a major failure in leadership and management.
You came back too to check . I wanted to see where all this anger Josh had that him and the professor talks about on their newest video
I’m pretty sure that podcast was just to make people happy. It almost felt like a dad telling you what you did wrong when you didn’t do anything but you just go along with it
Just a bunch of unnecessary virtual signaling
@@1coolnika133the video with Professor and Josh is the video I wanna see what video is it?
For people who think commander is going to die (unlikely) its a community built format! If wotc starts dramatically changing things we can, as a community, just keep playing commander how we have been! You won't be ARRESTED for playing with the cardboard how you and your friends want. We can just make a format called commander classic or something lol
Time to revive the Captain format! /s
I wish more people understood that this format is really what you make it.
Exactly, while I like the bracket system (means you have to rule 0 if your deck is “mostly a 2 but runs a couple of 4s”)… if you don’t want to use it, just don’t.
My LGS will just be playing as normal.
That's good with a tightly-knit friend group, but try telling that to people who can only go to a LGS to play Commander, and they rock up to a pod of Randoms with banned cards. It won't end well.
I agree with you, we can adjust rules, but playing banned cards always feels wrong (e.g. paradox engine). And for some reason we insist on buying the original cardboard instead of a good printer.
Why don't we all play with proxied original duals and tabernacles and stuff like that?
On con #1, about Wizards being profit motivated, I think Jimmy makes a good point about Wizards already being in the position to squeeze Commander players harder if they need to. What's missing from that argument though is that an independent RC can make changes - like they just did, for better or worse - that fly in the face of WotC's profit motivation for the benefit of format health. What the whales don't talk about is that they benefit when Wizards creates expensive game pieces and keeps them legal, and that's part of why they're so mad at the RC for banning their expensive cards. Now, Wizards is incentivized to not ban those things...
Yea and the cards they banned were chase cards for some time. Very weird stuff. I just think wizards is going to mess it up like all of its other properties.
Unfortunately the RC proved time and time again that they were not interested in format health either, as every decision came out of left field with zero testing or logical impetus and the explanations were always arrogant and dismissive. At least now we'll have an entity that can be held accountable in charge.
and this is why mixing gameplay balance and finance is a bad idea for game design
They wouldn't be a company anymore if they didn't mix gameplay balance and finance. Do you really not know anything about how the world works?
@@thechestrockfieldthank you. They want money, that’s easy to follow.
What’s a mystery is what the RC was doing.
@Morphling92 Honestly, I think they were in an echo chamber. There are a lot of people like "the professor" who make idiotic claims about Magic that completely ignore common sense, logic, and basic principles of economics. If you only listen to people like that, and not to people like JLK that emphatically say, "Don't do this!" you will make very unpopular decisions.
@@thechestrockfield *emphatically. And the Prof and JLK were in full agreement in this situation, so idk what you’re talking about.
@pokelover02 I don't watch Prof anymore, but even in this video he talked about how they differed, so I don't know what you're talking about. Anyway, Prof used to say all kinds of dumb stuff about how cards are overpriced and NEEDED reprints to bring the cost down which is in direct contrast to what JLK said when he recognized Wizards needs cards to have reprint equity.
1:26:00 - Rachel just laid out the perfect reasoning why these bans were bad. They ramifications (financial, CEDH, and otherwise) were not worth it. Plus each playgroup can police themselves.
Hopefully WOTC learns and doesn't replicate this type of decision.
So I came here from hearing in Looking in the Mirror episode with Prof that Josh got angry and I failed to catch where in the video that happened.
I think a major portion of it is found in the section "How did we get here?". It's also a bit about knowing how Josh usually speaks and he's agitated and rapid-speaking for portions of the video, which can be picked up as Josh being angry. (Edit: Just to be clear it wasn't all that much, but it was there under the surface). I hope that helps understand the Mirror episode better.
I still think Josh (and Rachel and Jimmy) did a commendable job containing that anger and disappointment. Personally I would not be as composed, but then again I don't run a business with public speaking.
@@m.r.r.2636 just a bit and not unreasonable. Not something worth addressing in another video. Prof is just a virtue signaling gaslighter.
@DoubleOhSilver I don't disagree about it being small and I too think the apology was blown a bit out of proportion. However it seems like Josh wanted to correct himself because that wasn't how he perceives himself. I can respect and appreciate that.
Agreed
Came for the same reason, i wanted to see where exactly the anger was, and for me it just isn’t there to the degree that he was apologizing for. But if he feels guilty for some reason and an apology makes him feel better, then so be it.
This is especially weird given how many negative and critical videos Prof makes. I don’t see how what Josh said was any worse.
tbh, while I'm not an MTG player, but I watch a lot of games on YT... Any card that is essentially a MUST in near all EDH decks, and not adding one would objectively make the deck worse, would be a good ban. Honestly, would have liked to see Sol Ring included in the ban list too.
I’m here because I was wondering why the Professor was having a therapy session for Josh’s anger…. Yes he seems soooo angry….
I'm detecting a hint of sarcasm here. lol
Same here. I generally like the content Prof puts out, and I appreciate what he does, but the dude has come off as sooooo self righteous on multiple occasions. Not trying to hate on the guy, but he does make me roll my eyes sometimes.
@@sassysasquatch1886 You're looking at the wrong video, watch the one "Let’s Talk About the Bans"
@@sassysasquatch1886josh victim blamed the committee A LOT.
@@OTAVify- No. I just came from the start of the same video and they both they were talking about this one. "Let's talk about the bans" was before the RC gave up control to WotC. They were talking about this video.
Commander is what got me into Magic the Gathering. It is relatively affordable and budget friendly to play and I love the idea of having a deck built around 1 card. I love playing commander and will continue to play the game.
I am hopeful that the commander format will stay healthy and more importantly safe for those that want an escape from everyday life.
As long as you have good friends or a playgroup you'll be happy to keep playing bubba! Side note I have a tip for you. Don't always build your deck from the top down. Meaning built solely because you like the commander. Sometimes it's better to build a deck from the bottom up. Meaning find a strategy you like, or a play style and build from that finding a commander that really jives with that strat.
Pauper is also budget friendly if you want to play 60-card 1v1 format. Lots of powerful decks at common
It's a card game. It's not possible for it to be dangerous.
@@kementurhman, I’ve been to a commander “tournament” once. Again, the reason I went once is watching a grown adult scream at a teen because of some slight. Again, anything that has a competitive aspect can be dangerous even if unlikely
@@brandoncampbell5390 What did you do about it?
I feel like the people who aren't connected to the online magic discourse, and aren't tapped into the most up to date info, aren't the people who the abuse the power level discussions.
From my experience it's exactly those clueless people that are the worst offenders because they don't know what the word casual deck means. There are people that show up to my LGS that I have never seen say they are new and don't know what their deck is power wise then proceed to stomp the table and leave with their 1 win for the day. Or they think Voja is a perfectly casual decks and not innately high power when full of elfs. (I have a Voja deck, I even run a bunch of wolf's and elfs in mine and it's a high power deck). The people that don't know certain commanders are just broken sitting in pods with other people that don't know that commander is broken is where the most pub stomping happens. Iv had to tell plenty of new players that their deck is high power just because of their commander, Chulane with creatures is going to be busted even without combos, Prosh, and Korvold are going to be busted, Ursa, lord high artificer is going to be busted with artifacts. Etali is going to be busted. Atraxa (both) are going to be busted.
These same people had no idea what the RC was and are likely the vast majority of players.
I really find this situation very interesting. I came from a Yu-Gi-Oh player background, so the reactions of the community to a ban is completely different. I'm used to see card value change rapidly and people are relatively chill (of course not everyone, but not like this level of situation). I was shocked to hear what happened in the magic community.
It's a game and i understand the frustration of see your cards lose value, but i think if you play the game it's because you love it and not his money value. This event showed me how much this community love this game, but also its darker side😢
Yea I really thought the Yugioh community was the most toxic over this kind of stuff but damn has that been proven wrong.
We've seen a lot of investors coming into Magic over the last few years. I wonder if the people reacting so strongly to these bans even play the game.
Yugio is NOT Commander! It's not even comparable. There's hasn't been a ban for three years and winning on turn two is highly unlikely, even if it's technically possible. It's apples and durians.
@@Tobi-ci3nsI play the game. I have one copy each of Jeweled Lotus and Dockside in my cedh deck that I rarely get to play, and I've been plotting to get my hands on Mana Crypt for years. I HATE THIS BAN! I wouldn't have minded so much if they had the balls to ban Sol Ring too, because that's the fast mana that actually shows up in like EVERY GAME, but I still would have hated it. I'm poor. My magic collection was built playing fnm drafts for years. It's probably my most valuable asset and all my cool old cards I collected 20 years ago have been reprinted, just so nooBs can get a footing in commander, and accordingly the overall value has tanked. But I was there, they weren't! That's that. I try not to let it bother me. But it does. Makes me feel I made lots of bad choices with my money. I bled for those stupid cards! I'm a wizard and those are some of the best spells in my grimoire, and now they're illegal and everthing was handed to all these whiney casuals on a silver platter and they don't really aprecciate what they've got or what's been taken.
@@stonedphilosopher2185Regardless, if a ban uodate hasnt been made in over 3 years, that doesnt justify the malicious reactions and threats players made. I too came from yugioh to mtg in 2015 amd started with standard and went to commander after building and spending money to it being worthless after the standard rotation. Commander is a great game because of its card stability. But its also a card game and to keep it healthy all players should be knowingly ready for any bans to be made.
My group has had a custom ban list for a while. The bans don't change anything. Wizards being in control doesn't change anything.
If they start printing crazy stuff, then Sheldon-era Commander it is.
I feel bad for the kids experiencing "loss out of your control" for the first time. This is how life goes. Luckily i bought my cards with no intentions to resell.
"Not everyone even knows what fun means" was the quote of the episode. Feeling it deep in my soul.
Lots of people want to decide what fun is for other people too!
You have fun with fast mana? There’s a space for you
You have fun with battlecruiser slower games? There’s a space for you
Should welcome all cards and self regulate, if you’re an adult you can use your words to communicate to the other players in your pod what your expectations are
Fun is subjective and divisive as it gets for example I had fun playing nadu while it lasted. My friend has fun playing Turgrid. Another friend of mine plays Armageddon in his yuma deck. I’m sure someone out there has fun playing stasis.
@@grimeyguy9989 exactly! this concept escapes a lot of players it seems...
I liked what Kibler said about how commander wants to be everything for everyone. What a smartypants! I was telling my mom about my mtg habit and she said said something that stuck with me ever since. She said, "I can see how that could satisfy a lot of different things", and it's so true! People play to be social, they play to be competitive, they might have a hoarding complex, they like engineering the perfect machine, perhaps they're scummy investors, or gamblers, maybe it's all of the above in varying degrees, or something entirely different. Timmies, Johnies, Spikes, Vorthos, whatever! It's Magic! Whatever neurosis you have, here's your fix! Too bad the RC only seems to care about poor widdle Timmy, and was like screw the rest of you chumps. Was that supposed to be the "statement"? It came across like that to me, at least.
Writing this it occurs to me that somehow they lost sight of the big picture, but I don't think it's because it's a dark room. Kibler sees it. Josh sees it even if he won't admit it. Even my mom who never played a game of magic in her life could see it for crying out loud! All it takes is the ability to step outside of your widdle Timmy shoes, or Spikey(sorry Spike, they threw you to the curb hard dude, then an angry mob showed up with baseball bats to finish the job, don't say you didn't deserve it!) shoes for a second, use your empathy and intellegence, and see that truly all is good and was never and couldn't ever be anything but.🎉😊
The statement as to how the RC wasn’t being held accountable bc they’re always excused for being volunteers and how the new setup will have more accountability is wild to me. Literally every decision the RC makes has been met with tons and tons of feedback. The community always holds them accountable and the fact that they’re volunteers is rarely acknowledged. Quite the opposite, they are treated as if this was a paid position and as if every decision was made for their personal gain.
Feedback and being held accountable are two very different things
How exactly would you propose unpaid volunteers be "held accountable" besides feedback? Put them in the stocks so we can throw rotting fruit at them?@@wilfulbuckle13
But they literally never were, in any way shape or form, held accountable? They made years and years worth of horrendous decisions, ignored all of the feedback because they're not paid and nobody is there to MAKE them listen, and this situation is the result. Arrogance has consequences, eventually.
The rules committee enjoyed their celebrity status, reaping the benifits until they actually had to do their job they asked for and received treatment that's on the same level as others regularly experience. They are cowards who lacked both the conviction and integrity to care for the format. Instead of voluntary stepping down allowing others to step up, they robbed us and left us in the hands of WotC.
@nickvanschaick6322 how has wizards been held accountable for printing mistakes like dockside and lotus? Nadu? Like you can try boycott but the walking dead secret lair was a massive success despite all the hate, at least the RC isn't in it for the profit
I literally bought a mana crypt 1 week before the ban happened because I try to have at least 1 of any card i proxy. It stung to have a $180.00 suddenly get wasted, but never at any point did it cross my mind to be crappy towards the RC or throw threats at them. I just wish the RC gave some kind of warning or watchlist.
If you are playing mana crypt then the people or type of commander games you play aren’t fun. Commander was always meant to be fun , and casual. Now if your group of players like broke a%# cards or that’s fun for guys awesome. But wizards see’s it different! Why would you be mad at wizards for trying to keep this format profitable and enjoyable for the majority of players.
It's not like it went from 180 to 10 though. If you look at tcg player there are like 2 copies under 100 after that it jumps back up to 120-150 pretty quick depending on the version. If the card is useless to you, you would still be able to get a pretty good part of your investment back. look at reserve list cards, a lot of them are banned in almost every format but they hold significant value even though they aren't commonly played.
@@MATTA74 Most subjective take I've seen, what's "fun" to you is irrelevant and shouldn't drive fundamental changes. Unless is format warping like flash, it shouldn't be banned.
@@MATTA74mana crypt is about the same power level of sol ring and both of those cards have been in the format forever. They can be fun. You just have to be in the mood for those kind of games. We need to best be able to identify the kind of games everyone wants to play. Maybe we will get there with the upcoming conversations.
@@MATTA74 Like others have said, this is a very subjective take. Furthermore you say Mana Crypt is a broke a$$ card and is unfun and not what Wizard wants. First of all, how do you know what WotC wants for the Commander format now that they have the reigns? Secondly, WotC printed Jeweled Lotus, which mirrors Black Lotus - the arguably strongest card in Magic's history - so I don't think it's true that WotC doesn't want to print powerful cards for the Commander format.
WotC does not want to alienate part of their consumer base, which also consists of players who wants to play with very powerful cards.
Ugh even the statements of “oh all commander players have multiple decks” is too much a generalization! Just goes to show, nobody plays the same way. I got really 3 decks. And that’s the way it has been for nearly 10 years. I’ve probably played 200 of two of them.
Meanwhile in 5 years of playing i have over 100 decks, few having more than 10 games on them.
@@atk9989 Used to have about 50 decks, now it's about 24, and I play like.. four of them most of the time, lol.
3 is actually a multiple of 1
Same. Got a few decks, not including stock precons. And I just swap out cards, take out ones not working, add new or old cards. Fine tune them, etc. I'm sure you're like me, and know those 3 decks so well we could play blindfolded (obviously sarcasm, but hopefully you get what I mean lol)
having 3 decks is having multiple decks
I'm curious, what will happen with the next Lutri situation? The RC didn't want that card printed (iirc), and then made the 'easy' decision to ban it because they had no financial incentive not to (and they could do it before people lost money on the card). Now, what check is there? Would Hasbro be happy with the Commander Team at WotC if they preemptively ban a card because it would be too desirable as an auto-include in so many Commander decks?
What check was there for jeweled lotus? The rc wasn't using their checks anyway for too long which got people in the mindset that they would never be used.
Lutri should be legal as a commander or in the 99. It is only as a companion that he is a problem.
I hope we see more nuance like that.
@@Wyrm7774 What do you mean? The RC regularly had ban announcements that offered possible considerations. If anyone was in the "mindset they would never be used", it was because they didn't read the quarterly report on the wizards website about possible ban considerations. The RC has posted multiple times about fast mana and dockside in particular being an issue, see the January announcement. They also mentioned considering banning it back in the November quarterly report.
@@brianpendleton2674 More nuance like that would be most welcome!
@@Wyrm7774 As far as I know, the community wasn't privy to the discussion of cards like Jeweled Lotus within the RC or between the RC and WotC, but just because it wasn't banned doesn't mean there wasn't a check. Do I think it's a poor design? Yes, but it's not game-warping like Lutri as a companion. WotC is pushing dumb designs like Jeweled Lotus or Dockside Extortionist (or Hullbreacher, Opposition Agent, etc.) all the time, but the RC always had the philosophy of allowing these cards to enter the format before taking action, or not.
The irony of people complaining about card bans and the financial impact of them while Mana Crypt and Jeweled Lotus are still listed at 120+ dollars is something else.
I think it's because many people are anticipating those two being unbanned. Who knows if that will happen or not, but before the switchover to WotC Crypt had dropped to ~$80.
i think commander stopped being exclusively community-run when WOTC started selling commander products and hosting commander events this was inevitably going to happen
Tangent away from everything that's happened recently, my big concern with Commander as a collector of the game since its inception is that for me, and for the format, I feel like new cards "don't matter" anymore AND that because UB has been green-lit into the default version of Commander... we're stuck with it, whether you want to play against Ken from Street Fighter or not.
With absolutely no rotation whatsoever it feels like the format is permanently entrenched to be largely the same experience going forward, with almost no variation in the overall structure of how players play the game or seek to win. In many ways the recent bannings could be argued as a response to a feeling like that, because the presence of fast mana is (I'd argue) the greatest divider between a casual-friendly experience and players aggressively seeking early and decisive wins.
With no rotation, I also feel like the format has calcified on a collection of "staple cards" so long that there's very little room left in decks to innovate-and that most new cards printed are simply variations of these staples. There's nothing new under the sun. Infinite combos are the most efficient way to win in virtually every game, and ultimately its just deciding whether you play that way or not. It no longer really much matters which version of infinite you choose to pursue, there's so many that as new pieces are printed and people go "wow, that card is so cool and it goes infinite with-" I unfortunately have this feeling of, "That's all well and good, but these cards don't actually change anything about the game and merely replace pieces that already exist, if that strikes you as interesting." Whether my mana ramp spell gets me 2 lands because I paid life, or paid a kicker cost, I sacrificed a creature... obviously those minor variations matter from deck to deck, but we are SOOO deep into card design that I'd argue that most new cards today are just variations of cards that already exist.
Second, I personally did not want Universes Beyond to be brought into the default Commander experience. I didn't want MTG to turn into the board/card game "Smash Up" where you jam together different hollywood tropes like Ninjas + Aliens VS. Dinosaurs + Cyborgs. That idea can be fun, but now it is permanent and I really don't like that. Because the community cooperates to bring their own personal game pieces to the overall experience, I also have no control over keeping Street Fighter or Fallout or Marvel out of my MTG game unless I'm going to be "that guy" and start yucking other peoples' yum... which I also didn't want to do.
I know I don't seem like I'm fun at parties, but in some ways I'm wishing for something that can probably never be again. I'm wishing for a Commander format with a significantly smaller card pool, where I don't have to acknowledge that The One Ring is on board but so is a My Little Pony who is piloting a Transformer while equipped with the Capt. America shield... *shrugs and sighs*
For my particular concerns, there will be no solution. UB's greatest selling point is that it can be brought into Commander, so that ship has sailed. The format is also never going to accept rotation even if that rotation was on the magnitude of decades, so that ship has also sailed.
The bannings matter and they don't. There's still more than enough fast mana in the format to completely separate who's trying very hard vs. who's here to have a fun and relaxing game. The pre-game conversation is still "vital" to create the best chance for a mutually enjoyable game for the entire table. If the bans didn't change that in the slightest, maybe they shouldn't have occurred. I don't know... but we'll see!
This decision will not be felt in weeks, maybe not even months. It will take probably years before we realize that this was the turning point for the game and how bad the effects truly were by this. Another thing people don’t think about is while these people love the game, it is their livelihood. If their boss threatens termination if they don’t comply with anti-player game choices, they will make those choices. Love and passion are great, but that pales in comparison to survival. You CANNOT put the expectation of the health of the format being prioritized ever again. It is no longer a game managed by players, it is a business and we are consumers.
Yea i think the sets coming out in 2026/7 will be interesting because those would have designed from day 1 with wizards at the helm
Everyone seems to keep forgetting that most recently banned cards, including format warping 1v1 constructed cards, were directly designed/tuned with commander in mind. Other cards like One Ring are begging to get banned, Companions had to be nerfed, the list goes on and on… WOTC owning the ban list is a bad idea
Not to mention they used those cards to sell sets recently
Still got my one ring im happy as a clam
But the RC took years to correct for some of those cards. I think the concerns are valid but I don’t see how the RC was solving against Wizards.
@@MarkAvothere's a really great interview on the professor's channel with the original founder of the format where he talks about the band's that they make being explicitly about the effect that they have downstream on the format, it's only once things start to have a wider impact or start to warp the play experience in general across communities that they want to take an action. And that tracks with the recent bands, as these things became more known and more available even though they were high price chase cards, they were showing up more and more in games. Commander at its core is a format about diversity of design and diversity of decks and when you start seeing the same things in every deck those are things that are asking to get banned if they are core and central to every game. Soul ring is brought up as a common example of something that should be banned except, soul ring itself doesn't generally make the game rotate around it when it hits the board even when it hits the board early
@@MarkAvo
Assuming that the rc contribution was aways slow is nonesense.
I remeber how much the prophet of kruphix and golos ban helped our playgroup an authority like the rc was what was required for our playgroup. I just know im gonna have to deal with someone saying my nadu deck only has one infinite combo piece. So its only a 2. No one wants to play against golos or nadu putting them in bracket 4 is only going to have people argue it down to a 3 or even a 2.
Wotc modern horizons release has resulted in months to year long waits before banning hoggak,nadu and fury in modern. No wizards is way worse. At this stage I'll take any rc like group other then wizards.
I feel like we won't really see the impact this has until at least a year from now since cards that are coming out within the next 12 months are basically done. Once that period passes we'll really see what wizards designs and whether they're really about the community, or about their pocketbook in what they print that's broken.
"We are not great at separating ourselves from our emotions." Well said Jimmy. I would also add "We are not great at separating ourselves from our opinions." Consideration is a diminishing skill.
Aside from the point of the video, I do wish they'd stop endorsing ultrapro. Everyone I know knows that ultrapro products are awful, floppy plastic deck boxes where the art rubs off, sleeves where the art peels off the back, and unstitched playmats that fray.
Unironically the best take in the comment section 😂
The amount of vitriol these last couple weeks has made me alternate between irritated or just tired.
Its not a dangerous decision. I have the Mana Crypt Card as well as a jeweled lotus. The ban happened, I don't like it (or any ban for that matter as I feel that it impedes on the creativity aspect of the game) but, it should NEVER be dangerous. We are not fighting a war where life or death is on the line, this is a card game...we should always remember that first. Under no circumstances should someone's life be wagered over a card game.... or any game for that matter. We do and should however, reasonably voice our concerns and see what we can do to fight the ban or future bans.
There were no “credible” threats. It was a bunch of whinny babies throwing a fit at a group of whinny babies on a rules committee.
To be fair, the ban of 3 stamples (more in cdeh) foment the creativity, I have seem lots of list that are just 0 creative, just copy pastes with the same cards. Lot of cedh players now are happy because they can brew with those free spots
I really like the conversation but there's NO WAY these bans happened without wizards knowing or even taking part of the decision - which is how you sound for most of the episode. It feels weird saying this is RC's doing only
I'm disappointed in the lack of acknowledgement of people who might have been for the ban cause they couldn't afford the cards. Some people can't just drop $100+ on single card.
I get people lost money but that was they got the opportunity to make. I know it wasn't the intent but it comes off as a bit elitist to clam someone's investment should be the deciding factor on what is and isn't banned
They didn't take the perspective of the average player because they're out of touch. They're successful content creators rubbing shoulders with Post Malone and Cassius Marsh. It absolutely is elitist to only take perspective of the players who could afford $200 cardboard and got salty about their ban.
Calling people in favor of the bans unempathetic while having little empathy for what the RC did to protect themselves because they didn't do it in a way you like is a bit laughable, don't you think? It seems like you are letting your own anger at the RC take over your good judgment.
when they say empathy they mean empathy for people's bank accounts
@@gwenyurick9663the RC lit 100 million dollars on fire in inventory
Imagine that in the stock world
1:13:00 Josh, Jimmy, and Rachel insinuate that players who liked the bans and said "Card games are not an investment" lack empathy for players who owned more copies of the cards. Jimmy says "try saying this to your romantic partner"
First off, if my romantic partner makes a poor decision, I will tell them that I think it's a poor decision and how to make a better one. Isn't that the point of being close to someone and trusting them? To trust in their feedback??? I guess Jimmy disagrees
Every Magic format, collectible card game, and most collectible games have bans of valuable cards that players collect. Yet when this is brought to attention, Josh, Jimmy, and Rachel feel the need to baby players who were extremely upset about the ban.
This can be a fair criticism depending where this sentiment comes from. The Command Zone criticizes players not feeling sorry for other players that bought expensive cards never expecting them to be banned. But a few years ago, Josh and Jimmy fully dismissed the concerns players had years ago when the Walking Dead cards were revealed. I find it extremely hypocritical that they will berate some players for not feeling sorry about others making poor decisions (when the bans almost objectively improve the game), but completely dismiss other players' concerns about the health/vision/future of the game (in regards to universes beyond).
10 mins in and it feels toxic enough to stop. The conversation sounds like there's a lot of bitterness both at what was banned, and that you weren't listened to/consulted recently. Josh, if you're ALWAYS "no bans ever", why would your opinion be asked again? It is already known. Unless RC was sharing info with you and no one else, you don't know there's a "small" amount of threats. It feels like trivializing what the RC dealt with, which was huge enough for them to drop the format. Also the ONLY person saying 'hey someone from the inside told me WotC told them specifically not to do these bans'. Video feels pretty distasteful at this point, enough to not continue watching.
Brackets are going to be a lot less relevant than people think. Expect to see a lot of "All brackets, no cEDH" games.
Right ?!?! Hahaha
Gotta disagree on asking g ppl from the community to step up as new RC members. Seems irresponsible to receive viable death threats and then just hand that over to someone else whether they’re okay with it or not
Could you elaborate on that?
Ok. I do not like some of the bans, BUT DO NOT THREATEN ANYONE!!! the heck is wrong with people!?
No lo sé bro, sinceramente no lo se
Credible threats yet they didn't even show the community. I'm sure they got a few bad actors but they make ot seems millions of death threats came in
@@GeneralDisarray666 do not believe a thing till a name and shame happens. Considering the politics of the RC and Wizards. For all we know. They're faking it cause the changeover was planned all along and they needed a contreversy to do so.
@@GeneralDisarray666 dude, this people don't even get paid for the work in the community rules. Now they have to show the evidence? I think you are a little confused
People hate people, hate being manipulated, love money. CMM and LCI were pushed hard with JL and MC being reprinted and DE being in the list of LCI, then shortly after a few volunteers pull the rug from under you.
Came back from recent vid yet again JLK had a very level and good response to this. Nothing to make a video about
12:45 Josh, you left the CAG. Even if they'd asked about it, you shouldn't have been part of that conversation... that's what resigning means
I feel like some introspection was missed in this episode. I think there is a lot of talk about how the community "fans" failed the RC post the ban, but what about Magic content creators? Do you feel you commentary and the reaction to the bans contributed to this? I know when I saw Josh quit the CAG a day after the bans it felt appeared angry and reactionary, and I can see how that and other statements on line by these influencers in the community, made the RC feel like maybe no one was going to get their backs, short of saying don't send death threats.
1:43:47 And there it is. Josh and Jimmy lean on Rachel enough and she reverses her opinion that she started with. And now all 3 have a completely impractical take.
The takes you have had here has made be hope you are not contacted for the new WotC CAG.
I mean, sure. The lion bit you. But why was your hand in its mouth?
I respect Rachel enormously but not enough to listen to out of touch people victim blame those who were trying to make the format a better experience for the average LGS goer. These last two videos lack tact and ooze with petty passive aggressiveness. All this is doing is further fanning the flames and putting the crosshairs back onto the former RC members under the guise of "I told you so". When your entire position is "don't do anything", you have no position and thus bring nothing to any conversation about rule adjustments.
Careful, if you clutch those pearls any harder, they might break
@@IsomerMashups Careful, your investments are losing value quick beter go sell them
@@Kriskrieg
My investments are in the bank.
Its a game. Bans happen. Stop being a baby
@@WiLDRAGE777 why do you think the casual lgs goer should determine what the sanctioned even player is allowed to play when rule 0 exists. If your decks a seven or below sit at a precon table it's that simple. There are so many precon players it's ridiculous. Sitting down at a table you know is high powered and asking them to play low powered shit to cater to you is why this is a thing. Sure there are some pubstomper dickheads that come in and play with casual players but it's a simple matter of not playing with them again. I actually liked the cards that got banned on competitive blue elemental blast is 50 cents literally stops dockside hushwing griff once again pennies to purchase and it shuts off all dockside etbs. Your inability to search for answers via interaction or stax is not the competitive sanctioned event goers problem yet I'm now subject to the banlist while you continue to rule 0. How is it fair I spend thousands on my cards and you buy a precon and your complaints shape the way I can play in tournaments recognized by wotc
To answer Josh’s question at 1:39:40 , those 4 cards need to stay banned. Otherwise the message gets through that threats and harassment work.
Thats an incredibly stupid take.
L take.
@@veginitono you’re right, that’s why it’s always a good idea to give a child throwing a tantrum what they want /s
I had time to mull it over. I agree the ban rollout wasn't well done. They should have given warning and time and did each card one at a time over an extended period with feedback. However, I just don't feel comfortable with just dumping EVERYTHING at the RC's feet. Let's use Jimmy's logic and go one step further. Why was it NOT safe to ban those cards? WotC made them artificially scarce, bred a predatory environment of FOMO and power creep, and it was allowed to fester. I agree the RC made mistakes. I may be on the wrong conversational layer or ignorant, but it feels like stopping there is still too shallow to address the issue of a community with severely toxic elements that can't handle a ban. I agree with a lot but that point knocks me off the wagon.
I think it’s worth pointing out that another tcg, Yugioh, does this all the time. A really expensive card gets banned, and they all shrug and move on (they’ll be upset) but never to this level. It’s unfair to put all the blame on the RC, especially for handing the reins to wizards. I understand being upset about not being consulted for the bans, that’s reasonable. Being upset for not being consulted for the handing over of rc when there’s literal safety concerns? That’s honestly ridiculous. Their safety is their priority as it should and they shouldn’t cater to the cag for it (bad wording makes it more negative but I couldn’t find another way to word it). The RC did make mistakes but it’s worth pointing out that their intention was for the health of the format, they just didn’t go about it in the best way. The RC is not at fault for the communities reaction, nor are they at fault for trying to protect themselves. They are not responsible for the wallets of players either. That argument I honestly find egregious, though I do feel bad for some.
1:29:15 All three say that the recent ban announcement has irrevocably destroyed all faith/trust players had in the RC due to the ban. Of 4 cards. This continues with Josh saying that if there was an outcry for the RC to resign, he would have supported it due to "failure of leadership"??? Really...
I just have to reiterate. The Rules Committee, whose main purpose is to maintain the banlist for a format, has lost the trust of players by......doing their job??? I concede that there should have been more communication to players about an upcoming ban. But for making the ban announcement itself, there should be no grudges held. The sentiment expressed by the Command Zone here IMO is the type of sentiment that contributed to the vitriol sent towards the RC that made them resign. Poor show Josh, Jimmy, and Rachel
@@supachigga I don't wanna go as far to say poor show but there is a solid chance I'm trying not contribute to same style of energy that got the RC lit up. (Not saying you're doing it, I'm just trying to keep myself in check). IDK. This situation is weird. I just wanna play my funny cards and pretty angels but eh. I guess we'll see.
This was super disappointing. The unbanning of the fast mana pieces would make it so that the people sending death threats get the message that these tactics work. And if you guys think that the Rules Committee should have seen this harassment coming, then do you really not think YOU could have seen subsequent harassment of them coming about as a result of this podcast? The RC threw in the towel and is trying to get away from this, and you're spending a good chunk of this video redirecting blame towards them. We get it, but you seriously don't think that's going to make their lives harder while the flames are still hot? The discussion from these last 2 podcasts has been hard to stomach. Unsubbing.
I have to say that personally, i fundamentally disagree that the financial side should be a fsctor in any way when it comes to bannings. Magic is, at its core, a game. To take the financial value of the cards into account when making ban decisions is a dangerous decision that can lead to cards being "unbannable" on the basis of cost.
It feels like the same kind of thinking that spawned the reserve list, which created this system that priortized card value over game access.
And this is what I get for commenting before I finished listening to the podcast. Because I definitely feel called out, and rightfully so, about the lack of empathy. Regardless of my feelings about the bans, and whether we should care about the financial aspects of things when making ban decisions, you guys are right in saying that people are allowed to feel hurt by what happened. Definitely made me look in the mirror a bit
You, your feelings, thoughts, and words you used in this video Josh are 100% VALID. Don't let anyone gaslight you.
any chance that the hand over was what they wanted to do in the first place and figured they wanted to get the fast mana out before they let it go?
I've suspected that Wizards was pushing for more and more control over the format for a long time. When the RC says they wanted to "make a statement," it was a statement to Wizards to stop printing cards into the format that are unhealthy for it. I imagine the frustration of trying to manage Magic's largest and de facto casual format against Hasbro's increasing desperation and greed put the RC into a bad spot where they thought they had to do this for the community. Then, when that same community turned around and stabbed them in the back for it, they gave up and said "fine, fuck it. Wizards can have it."
More like wotc wanted those cards banned but didn't want the heat on them so they used the RC
Strangers playing edh at LGSs and events are communicating very poorly about what type of game they want to play. Rather than redefining how to represent the power level of a deck is, we should define more clearly what type of games we want to play during rule zero. Maybe Wizards curating a set of questions to structure rule zero would have a more positive impact that player would also be more open to adapting because it requires less though on their end for ranking their deck's power level/bracket. They could even print something like this on the backside of tokens to help new players understand what should be discussed during rule zero.
Examples of questions:
1) What turn do we want the game to end?
2) How much fast mana does the deck have?
3) How interactive are our decks? Does the deck run any stax effects?
4) What different ways can your deck realistically win games? Combat damage, Burn or Life drain, Mill, Posion counters, etc...
5) Can the deck go infinite? If so is the commander part of that combo, what is the earliest turn that can happen? Is a deterministic win-the-game combo or a non-deterministic win-the-game combo?
6) How expensive if the deck list?
7) What is the decks salt sum? Are we trying to play mean decks and we will not take ourselves too seriously? Are we just trying to have a chill relaxed game with less salt?
By no means does these questions fix all of the issues present, but I think that structuring rule zero with a set of example questions that should be asked if players are not familiar with each other's decks is a much better way to try and address the social issues that led to the bans in the first place.
Commander is the most expressive format which to me makes it the most interesting. The fact that we can rule zero to play with banned cards as long as everyone understand and is on board means that official bans do not really matter nearly as much as long as ALL players are on board with that game. Creating a more defined structure on what should be discussed for rule zero will help players understand what aspects they need to communicate about their deck for everyone to understand if they are all trying to play the same game.
If the power level conversation has taught us anything, it is often better to discuss the type of game everyone wants to play rather than the explict power level of their deck.
i don't think the kind of people that make death threats, on instagram, are affected by the shame tactic 😭
What I do not understand is that there are tens of thousands of other magic cards that you can play. Why is banning four of them such a big problem?
Regarding threats: to those saying "it wasn't about cardboard, it was about money", investing in magic is a speculative investment and should always have been treated as such, putting down huge sums of money in something that's not regulated is your right sure, but you lose the right to complain about market fluctuations in the process. If your investments holding value matters so much you're going to threaten people's lives over it, put it in an index fund or something with legal backing. "It's about the money" is just "it's about the cardboard" with extra steps and a sprinkle of economics on top.
Feeling a bit uncomfortable with this one
If people have received credible death threats to the point of forcing them to give away commander to wizards, I think every community leader and content creator priority should be protecting those people. I don’t know how saying things like “wizards told us they warned them” would help in that. I get that you all are angry and sad at what went down, but it feels like a bit more consideration should have been needed there.
Plus some of Josh’ and jimmy’s quotes sometimes go a bit into victim blaming. The RC might have acted recklessly, but them having to give away the format didn’t happen because of that, but because there are some crazy people out there who made their life hell. I know you all people at CZ know that and are aware of that, I just thinking that devoting a big chunk of the podcast at pointing out RC’s errors isn’t really helping in calming crazy people down and bring the community in a better direction
It seems like there's no good way to handle the situation. I've started to really dislike the way death threats are handled on the internet. Like, what does the word 'credible' even mean when people on the internet can throw out death threats like candy on Halloween? Can we actually tell which death threats are credible? Are any of them credible? None of them? If some are and they're indistinguishable from non-credible death threats, how in the world is anyone supposed to react to that when the non-credible ones are so common?
I have to wonder - is the way we spotlight verbal threats online actually helping? The last thing I want to do is victim blame - this isn't about any specific instance or person, but about how we collectively handle threatening words on the internet. It feels like, more than anything, calling it out in the abstract without action or consequence is rewarding the people doing it with attention and apparent influence while protecting personal reputation, allowing us to say we're not one of those people, we would never do that, we take this Very Seriously but it's not actually doing anything to solve the problem.
IMO, and I think this is a point that Josh makes in the discussion, is that discussing the problems with how the RC handled everything is more about understanding the situation and holding them accountable (in the sense of discussion) and not victim blaming. Victim blaming would be blaming individual members and somehow saying that they got what they deserved, but at no time does Rachel, Josh, or Jimmy say that the extreme responses were appropriate and they all condemn the extreme responses.
1000% what I said in my comments too! "They had this coming" and calling it a failure of leadership and horrible decision making is such an immature approach of someone like Josh who claims to have this huge platform he's responsible for
@@francescoarchidiacono5370 I very much felt the same on this one. But I do have to wonder how much of that might indicate a "special relationship" with WOTC.
Why not keep it community driven? The 5 members of the RC can step down, nominate new people and keep them anonymous. Simple solution
What people often dont seem to mention when just saying 'rule 0', is how awkward that can be made. If you play in the one LGS near you house, with a £50 pile of random nonsense, where maybe 4/5 people turn up per week, are you just supposed to get up and leave if that one asshole refuses to take out his Crypt/Dockside/Lotus? I want to play the game. So when I sit down and ask a dude to take out dockside, and he responds with either 'no' or 'only if you take out your Kinsbaile cavalier', it just less painful to suck it up and have 4 shit games on the off-chance he doesn't draw his game breaking cards.
And nothing has changed with the banning of the cards, because there are still dozens upon dozens of pushed OP cards that still exist in the format (and some have become even moreso post ban).
Straight up. It’s easier to ask to include a card than it is to ask someone not to play something. Then you have to assume they actually have something to replace it or they brought another deck which I am sure could be infuriating if you are the one being asked not to play something. That would break up the community fast.
what a sad life.
Why should I who prefers fast placed gameplay as well as my group cater to you who barely plays for one. Why do casual players feel the need to hinder my ability to play cards in sanctioned tournaments they don't play in because you refuse to find a group that fits your gameplay
@@kyriethaking why cant you find a group thats fits your gameplay? My point isnt that either is better or worse, just saying it adds so much unnecessary work to a game
I'm going to give you (Josh) the benefit of the doubt, to a degree, that when you blame the RC for WotC gaining control of Commander it's just your anger at how the bans were handled and not anything else. HOWEVER, given you also said WotC and the RC should have expected death threats and doxxing for banning pieces of cardboard it's really hard to justify your statements.
And that you believed that the RC should have consulted others about what to do WHILE BEING THREATENED. So like- it's hard not to see a common denominator here? Similarly you and Jimmy were both talking about how WotC shouldn't do anything drastic, unless its unban a bunch of cards you like that'd be sick.
Especially with all of this being over four (well, three) cards that were very clearly (and called such by you) design mistakes. Cards you generally don't allow on your show because it leads to bad gameplay videos for your bottom line. Taking a moment to call out the pro-ban people for dismissing the feelings of others when you just- forgot briefly, that your friends were being threatened with violence and how that might impact their decision making.
Like- this is where I part ways with Command Zone, Game Knights, and Extra Turns. If this is your view on the game, I want no part in it.
It is though. Facts are facts. It doesn’t invalidate the threats to state the truth.
Also, his announce about his retiring as advisor, he was part of the problem, he could wait a few days until people calm, but, he just gave more fuel to the hate. Also, i can see why they didn't talk with the advisors, it was a big thing, if some of then made the previous weeks some comment or buy/sell people could acuse then for controling the market (also, in his case, if he always say no, then, why question if they knew the answer?)
He didn’t say they DESERVE the threats they recieved; but it’s common knowledge that there’s a vocal, asshat minority amongst the MTG community and it was a safe assumption they’d lash out like they did. Pretty sure that was his stance.
@@chrismcdonell6816 WotC and the RC said they expected pushback, but not to this degree or severity, Josh's response to this is he would have expected this severity of pushback. Meaning that Josh expected that banning Crypt and Lotus would lead to Death Threats. Which is on its own a pretty fucked up thing to say in both the 'how he sees the community' and 'how he thinks about the bans' ways.
I also have to push back against people being entitled to their anger. This is not a topic you're entitled to that level of anger, you're entitled to be miffed you can't play that card you like. You're entitled to think it sucks. But unless you tell me Gavin Verhey stole your Grandfather's soul and trapped it in an ancient Egyptian artifact and you needed that Jeweled Lotus to win it back in a game of Commander, that's as far as your anger takes you.
And that goes for whatever weird nonsense trip of anger Josh is on being mad at the RC here. To the point that he thinks they should have 'learned their lesson to not act rashly' while their lives, and their family's lives, are in danger.
You do know they’ve received similar threats for various things they’ve done as well? They’re talking from experience, not expectation.
"They handed it over without asking if we should keep it community run"
Bro. The community THREATENED THEM WITH VIOLENCE. They owe NOTHING. If a SINGLE incident resulted in that? I'd also wash my hands and say "ok fuck you were done"
And then Jimmy saying "no, I'd send a threat of violence about giving it to wizards"? Damn guys. Really?
Exactly. This whole video is riddled with bitterness and victim blaming. Why the fuck would you want to keep volunteering for a group of people that threatened your life?
Ah yes because a minority of bad actors is justification for changing ownership of MTG's biggest format.
You're so easily manipulated it's crazy. Every hobby of this size is going to have its lunatics, it doesnt justify the takeover.
I think the argument they were making was that people that (rightfully) no longer wanted to be on the RC could have stepped away and offered it to other members of the community/CAG that wanted that position - keeping it community-run while letting people step away from a position they weren't comfortable in.
Also do you have a timestamp for Jimmy saying what you've quoted? Closest I found was at 14:38 him saying "I could totally see someone saying {...} 'them giving it to wizards? This is what I'm going to send a threat of violence about'", then immediately followed with an admonishment for such behaviour. Quoting him as saying he would threaten WotC staff seems quite disingenuous at best.
@@Harry94074
How many people do you think constitutes a minority in this case?
They owe no one anything. But the community is not theirs only. If they don't want the responsibility because the situation has gone very wrong, they can just say "I'm out". Someone else could try if that happened. But that's not what happened. The threats are bad but that doesn't solve them.
I watched this video because I thought I was going to watch another great video were JLK and Prof talk about business and general life stuff but instead it was a video about nothing. Josh is a good person. He should feel just in what he said because it is factual and he should feel ok about his feelings because they are valid.
Listening to you guys make me even more confident in my current thought process; don't try and make a system to accurately measure deck power because that's impossible. You CAN make a system to categorize individual card power level and use that as a measure for people to match up. Deck building is half the entire format, and most people aren't good at it. That's why they copy pasta EDHREC lists so often. Quit trying to measure unmeasurable stats and data. Use your data to measure card power, commander tiers, and make loose, easy to use tools to help people communicate basic info.
I just returned to watch this video again after watching the episode with Prof recently released. And I honestly can't see the lines that Josh supposedly crossed here.
Let me start by stating that I personally disagree with him and think that baning fast mana is excelent for the format (and the game design principles behind any card game ban should never address any other factor other than the health of said card game format), but nevertheless he has all the right as a leader of the comunity to express his frustration and discontent, specially using his own plataform (youtube channel).
I highly doubt WotC understands that the Commander format moves glacially slow considering WotC churn out 25+ Commander Preconstructed Decks and 50-100 Commander-ready Legendary Creatures per year! :/
In some way, nothing's stopping the community from getting together and just.... doing their own thing irrespective of what WOTC thinks. Even in my own EDH playgroup we'd sorta curate our own power levels, figure out what was too obnoxious and unfun and build our decks a certain way.
Given the fact that all of this happened because of death threats to people. I'm disappointed in Jimmy saying he wants WOTC to now unban the cards that caused all this for the sake of gameplay. Whether you agree or not, that's rewarding them for bad behavior, and I expected better. But overall, you guys had a massive amount of responsibility making this video and well done
Considering Josh is talking about alleged unverified private conversations with supposed wotc insiders to try to prove he was right, it seems like the RC had pretty good reasons to not trust members of the CAG not to leak, didn't they Josh
And they calle them their friends. Yeah sure, friends that don't victim blame you when your family recieves death threats for a card game.
If communication was there it could have prevented this. If leaks had occurred it could have prevented this.
The one thing I disagree is the discussion that the RC could have or rather should have remained a volunteer regulatory entity. For If you believe the implementation for these Banning was correct for the game it's obvious to everyone that this regulatory body needs protections.
ALL of the problems derive from mistakes made by WOTC either through design or marketing. But we had other people wholly tasked with correcting them. That doesn't make sense.
The responsibility of correcting mistakes should be carried out by the entity that created them, along with the blame and anger.
And if that anger manifests itself into threats then a company with resources can help in eliminating that with prosecution and at the very least lifetime bannings of players who are found guilty of these thing.
Sadly this is it for me on this channel, the complete disregard, victim blaming and how they talked about the CRC handing over the keys completly disgust me.
I am so disappointed in both as I have really enjoyed the channel.
These are your friends.
Peace.
Bye Felicia.
You wont be missed bye
Regarding the conversation about just what proportion of people were on board with this, there's always been an issue with magic that the loudest people are the most hard core audience. The people who follow MtG content creators, respond to polls on twitter and post opinions on reddit aren't necessarily a good representation of the overall community of players who find out about things like this when they show up to their LGS once every week or two.
Does that mean I'm speaking for all the more casual players and saying they were totally cool with this? No, but I am saying just like I shouldn't do that, it's too presumptive to assume the online frenzy is super representative, and we still could have been looking at most people being genuinely fine with and in favor of these bans. It's anecdotal, but I have never seen a player who does not own a Mana Crypt be happy when one comes down on the other side of the table.
The game changed when WoTC started to print specific cards and sets for Commander. It felt like, from my perspective, sometime after 2017 WotC really ramped up monetizing commander by printing more powerful cards designed to make commander players chase them.
Just watched the first 20 minutes and it's basically only been set up as a one-sided victim blaming conversation with no pushback at all. Trying to recontextualize the conversation and throw blame back at the RC like JW does around @15:00 is completely unacceptable. You are all pouring more fuel on the fire and adding to the divisive rhetoric that we have seen thus far. I've subbed to your content since near the start but this is honestly it for me.
It is the WotC Propaganda Channel.
18:03 Josh says that the level of backlash this week towards the rules committee "should have been anticipated". He continues by saying the RC was "naive" for being blindsided by the threats they received. Jimmy and Rachel agree with Josh on all points
A quick recap: The rules committee received numerous online death threats, some of their addresses were doxxed, some members were intimidated/threatened in person face to face from Magic players, detailed and graphic threats were made with specific plans/intentions on how they would harm the RC members and their families, some RC members may have had players stalk them to their home addresses, local authorities had to get involved, and Wizards had to assist possibly by contracting some private security for the RC members.
Josh, Jimmy, and Rachel are aware of all of this information, they talk about it right before this timestamp
And Josh's response to this is: this was so easy to see coming, I would have 100% expected all of this from a ban announcement. Of 4 cards. For a children's card game fan-format.
I know sponsors keep the lights on, but there is something weirdly dystopian about how you talk about threats of violence to the RC and your feelings on the whole situation. You create this very emotional mood and follow it up by "btw guys check out our sponsors"
For the “Bracket system” I think it should include a number system for the number of:Tutors(except land searches), free spells, power of cards, ramp, Fast mana, etc.
Examples:
Tutor categories:
Bracket 1 has 0-1 tutors,
Bracket 2 has 2-3 tutors
Bracket 3 has 4 tutors
Bracket 4 has 4+ tutors-demonic tutor, vameric tutor auto
Free spells
Bracket 1=0 or low power free spell
Bracket 2=1
Bracket 3=2
Bracket 4=3+
Serving the freezing cold take that threatening poeple is bad while giving indirecte validation of those behaviors on social media by throwing fuel to the fire for 2 weeks straight, the dissonance is palpable... You are partly at fault for all this. I would like to hope you would be able to be better judges of the impact of your words on poeple lives in the futur.
So, let me get this straight: if I become the victim of something, nothing I did before or after that will ever be my fault again?
Honestly super disappointed in JLK. I think it is really tasteless to start talking about "they didnt consult me again" when they are volunteers that are clearly distressed and upset by death threaths. Ofc they didnt do the best thing. They did what they had to. Which was looking out for the safety of their loved ones and themself. Some CAG members and especially JLK just cannot step over their own ego and step up. Instead they call fire bad and turnaround to bring fuel to the fire.
The fact that the one ring isn't banned in modern for purely financial reasons (they want to reprint an in universe version) is a large part of what makes me not super trust them in the first place
I feel that the sentiment “this is the road we picked” is as naïve as the rules committee’s decision. The entire statement around “the format is better” is an ignorant one, because what is better for you doesn’t make it better for another and how they want to play. Who wants to play slow durdling games? Rachel apparently, and good for her for that. But, you are saying how you want to play is how everyone else should play. And let’s be realistic, JL and Mana Crypt are more accessible than Mox Diamond or some other fast mana pieces like LED. All they have done is make a bigger divide in access to fast mana. I feel like Rachel isn’t getting the fact that not everyone wants to play the way she does. I personally don’t think less options for how to play is better.
Well said. I'm tired of hearing "better for the health of the format" with no argument to back it up. Was the format sick and dying a month ago? Not at all! It was growing as fast as ever.
The problem is WotC printing overpowered cards and not the RC or somebody else banning cards!
Nadu, One Ring, Companions, True-Name Nemesis, Mental Misstep, ... so many examples and I'm forgetting most of them ... they all were literal mental missteps of WotC!
Power creep sells product. Hasbro owning wotc, and being a publicly traded company is a bad thing.
@joeferreti9442 See, why exactly is True-Name a mistake? It's powerful, but the meta adjusted. It's barely played, let alone needing to be banned. If casual commander players would use the tools they have instead of begging mommy RC to make the bad cards go away, the meta would adjust and a lot of their problems wouldn't be an issue. But they're so sensitive that they get butthurt by taxing effects, land destruction, etc. A Null Rod would work miracles on "broken mana rocks", but they'd never allow you to play something like that.
Came here straight after watching the episode with Prof that was basically a super weird public shaming. I haven't seen anything close to what i expected given how hard Prof was raking Josh over the coals????
Yup. Prof sucks. I unsubscribed after that self righteous disgusting nonsense.
Maybe my unsubscribing was just virtue signaling though. 🤔
I don't know why this ban is considered controversial. All the cards banned needed to go whether you agree or not. Magic is supposed to be for everyone, but cards like MC and Dockside existing and being as powerful as they are, leads to high price on a secondary market by which wizards prints cards specifically for. When people play these cards, the power of the deck is amplified and it is hard to keep up with people who spend every cent they have on cards. Proxying is a solution but wizards actively makes it harder to do that, and is time consuming. Cedh players and collectors are just throwing temper tantrums because they see magic as an investment when it's not really supposed to be that. Because they threw their tantrum now wizards controls the format, which is in my opinion worst case scenario.
Tldr magic is a fickle cardboard game, don't treat it like the stock market, and abolish the reserve list, magic is a game for everybody
It's incredibly easy to proxy cards if you have access to a printer
@@colli_ not everyone does
@@Horse-m2obut everyone can, which is what matters
29:27 the big thing is that commander isn’t the stuff in the room. commander is the room, but it’s a room with no ceiling and walls because you can do so much within the format, high power, causal, competitive, jank. even if there was a way to quantify EDH it would be too difficult to track. that scatter plot would be all over the place.
Josh came across as quite bitter, is he a bit angry he never got added to the RC? I love the absolutely show, and will continue to enjoy it, but definitely don't trust Josh's judgement here.
Social media has killed the fear of am old fashioned face to face with your opposition
This and the last episode come off so disconnected from most players and the impact these cards and others have on the average table at an LGS. And also as blaming the RC in part repeatedly for how they banned these cards all at once and didn't just announce beforehand or do nothing. Just comes off as salty they weren't specifically asked on banning some overpowered cards that should not have been printed, and only were for profits as chase cards, and that they were finally banned.
Josh even says they did speak to some who said not to ban them. If they kept consulting and reaching out and the ban ideas leaked it would've caused mass panic selling and further uproar the RC wanted to avoid if possible.