one thing I'd add is that I think you put more consideration into power level into the average player does. I think most players just want to make their decks as strong as they can with what they have available, and get down because they reach a certain point where it's impossible to make the deck stronger without dipping into the expensive staples
Maybe this is why everything's a 7, because "I tried to make it as strong as possible, but couldn't reach an 8 for xyz reasons" where '8' becomes "a point where the deck is very strong and not held back by e.g. my budget" and always feels the same regardless of how powerful this deck's '8' is compared to others'.
I have a huge issue with this style of "as strong as I can", exactly because of what this video highlights. They sometimes combo, so I need to aggro focus them or combo faster. But if my deck is consistent at that, its not fun because theirs aren't and I'm jus getting free wins. And if my also isn't consistent to be "same level", then we are basically just throwing dice to see who wins.
@@shorewall this is only somewhat true. A deck that cannot possibly win on turn 5 is still weaker than a deck that has the potential to hit an infinite combo on turn 5 and kill the table, even if that potential is exceedingly unlikely.
@@gnogara aggro inherently does well against combo decks so you SHOULD be winning more often, and making your aggro deck less consistent to give the combo players an even playing field seems like an uncommon choice when you could just . . . play a different deck when you see a combo commander hit the field
Fun fact: the power 9 weren’t banned because they are overpowered, they were banned on their monetary cost alone and the creators didn’t want people to feel like they had to buy them. If sol ring was not printed in third edition and it was the “power 10” it never would’ve been legal likely
@@adrianoamram2140 What he/she says is true and what you saying too we see that the RC is sometimes very inconsistent why they bann or unbann Cards For Example Flash was banned because it was to good with Hulk a two Card combo easy to pilote into a turn one/two win which needs +X cards to to its things ( Look at flash hulk pilles ). Now we got in the same Format a 2 Card combo Oracle + Pact / Connsoltion which can win turn 1/2 with not really more set up. . Ok Flash Hulk maybe a liitle more broken than Oracle but its the same concept.
@@10Pugz Flash was banned because it was a problem in the community, this is ultimately, when you boil it down, why every single card on the banlist is there. There have been a very small number of philosophical bans (lutri), and almost every ban is because the card not being banned would cause some problem with the format. Cards like the power 9 are a perfect example because the problem of the format being perceived as a high power pay to enter format was considered worse than being able to play with those cards.
i know this, but then i wonder why cards like the first dual lands are both not banned and told to the community that "they are fine" and "they don't increase a deck's power level"
I just don't get how, if we're having a hypothetical conversation about what would have been best for the format, we're not just saying Sol Ring should have been banned. You're right, it wasn't banned. It also was reprinted, so we're immediately not talking about real life. Why are we using cost as a way to balance cards? We have hundreds of examples of that not working. Every single banned card, though, immediately stops having an effect on the format it's banned in. 1. If it's unhealthy, it should be banned. 2. If that's not practical, well, that's what hypothetical conversations are for. 3. If it shouldn't be banned, everyone should have access to it.
Yup. Money has only ruined the game by pricing certain cards out of most players' budget. You can't compete if you aren't rich, and you can't play if you can't compete. That's why I only ever have and only ever will play with close friends, and never with randoms at the store.
1. I absolutely agree Sol ring is a net-negative to the format 2. I think some other cards acting as simple cheap staples like swords to ploughshares allowing cheaper decks to do ok and more easily eat veggies is good 3. It is weird to me how so many people say money isn't a huge factor but one of the best metrics I've found for how fun a deck is to play against is price. Like, if a deck isn't CEDH but costs $1000 I almost always have a bad time.
To point #2: cheap ANSWERS are great in a format where price/power of decks varies so much. Swords, counterspell, fatal push, lightning bolt, and nature's claim are all $2 or less and among the best removal/interaction in the format. More of these cards/effects help "weaker" decks at a table keep "stronger" decks in check.
A $1000 dollar deck can mean a few drastically different things. It could just be a "normal" edh deck with an optimized mana base. Lands are expensive.
@@HeirophantCarneus"it could" but any reasonable person would guess the deck is good. Even "optimized lands" depending on the deck is a huge boost. 1000 deck being bad or normal is the exception not the rule not worth mentioning.
@@HeirophantCarneusLet's use a deck that I wanted to make since I'm currently doing research for my first magic deck. Caesar is cool because New Vegas, same for Mr. House. Both of those commanders can be made for about 50 bucks. Yet any of the cards that would make those decks worth playing at anything beyond chilling with my coworker during lunch? We're talking about a 10x multiplier. Simply because things such as the token generation multiplier cards are worth 20-50 bucks a pop. Sure, I could buy the Precon for 40 and just not do anything unique. Where's the fun in that?
While I agree with many of the points made in this video, it's important to recognize that the most important argument made in the video is the last one. Commander ultimately comes down to individual interpretation, and there's no way to make everyone happy. For example, I like to make my decks thematic with little to no thought of how powerful or expensive the deck may end up being. The creation is what is fun for me, and thoughts of tuning up or down power levels only happens once the process is almost complete. The strongest deck I've ever made is a Graaz, Unstoppable Juggernaut deck because I wanted to see how many juggernauts it was possible to make in as little time as possible. My own preferences mean that I love proxying because it means I'm not limited in the same way I otherwise would be when my creations need some insanely expensive card. And yet, I understand why others despise proxying and inconsistent power levels. As long as you can find people who are happy to play with you, I don't think there's really a problem with any interpretation of the format. That's what makes commander so fun, after all: being able to play it your own way.
What’s your coolest thematic build? My Omnath Locus of Rage deck isn’t very powerful because I’ve included many cards with the words “Anger”, “Angry”, “Rage”, “Fury”, etc. My Zaxara decks uses exclusively cards with alliterative names. My Saruman of Many Colors deck only uses cards with white beards in the art. I could go on …
Proxies are only bad in a competitive format with prize support. WOTC does not benefit from the secondary market, and unless I find personal fulfilment in spending money on cardboard, I have no obligation to do so, nor do other players have any reasonable expectation that I do so. I find Proxying to be a duty in Commander. The format is based around deck construction and experimentation. Not just trying different things, but changing how you do different things. Adjusting power level to match with others. What happens if you spend a couple of hundred dollars on a deck, but then you find that it isn't fun for you? Or even worse, that your playgroup doesn't want you to play it?
@@MisterWebb My coolest build was a Rakdos, Lord of Riots deck based on demonic bargains. It is basically designed to force opponents into choosing two bad things, as if I were an actual demon. To that end, the deck would drain down life totals as fast as possible, then use cards like Protection Racket, Temporal Extortion, Painful Quandary, and Risk Factor on them. They are forced to choose between either losing some of the little life they have left or giving me some advantage. Not incredibly powerful or tuned, but it can be really fun in the right circumstances.
I remember that video's comments being very clearly about how price shouldn't dictate the casual player's access to the format's staples. People shouldn't be priced out of sol ring and the fact that people are priced out of mana crypt is seen as an issue. I think it has to do with the grandfathering of sol ring into the mascot of commander. I've gone back and fourth a lot about whether or not sol ring (and other power outliers) should be banned. There's positives and negatives about it I've found when going into writing my "Commander is a Bad Format (and that's good)" video. On one hand the variance is already so high in commander that "nut draws" increasing it even more aren't really healthy for the format and can lead to nongames sometimes, but on the otherhand sol ring can really enable a lot of funny jank decks that regularly wouldn't get off the ground unless they happen to get that opening hand sol ring variance. So in the end I get the sol ring ban argument, and I used to agree with your point in that video even if the rhetoric was wrong, but I've come all the way around to thinking that sol ring should stay. Maybe its a topic we can talk about sometime.
I had to cut myself off while scripting for this because I was finding simply too much stuff to say about Sol Ring. So much of the complexity at the heart of EDH can be explored by thinking about one simple little artifact.
"...but on the otherhand sol ring can really enable a lot of funny jank decks that regularly wouldn't get off the ground unless they happen to get that opening hand sol ring variance." Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but as a lover of Jank my argument wouldn't be "this deck needs Sol Ring so that 1 in 70 games it can go off," but instead that one can build consistent Jank. Sure, the power ceiling won't be terribly high, but it will perform well in far, FAR more games -- closer to 80% of games, if not even better. Love your videos, by the way.
@@vengerofthelight I agree with you. I don't think Sol Ring enables jank. Jank is an experience, not meant for competition. If you say you are building a jank deck, but then include a sol ring, I don't consider that jank or tuned. I consider that a haphazard pile of cards. Snail's take that it sends incorrect signals about your deck is how I feel. I think jank decks need to be played in the right power level. If you bring a jank deck to a high power pod, you are the asshole. And if you put a sol ring in your jank deck thinking that does something, you are the fool.
Your argument about wanting powerful cards to be out of financial reach is still dodging the fundamental question of why do cards, *mechanically,* need to have a financial element in a "casual" format? A lot of the current-era talk about Commander power levels is also a result of the increasing de-casualisation of Commander. When I got into EDH a decade ago, *Mana Vault was $5 and wasn't even in a lot of decks.* Today there is much more of a spotlight on the format, and thus people are inherently more competitive about it hence the rise of cEDH. If a powerful card being easily accessible is a problem, the solution is bans. You're arguing to cover up the failure of an inadequate ban system through financial strongarming. If money is the only way to stop every deck from being optimised into a borderline/cEDH deck, maybe there even needs to be some kind of tiered ban system like with Smogon's Pokémon tiers. Also lets face it; the blind-bureaucratic nature of the current banlist is already hamfisted, with needing to ban cards such as Lutri simply because if it's allowed there's no rule to stop it being run as Companion.
I think his entire essay revolves around the idea that cards aren't bannable in EDH. But in many discussions here in the comments you can catch him agreeing with your take. It should be banned. But it won't, so it could be expensive, and it would also kinda solve the problem. But it isn't, so we have wildly incoherent decks in EDH. Which is what I think his other videos try to fix: "Don't build inconsistent decks"
The rules committee doesn't want to ban cards because they say "Rule 0 will take care of it". cEDH players are happy to be able to use all the fast mana, Thassa's Oracle, Dockside Extortionist, Rhystic Study, etc
Smogon tiers for Commander genuinely sounds like an amazing idea for addressing this problem. It keeps the fundamental idea that Commander can be whatever you want it to be (if you want to play Ubers or OU, play Ubers or OU) while also not relying on WotC's reprint decisions to keep high power level cards out of a game that everyone agreed would be low power level. Being able to say "this is an RU pod" and know everyone is on the same page about power level off the bat would be amazing.
@@ryanmuller9497 Honestly I really like the way Arena did it (even if the actual numbers were often nonsense): each card has a 0-5 point value (that value is different whether the card is the commander or in the 99) and you add all the values to make a deck score (the commander itself has its value multiplied by 360: instead of having values of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 it has values of 0, 360, 720, 1080, 1440, 1800) and the matchmaking algorithm (that also factors your account's win rate and global ranking) takes care of balancing your opponent to your deck
@@laytonjr6601 The reason I'm not so fond of that is that it relies on human judgement in a context where the value of a card can depend entirely upon the cards available around it. It's a monumental task to try to make a meaningful call on how powerful each card actually is while trying to take into account potential synergies. A lot of the values that came out of the Arena datamining basically boiled down to "this card is powerful in this strategy so it has a high score even though the card itself isn't particularly problematic in a vacuum". By contrast, usage-based tiering says that, if people are using something a lot in a format, it's probably good in that format. There are obviously exceptions, like beginners just running precons and rare cards being harder to get access to than common ones, of course, so they'd have to figure out how to account for that. But, beyond that, it really does escape the need for arbitrarily assigned values. You let the player-base figure out what's good, use that to define the top tier of play, and the tier below is what's left once you filter out everything seeing high usage in the top tier. Repeat the process for as many tiers as you want to create, and there's probably a tier in there somewhere where you can use your favourite card in at least a semi-viable fashion. Additionally, each tier gets a clearly defined metagame so, instead of being at the mercy of the algorithm placing you with the deck it thinks has a similar power level to yours, you know you're playing against decks limited to a particular pool of cards and can plan accordingly. I doubt we'll ever see it introduced, but I'd rate usage-based tiering far above card point values as a way of accounting for deck power level.
I appreciate the explanation behind your logic and the thoughtfulness you bring to the discussion. To play devil’s advocate, I think some viewers might feel a sense of frustration due to what they perceive as a tone of paternalism in your comments. While your arguments are measured and reasonable, it's possible that some people might interpret your presentation as suggesting that your opinions are the only logical conclusions, or that there is a certain superiority implied in how these opinions are expressed. For example, the frequent use of the phrase “casual commander players” when distinguishing those who may be less critical, less analytical, or apply less of an iterative, optimization-focused approach in building decks could be interpreted in a way that unintentionally alienates some players. Reiterating this distinction, and potentially implying that those who take issue with the underlying argument might fall into this category, could alienate this section of viewership who may just enjoy building janky decks and are not as focused on working towards an ideal deck. On a final, unrelated note, I'd like to mention something that wasn’t covered in this discussion. In WOTC-sanctioned events, proxies are not allowed, which means that financial considerations do have a tangible impact in certain areas of play.
I don't think casual players have a problem with being called less critical or analytical. I think that is the point of it being casual. And as for WOTC-sanctioned events not allowing proxies, all the more reason to not want to play in WOTC sanctioned events. They are the ones trying to sell you cardboard.
I agree with the part about tone. A lot of it comes across as "If you aren't playing with your most efficient, cut throat, hyper tuned deck you are just bad at the game" even if that's not what the words the snail says means. It is something that should be worked on, even if what he says is logically sound.
I play exclusively proxy EDH so price isn't an issue, we banned Sol Ring from our pod. When one out of four players has Sol Ring on turn 1, the entire game becomes warped around it. It makes for much more interesting games when that isn't a factor. I understand the casual argument though, it makes it so worse players can sometimes spike a win against their friends when they have it and opponents don't. I personally think games are more interesting when you actually have to play them though, not roll a die and see who's number is bigger. In traditional Magic formats, what would we call a card with a 100% inclusion rate in top decks? "Banned"
Yeah but tbh that should be the greater conclusion here as well. If a card is only okay because no one plays it due to price concerns, but it's busted when you do, then it's not actually fine. The price of a card should not be a balance concern. If a card is that problematic, then it should be banned. If Snail's argument is that it was better if Sol Ring was more expensive so people play it less, then the conclusion should IMO actually be to advocate for banning Sol Ring.
@@Alaaen Yeah I agree, but we're never going to get a competent banlist with the group that's currently heading the format. I've just accepted that I will never play random pick up games as long as the current "just rule 0" philosophy stands, which is a massive problem in and of itself for a game that wants to fill tables at LGSes and events.
@@Alaaen That is true, and Snail even mentions it indirectly in this video, but he also mentions that part of his argument is that because Sol Ring is a staple and an almost mascot-tier representation of the format, it's never going to BE banned. Advocating for Sol Ring to be banned at this point is practically useless and doesn't add anything to the point he wanted to make about why *this* piece of fast mana gets played over others (the price) and how that is bad for the format as a whole, because he doesn't like fast mana in casual commander at all.
If everyone is playing all the fast mana (Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus, Mox Opal, Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox, etc) then everyone at the table will have a "turn 1 Sol Ring". But if you want to use all these cards you might as well play cEDH
I’ve been bouncing back and forth between “optimizing” the mana base of my jank decks with cheap mana rocks, and ignoring ramp in anything that doesn’t want to ramp, for the reasons described in this video. I’ve found that I need to find the balance based on my playgroup, more then my personal opinion. Not needing to devote 55 cards to lands and “staples” allows so much more personality to my decks, but in my current playgroups, I can’t justify it.
that doesn't really make any sense. the entire point of this video and this channel is that you can make strong decks without having to play the same cards in every deck, even sol ring. unless your playgroup is literally cedh, any reason why you feel like you have to play "staples" is a deckbuilding issue, not a playgroup one.
I think a point that could have been more emphasized in this video is proxies. "If money is truly a detriment to enjoyment of a casual format, then why not work outside the bounds of that system and proxy instead? Why, logically, must you own a legitimate copy of a card in order to play it in an un-sanctioned format with friends and/or friendly strangers?" I understand the impulse to have the cards that you like, and there are legitimate reasons for it. But I also built a Powered Cube a decade ago by printing out cards in BW on a laser printer, and getting to play was way more fun than not playing b/c I couldn't afford an extra $20k of fancy cardboard.
The acceptance of proxies IRL is not as high as discussion online would suggest. It's a possible resolution if you have a close playgroup but if you play in an LGS with a lot of different people it might be hard to get everyone on board. When it comes to proxies there's 3 groups of people from what i've seen, the vast majority doesn't care, there's some people who are vocally against them and there's a small number of people who are actively pro proxy. The first group is just likely to side with whoever has the most push in a playgroup, so it might just take one or two people from the second group for the group to disallow proxies to avoid upsetting those people, who are often long term players in the group.
@@vileluca If everyone at your table wants to play cEDH, then do it. But, presumably, if everyone is there to play casual, you wouldn't be building a cEDH deck even if budget wasn't a concern.
So, having watched most of the video, it sounds to me like it's a continuation of the overarching theme of a lot of your other work, which I think could be summarized as "actually think about the decks you're building instead of just throwing some crap and staples together and getting mad when it doesn't work."
I was in the middle of watching a different video, when I suddenly lost interest and went back to home. Caught this less than a minute after posting. It was just meant to be
The Sol Ring/Mana Crypt example is the easiest AB test or natural experiment for your argument. Most reasonable people I encounter and almost all content creators do not feel like Mana Crypt MUST be printed in order for it to be accessible to every commander deck. The only difference about Sol Ring is the loss aversion from going the other direction from something that is already cheap.
@@orpheos9 but denying people the ability to play to the maximum efficiency based on monetary value alone instead of deck building skill just feels really shitty. I think if a card is so powerful it warps the game it should be accessible and it should probably be banned, but if it isn't, it should be printed into the ground. If the game is so flawed that your deck would start with the same 20-30 cards every time if you were building optimally the solution isn't "they break the game, so let's make it so only 1% of people can play these" it's "let's make it so no one can play these cards because they break the game" If you are going to make a game and profit off it, you don't get to have a hands off approach to balancing that game.
@@beverlyshields2399the rules committee don’t profit from magic in any meaningful way. Adding a 1 of fast mana piece to your deck also doesn’t make it a better deck in commander. If you want to play with powerful, expensive cards you can always just proxy. Sol ring being expensive wouldn’t actually limit it to the 1%, it would just mean that it’s not in every single commanders deck. I get where you’re coming from though, the original video can be confusing. Someone should really make a video clarifying what it meant…
@@kilroy7506 you can't pretend like wotc isn't the one pulling the stings there. I'm really not usually one for that kind of conspiratorial thought, but with the direction wizards as a company has gone I can't believe they'd let their most profitable format be dictated by community members. They might do something silly, like ban a card before they've rang every last dime out of it being expensive. Also correct, a ONE OF card doesn't lead to a massive boost, but it does lead to massive inconsistency as he points out. But if all the forms of fast mana were printed as ubiquitously as sol ring, then we'd all probably be running them and the inconsistency in power would balance out more, or at least not be dictated by the unreliable nature of fast mana in casual edh. The entire crux of my comment was that it shouldn't be money that guides your gameplay decisions. Building a budget deck as a fun restriction, and being forced to only play budget because you're broke isn't the same. Also I'll say here proxying is a thing, you should do it, frankly I support realistic proxies but that's an entirely different argument, the fact of the matter is nothing works as well as having the real things be cheap and accessible and it's what we should really be advocating for. Also take your snark elsewhere, I watched the whole thing tip to taint. I just still disagree with him on a bit.
@@beverlyshields2399 yeah alright, if you’re just going to substitute your own reality we’re done here. I still can’t believe the NWO forced wotc to reprint sol ring though, that was crazy lol
In the pods of casual I play if anyone gets a turn 1 sol ring there's always groans across the table even if that mana isn't being used on turn 1. I feel like sol ring is just inherently more powerful then any other "casual" card even if it isn't being used correctly or effectively leading to everyone always groaning about it on turn 1.
If everyone is playing fast mana (Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus, Mox Opal, Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox, etc), everyone at the table has a "turn 1 Sol Ring" (but then you're probably playing cEDH with proxies allowed because all of these are 100$ cards)
The way people typically build their deck is starting with some concept/commander, then trying to optimise their idea as much as their budjet allows. This is why you see powerfull, cheap, staple being slap left and right in an attempt to artifically increase the powerlevel of a deck, beyond what it can reliably handle. The problem isnt powerfull card being slap everywhere around, but people not building their deck with a specific powerlevel in mind. And, quit frankly, doing so is hard. Most low power deck are made out of a combination of: - low budjet - janky concept - poor deck building Like, let's be real. It can take weeks for a group of seasonned, competitve, player to brew a powerfull deck from groundup. But now, I should expect Timmy at the LGS to have all that knowledge, and use it properly to build a consistent mid-power level deck? Not only that, but "expensive", and "powerfull" aint always the same. Like, you can buy most of the blue prison package for 50 bucks. Price is driven by what players like to play, versus how many prints are available on the market. So, no, accessible, powerfull card are not the problem. Yes, I agree that powerfull staple slam in a low power deck breaks the low power experience. IMO, the solution lies in play group regulating themeself.
I'd argue that powerful cards like soul ring are actually STRONGER in higher power level decks. If your cards are more powerful being able to cast them earlier means more. Edit: Great video as always!
15:30 this argument is deeply frustrating because, yeah you aren't incorrect, but it feels like hiding how broken your game is, how truly unbalanced, how full of bad decisions it has become behind a veil of price and availability. And as someone who went to yugioh, I love when a game is broken but hiding the fact that it is broken behind factors other than player skill just feels cowardly and like they are unwilling to balance the game for the sake of the secondary market. So instead of the responsibility of balancing the game falling on the shoulders of the wizards, where it should be, it lands on the consumer and we sit here arguing in circles with no one happy with the direction.
Commander is a casual format though... its supposed to be based on what's most fun. Formats like vintage, legacy, and modern make no effort to hide their higher power level. In fact, a lot of legacy players would complain if you banned powerful cards like reanimate or brainstorm - in the same way that weaker cards make a casual format like commander fun, powerful staples can make a competitive format like legacy more entertaining. Also, wizards doesn't control the commander banlist, and never has. I think your point that both the RC and WOTC play a role in balancing commander through each of their tools (banlist and price respectfully) has merit, but to suggest that WOTC bears the full responsibility of balancing commander isn't true. Also, if you're interested in higher power, broken formats, I can't recommend vintage cube or even a homemade cube enough. Even at a table of four players, the variability in games is great and playing with a whole bunch of broken cards leads to some crazy and over the top games.
@@cruddytacowizards took over the commander committee a couple years ago now. They absolutely are in control of what happens in relation to commander now.
@@cruddytaco the format was built around fun UNTIL Wizards started to print commander focused cards.... Now the format isn't "designed to facilitate fun" it's designed to facilitate long Rule 0 conversations OR a strong game
@@cruddytaco WotC DO have a profound effect on the balancing by their straight to commander sets, so I simply reject that notion. The players you play with and Rule Zero have always been the two most important parts of Commander, yes. However, it's just untrue to posit that Wizards has had "few tools to shape the format" since 2011.
@@Lemon_Sage9999 "few tools to shape the format" wasn't my specific wording lol. I agree that wotc have a huge impact on the format. I also agree that the format has been majorly impacted by the introduction of more powerful staples. I however would point you to the primary point that snail and other commander creators make: that part of the fun in commander can be personal restriction. I remember playing commander in 2015, and people weren't playing decks that were even close to optimised back then, just like how people don't play optimised decks now. This is a matter of opinion though. You believe that wotc should have less impact, I believe that players have enough control that it doesn't matter. I think my primary disagreement was with your point around yu-gi-oh. But now it also comes around to your point around fun. It's clear that you don't find modern day commander fun when compared to previous versions, and that's ok. Pretending that this is some massive issue or some fault of wotc is not really fair though. If you want a blazenly broken game, play legacy. If you want a format with less high power staples, play preDH. It seems like most of this is a problem of your own creation.
Magic is two things. A supply and demand commodity marketplace where supply can strip pricing very quickly in many cases. And a game where you play cards to win. But it seems really difficult not to equate price to usefulness. So most people choose cards based on perceived value (price) over the card itself. Unfortunately its nearly impossible not to let price influence how you think about power and usefulness.
As someone who agreed with your first video, I appreciate the follow up. However, the more I've gotten into the hobby over the last year, the more I think you were on the money. I've met a fair chunk of players who intentionally want to blur the lines between CEDH and casual commander. "Commander is inherently more competitive." and "There is no CEDH--just optimized EDH." are both sentiments I've heard from players, and it's frustrating. But I've met lots of player who don't run cards because they're expensive, even if they have one from a lucky pull. It's a real deterrent, and it's kept my decklists in line more than once. And, of course, you're right about CEDH being THE proxy friendly format.
‘There is no cedh’ is a take so bad I’d expect it only to be made on twitter. cEDH decks preform on a completely different axis than other edh decks. Card like mental mistep are auto includes in cedh, and absolute trash is classic edh. Some with a lot of other cards.
Black Lotus is more powerful in constructed because you can take full advantage of the burst of mana, I agree that Sol Ring is better in Draft because people aren't winning turn 1
All the videos about commander I have seen make it hard for me to understand why people like the format so much, it seems like having fun in this game mode is so hard when you have so many cards available with so many varying power levels that it makes it seemingly impossible for someone to find 3 other persons with similarly powerful decks so that nobody is having a terrible experience.
Also to be more relevant to the video, I think that a card that's so powerful that it completly changes the dynamics of how people play and that should be autoincluded in every "competitive" deck should be banned, wether it's cheap or expensive, ban Sol Ring AND Mana Crypt in short.
I think the proliferation of sub formats is what will help Commander. cEDH for the sweathogs, PrEDH, Pauper EDH, etc. In fact, Rule Zero basically creates a multi-verse of subformats, which is integral to the game.
I love cEdh for this. Its a real format, not 3 formats in a trench coat like regular or casual edh is. Being honest I don't even like competition, but being able to just sit down and play and no one cries about any card is just *chef's kiss*
Commander's a ton of fun. What are the unusual features? The main ones are: several players, a commander, a higher life total, and every card must be different. Several players is more fun, for a bunch of reasons-games self-balance, somewhat, letting players behind catch up, as people cooperate to restrain whoever's in the lead. Note that this makes power level a bit less important than it would otherwise be-if you play competently, you can not infrequently get by with your weaker deck as other players are fighting each other, and win late-game. There's more politics and threat-assessment, which I like. I like the social aspect overall-a game as a group is more fun than a one-on-one, in general (not just magic), for me. Commanders are fun, because they let the deck be a little bit more explicitly themed. You have a card always available to work around, and (depending on how you build it), be a central part of your deck. This allows for more niches than if you just had to build around an individual theme, and it feels a little more like it personifies your deck, which often seems nice to the social animals that are humans. Higher life totals, combined with the multiplayer aspect, slows down the game. This is fun, because it allows for a higher buildup and splashier cards, which a lot of people enjoy. The singleton (that every card must be different) rule forces people to use more obscure or weird cards, which is fun. It also increases variance, and makes things less repetitive.
The core argument of this video is probably best summarized as: Power level is dictated by card quality, not price. To that point, if every card cost at most $1, I'd be willing to bet a lot more people would actually be playing cEDH or fringe cEDH because those powerful cards would be much more accessible. It's why introducing proxies into a play group without considering the group's average power level can cause so much turmoil.
@@shorewall It's not that most groups want to play cEDH, but that in a scenario where all real cards were equally accessible, the natural arms race to play better and better cards/decks that so many groups experience would naturally lead them to a similar card pool to cEDH. At that point, again assuming all cards cost the same and to reiterate the point of the video, groups would then need to tune their decks to match the level of power and type of play style they would best enjoy.
Exactly. As budget cards become more powerful, most of my casual decks are no longer competitive. I had to quit one casual playgroup because their definition of casual was significantly more optimized than I prefer. This happens pretty consistently, and I'm worried I'll not be able to play truly casual Commander for much longer. It's a dying format, despite everyone's claims that Commander is still really casual.
Having been on both sides of the argument with my playgroup who had a fairly strict no proxy rule to going almost all digital play during covid and allowing 100% proxies, that there are a couple takeaways I have. First is that using card cost as the primary way to limit 'powerful cards' while it works, has too many downsides to really be good. The approach has a lot of bad side effects that should be controlled for. Second, players with unlimited budgets will absolutely build the most busted, toxic decks, with the most generically powerful cards they can find.
I think this is the first time I really didn't took much from one of your videos. My take away message for today is: "If sole ring wouldn't exist, magic may or may not be a better game". I like your videos the most where I lern something that I can use for playing the game of for deck building. For example "dont turn your commander into a combo piece" is a leson I try to utilize whenever I build decks now. However, I am always happy to see your videos landing in the top row of my front page and I'm looking forward to your next one!
Having a self review vid is honestly really cool to see in the name of growth and thinking process, and im glad to see it in a non-academic-esque vid. I will say that the OG vid's controversiality as its premise still wound up very clickbaity (which i guess got me hooked for good faith full watch so thats a point) but its main thesis wound up better represented in later vids with less accusatory implications: consistency > variable power, misconceptions on deck builds into the commander social norms, etc... Id say its better having the editorialized version much clearer than a controverisal claim that doesnt really cut to its real meat of the argument for rhetorical evaluation, i will say that in spite of the bad publicity, or maybe because of it, the main argument has let you explore it better in later vids
Mana crypt is a tier above. 0 mana vs 1 mana is huge. You can go land and mana crypt T1 into a 3 drop in your color vs just land sol ring into a 2 colorless mana drop. 0 mana also allows for many loops
a 0 cmc artifact that produces two mana is significantly better than Sol Ring. That's not to say that Sol Ring is a bad card by any means, near the top of the power level, but frankly the difference in power level is pretty large.
@@camoking3609 But price doesn’t make power. Mana Crypt is of similar power to say Mox Emerald, yet the mox is much more expensive. A lotus is even more expensive and most casual edh decks will benefit more from a Sol Ring than a Black Lotus just because they usually aren’t as bursty and can utilize the colorless mana from sol ring well
zero mana cost is huge, mana cript on your opening hand means you still get to cast something first turn meanwhile sol ring mans you are committed to casting it and skipping
10:03 If the only thing keeping fast mana out of casual commander is money, what is stopping a person with an adult income from just coming into your LGS and destroying your fun? At my LGS we have a lot of military guys that will come in with absurdly expensive decks. We also have a few older players who will play expensive decks, but they are older players and they can read the room, but the military guys can't. My point is that the problem isn't the money, it isn't the cardboard, it's the person. You aren't trying to keep fast mana out of casual commander, you are trying to keep the kind of player who would slam a ton of fast mana, tutors, and 2 card combos in their casual deck and decry "but this isn't even a cedh commander!" as they point to their generic for-the-colors grixis commander with card advantage. The whole problem with saying "the format would have been better if sol ring was more expensive" is that it completely ignores the huge income disparity between players, and the fact that cards like mana crypt, dual lands, etc. should all be as cheap as sol ring. The greatest mistake WotC has ever made is the reserved list, and the second greatest mistake was not making collectors editions playable versions of the cards. 10:31 I'd argue that it's much more about the goals of those decks than the enabler of the deck, but that's a fairly trivial difference. I'd be much angrier about someone going Land > chrome mox > Lotus Petal > Thoracle Consult than someone going Land > Chrome Mox > Lotus Petal > Tireless Provisioner. The goal of the deck is more important to me, but fast mana does leave a weird taste in the mouth in a vacuum. 13:03 yeah but actually talking with the human beings across the table that you play with would also accomplish that goal, and would make the game more accesible than making any powerful card arbitrarily expensive. 13:40 I think it's just a really flawed initial perspective on how to solve a problem, not a bad take in the sense that it's wrong subjectively, but a bad take in the case that the solution to that problem is a lot easier and doesn't require a time machine. 14:30 And that's one of the major problems with advocating for price changes, the players who are problems can just proxy the problem cards, and the monetary element is irrelevant. Problems will be problems, and figuring out how to solve them at the source in my opinion is more valuable than time machine experiments with card prices. 16:00 This is why I have a love/hate relationship with Snail videos, snail talks about shit I think is completely irrelevant or vehemently disagree with for like 80% of the video, then at the end of the video he says exactly what I'm thinking every time, it's kind of fucked up how he just reads my mind like that. "just have a conversation and fix the problem." The ULTIMATE aspect of EDH is that it is not an anti-social game, you won't really have fun in edh if you can't embrace that social aspect of the game and actually engage with the human beings that you're playing with.
I was one of the original critics of your video and left a decently long comment. You won't find it because I've since deleted my old channel. You actually ended up addressing most of my critiques in this video and I'm happy you made this follow up. However, I am still deeply frustrated by your reasoning as to WHY price ought to be the filter that keeps casual players from accessing what you deem to be (for lack of a better term) degenerate cards. I feel as though you can only hold this opinion because the culture around Magic conveniently does not widely accept proxying cards you cannot afford. Should circumstances change over night and players decide to proxy all the cards they like, and the game really does become a soup of janky decks taped together by fast mana, what then would your solution be? Furthermore, I do not believe that this degeneration of the format would happen in this scenario anyways. Is it not at least possible that players will notice how similar their decks are and seek to diversify and improve their deck construction as a response? I find it strange that you appeal to the free market as an effective tool for gatekeeping powerful cards from casuals while seemingly having no faith in casuals to adapt their own decks to a potential landscape where mana crypts are just as common (and just as cheap) as sol rings. I agree that contemporary EDH is heavily populated by casuals who do not understand that their decks are bad. I do not think that price is an effective or even ethical means of keeping the format healthy. In my view, it is the lack of education and knowledge surrounding the judicious use of powerful cards that keeps players building bad decks. If these cards were cheaper, players would have more opportunities to use them and learn for themselves how to effectively play with them. Educating players on proper deck construction and advocating for a healthier format (as you are already doing with your channel) is a better rout than price gouging teens and young adults who just want to play with a deck that wont take 20 turns to set up. Personally, I would even advocate for incorporating a separate casual banned list, or even creating an entirely separate casual EDH format that is more willing to ban overly oppressive cards.
I believe, from my time playing MtG and other CCGs, is that both the companies and the customers have to decide what is the priority of the game is. Is it a game first, collectible/tradable second or a collectible that you happen to be able to play with? If it's a game first, then bans and card design is based off of the assumption of everyone having access to all the cards. If it's a collectible first, then those things are based off of availability, with the power weighed more heavily into rarer cards. WotC made it clear a _long_ time ago that they're printing, balancing, and banning around MtG being a collectible first with the Reserved List. The collectors and the speculators are their first priority, the game's health is second at best. Their whole business model is about chasing the cards that you want, not _getting_ said cards for the average person. Personally, I want the first one. Having bits of printed cardboard reach over $50 USD feels gross, having them reach over $200 feels like insanity and the only reason why they are that way is because of the collectible mentality first. Trying to design, ban and enable around something that WotC can't even acknowledge (otherwise they would be potentially running afoul of gambling laws if they admit to adjusting to the secondary market) is unhealthy for the game. I understand why the rules committee for Commander doesn't want to ban Sol Ring. That format first was created to have dumb fun with draft chaff and cards we can't play in tourneys, and sol ring allows people to do so since draft chaff is pretty much synonymous with inefficiency in MtG. It has shown that it (and cards like it) instead supercharge efficient cards, which takes away from that 'dumb fun with draft chaff' that the format is supposed to be about. If there was a way so that everyone dropped a sol ring (or other fast mana) whenever someone did, it would probably be a bit better but still has the problem of 'dumb fun' being trumped by 'efficiency'. IMO, ban sol ring in commander regardless of how many reprints it has. Ban any other cards that warp the commander experience away from 'dumb fun with draft chaff'. Create a different, solely competitive, format where the only bans are those decks that warp everything to become a copy of it or lose. Having sol ring (or other cards like it) doesn't warp the whole format around it. We don't call our commander decks 'mana rocks', we call them what the fast mana enable. Saying that pricing people out of playing poorly balanced cards instead of balancing them or banning them is ok, is a bad take. It's the reason why legacy is a shell of what it could be. Reprint every card so that it is accessible to everyone, and everyone can play them in tournaments. Right now, officially sanctioned events are people playing against each other's wallets. Anything that WotC puts prizes behind is sanctioned. Any store that decides to allow proxies in DCI's officially sanctioned events is risking their connection to DCI. I'd much rather have a game balanced around player skill (both in building and piloting a deck) and luck instead of their purchasing power. 'Just proxy and if they don't let you, they're not worth playing against', good for you for having that option. Where you can walk away from one store, and potentially several, and still be able to play commander. And for those who don't have that playgroup or store accessible, but don't want to play online because it's a fundamentally different experience that they don't enjoy? Guess tough cookies, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
thanks for this video! i think i'm in the minority as i haven't seen the original video in my area there are some events that have deckbuilding restrictions to keep things light and casual, and one of them has a rule of "no fast mana". i've had to ask them if sol ring is allowed, and they said that it absolutely was, to my mild confusion... i think you're right that in the long run the view on cards in this format is warped by availability/accessibility, which is funny since the thassa's oracle + tainted pact is actually pretty affordable compared to some other casual powerhouses. it takes more experience than you'd think to build a deck to be intentionally more casual
The Painbow precon doesn’t have Sol Ring. It’s also the precon that has felt the most consistent when playing. There are two different kinds of consistency in Commander - how consistently you can do your thing and how consistent the games feel. You start to stray away from games feeling consistent when you add more cards that power you ahead, especially if you effectively have 1-5 slots within the 99 dedicated to those cards. Now let’s apply this to precons. Those precons almost never run a way to tutor out your Sol Ring. So, if you’re in a match consisting of precons of a similar power level, that slim chance of getting a relatively early (before turn 5) Sol Ring immediately begins to warp the game when it happens. That is why Sol Ring isn’t a casual card. “But Sol Ring lets other players keep up with green ramp” - Sol Ring also accelerates green ramp. Running a proper amount of interaction and/or starting to attack the green ramping player before they become a problem also helps combat the ramp. If you let said green deck ramp, don’t punish them as they solely ramp, and aren’t prepared to stop them AFTER they ramp, then that’s on you.
i actually like the high variance in card quality. Opening the game with a Sol ring may be way to strong but the 4 player format balances that out quite nicely. It also adds a nice Mario Party-ish vibe to the whole game, hece why imo running Sol Ring is fine but running Mana Crypt is starting to be a little sweaty
This is kind of like my love/hate relationship with Tutor spells. I only ever use them in decks that are higher power levels so they can be more consistent in its game plan (reduce variance), but I absolutely detest playing them in lower power level decks because lower consistency, or higher variance, make the games more fun for everyone at the table. It really makes the games less fun for everyone when I'm acting like a try-hard by stuffing my deck full of tutors in a casual/low powered game with friends. Something else that I like to do to make the games more fun is by adding in Planechase, especially when everyone has higher power decks, as anything could happen with each and every roll of the planar die.
I think the argument is explained better with an analogy. At least for TCG players who play more than just magic. Sol ring in commander is like if they decided to reprint pot of greed in every yugioh structure deck instead of banning it. It's not a game breaking card, but it is incredibly good value. It's just a very odd way to address an overpowered card which is so good it needs to be in every deck if not banned. Normally you'd ban it. Instead they just printed so many that it's in every deck.
This entire topic is why i love proxying everything and when my opponents are proxying everything, because only then you make exactly the decks you want to make and have them do exactly what you want them to do and have them be as strong as you want to make them
hoooold on holdonholdonholdon. i was nodding along sagely until i got to "then they aren't worth playing against". if i may allow myself a moment of rhetorical belligerence, what, do you think playgroups grow on trees?
I think occasionally re-treading a topic you feel like garnered a lot of divided discussion in your comments is nice. It engages the community more as it makes it feel like they are being heard and responded to.
You need to actually reflect on your opinions of a topic though. Some creators just go "reeee I won't be bullied by my audience into changing my mind!" and end up in a TotalBiscuit war against their own fans.
i actually really love ur content cause it gives people a different way to look at their own decks and their own deckbuilding. ur vids seem controversial cause you like playing in a certain way that people seem to disagree with, which is completely fine. I find it entertaining and I feel like ive become a better deckbuilder since listening to ur advice. i appreciate ur content for what its worth :)
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it." I liked the ideas you presented in your original video. I didn't agree with all of them, but could at least empathize with your preferences. There are some EDH decks I have built in the past where I choose not to include Sol Ring on purpose. When I hear that some people didn't like your video, and didn't finish watching it because they disagree with your opinion in the first 11 minutes, I find it pretty easy to dismiss their opinions entirely.
First off, just want to say I really appreciate your style of content in general. I'm someone who loves the big brain dives into 'ok, but *why*' regarding types of cards to run, how perception vs reality of a deck gets warped and everything else you cover. I do agree with the sol ring argument. I mean anecdotally, the amount of times someone has joked "oh turn 1 sol ring guess I'm the threat now" I'd argue is statistically significant. The difference a t1 sol (usually followed by a signet) can make is 5 mana on turn 2 vs 2/3 mana. And the thing is, a lot of people run it even in decks where it doesn't make sense like decks that would rather use enchantment ramp just because "its sol ring of course I run it" I do mostly align with your views regarding casual commander. But I'm also of the opinion "I'd rather play you, not your wallet" which does have it's own set of problems. The fact that cards prices are a mostly user-defined market creates a lot of it's own issues. Expensive cards are not automatically powerful ones despite what a lot of people's knee jerk reaction would be on that topic. And like you said, expensive cards, even if they are staples, can drastically warp the power of your deck outside of what it's intended to be. So there's really a lot of factors at play here, some that people internalize and understand, others that go against what they view as core aspects of the format. And people are going to react based on their experience. For me that's running fluffy pet cards that, while really being anti-synergistic with a deck (for example, running Embercleave in any deck that remotely cares about the commander being on the board not even doing commander damage) because I love making vibe-based decks over purely mechanical/strategy based ones.
While I'm a little sympathetic to "I'd rather play you, not your wallet," I think my take on that is more disliking when players spend a ton and get very strong cards, than disliking that the best cards cost a lot. In fact, I dislike it more when people ask to play a deck full of proxied expensive cards-they're still trying to play all the expensive cards, but now want to set aside all the deterrents (in the form of costs) that help encourage a power level closer to what I prefer and what my decks can play reasonably well against. I want people to be reluctant to do so (without outright banning), and I think prices do a good job of that. That is, I like the price system and constraints it engenders, I just wish the amount people would be willing to spend on a deck was a lower number, or at least, would match tables more. I like that budget is a constraint that I have in the power-level of my deck, and am satisfied when I beat players who have a deck that costs many times what I spent. Sol ring is basically always good, though (that is, I disagree with what you said at the end of your second paragraph). I can't think of many decks where it's bad. I've skipped it once, because it would have cost above well above what I was spending on any of the other cards in that deck, but it's pretty much always raises the power of one's deck, I think.
@@BernardinusDeMoor oh I agree, the 'you not your wallet' concept, to me, is more so regarding being limited by your wallet *over* whatever our rule 0 conversation is. Power level/type of game we are playing takes precedence. If we're playing unoptimized, 3-4 lists and you rock up with a mana crypt because 'I mean the rest of the deck is a 4' that's not going to fly with me. It also avoids people buying a card for a deck they may never play again, which for some isn't an issue but for others can add up and make a difference. As for Sol ring, I can't give specific examples (as in card names) right now, but some decks work on blowing up all artifacts, or preventing their abilities from being activated or keeping them tapped or maybe the enemy has a dockside or other anti-artifact synergy. My point was more so about how automatic it is for people to add it without actually *thinking* about what it does for the deck aside from providing more mana.
If sol ring were expensive like mana crypt, rich players would be even more painful to play against for poor players. Either ban it or keep it cheap, I don't want the rich/poor divide to be even more pronounced! Every time someone drops a mana crypt in a casual commander game, I groan a little. And players lie about their decks power level all the time, so you can't just fix it by asking what they mean with "my deck is a 7".
My Vilis deck has mana crypt, mana vault, ancient tomb, and a plethora of fast mana...but I don't whip that deck out for just any game. It's just too powerful, it's for tournaments with good prizes or for that player that decides to pubstomp. Usually I start out with a precon deck so I can gauge other players decks power then I'll go to a more fitting deck in game 2. I even have decks that I consider less than precon levels. For me it's about having fun more than winning.
You're making this rich vs poor thing when its really an asshole vs not asshole thing. I have a couple of expensive high power decks, but I almost never play them outside of games with close friends because most local players play at a much lower power level. If I'm playing at a local meetup I'll just ask to borrow a deck. Someone saying their deck is a 7 with mana crypt in it makes me question their character more than anything.
I find the argument of Sol Ring leading to more variance quite compelling. It's very tempting to add powerful cards to your deck, but if they are on a totally different level then the rest of your deck, your opponents are more likely to view you as the problem. I think there's an argument to be made that the 'best' casual deck is one with as little variance as possible. I've recently started to toy with this idea. I'm starting to think it doesn't makes sense to include fewer than 8 cards of a certain category (like ramp, draw, protection, etc.) in your deck, because if you aren't nearly guaranteed to come across one of these cards in your deck, they don't actually make your deck more consistent. What is your view on this?
A few years ago, i think i would have thought exactly the same as the comment section. Tired about the high price of a lot of staples, we decided to allow proxies in my playgroup, and a few month later, we realized that games were not as fun anymore. First of all because all of them looked kinda alike. In every deck you'll have a base of more than 40% of staple cards. It creates a poor deck building experience as you said and very repetitive and boring games. I have no particular problem with sol ring because the problem is in the quantity. I also think the price of certain cards should be high to discourage people to put all of them in one deck. It feels bad, your deck may be slightly worse but more synergistic, you'll have more fun building it and playing it. I strongly advise people who want to play all these powerful expensive cards to try some games by proxying them before making a 1000€ order. If you like it then that's fine, but just go play cedh and let the casual commander players enjoy their games not over by turn 3.
Overall I think I agree. A turn one sol ring is akin to sticking in that one extra card that just infinitely combos - obviously not the same, but a bit below it. Everyone knows the feeling I think of hitting that turn on sol ring and seeing the other 3 players just go ok this one is the target for the first few rounds.
Its always nice to come back to old topics with a fresh perspective, I remember seeing your original video and not really understanding what was the issue you had since I was just starting to play commander. Now that I've had some time to play and experience the game more I understand more about the point you wanted to make.
Just to add a bit to your argument on why Sol Ring isn't a good thing to see so often, outside of higher power, more consistent decks it becomes very hard to actually place a deck's strength in comparison to the rest of the group because an almost ubiquitous combo of Command Tower -> Sol Ring -> Arcane Signet catapults a deck far in front of everyone else. Of course you're going to have variation in strength because randomness exists, but it can make otherwise equal decks turn into oppressive powerhouses turn 1. It feels great to pull it off yourself but it's demoralizing when you're playing low power decks/precons and someone on the play just sets themself up to throw down a 5+ drop turn 2 while everyone else is sitting there with a basic land.
@@shorewall You do realize almost every precon comes with these cards? Maybe if you got off your high horse you'd have more fun, I get the feeling from seeing your other posts on this vid that you'd balk at almost anything.
Like baseball cards have set boxes you can buy that contain every card for that season. Why can't Wizards of the Coast do that? Also re-release all the old sets that way. Just nuke all the prices of all the cards. It's not like they get money from the 3rd party sale so who cares if it crashes a bunch of their businesses. I just want to play the game with the most powerful cards and not have to print them off.
The issue I think is _generically_ powerful cards. The beauty of commander to me is not knowing how your deck is going to work in any given game. It's discovering or rediscovering combos you didn't intentionally put into the deck. There's very few blue decks that don't benefit from having a Counterspell, but the question probably should be: Does Counterspell actually work with your deck or is it just good on its own? Would another card that's slightly worse make more sense in terms of flavour, synergy, and surprise/novelty/fun?
It seems to me, that this whole issue is based on the perception, that there's a strong correlation between the price of a card and its power. Which is often true, but certainly not always (Sol Ring is probably the most obvious example). These cards are therefore very attractive for all players (including those with more limited budgets) and become staples. Normally this high demand would result in a higher price over time, but if the archetype of the deck is niche enough or the card sees a lot of reprints, it might stay affordable. In some cases the existence of an even stronger version at a higher price, might keep the lower powered (but still comparatively powerful) card affordable, because the players with bigger budgets buy that card instead. The natural result is, that most budget decks include such high-power yet affordable cards, and therefore have significant variance in their power level consistency, based on them drawing these cards or not. Even an out-of-the-box precon could rival much more potent decks if it plays the infamous turn 1 Sol Ring into Arcane Signet, but it only does so 1 out of 50 games or so. That's why I don't like power-level being a single value to describe a deck. The power-level a deck performs at can vary a lot game to game and therefore we need consistency as a second variable to compare the "power" of decks properly. Tutors are a great example for this, because a tutor cannot increase the resulting power-level for a game, since you could have played the same game without the tutors if you simply would have drawn the cards you want instead of the tutors. A tutor therefore doesn't increase the power-level, but instead increases the consistency. Plotted as a 2-dimensional graph (power-level vs. consistency), a tutor will therefore shift the deck along the consistency axis, while fast-mana (like Sol Ring) would shift it along both axis. The resulting "static power" can therefore be described as the area under the curve of such a graph. Many players I've met intuitively understand this, but mix up the power-level axis and the area-under-the-curve in this illustration, during discussions. (you might also call the area-under-the-curve the "power-level" and the axis "potential-power" if that helps, the semantics are interchangeable) Now - what does this have to do with the point of your video? I believe that a proper understanding of the relationship between power-level and consistency would result in a much less confusion and bickering. In many cases it's also a good idea to reduce the (potential) power-level of a deck to increase its consistency - which therefore might result in an overall bigger area-under-the-curve and therefore overall "power" of the deck. This makes a lot of sense for more experienced players, but more novice players or players who haven't thought about these concepts enough, might get involved in discussions like your video and that's where a lot of the issue stems from, in my opinion.
I run Sol Ring in exactly 2 of my 9 commander decks. One is a Zaxara the Exemplary deck where having as much mana as possible is the goal, and the sol ring isn't nearly as daunting to my opponents when I'm trying to get up to 10+ mana by turn 5 or 6. The second is in a Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale Knight/Equipment deck where my ramp package needs some help, and the sol ring accellerates my aggro gameplan. In other decks I run more appropriate mana ramp that feels more on theme. Your videos on deck balance are extremely key to helping me figure out when to run certain cards and how to create decks that have a solid core theme. I've greatly appreciated your takes thus far and I'm looking forward to plenty more!
It's not strictly about classism, it's that your argument promotes excluding people from cards before they even sit down at a table. You want to solve a social problem with how people build their deck with financial exclusion, rather than socially. I would argue against your point at 15:00 that if "must-play" cards like rhystic and great henge were budget, there would be no sunk cost to removing them from the deck once they realize or are convinced that it isn't right for their deck's power level. If 'casual' players really can't build decks at specific power levels, or represent them properly in pre-game discussions, you should teach and not exclude.
So glad you revisited that video, I think you really nailed it this time. Can't overstate how your content is getting better every video - quality and discourse wise. Love it!
I honestly think commander would be a worse format without sol ring, despite being fast mana games are slower because of it. Having dealt with groups that don’t run fast mana rush down becomes king in ways no one can counter because anyone with a commander over 3 value has no chance to build a defence.
Big fan of this video. It takes a lot to retread some ground and rethink your old work, and it shows your growth as an essayist. I always loved the first video. It was the thing thay turned me onto your channel in the first place. But I recognize I am in the minority who, within the first few minutes of your video, understood the ideas you were gesturing at and wanted to hear more. The incredible variance in play dynamic I've experienced based on the answer to "did anyone draw Sol Ring turn 1?" is undeniable, and you seemed to point at that topic clearly enough that I was invested in sticking around. I agree with your self-criticism. The thesis of "budget warps the way we think about card power" is too obscured by the aimlessness of your essay. And in a way, you proved this over the course of last year by expanding on each of those rambling topics in their own self contained videos. As you’ve no doubt learned to do, starting from the common ground of your audience can smooth the transition into more controversial ideas. There is some math involved in making points, but ultimately, your ideology is very "vibes" based, so you want to win your audience's trust by relating to them rather than bludgeoning them with an idea that may be harder to stomach. Anyway, keep it up! I'm excited to see what you publish next
I loved your Sol Ring take. I don't really miss Mana Vault/Crypt in my decks bc my playgroup doesn't run them either, so it would be the same if Sol Ring had a similar $ value.
It was pretty impressive to realise how much improvement has gone into your videos under the hood thanks to the side-by-side comparison! But even when I first watched the old video, the takeaway I had was the one that's most consistent across all your videos -- that more of the less splashy, workhorse cards which you can often even just pull from "chaff" piles will make almost any deck more consistent, and that consistency in deck expectations helps to harmonise most tables for both you and your friends.
I think you can make this argument a lot more simple and concise by just appealing to supply and demand in the aftermarket, and equating them to reprints and power level. Like so: 1: "Demand" for a card strongly correlates to how powerful it is. 2: Thus for a fixed Supply, the Price of a Card directly correlates its power level. 3. If the Supply of all Cards were fixed, the Power Balance of a deck would be very strongly determined by fixing its Budget. Opinion 1: Since Budget Constraints are a Real and Unavoidable part of the Game, the Power Balance of decks with the Same Budget *should* be roughly the same. 4. "Supply" of a card is actually determined by how many printings it has. 5. Cards that have been Reprinted more often will thus be More Powerful than others at the same Price, and Cheaper than otherwise very similar cards with fewer Prints. (These are the "Budget" Cards). 6. Because of Budget Cards, Power Balance is not achieved by fixing a deck's Budget, and Power Balance as a whole is much more difficult to determine. 7. Moreover, because players tend to Favor stronger decks at a given Budget, decks with almost any fixed budget will disproportionately many Budget Cards, reducing overall deck variety. Opinion 2: More Deck Variety and Creativity at a fixed Budget and Power level is a Good thing. Thesis 1: The first Problem with Budget Cards is that they ruin a Player's ability to determine how Fair and Balanced their deck is by just appealing to realistic budget constraints. Thesis 2: The Second Problem with Budget Cards is that greatly reduce deck variety and creativity, with more depending on generic staples than more suitable choices. This btw is also why I kinda hate the games WotC plays with Rarity, jacking up the price of certain really fun cards by just printing less of them. PSA: Play more Pauper, please!
One of the hardest things for me to learn about Commander has been determining card quality and card selection. High and low power cards can't be simply determined by price due to the wide variety of formats (the change if price of Gix and Nadu being good exanples). And i think your argument against sol ring is a really good example of that. Sol ring, assuming you have additional cards to fill out your curve, is game warping. Even a pile of jank can become game ending if you are 2 or more turns ahead on mana. Sol Ring, while i don't think is as strong as a card like Doubling Season, Rystic Study, or Smoothering Tide, can be just as game alternating as them and can lead to the same sorta deck inconsistencies as them despite the fact that the card is 30ish dollars cheaper than the rest of them. And additionally it also warps how people view your deck. If your deck which normally struggle for mana is able to break mana parody because of a turn 1 sol ring people might think your deck is strong that it is
Really like your content and I agree with your message here. I have to say - I definitely didn't really grasp what you were trying to get at in your first video and this clears it up. I definitely agree I think casual commander would be WAY better without sol ring. It's a huge feels bad both when I get it early and others get it early as it just creates this strange early game dynamics, but often times the sol ring player gets ganged up on in my play groups so much so that it feels like they would be way better off never playing it! It's so unnatural and STILL hurts to do, but removing it from decks makes the game more fun. I am guilty of the disparate power level thing - HUGE example here - I built your $40 Radha deck and LOVED IT. then I replaced 3 cards - putting a GREAT HENGE, a tribute to the world tree, and a lurking predators in there. Absolutely made my deck way more consistent and better whenever any of those cards came up.
Some years back a friend of mine proposed to cut sol rings from the decks of our playground. I was against it because I thought I need sol ring to keep up or anything. However, after some time playing I realized why it actually makes sense and your video underlines that. Thank you for your great content!
The beating heart at the center of this topic and the whole issue surrounding Sol Ring and power levels is that Commander, at it's very core, is a casual format. Every other officially recognized/sanctioned format is competitive. Every other format has tournaments and metas and professionals. They are focused on the objectivity of Winning, whereas EDH is focused on the subjective concept of Fun. CEDH doesn't really have this issue because of its focus on winning. While it may be using the same rules and banlist of Commander, all cEDH players share the same expectations of how a game will play out. Commander's focus on "casual fun" is really dubious, and more than a little at-odds with its poster child, Sol Ring, being a highly powerful card that's been banned in multiple formats. More than anything, I think the best thing anyone can do for having fun in EDH is having a good mindset. You're playing an inherently broken format with a paltry ban list that strongly favors the wealthy. Who really cares about the outcome of the game? It's the playing with other people that's the fun part.
The problem comes when one person REALLY cares about the outcome of the game, and they tryhard to always be the winner, and it gets annoying and trite. Everyone else is trying to just have fun, and one dude HAS to make it miserable because he wants to win.
I think the simple and unfortunate answer of this issue would be for wotc to give cards a usage cost beyond slotting it in the deck - like if you had 200 points to spend on cards and sol ring cost ~15. Then you wouldn't need to use money prices to scale the usage of a card, and playgroups can all choose their own point limit whether it's 100, 500, infinite, etc. It's unfortunate because they'd never really use this, but could be fun with a local meta.
It would be a nice thing to do but with tens of thousands of cards to rate vs each other, that's a lot of time invested in something most players don't want. Most players absolutely don't care about playing at a given powerlevel. They want to win as much as possible and they want to make their decks as strong as possible and only stop when making their deck stronger is too expensive. That's why everything is a 7: "I made it as strong as I could, I just can't afford manacrypt"
@@garak55 I was thinking about that first bit too, some kind of usage based tiering in association with EDHREC could do the trick, giving bottom tier cards a single point cost and going up from there. You do have a point lots of people don't care, I think the trick woud be to market it as an alternative, hence each table could choose their own point budget (including infinite). There's certainly not a ton of gain wotc themselves would get out of this though, a pretty nasty nail in the coffin regarding any potential format changes.
@@epicdude8742 Yeah. I had to force my playgroup into a 30$ budget by threatening them to actually go and buy a mana crypt if they refused. Now the decks are much more varied, commanders are very different and the cards used are very synergistic because staples are too expensive(at 30$ you can't even really get swords to plowshares). The only downside is some cards are too expensive for how good they are: some strategies like tribal decks are very popular amongst the general public and the cards they require are thus very pricey even though they're really not that good tbh.
@@garak55 yeeee, as someone who's tinkered around with lower budgets it's a great way to get people thinking out of the box! Of course, main issue goes back to what snail points out where the power of a card isn't always reflected in the price. Glad y'all got a fun budget going though, certainly!
In an ideal world, every card would be free and people would be able to deck build with anything they want. I 100% agree with the main point, that commander would be a better format if people played less sol ring, but the reason why people play it less should not be price. A card being expensive is never a good thing
I was someone who was introduced to your channel through that original video and largely agreed and understood what you were getting at back then. I exist largely more on the 'expressive play' end of the spectrum and have largely wanted to take cards like sol ring out of my decks where they don't fit the theme, as playing it in non-artifact decks feels massively underwhelming compared to my artifact themed decks. Sol Ring's position as fast mana is much more obvious and oppressive when played in conjunction with untapping effects (voltaic key, clock of omens, unwinding clock, etc etc) and artifact tutors which mitigate the inherent variance (looking at you, urza's saga, a 0 mana tutor for sol ring which is also quite pricey), on top of generally not being restricted by the fact that it produces colorless mana. If Sol Ring was less ubiquitous, I think players would be more prepared to react appropriately to its presence on the battlefield.
You were right back then and you're right now! There's a kind of confirmation bias to lower-powered players where they remember the time drawing Sol Ring helped them keep up but they forget the dozens of times that more powerful decks ALSO drew Sol Ring and stomped them. It almost always creates an imbalanced game (in casual EDH) and I've started removing it from all of my decks for that reason. Also, the myth that "it's fair cause everyone has one" is pretty thin when it's a 100 card singleton format. If everyone started with it in hand that would be a different story. Also I couldn't agree more about the supposed "arms race" happening with power creep in the last few years. I don't own a single copy of The One Ring, Rhystic Study, etc. and I win plenty of my games. No one is forcing you to buy those cards, decks can be plenty strong if they just lean on actual synergies and solid deck construction. Also, no one is forcing you to play at a power level where Dockside/Force of Will/Cyc Rift are a necessity. This part is personal preference but I like a game that gets to turn 8 or so, plenty of competition and dynamic shifts in who is in the lead. Players, whether they realize it or not, use monetary value to gauge a card's power level and your thesis that Sol Ring is an egregious flaw in that system holds completely.
Brother the sol ring video was the first video i saw a week or so ago and now ive watched everything you have posted. The fundamental idea of questioning the one card that i put in all my decks shifted how i was looking at the game and made me so much more invested in my deckbuilding moving forward.
15:10 - 15:58 I came to this video ready to make this argument in the comments after finishing it, and I'm so relieved to see you already included it in the video itself
Regardless of my opinions about EDH and how they relate to yours, I really liked how you approached the same ideas from the previous video, but just expressed them in a different layout and style that more clearly got your point across. After watching a handful of EDH videos from a few different sources, the overall point I end up taking away from these kinds of videos is "be intentional and thoughtful with deckbuilding", and honestly that's a good enough rule of thumb for me. Good video, keep up the good work!
I think having sol ring as a single, clean piece of power that can grant early game initiative and break up thepacing is good. I think having a lot of fast mana, especially unevenly distributed between players, is bad. There's a common gotcha with "well, if you think mana crypt is bad for the format, then logically sol ring is too", and, no, we are allowed to have exceptions kn general principles so long as they are kept limited.
Great gastropod one you should make a video on cards with transmute! I love it and there’s usually a transmute card that’s a cheap tutor for good synergy pieces and tools for situations within the deck.
T1 Sol Ring (especially when immediately followed by a 2cc mana rock) can lead to non-games with no surprises or changes in the lead. But such plays also often lead to the other players coordinating their actions and removal to bring the early leader back in line with the rest of the table. Such a rally to action to stop the emerging archenemy can makes the otherwise boring (if faster to play) first 3-4 turns of Commander interesting with actual stakes that can affect the rest of the game. Of course if people aren't playing enough of removal/answers then you get more snowball rolling down a hill non-games in those kinds of situations. That's why cutting some synergy/theme cards for removal is a good idea. And I like some of the new flexible cards like the Seasons from Bloomburrow that are removal when you need it and still pretty good card draw or board development when you don't. The problem with banning Sol Ring from the format is that players will still want to be faster than their opponents and so players seeking speed will just push casual magic towards 1cc mana-making creatures (elves plus bird of paradise mostly). There is counterplay to those creatures but most are pretty bad in commander outside the the prohibitively money-expensive Orcish Bowmasters. Also slowing down artifact mana acceleration in non-green decks means that between elves and 2cc land ramp green decks would outrace the rest of the table on mana development even more often that it already does. That would probably be worse than the occasional non-game. Slower non-green mana development is also going to push players to choose lower mana cost commanders in non-green decks, constraining player choice and design space. That said, black red and blue treasure mana ramp and white land catch-up ramp means this is a bit less of a problem than it used to be. More mana dorks would in turn force players building non-green decks to play more mass creature removal to stop the mana dorks from snowballing. More creature wipes in average decks lead to long sluggish games which are less fun. Something long-time players of the format will remember.
I don't know what is so complicated about "strong cards should be played in strong decks against other strong decks, so stop putting sol ring in your timmy decks, that way you'll get more fun", and if you want to play strong cards for cheap, just proxy, but PLEASE keep your strong cards in your strong decks. There is no need to put Sol Ring in every single one of your decks, even if it's cheap and powerful: it's an easy trap to fall into that can make your deck wildly inconsistent with its power level. That being said, I don't want to be a fun police, so do what you want, I don't play at your table, I don't play against you, and I certainly don't play your decks. But the original points always made sense to me.
I actually like having variance in the power of a deck. It makes games have more variance, making that sometimes one deck has an awesome plan in its hand, when others I can see other decks make cool plays. Obviously I don't want any game when I do nothing, but I don't mind being the underdog sometimes.
While I do enjoy your other videos more because of their subject, this was a refreshingly different video that made me realize that I would happily watch your breakdowns of literally anything because the style and approach are absolutely incredible
I feel the most accurate part of this analysis was when you noted that most people didn’t finish watching your video. Some arguments are simply difficult to make to the general public, particularly if they have an unappealing face value despite the strength of the evidence supporting it. I suspect what you’ve run into is a similar to talking with the religiously devout. It doesn’t matter what you’re saying if they close their ears in the first minute, and suggesting any cards should be expensive is absolutely that sort of trigger.
I remember people complaining about "why does WOTC print 'bad cards'?" Then you have to tell them that any set will have "relatively" bad cards, and even if you took the 100 best cards in MTG history and put them in a set, some would be "relatively" bad compared to the others. But it's like talking to a brick wall.
@@shorewall To be fair, I sympathize with the sentiment "why does WotC print 'bad cards?'" but when I say it, I specifically mean "why does WotC print cards that are strictly worse than previous cards meant for the same format", like, why did we sometimes see vanilla 2-mana 2/2s, even after the baseline became 2-mana 2/2 with upside. I get that oftentimes it is about limited concerns, but I think most cards they print could be designed in a way that at least means it isn't *strictly* worse than another card.
You're missing the entire point just like everyone else who tries to "debunk" the logic behind people who say "why does work print bad cards. We get that there is relative power level. That doesn't change the fact they sometimes intentionally make cards that are considerably weaker than others, sometimes cards that basically do nothing good(until maybe something new printed years later can make it relevant.) and it creates worthless filler in random packs.
@@rh7474 in my eyes, one major reason is to limit power creep. If every card had to be the same power as similar cards from previous sets, there is no way to introduce "good" or "bomb" cards in a set that excite players without letting the power creep go wild. I believe this is also partly a reason for rotating formats like standard (selling new product cannot be ignored as a reason though). As someone with a collection of 15-20 year old pokemon and yugioh cards that are utterly unplayable compared to their modern counterparts, i think wizards have done a better job with this than many other games.
To me a game being casual, and to a lesser extend a decks power level, is more of a personality and vibe thing than dictated by the cards in the deck. You can have high power cards and still play pretty relaxed and non-competetive. That is what creates the casual environment in my opinion. One of my favorite examples is Aura Shards: A lot of people hate on that card and even swear at others for playing it, but that thing has a may ability... so if someone blows up everything all the time, the card isn't the problem, it's the player! This basically applies to almost everything and -card in MTG. Sure, I can play my Crypt into Sol Ring into Signet on turn 1 and tutor up a combo in turn 2... or I just chill out a bit and play the same hand just a little more stretched out and maybe save my tutor to react to a threat later in the game. I call this style as higher power ultra casual. Just wanna play and do the thing without the need to win.
I disagree with two things in this video: 1. I think the premise of tying price point to power level is fundamentally flawed. In a casual format like EDH, it's not up to Wizards to regulate deckbuilding culture, its up to the players. While printing flagship cards like Sol Ring may provide some incentive for newer players, the actual decision to include is made by the player. It would be better for the casual community to embrace proxies like cEDH players and just get the power level addiction out of their systems. 2. Adding a Sol Ring to a low-power deck is generally much worse than adding one to a high-power deck. My background is mostly in cEDH so I can tell you that adding a single copy of Sol Ring to my deck is practically the same as adding 10 copies once you factor in all the tutoring options etc. It also dramatically escalates the degree of "brokenness" and consistency that is possible.
I think you are still right on a lot of what you say. I have tried making my decks more unique in card selection and theme and I have found that my opponents enjoy playing with me more than some at my shop that just play all the staples. Keep up the great work! I'm always looking forward to the next upload!
That camel shaped winrate curve is super interesting to think about. When I first started playing commander, my goal was to build decks on a $100 budget that could win 25% of games against much more expensive decks at the local game store. If the deck does absolutely nothing 50% of the time, builds a board state 50% of the time, and can squeak out a win 25% of the time, I'd consider that mission accomplished. What I learned in that first year of playing was that a) building a deck like that wasn't difficult, and that b) decks like that aren't fun to play **or** to play against. Now I'm building decks that only completely flop maybe 15% of the time, that have more protection, more removal, more draw, less tutors, less combos, less infinite hand size, with shorter turns for myself but more to do on other players turns. I still care a lot about winrate, but I find that staying out of "first place" until the right moment does more for my winrate than running more powerful cards.
i appreciate seeing this video. ive been listening to your videos in the background, and ive heard a lot of contradictions between gaps of time. rad to see you being critical of yourself :)!
'i probably wouldn't make this take again' hot takes are the best way to get people talking, if they aren't trying to be the correct one. id hope you'd make the video again.
Honestly, a lot of your videos are just enjoyable to listen to as a foil to traditionally held EDH notions. Regardless of whether I, the listener, agree with them, they still do their job of opening up the discussion to new trains of thought, and my playgroup and I have certainly enjoyed listening to them as a result. Keep up the great work Mr. Snail! :)
I have to say that original video and your takes within it (particularly on sol ring) is what made me subscribe. Maybe I was one of the few people you alluded to who digested the video fully? Suggesting that sol ring having a high price as a way to keep the number of copies in casual commander low solves a very real problem. Obviously pricing it out of the format its not a perfect solution and reading between the lines I got the impression that was part of your opinion too. As you outlined in this video, sol ring evaluated in a vacuum is not *too* problematic, but the rising tide of power level which it is part of and enables is what causes problems. Also, the "keeping up" argument is complete nonsense for a casual format. I love competitive magic and played modern for years, and there obviously "keeping up" is a fundamental deckbuilding assumption. But in casual formats like commander everyone should be tuning their decks to their playgroup and/or specific pod of people in that match. I took about a 6 year break from magic and it's crazy to me that as a community we're still having this conversation. The only progress seems to be new content creators with better takes - so thank you for that!
I definitely get the argument that more low power decks will put cheap fast mana pieces in when they may not belong, and I do understand the issues that could be caused by this. I also understand that if someone wants to play higher level decks, many groups of commander players are proxy-friendly. *However*, many LGS events are *not* proxy-friendly, such as the weekly commander tournament at my preferred LGS and the weekly commander night at the LGS I don’t prefer (for many reasons I won’t get into). Events like these, where commander players are pit against each other in a semi-competitive environment, are *inherently* classist. If higher power cards cost more *and* you are in a scenario that isn’t proxy-friendly, those with more money will have a definitive edge and a much higher potential for higher power deck building. I-as a budget-playing college student-am not able to get nearly as close to winning in these events as the person to my right with every fast mana piece and cEDH value engine in their deck. This is bound to happen when higher power cards are more expensive. Playgroups being proxy-friendly really does lighten the load, but I don’t really want to play higher power cards in casual environments, so there’s a mismatch here. I-and many others-want to have a chance in more competitive settings, but those are not the settings in which I can play higher power cards.
My playgroup decided to make rule zero decks banning fast mana, tutors and the free spells cycle plus force of will etc. We thoroughly enjoyed playing those decks against each other. We all still have our higher power level decks including some cedh piles. I disagree with the nothing to keep up with argument, as the never ending power creep in general seeps into commander.
I am a huge cEDH player. I almost exclusively play it at this point unless I'm playing with new players or am with close friends. If it wasn't for the formats proxy friendly nature I would not be able to play the format I find the most fun. Budget and cEDH are just not compatable at this point of the format. I think this is an amazing video deconstructing the relationship between power of a deck to cost to play for the most part. If they suddenly printed a precon set of Blue Farm, Tivit, Najeela, and Atraxa I think that would alienate the vast majority of players from the wider EDH format. Fast mana and the effects on play are just polarizing and create lots of issues with everyone "doing their thing". At the start of the video I thought I would disagree with your point but I think around the 15:30 mark my mind changed. I think it would be interesting to see what the wider effect on the format would be if sol ring was left out of recons going forward and more niche weirder cards started being printed. As a cEDH player to anyone looking to play at the highest level and play cEDH, I want to play against peoples minds and their decks, not a wallet. Proxies should be more welcome at lower power levels as well. On the side, I would love to see a non-MTG video just about writing I found that part really interesting
One problem with all these expensive ramp/fast mana cards are that if one guy in a playgroup has a deck full of these powerful cards, and the rest doesn't (because they can't afford them). That just means that that person won't be allowed to play that deck. Because it will most likely steamroll all the other decks. And that's no fun for anyone. Even as a somewhat casual Commander player (I used to be a pretty competitive Modern player), I honestly don't mind cards like Sol Ring or Ancient Tomb. To me it just means that decks can start doing fun things faster. There's not really anyone in my group that plays decks that wins turn 1 or so anyway. Though I do have several decks with infinite combos that might get off a turn or so earlier because of those cards. Though they aren't unstoppable as long as anyone of the other three has removal/counterspell.
Fundamentally, you’re correct on the take that cheap powerful staples causes more similar decks, less balanced decks, and likely less fun for anyone involved. But calling to make such cheap cards more scarce/expensive isn’t correct from both a class division perspective nor a learning/teaching perspective. The classism argument has people ending up segregated among two groups as you mentioned. People can afford the card and those who can’t. Those who can afford the card get to play the card and those who can’t can’t. These conditions are literally what we play under now. Except by wishing the powerful cards which are cheap by good fortune you’re still not solving that issue. When someone has a lot of high power, expensive staples it creates what I would call envy as opposed to anger or frustration. Someone without the most expensive/powerful cards want them though can’t get them due to price. They play against them and these cards win or make the game unfun due to a lack of even playing field. So there’s the option of everyone having the cards or even fewer people having the cards. Now this isn’t nuclear disarmament so I’m inclined to the make them more accessible camp. By making them more accessible people can play with the cards in both decks that are high power level and those that aren’t. And through these experiences people could learn that perhaps these expensive staples aren’t actually increasing their enjoyment of the game nor making their decks fundamentally better. And by decreasing the overall price of cards envy is eliminated and arguments revolving around you won because you could afford a super expensive card fall flat. It lets people be like let’s change this deck to include this card now since I lost to it and therefore it’s good. And from there people might learn that that card doesn’t fundamentally work with their deck or it makes it boring. By choosing argument make the powerful cards more expensive you’re not giving people that opportunity to learn. The only way they can learn is through thought experiments, videos about the topic like yours, and reflections when they could play against it. And these are much less effective learning techniques than literally experiencing play with them. And not everyone spends their free time doing any of those things. People might realize that perhaps these cards aren’t what they want to use, but at least they can choose to use them in the first place. By choosing the argument of make them more expensive you’d make formats like cedh become more inaccessible to people, you’d end up with more class imbalances, and you’d make people unable to learn your general points about deck construction and synergy more effectively. Your argument reminds me a lot of an atheists’ argument about how religion is good (or at least useful). People can’t be trusted to be good without religion. So by getting rid of religion, lots of people will become worse people. I’m a atheist and I believe I am good without a God (granted whether or not we have the ability to make moral valuations without a god is very hotly debated among theologians and philosophers), so to claim that I could do it but most people can’t isn’t claimable without assuming you’re better than most people, and most people think that they’re better than most people. Hopefully you can see that most people are not better than most people. Replace the idea of religion with high prices on expensive cards though and hopefully my point comes across. Of course people can proxy but until proxies are allowed in sanctioned wizards of the coast events (or there are no sanctioned wizards events), I don’t think proxies are our solution
This snail keeps telling me to put vegetables into my deck, but snails eat vegetables. You don't fool me, snail. Stay away from my decks.
Dude got tired of playing theft decks and getting shit cards
77% those are rookie numbers! I bet you could get a solid 50% if you wanted!
do it do it do it
Two creators making (semi-) controversial videos back to back. Hell yeah.
Also after reading this comment I’m wondering what the like-dislike ratio on the Stax video was……
Nahh. Gotta make a pro Winter Orb and Stasis video. Get that 33% likes
Ngl you have some bad takes but overall your fairly on point. Never had an issue with Snail tho lol
Sluggish delivery? But...snail. Snailish delivery.
Snail mail
You win an internet trophy of the day for this
Poneh
"In a casual, social format, just ask people to not play with the one ring."
Ok, but I could do that if every card was a nickel, too.
In fact, it would be much easier to get them to agree to!!!!
It sounds like your problem boils down to 'I'm not a good fit for my playgroup'
one thing I'd add is that I think you put more consideration into power level into the average player does. I think most players just want to make their decks as strong as they can with what they have available, and get down because they reach a certain point where it's impossible to make the deck stronger without dipping into the expensive staples
Maybe this is why everything's a 7, because "I tried to make it as strong as possible, but couldn't reach an 8 for xyz reasons" where '8' becomes "a point where the deck is very strong and not held back by e.g. my budget" and always feels the same regardless of how powerful this deck's '8' is compared to others'.
A deck's power level is relative to the pod it is played in, which is why rating power levels of decks doesn't work.
I have a huge issue with this style of "as strong as I can", exactly because of what this video highlights. They sometimes combo, so I need to aggro focus them or combo faster. But if my deck is consistent at that, its not fun because theirs aren't and I'm jus getting free wins. And if my also isn't consistent to be "same level", then we are basically just throwing dice to see who wins.
@@shorewall this is only somewhat true. A deck that cannot possibly win on turn 5 is still weaker than a deck that has the potential to hit an infinite combo on turn 5 and kill the table, even if that potential is exceedingly unlikely.
@@gnogara aggro inherently does well against combo decks so you SHOULD be winning more often, and making your aggro deck less consistent to give the combo players an even playing field seems like an uncommon choice when you could just . . . play a different deck when you see a combo commander hit the field
Fun fact: the power 9 weren’t banned because they are overpowered, they were banned on their monetary cost alone and the creators didn’t want people to feel like they had to buy them. If sol ring was not printed in third edition and it was the “power 10” it never would’ve been legal likely
But that doesn’t make sense timetwister isn’t banned and neither is mana crypt
@@adrianoamram2140 What he/she says is true and what you saying too we see that the RC is sometimes very inconsistent why they bann or unbann Cards
For Example Flash was banned because it was to good with Hulk a two Card combo easy to pilote into a turn one/two win which needs +X cards to to its things ( Look at flash hulk pilles ). Now we got in the same Format a 2 Card combo Oracle + Pact / Connsoltion which can win turn 1/2 with not really more set up. . Ok Flash Hulk maybe a liitle more broken than Oracle but its the same concept.
@@adrianoamram2140in 2011 timetwister was still like $120, its massive spike is much more recent
@@10Pugz Flash was banned because it was a problem in the community, this is ultimately, when you boil it down, why every single card on the banlist is there. There have been a very small number of philosophical bans (lutri), and almost every ban is because the card not being banned would cause some problem with the format. Cards like the power 9 are a perfect example because the problem of the format being perceived as a high power pay to enter format was considered worse than being able to play with those cards.
i know this, but then i wonder why cards like the first dual lands are both not banned and told to the community that "they are fine" and "they don't increase a deck's power level"
I just don't get how, if we're having a hypothetical conversation about what would have been best for the format, we're not just saying Sol Ring should have been banned. You're right, it wasn't banned. It also was reprinted, so we're immediately not talking about real life. Why are we using cost as a way to balance cards? We have hundreds of examples of that not working. Every single banned card, though, immediately stops having an effect on the format it's banned in.
1. If it's unhealthy, it should be banned.
2. If that's not practical, well, that's what hypothetical conversations are for.
3. If it shouldn't be banned, everyone should have access to it.
Yup. Money has only ruined the game by pricing certain cards out of most players' budget. You can't compete if you aren't rich, and you can't play if you can't compete. That's why I only ever have and only ever will play with close friends, and never with randoms at the store.
1. I absolutely agree Sol ring is a net-negative to the format
2. I think some other cards acting as simple cheap staples like swords to ploughshares allowing cheaper decks to do ok and more easily eat veggies is good
3. It is weird to me how so many people say money isn't a huge factor but one of the best metrics I've found for how fun a deck is to play against is price. Like, if a deck isn't CEDH but costs $1000 I almost always have a bad time.
To point #2: cheap ANSWERS are great in a format where price/power of decks varies so much. Swords, counterspell, fatal push, lightning bolt, and nature's claim are all $2 or less and among the best removal/interaction in the format.
More of these cards/effects help "weaker" decks at a table keep "stronger" decks in check.
@@slydogamigo2303 At the same time, though, whenever I see a rhystic study, proxied or not, I wanna barf.
A $1000 dollar deck can mean a few drastically different things. It could just be a "normal" edh deck with an optimized mana base. Lands are expensive.
@@HeirophantCarneus"it could" but any reasonable person would guess the deck is good. Even "optimized lands" depending on the deck is a huge boost. 1000 deck being bad or normal is the exception not the rule not worth mentioning.
@@HeirophantCarneusLet's use a deck that I wanted to make since I'm currently doing research for my first magic deck.
Caesar is cool because New Vegas, same for Mr. House. Both of those commanders can be made for about 50 bucks. Yet any of the cards that would make those decks worth playing at anything beyond chilling with my coworker during lunch? We're talking about a 10x multiplier. Simply because things such as the token generation multiplier cards are worth 20-50 bucks a pop.
Sure, I could buy the Precon for 40 and just not do anything unique. Where's the fun in that?
While I agree with many of the points made in this video, it's important to recognize that the most important argument made in the video is the last one. Commander ultimately comes down to individual interpretation, and there's no way to make everyone happy.
For example, I like to make my decks thematic with little to no thought of how powerful or expensive the deck may end up being. The creation is what is fun for me, and thoughts of tuning up or down power levels only happens once the process is almost complete. The strongest deck I've ever made is a Graaz, Unstoppable Juggernaut deck because I wanted to see how many juggernauts it was possible to make in as little time as possible.
My own preferences mean that I love proxying because it means I'm not limited in the same way I otherwise would be when my creations need some insanely expensive card. And yet, I understand why others despise proxying and inconsistent power levels. As long as you can find people who are happy to play with you, I don't think there's really a problem with any interpretation of the format. That's what makes commander so fun, after all: being able to play it your own way.
What’s your coolest thematic build?
My Omnath Locus of Rage deck isn’t very powerful because I’ve included many cards with the words “Anger”, “Angry”, “Rage”, “Fury”, etc.
My Zaxara decks uses exclusively cards with alliterative names.
My Saruman of Many Colors deck only uses cards with white beards in the art.
I could go on …
Proxies are only bad in a competitive format with prize support. WOTC does not benefit from the secondary market, and unless I find personal fulfilment in spending money on cardboard, I have no obligation to do so, nor do other players have any reasonable expectation that I do so.
I find Proxying to be a duty in Commander. The format is based around deck construction and experimentation. Not just trying different things, but changing how you do different things. Adjusting power level to match with others. What happens if you spend a couple of hundred dollars on a deck, but then you find that it isn't fun for you? Or even worse, that your playgroup doesn't want you to play it?
@@MisterWebb My coolest build was a Rakdos, Lord of Riots deck based on demonic bargains. It is basically designed to force opponents into choosing two bad things, as if I were an actual demon.
To that end, the deck would drain down life totals as fast as possible, then use cards like Protection Racket, Temporal Extortion, Painful Quandary, and Risk Factor on them. They are forced to choose between either losing some of the little life they have left or giving me some advantage. Not incredibly powerful or tuned, but it can be really fun in the right circumstances.
I remember that video's comments being very clearly about how price shouldn't dictate the casual player's access to the format's staples. People shouldn't be priced out of sol ring and the fact that people are priced out of mana crypt is seen as an issue. I think it has to do with the grandfathering of sol ring into the mascot of commander.
I've gone back and fourth a lot about whether or not sol ring (and other power outliers) should be banned. There's positives and negatives about it I've found when going into writing my "Commander is a Bad Format (and that's good)" video. On one hand the variance is already so high in commander that "nut draws" increasing it even more aren't really healthy for the format and can lead to nongames sometimes, but on the otherhand sol ring can really enable a lot of funny jank decks that regularly wouldn't get off the ground unless they happen to get that opening hand sol ring variance.
So in the end I get the sol ring ban argument, and I used to agree with your point in that video even if the rhetoric was wrong, but I've come all the way around to thinking that sol ring should stay. Maybe its a topic we can talk about sometime.
Your video was really great!
oh hey! I love ur videos
I had to cut myself off while scripting for this because I was finding simply too much stuff to say about Sol Ring. So much of the complexity at the heart of EDH can be explored by thinking about one simple little artifact.
"...but on the otherhand sol ring can really enable a lot of funny jank decks that regularly wouldn't get off the ground unless they happen to get that opening hand sol ring variance."
Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but as a lover of Jank my argument wouldn't be "this deck needs Sol Ring so that 1 in 70 games it can go off," but instead that one can build consistent Jank. Sure, the power ceiling won't be terribly high, but it will perform well in far, FAR more games -- closer to 80% of games, if not even better.
Love your videos, by the way.
@@vengerofthelight I agree with you. I don't think Sol Ring enables jank. Jank is an experience, not meant for competition. If you say you are building a jank deck, but then include a sol ring, I don't consider that jank or tuned. I consider that a haphazard pile of cards.
Snail's take that it sends incorrect signals about your deck is how I feel. I think jank decks need to be played in the right power level. If you bring a jank deck to a high power pod, you are the asshole. And if you put a sol ring in your jank deck thinking that does something, you are the fool.
Your argument about wanting powerful cards to be out of financial reach is still dodging the fundamental question of why do cards, *mechanically,* need to have a financial element in a "casual" format?
A lot of the current-era talk about Commander power levels is also a result of the increasing de-casualisation of Commander. When I got into EDH a decade ago, *Mana Vault was $5 and wasn't even in a lot of decks.* Today there is much more of a spotlight on the format, and thus people are inherently more competitive about it hence the rise of cEDH.
If a powerful card being easily accessible is a problem, the solution is bans. You're arguing to cover up the failure of an inadequate ban system through financial strongarming. If money is the only way to stop every deck from being optimised into a borderline/cEDH deck, maybe there even needs to be some kind of tiered ban system like with Smogon's Pokémon tiers. Also lets face it; the blind-bureaucratic nature of the current banlist is already hamfisted, with needing to ban cards such as Lutri simply because if it's allowed there's no rule to stop it being run as Companion.
I think his entire essay revolves around the idea that cards aren't bannable in EDH. But in many discussions here in the comments you can catch him agreeing with your take. It should be banned.
But it won't, so it could be expensive, and it would also kinda solve the problem.
But it isn't, so we have wildly incoherent decks in EDH. Which is what I think his other videos try to fix: "Don't build inconsistent decks"
The rules committee doesn't want to ban cards because they say "Rule 0 will take care of it".
cEDH players are happy to be able to use all the fast mana, Thassa's Oracle, Dockside Extortionist, Rhystic Study, etc
Smogon tiers for Commander genuinely sounds like an amazing idea for addressing this problem. It keeps the fundamental idea that Commander can be whatever you want it to be (if you want to play Ubers or OU, play Ubers or OU) while also not relying on WotC's reprint decisions to keep high power level cards out of a game that everyone agreed would be low power level. Being able to say "this is an RU pod" and know everyone is on the same page about power level off the bat would be amazing.
@@ryanmuller9497 Honestly I really like the way Arena did it (even if the actual numbers were often nonsense): each card has a 0-5 point value (that value is different whether the card is the commander or in the 99) and you add all the values to make a deck score (the commander itself has its value multiplied by 360: instead of having values of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 it has values of 0, 360, 720, 1080, 1440, 1800) and the matchmaking algorithm (that also factors your account's win rate and global ranking) takes care of balancing your opponent to your deck
@@laytonjr6601 The reason I'm not so fond of that is that it relies on human judgement in a context where the value of a card can depend entirely upon the cards available around it. It's a monumental task to try to make a meaningful call on how powerful each card actually is while trying to take into account potential synergies. A lot of the values that came out of the Arena datamining basically boiled down to "this card is powerful in this strategy so it has a high score even though the card itself isn't particularly problematic in a vacuum".
By contrast, usage-based tiering says that, if people are using something a lot in a format, it's probably good in that format. There are obviously exceptions, like beginners just running precons and rare cards being harder to get access to than common ones, of course, so they'd have to figure out how to account for that. But, beyond that, it really does escape the need for arbitrarily assigned values. You let the player-base figure out what's good, use that to define the top tier of play, and the tier below is what's left once you filter out everything seeing high usage in the top tier. Repeat the process for as many tiers as you want to create, and there's probably a tier in there somewhere where you can use your favourite card in at least a semi-viable fashion.
Additionally, each tier gets a clearly defined metagame so, instead of being at the mercy of the algorithm placing you with the deck it thinks has a similar power level to yours, you know you're playing against decks limited to a particular pool of cards and can plan accordingly.
I doubt we'll ever see it introduced, but I'd rate usage-based tiering far above card point values as a way of accounting for deck power level.
I appreciate the explanation behind your logic and the thoughtfulness you bring to the discussion. To play devil’s advocate, I think some viewers might feel a sense of frustration due to what they perceive as a tone of paternalism in your comments. While your arguments are measured and reasonable, it's possible that some people might interpret your presentation as suggesting that your opinions are the only logical conclusions, or that there is a certain superiority implied in how these opinions are expressed.
For example, the frequent use of the phrase “casual commander players” when distinguishing those who may be less critical, less analytical, or apply less of an iterative, optimization-focused approach in building decks could be interpreted in a way that unintentionally alienates some players. Reiterating this distinction, and potentially implying that those who take issue with the underlying argument might fall into this category, could alienate this section of viewership who may just enjoy building janky decks and are not as focused on working towards an ideal deck.
On a final, unrelated note, I'd like to mention something that wasn’t covered in this discussion. In WOTC-sanctioned events, proxies are not allowed, which means that financial considerations do have a tangible impact in certain areas of play.
I don't think casual players have a problem with being called less critical or analytical. I think that is the point of it being casual.
And as for WOTC-sanctioned events not allowing proxies, all the more reason to not want to play in WOTC sanctioned events. They are the ones trying to sell you cardboard.
I agree with the part about tone. A lot of it comes across as "If you aren't playing with your most efficient, cut throat, hyper tuned deck you are just bad at the game" even if that's not what the words the snail says means. It is something that should be worked on, even if what he says is logically sound.
I play exclusively proxy EDH so price isn't an issue, we banned Sol Ring from our pod. When one out of four players has Sol Ring on turn 1, the entire game becomes warped around it. It makes for much more interesting games when that isn't a factor.
I understand the casual argument though, it makes it so worse players can sometimes spike a win against their friends when they have it and opponents don't. I personally think games are more interesting when you actually have to play them though, not roll a die and see who's number is bigger.
In traditional Magic formats, what would we call a card with a 100% inclusion rate in top decks?
"Banned"
Yeah but tbh that should be the greater conclusion here as well. If a card is only okay because no one plays it due to price concerns, but it's busted when you do, then it's not actually fine. The price of a card should not be a balance concern. If a card is that problematic, then it should be banned.
If Snail's argument is that it was better if Sol Ring was more expensive so people play it less, then the conclusion should IMO actually be to advocate for banning Sol Ring.
@@Alaaen Yeah I agree, but we're never going to get a competent banlist with the group that's currently heading the format. I've just accepted that I will never play random pick up games as long as the current "just rule 0" philosophy stands, which is a massive problem in and of itself for a game that wants to fill tables at LGSes and events.
In traditional Magic formats, they haven't banned Nadu and Grief yet so ehhhh
@@Alaaen That is true, and Snail even mentions it indirectly in this video, but he also mentions that part of his argument is that because Sol Ring is a staple and an almost mascot-tier representation of the format, it's never going to BE banned. Advocating for Sol Ring to be banned at this point is practically useless and doesn't add anything to the point he wanted to make about why *this* piece of fast mana gets played over others (the price) and how that is bad for the format as a whole, because he doesn't like fast mana in casual commander at all.
If everyone is playing all the fast mana (Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus, Mox Opal, Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox, etc) then everyone at the table will have a "turn 1 Sol Ring".
But if you want to use all these cards you might as well play cEDH
I’ve been bouncing back and forth between “optimizing” the mana base of my jank decks with cheap mana rocks, and ignoring ramp in anything that doesn’t want to ramp, for the reasons described in this video.
I’ve found that I need to find the balance based on my playgroup, more then my personal opinion. Not needing to devote 55 cards to lands and “staples” allows so much more personality to my decks, but in my current playgroups, I can’t justify it.
that doesn't really make any sense. the entire point of this video and this channel is that you can make strong decks without having to play the same cards in every deck, even sol ring. unless your playgroup is literally cedh, any reason why you feel like you have to play "staples" is a deckbuilding issue, not a playgroup one.
I think a point that could have been more emphasized in this video is proxies.
"If money is truly a detriment to enjoyment of a casual format, then why not work outside the bounds of that system and proxy instead? Why, logically, must you own a legitimate copy of a card in order to play it in an un-sanctioned format with friends and/or friendly strangers?"
I understand the impulse to have the cards that you like, and there are legitimate reasons for it. But I also built a Powered Cube a decade ago by printing out cards in BW on a laser printer, and getting to play was way more fun than not playing b/c I couldn't afford an extra $20k of fancy cardboard.
If you aren't competing for prizes, Proxies are an obligation!
Because if you allow proxies without limits everything devolves into cedh.
The acceptance of proxies IRL is not as high as discussion online would suggest. It's a possible resolution if you have a close playgroup but if you play in an LGS with a lot of different people it might be hard to get everyone on board.
When it comes to proxies there's 3 groups of people from what i've seen, the vast majority doesn't care, there's some people who are vocally against them and there's a small number of people who are actively pro proxy. The first group is just likely to side with whoever has the most push in a playgroup, so it might just take one or two people from the second group for the group to disallow proxies to avoid upsetting those people, who are often long term players in the group.
@@vileluca If everyone at your table wants to play cEDH, then do it. But, presumably, if everyone is there to play casual, you wouldn't be building a cEDH deck even if budget wasn't a concern.
@@vileluca That's why you discuss this with your pod and Rule 0 what cards are in and out.
So, having watched most of the video, it sounds to me like it's a continuation of the overarching theme of a lot of your other work, which I think could be summarized as "actually think about the decks you're building instead of just throwing some crap and staples together and getting mad when it doesn't work."
“If you play against the same pod every week, blah, blah …” totally irrelevant to my EDH experience
If you get angry at people talking about meeting the same pod regularly, you should probably try to make some friends.
@@MisterWebbalright well just watch yt videos that _are?_ dunno what you think you're accomplishing
We've gone from MTG Commander breakdowns to video and pacing breakdowns, and I'm 100% here for whatever you decide to thoroughly breakdown next! 😁
I was in the middle of watching a different video, when I suddenly lost interest and went back to home. Caught this less than a minute after posting. It was just meant to be
Green Day : "When m***********n's lost its fun you're ...."
watching the snail !!!
The Sol Ring/Mana Crypt example is the easiest AB test or natural experiment for your argument. Most reasonable people I encounter and almost all content creators do not feel like Mana Crypt MUST be printed in order for it to be accessible to every commander deck. The only difference about Sol Ring is the loss aversion from going the other direction from something that is already cheap.
Bingo… If they never had it in the first place, it wouldn’t even matter
@@orpheos9 but denying people the ability to play to the maximum efficiency based on monetary value alone instead of deck building skill just feels really shitty. I think if a card is so powerful it warps the game it should be accessible and it should probably be banned, but if it isn't, it should be printed into the ground. If the game is so flawed that your deck would start with the same 20-30 cards every time if you were building optimally the solution isn't "they break the game, so let's make it so only 1% of people can play these" it's "let's make it so no one can play these cards because they break the game" If you are going to make a game and profit off it, you don't get to have a hands off approach to balancing that game.
@@beverlyshields2399the rules committee don’t profit from magic in any meaningful way.
Adding a 1 of fast mana piece to your deck also doesn’t make it a better deck in commander. If you want to play with powerful, expensive cards you can always just proxy.
Sol ring being expensive wouldn’t actually limit it to the 1%, it would just mean that it’s not in every single commanders deck.
I get where you’re coming from though, the original video can be confusing. Someone should really make a video clarifying what it meant…
@@kilroy7506 you can't pretend like wotc isn't the one pulling the stings there. I'm really not usually one for that kind of conspiratorial thought, but with the direction wizards as a company has gone I can't believe they'd let their most profitable format be dictated by community members. They might do something silly, like ban a card before they've rang every last dime out of it being expensive.
Also correct, a ONE OF card doesn't lead to a massive boost, but it does lead to massive inconsistency as he points out. But if all the forms of fast mana were printed as ubiquitously as sol ring, then we'd all probably be running them and the inconsistency in power would balance out more, or at least not be dictated by the unreliable nature of fast mana in casual edh. The entire crux of my comment was that it shouldn't be money that guides your gameplay decisions. Building a budget deck as a fun restriction, and being forced to only play budget because you're broke isn't the same. Also I'll say here proxying is a thing, you should do it, frankly I support realistic proxies but that's an entirely different argument, the fact of the matter is nothing works as well as having the real things be cheap and accessible and it's what we should really be advocating for.
Also take your snark elsewhere, I watched the whole thing tip to taint. I just still disagree with him on a bit.
@@beverlyshields2399 yeah alright, if you’re just going to substitute your own reality we’re done here.
I still can’t believe the NWO forced wotc to reprint sol ring though, that was crazy lol
In the pods of casual I play if anyone gets a turn 1 sol ring there's always groans across the table even if that mana isn't being used on turn 1. I feel like sol ring is just inherently more powerful then any other "casual" card even if it isn't being used correctly or effectively leading to everyone always groaning about it on turn 1.
And the correct play to do is to target that player, and then that player whines about being targeted. So why even play the sol ring?
If everyone is playing fast mana (Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus, Mox Opal, Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox, etc), everyone at the table has a "turn 1 Sol Ring" (but then you're probably playing cEDH with proxies allowed because all of these are 100$ cards)
The way people typically build their deck is starting with some concept/commander, then trying to optimise their idea as much as their budjet allows.
This is why you see powerfull, cheap, staple being slap left and right in an attempt to artifically increase the powerlevel of a deck, beyond what it can reliably handle.
The problem isnt powerfull card being slap everywhere around, but people not building their deck with a specific powerlevel in mind.
And, quit frankly, doing so is hard. Most low power deck are made out of a combination of:
- low budjet
- janky concept
- poor deck building
Like, let's be real. It can take weeks for a group of seasonned, competitve, player to brew a powerfull deck from groundup. But now, I should expect Timmy at the LGS to have all that knowledge, and use it properly to build a consistent mid-power level deck?
Not only that, but "expensive", and "powerfull" aint always the same. Like, you can buy most of the blue prison package for 50 bucks.
Price is driven by what players like to play, versus how many prints are available on the market.
So, no, accessible, powerfull card are not the problem.
Yes, I agree that powerfull staple slam in a low power deck breaks the low power experience.
IMO, the solution lies in play group regulating themeself.
I'd argue that powerful cards like soul ring are actually STRONGER in higher power level decks.
If your cards are more powerful being able to cast them earlier means more.
Edit: Great video as always!
Yep. And Green decks can also benefit from Sol ring, so it isn't the equalizer that it is portrayed as.
15:30 this argument is deeply frustrating because, yeah you aren't incorrect, but it feels like hiding how broken your game is, how truly unbalanced, how full of bad decisions it has become behind a veil of price and availability. And as someone who went to yugioh, I love when a game is broken but hiding the fact that it is broken behind factors other than player skill just feels cowardly and like they are unwilling to balance the game for the sake of the secondary market. So instead of the responsibility of balancing the game falling on the shoulders of the wizards, where it should be, it lands on the consumer and we sit here arguing in circles with no one happy with the direction.
Commander is a casual format though... its supposed to be based on what's most fun. Formats like vintage, legacy, and modern make no effort to hide their higher power level. In fact, a lot of legacy players would complain if you banned powerful cards like reanimate or brainstorm - in the same way that weaker cards make a casual format like commander fun, powerful staples can make a competitive format like legacy more entertaining.
Also, wizards doesn't control the commander banlist, and never has. I think your point that both the RC and WOTC play a role in balancing commander through each of their tools (banlist and price respectfully) has merit, but to suggest that WOTC bears the full responsibility of balancing commander isn't true.
Also, if you're interested in higher power, broken formats, I can't recommend vintage cube or even a homemade cube enough. Even at a table of four players, the variability in games is great and playing with a whole bunch of broken cards leads to some crazy and over the top games.
@@cruddytacowizards took over the commander committee a couple years ago now. They absolutely are in control of what happens in relation to commander now.
@@cruddytaco the format was built around fun UNTIL Wizards started to print commander focused cards.... Now the format isn't "designed to facilitate fun" it's designed to facilitate long Rule 0 conversations OR a strong game
@@cruddytaco WotC DO have a profound effect on the balancing by their straight to commander sets, so I simply reject that notion. The players you play with and Rule Zero have always been the two most important parts of Commander, yes. However, it's just untrue to posit that Wizards has had "few tools to shape the format" since 2011.
@@Lemon_Sage9999 "few tools to shape the format" wasn't my specific wording lol. I agree that wotc have a huge impact on the format. I also agree that the format has been majorly impacted by the introduction of more powerful staples.
I however would point you to the primary point that snail and other commander creators make: that part of the fun in commander can be personal restriction. I remember playing commander in 2015, and people weren't playing decks that were even close to optimised back then, just like how people don't play optimised decks now. This is a matter of opinion though. You believe that wotc should have less impact, I believe that players have enough control that it doesn't matter.
I think my primary disagreement was with your point around yu-gi-oh. But now it also comes around to your point around fun. It's clear that you don't find modern day commander fun when compared to previous versions, and that's ok. Pretending that this is some massive issue or some fault of wotc is not really fair though. If you want a blazenly broken game, play legacy. If you want a format with less high power staples, play preDH. It seems like most of this is a problem of your own creation.
Magic is two things. A supply and demand commodity marketplace where supply can strip pricing very quickly in many cases.
And a game where you play cards to win.
But it seems really difficult not to equate price to usefulness. So most people choose cards based on perceived value (price) over the card itself.
Unfortunately its nearly impossible not to let price influence how you think about power and usefulness.
As someone who agreed with your first video, I appreciate the follow up. However, the more I've gotten into the hobby over the last year, the more I think you were on the money. I've met a fair chunk of players who intentionally want to blur the lines between CEDH and casual commander. "Commander is inherently more competitive." and "There is no CEDH--just optimized EDH." are both sentiments I've heard from players, and it's frustrating.
But I've met lots of player who don't run cards because they're expensive, even if they have one from a lucky pull. It's a real deterrent, and it's kept my decklists in line more than once.
And, of course, you're right about CEDH being THE proxy friendly format.
I met a, "There is no cedh." guy. Who then proceeded to turn 4 infinite us because my janky vazi deck gave him 2 treasures.
What do you MEAN "Commander is inherently more competitive" basically all the tweaks make it less competitive lol
‘There is no cedh’ is a take so bad I’d expect it only to be made on twitter.
cEDH decks preform on a completely different axis than other edh decks. Card like mental mistep are auto includes in cedh, and absolute trash is classic edh. Some with a lot of other cards.
@thomaspetrucka9173 it may be frustrating but thats the truth. All edh is cedh.
@@yugioh1870you’re disinvited from the pod ✌️
Playing in a vintage draft sol ring can often be more powerful than even black lotus. It is definitely fast mana
Black Lotus is more powerful in constructed because you can take full advantage of the burst of mana, I agree that Sol Ring is better in Draft because people aren't winning turn 1
20:22 AH! A human! WHO ARE YOU
All the videos about commander I have seen make it hard for me to understand why people like the format so much, it seems like having fun in this game mode is so hard when you have so many cards available with so many varying power levels that it makes it seemingly impossible for someone to find 3 other persons with similarly powerful decks so that nobody is having a terrible experience.
Also to be more relevant to the video, I think that a card that's so powerful that it completly changes the dynamics of how people play and that should be autoincluded in every "competitive" deck should be banned, wether it's cheap or expensive, ban Sol Ring AND Mana Crypt in short.
I think the proliferation of sub formats is what will help Commander. cEDH for the sweathogs, PrEDH, Pauper EDH, etc. In fact, Rule Zero basically creates a multi-verse of subformats, which is integral to the game.
I love cEdh for this. Its a real format, not 3 formats in a trench coat like regular or casual edh is. Being honest I don't even like competition, but being able to just sit down and play and no one cries about any card is just *chef's kiss*
@@gnogara May I introduce you to just 1v1 magic?
Commander's a ton of fun. What are the unusual features? The main ones are: several players, a commander, a higher life total, and every card must be different.
Several players is more fun, for a bunch of reasons-games self-balance, somewhat, letting players behind catch up, as people cooperate to restrain whoever's in the lead. Note that this makes power level a bit less important than it would otherwise be-if you play competently, you can not infrequently get by with your weaker deck as other players are fighting each other, and win late-game. There's more politics and threat-assessment, which I like. I like the social aspect overall-a game as a group is more fun than a one-on-one, in general (not just magic), for me.
Commanders are fun, because they let the deck be a little bit more explicitly themed. You have a card always available to work around, and (depending on how you build it), be a central part of your deck. This allows for more niches than if you just had to build around an individual theme, and it feels a little more like it personifies your deck, which often seems nice to the social animals that are humans.
Higher life totals, combined with the multiplayer aspect, slows down the game. This is fun, because it allows for a higher buildup and splashier cards, which a lot of people enjoy.
The singleton (that every card must be different) rule forces people to use more obscure or weird cards, which is fun. It also increases variance, and makes things less repetitive.
The core argument of this video is probably best summarized as: Power level is dictated by card quality, not price. To that point, if every card cost at most $1, I'd be willing to bet a lot more people would actually be playing cEDH or fringe cEDH because those powerful cards would be much more accessible. It's why introducing proxies into a play group without considering the group's average power level can cause so much turmoil.
I don't think most commander players want to play cEDH, even if money is no object, because it isn't because cEDH players proxy.
@@shorewall It's not that most groups want to play cEDH, but that in a scenario where all real cards were equally accessible, the natural arms race to play better and better cards/decks that so many groups experience would naturally lead them to a similar card pool to cEDH. At that point, again assuming all cards cost the same and to reiterate the point of the video, groups would then need to tune their decks to match the level of power and type of play style they would best enjoy.
Exactly. As budget cards become more powerful, most of my casual decks are no longer competitive. I had to quit one casual playgroup because their definition of casual was significantly more optimized than I prefer. This happens pretty consistently, and I'm worried I'll not be able to play truly casual Commander for much longer. It's a dying format, despite everyone's claims that Commander is still really casual.
Having been on both sides of the argument with my playgroup who had a fairly strict no proxy rule to going almost all digital play during covid and allowing 100% proxies, that there are a couple takeaways I have. First is that using card cost as the primary way to limit 'powerful cards' while it works, has too many downsides to really be good. The approach has a lot of bad side effects that should be controlled for. Second, players with unlimited budgets will absolutely build the most busted, toxic decks, with the most generically powerful cards they can find.
Best MTG video essay content on youtube! Would love to hear you in a podcast format like mtggoldfish
I think this is the first time I really didn't took much from one of your videos. My take away message for today is: "If sole ring wouldn't exist, magic may or may not be a better game". I like your videos the most where I lern something that I can use for playing the game of for deck building. For example "dont turn your commander into a combo piece" is a leson I try to utilize whenever I build decks now. However, I am always happy to see your videos landing in the top row of my front page and I'm looking forward to your next one!
Having a self review vid is honestly really cool to see in the name of growth and thinking process, and im glad to see it in a non-academic-esque vid.
I will say that the OG vid's controversiality as its premise still wound up very clickbaity (which i guess got me hooked for good faith full watch so thats a point) but its main thesis wound up better represented in later vids with less accusatory implications: consistency > variable power, misconceptions on deck builds into the commander social norms, etc...
Id say its better having the editorialized version much clearer than a controverisal claim that doesnt really cut to its real meat of the argument for rhetorical evaluation, i will say that in spite of the bad publicity, or maybe because of it, the main argument has let you explore it better in later vids
What always confuses me is how so many people seem to not see Sol Ring and Mana Crypt as very similar power level
Mana crypt is a tier above. 0 mana vs 1 mana is huge. You can go land and mana crypt T1 into a 3 drop in your color vs just land sol ring into a 2 colorless mana drop. 0 mana also allows for many loops
because one of them carries a 200+ dollar price tag
a 0 cmc artifact that produces two mana is significantly better than Sol Ring. That's not to say that Sol Ring is a bad card by any means, near the top of the power level, but frankly the difference in power level is pretty large.
@@camoking3609 But price doesn’t make power. Mana Crypt is of similar power to say Mox Emerald, yet the mox is much more expensive. A lotus is even more expensive and most casual edh decks will benefit more from a Sol Ring than a Black Lotus just because they usually aren’t as bursty and can utilize the colorless mana from sol ring well
zero mana cost is huge, mana cript on your opening hand means you still get to cast something first turn meanwhile sol ring mans you are committed to casting it and skipping
10:03 If the only thing keeping fast mana out of casual commander is money, what is stopping a person with an adult income from just coming into your LGS and destroying your fun?
At my LGS we have a lot of military guys that will come in with absurdly expensive decks. We also have a few older players who will play expensive decks, but they are older players and they can read the room, but the military guys can't. My point is that the problem isn't the money, it isn't the cardboard, it's the person. You aren't trying to keep fast mana out of casual commander, you are trying to keep the kind of player who would slam a ton of fast mana, tutors, and 2 card combos in their casual deck and decry "but this isn't even a cedh commander!" as they point to their generic for-the-colors grixis commander with card advantage.
The whole problem with saying "the format would have been better if sol ring was more expensive" is that it completely ignores the huge income disparity between players, and the fact that cards like mana crypt, dual lands, etc. should all be as cheap as sol ring. The greatest mistake WotC has ever made is the reserved list, and the second greatest mistake was not making collectors editions playable versions of the cards.
10:31 I'd argue that it's much more about the goals of those decks than the enabler of the deck, but that's a fairly trivial difference. I'd be much angrier about someone going Land > chrome mox > Lotus Petal > Thoracle Consult than someone going Land > Chrome Mox > Lotus Petal > Tireless Provisioner. The goal of the deck is more important to me, but fast mana does leave a weird taste in the mouth in a vacuum.
13:03 yeah but actually talking with the human beings across the table that you play with would also accomplish that goal, and would make the game more accesible than making any powerful card arbitrarily expensive.
13:40 I think it's just a really flawed initial perspective on how to solve a problem, not a bad take in the sense that it's wrong subjectively, but a bad take in the case that the solution to that problem is a lot easier and doesn't require a time machine.
14:30 And that's one of the major problems with advocating for price changes, the players who are problems can just proxy the problem cards, and the monetary element is irrelevant. Problems will be problems, and figuring out how to solve them at the source in my opinion is more valuable than time machine experiments with card prices.
16:00 This is why I have a love/hate relationship with Snail videos, snail talks about shit I think is completely irrelevant or vehemently disagree with for like 80% of the video, then at the end of the video he says exactly what I'm thinking every time, it's kind of fucked up how he just reads my mind like that. "just have a conversation and fix the problem." The ULTIMATE aspect of EDH is that it is not an anti-social game, you won't really have fun in edh if you can't embrace that social aspect of the game and actually engage with the human beings that you're playing with.
I was one of the original critics of your video and left a decently long comment. You won't find it because I've since deleted my old channel. You actually ended up addressing most of my critiques in this video and I'm happy you made this follow up. However, I am still deeply frustrated by your reasoning as to WHY price ought to be the filter that keeps casual players from accessing what you deem to be (for lack of a better term) degenerate cards. I feel as though you can only hold this opinion because the culture around Magic conveniently does not widely accept proxying cards you cannot afford. Should circumstances change over night and players decide to proxy all the cards they like, and the game really does become a soup of janky decks taped together by fast mana, what then would your solution be?
Furthermore, I do not believe that this degeneration of the format would happen in this scenario anyways. Is it not at least possible that players will notice how similar their decks are and seek to diversify and improve their deck construction as a response? I find it strange that you appeal to the free market as an effective tool for gatekeeping powerful cards from casuals while seemingly having no faith in casuals to adapt their own decks to a potential landscape where mana crypts are just as common (and just as cheap) as sol rings.
I agree that contemporary EDH is heavily populated by casuals who do not understand that their decks are bad. I do not think that price is an effective or even ethical means of keeping the format healthy. In my view, it is the lack of education and knowledge surrounding the judicious use of powerful cards that keeps players building bad decks. If these cards were cheaper, players would have more opportunities to use them and learn for themselves how to effectively play with them. Educating players on proper deck construction and advocating for a healthier format (as you are already doing with your channel) is a better rout than price gouging teens and young adults who just want to play with a deck that wont take 20 turns to set up. Personally, I would even advocate for incorporating a separate casual banned list, or even creating an entirely separate casual EDH format that is more willing to ban overly oppressive cards.
I believe, from my time playing MtG and other CCGs, is that both the companies and the customers have to decide what is the priority of the game is. Is it a game first, collectible/tradable second or a collectible that you happen to be able to play with?
If it's a game first, then bans and card design is based off of the assumption of everyone having access to all the cards.
If it's a collectible first, then those things are based off of availability, with the power weighed more heavily into rarer cards.
WotC made it clear a _long_ time ago that they're printing, balancing, and banning around MtG being a collectible first with the Reserved List. The collectors and the speculators are their first priority, the game's health is second at best. Their whole business model is about chasing the cards that you want, not _getting_ said cards for the average person.
Personally, I want the first one. Having bits of printed cardboard reach over $50 USD feels gross, having them reach over $200 feels like insanity and the only reason why they are that way is because of the collectible mentality first. Trying to design, ban and enable around something that WotC can't even acknowledge (otherwise they would be potentially running afoul of gambling laws if they admit to adjusting to the secondary market) is unhealthy for the game.
I understand why the rules committee for Commander doesn't want to ban Sol Ring. That format first was created to have dumb fun with draft chaff and cards we can't play in tourneys, and sol ring allows people to do so since draft chaff is pretty much synonymous with inefficiency in MtG. It has shown that it (and cards like it) instead supercharge efficient cards, which takes away from that 'dumb fun with draft chaff' that the format is supposed to be about. If there was a way so that everyone dropped a sol ring (or other fast mana) whenever someone did, it would probably be a bit better but still has the problem of 'dumb fun' being trumped by 'efficiency'.
IMO, ban sol ring in commander regardless of how many reprints it has. Ban any other cards that warp the commander experience away from 'dumb fun with draft chaff'. Create a different, solely competitive, format where the only bans are those decks that warp everything to become a copy of it or lose. Having sol ring (or other cards like it) doesn't warp the whole format around it. We don't call our commander decks 'mana rocks', we call them what the fast mana enable.
Saying that pricing people out of playing poorly balanced cards instead of balancing them or banning them is ok, is a bad take. It's the reason why legacy is a shell of what it could be.
Reprint every card so that it is accessible to everyone, and everyone can play them in tournaments. Right now, officially sanctioned events are people playing against each other's wallets. Anything that WotC puts prizes behind is sanctioned. Any store that decides to allow proxies in DCI's officially sanctioned events is risking their connection to DCI.
I'd much rather have a game balanced around player skill (both in building and piloting a deck) and luck instead of their purchasing power.
'Just proxy and if they don't let you, they're not worth playing against', good for you for having that option. Where you can walk away from one store, and potentially several, and still be able to play commander. And for those who don't have that playgroup or store accessible, but don't want to play online because it's a fundamentally different experience that they don't enjoy? Guess tough cookies, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
thanks for this video! i think i'm in the minority as i haven't seen the original video
in my area there are some events that have deckbuilding restrictions to keep things light and casual, and one of them has a rule of "no fast mana". i've had to ask them if sol ring is allowed, and they said that it absolutely was, to my mild confusion...
i think you're right that in the long run the view on cards in this format is warped by availability/accessibility, which is funny since the thassa's oracle + tainted pact is actually pretty affordable compared to some other casual powerhouses. it takes more experience than you'd think to build a deck to be intentionally more casual
The Painbow precon doesn’t have Sol Ring. It’s also the precon that has felt the most consistent when playing. There are two different kinds of consistency in Commander - how consistently you can do your thing and how consistent the games feel. You start to stray away from games feeling consistent when you add more cards that power you ahead, especially if you effectively have 1-5 slots within the 99 dedicated to those cards.
Now let’s apply this to precons. Those precons almost never run a way to tutor out your Sol Ring. So, if you’re in a match consisting of precons of a similar power level, that slim chance of getting a relatively early (before turn 5) Sol Ring immediately begins to warp the game when it happens. That is why Sol Ring isn’t a casual card.
“But Sol Ring lets other players keep up with green ramp” - Sol Ring also accelerates green ramp. Running a proper amount of interaction and/or starting to attack the green ramping player before they become a problem also helps combat the ramp. If you let said green deck ramp, don’t punish them as they solely ramp, and aren’t prepared to stop them AFTER they ramp, then that’s on you.
i actually like the high variance in card quality. Opening the game with a Sol ring may be way to strong but the 4 player format balances that out quite nicely. It also adds a nice Mario Party-ish vibe to the whole game, hece why imo running Sol Ring is fine but running Mana Crypt is starting to be a little sweaty
complimentary engagement to improve this snail's youtube metrics. BEHOLD RUclips, ALGORITHM
This is kind of like my love/hate relationship with Tutor spells. I only ever use them in decks that are higher power levels so they can be more consistent in its game plan (reduce variance), but I absolutely detest playing them in lower power level decks because lower consistency, or higher variance, make the games more fun for everyone at the table. It really makes the games less fun for everyone when I'm acting like a try-hard by stuffing my deck full of tutors in a casual/low powered game with friends.
Something else that I like to do to make the games more fun is by adding in Planechase, especially when everyone has higher power decks, as anything could happen with each and every roll of the planar die.
I think the argument is explained better with an analogy. At least for TCG players who play more than just magic. Sol ring in commander is like if they decided to reprint pot of greed in every yugioh structure deck instead of banning it. It's not a game breaking card, but it is incredibly good value. It's just a very odd way to address an overpowered card which is so good it needs to be in every deck if not banned. Normally you'd ban it. Instead they just printed so many that it's in every deck.
This entire topic is why i love proxying everything and when my opponents are proxying everything, because only then you make exactly the decks you want to make and have them do exactly what you want them to do and have them be as strong as you want to make them
hoooold on holdonholdonholdon. i was nodding along sagely until i got to "then they aren't worth playing against". if i may allow myself a moment of rhetorical belligerence, what, do you think playgroups grow on trees?
Better to not play at all than to play with random tryhard wannabe champions at the LGS....
@@BusinessSkrubthat's why mtg really isn't worth getting into unless it's being dumped on your lap by someone retiring out
I think occasionally re-treading a topic you feel like garnered a lot of divided discussion in your comments is nice. It engages the community more as it makes it feel like they are being heard and responded to.
You need to actually reflect on your opinions of a topic though. Some creators just go "reeee I won't be bullied by my audience into changing my mind!" and end up in a TotalBiscuit war against their own fans.
i actually really love ur content cause it gives people a different way to look at their own decks and their own deckbuilding. ur vids seem controversial cause you like playing in a certain way that people seem to disagree with, which is completely fine.
I find it entertaining and I feel like ive become a better deckbuilder since listening to ur advice. i appreciate ur content for what its worth :)
this might apply mostly to other mtg content creators of similar styles, but still kinda applies.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it."
I liked the ideas you presented in your original video. I didn't agree with all of them, but could at least empathize with your preferences. There are some EDH decks I have built in the past where I choose not to include Sol Ring on purpose. When I hear that some people didn't like your video, and didn't finish watching it because they disagree with your opinion in the first 11 minutes, I find it pretty easy to dismiss their opinions entirely.
First off, just want to say I really appreciate your style of content in general. I'm someone who loves the big brain dives into 'ok, but *why*' regarding types of cards to run, how perception vs reality of a deck gets warped and everything else you cover.
I do agree with the sol ring argument. I mean anecdotally, the amount of times someone has joked "oh turn 1 sol ring guess I'm the threat now" I'd argue is statistically significant. The difference a t1 sol (usually followed by a signet) can make is 5 mana on turn 2 vs 2/3 mana. And the thing is, a lot of people run it even in decks where it doesn't make sense like decks that would rather use enchantment ramp just because "its sol ring of course I run it"
I do mostly align with your views regarding casual commander. But I'm also of the opinion "I'd rather play you, not your wallet" which does have it's own set of problems. The fact that cards prices are a mostly user-defined market creates a lot of it's own issues. Expensive cards are not automatically powerful ones despite what a lot of people's knee jerk reaction would be on that topic. And like you said, expensive cards, even if they are staples, can drastically warp the power of your deck outside of what it's intended to be. So there's really a lot of factors at play here, some that people internalize and understand, others that go against what they view as core aspects of the format. And people are going to react based on their experience. For me that's running fluffy pet cards that, while really being anti-synergistic with a deck (for example, running Embercleave in any deck that remotely cares about the commander being on the board not even doing commander damage) because I love making vibe-based decks over purely mechanical/strategy based ones.
While I'm a little sympathetic to "I'd rather play you, not your wallet," I think my take on that is more disliking when players spend a ton and get very strong cards, than disliking that the best cards cost a lot. In fact, I dislike it more when people ask to play a deck full of proxied expensive cards-they're still trying to play all the expensive cards, but now want to set aside all the deterrents (in the form of costs) that help encourage a power level closer to what I prefer and what my decks can play reasonably well against. I want people to be reluctant to do so (without outright banning), and I think prices do a good job of that. That is, I like the price system and constraints it engenders, I just wish the amount people would be willing to spend on a deck was a lower number, or at least, would match tables more.
I like that budget is a constraint that I have in the power-level of my deck, and am satisfied when I beat players who have a deck that costs many times what I spent.
Sol ring is basically always good, though (that is, I disagree with what you said at the end of your second paragraph). I can't think of many decks where it's bad. I've skipped it once, because it would have cost above well above what I was spending on any of the other cards in that deck, but it's pretty much always raises the power of one's deck, I think.
@@BernardinusDeMoor oh I agree, the 'you not your wallet' concept, to me, is more so regarding being limited by your wallet *over* whatever our rule 0 conversation is. Power level/type of game we are playing takes precedence. If we're playing unoptimized, 3-4 lists and you rock up with a mana crypt because 'I mean the rest of the deck is a 4' that's not going to fly with me. It also avoids people buying a card for a deck they may never play again, which for some isn't an issue but for others can add up and make a difference.
As for Sol ring, I can't give specific examples (as in card names) right now, but some decks work on blowing up all artifacts, or preventing their abilities from being activated or keeping them tapped or maybe the enemy has a dockside or other anti-artifact synergy. My point was more so about how automatic it is for people to add it without actually *thinking* about what it does for the deck aside from providing more mana.
If sol ring were expensive like mana crypt, rich players would be even more painful to play against for poor players. Either ban it or keep it cheap, I don't want the rich/poor divide to be even more pronounced! Every time someone drops a mana crypt in a casual commander game, I groan a little. And players lie about their decks power level all the time, so you can't just fix it by asking what they mean with "my deck is a 7".
My Vilis deck has mana crypt, mana vault, ancient tomb, and a plethora of fast mana...but I don't whip that deck out for just any game. It's just too powerful, it's for tournaments with good prizes or for that player that decides to pubstomp. Usually I start out with a precon deck so I can gauge other players decks power then I'll go to a more fitting deck in game 2. I even have decks that I consider less than precon levels. For me it's about having fun more than winning.
You're making this rich vs poor thing when its really an asshole vs not asshole thing. I have a couple of expensive high power decks, but I almost never play them outside of games with close friends because most local players play at a much lower power level. If I'm playing at a local meetup I'll just ask to borrow a deck. Someone saying their deck is a 7 with mana crypt in it makes me question their character more than anything.
I find the argument of Sol Ring leading to more variance quite compelling. It's very tempting to add powerful cards to your deck, but if they are on a totally different level then the rest of your deck, your opponents are more likely to view you as the problem. I think there's an argument to be made that the 'best' casual deck is one with as little variance as possible. I've recently started to toy with this idea. I'm starting to think it doesn't makes sense to include fewer than 8 cards of a certain category (like ramp, draw, protection, etc.) in your deck, because if you aren't nearly guaranteed to come across one of these cards in your deck, they don't actually make your deck more consistent. What is your view on this?
A few years ago, i think i would have thought exactly the same as the comment section. Tired about the high price of a lot of staples, we decided to allow proxies in my playgroup, and a few month later, we realized that games were not as fun anymore. First of all because all of them looked kinda alike. In every deck you'll have a base of more than 40% of staple cards. It creates a poor deck building experience as you said and very repetitive and boring games.
I have no particular problem with sol ring because the problem is in the quantity. I also think the price of certain cards should be high to discourage people to put all of them in one deck. It feels bad, your deck may be slightly worse but more synergistic, you'll have more fun building it and playing it.
I strongly advise people who want to play all these powerful expensive cards to try some games by proxying them before making a 1000€ order.
If you like it then that's fine, but just go play cedh and let the casual commander players enjoy their games not over by turn 3.
Overall I think I agree. A turn one sol ring is akin to sticking in that one extra card that just infinitely combos - obviously not the same, but a bit below it. Everyone knows the feeling I think of hitting that turn on sol ring and seeing the other 3 players just go ok this one is the target for the first few rounds.
Its always nice to come back to old topics with a fresh perspective, I remember seeing your original video and not really understanding what was the issue you had since I was just starting to play commander. Now that I've had some time to play and experience the game more I understand more about the point you wanted to make.
Just to add a bit to your argument on why Sol Ring isn't a good thing to see so often, outside of higher power, more consistent decks it becomes very hard to actually place a deck's strength in comparison to the rest of the group because an almost ubiquitous combo of Command Tower -> Sol Ring -> Arcane Signet catapults a deck far in front of everyone else. Of course you're going to have variation in strength because randomness exists, but it can make otherwise equal decks turn into oppressive powerhouses turn 1.
It feels great to pull it off yourself but it's demoralizing when you're playing low power decks/precons and someone on the play just sets themself up to throw down a 5+ drop turn 2 while everyone else is sitting there with a basic land.
Yeah, I'd probably be impressed if I saw it happen once, and then I'd never play against it again.
Precons come with the exact combination though. so really it's just luck of the draw.
@@shorewall You do realize almost every precon comes with these cards? Maybe if you got off your high horse you'd have more fun, I get the feeling from seeing your other posts on this vid that you'd balk at almost anything.
Like baseball cards have set boxes you can buy that contain every card for that season. Why can't Wizards of the Coast do that? Also re-release all the old sets that way. Just nuke all the prices of all the cards. It's not like they get money from the 3rd party sale so who cares if it crashes a bunch of their businesses. I just want to play the game with the most powerful cards and not have to print them off.
The issue I think is _generically_ powerful cards. The beauty of commander to me is not knowing how your deck is going to work in any given game. It's discovering or rediscovering combos you didn't intentionally put into the deck.
There's very few blue decks that don't benefit from having a Counterspell, but the question probably should be:
Does Counterspell actually work with your deck or is it just good on its own? Would another card that's slightly worse make more sense in terms of flavour, synergy, and surprise/novelty/fun?
It seems to me, that this whole issue is based on the perception, that there's a strong correlation between the price of a card and its power. Which is often true, but certainly not always (Sol Ring is probably the most obvious example).
These cards are therefore very attractive for all players (including those with more limited budgets) and become staples. Normally this high demand would result in a higher price over time, but if the archetype of the deck is niche enough or the card sees a lot of reprints, it might stay affordable. In some cases the existence of an even stronger version at a higher price, might keep the lower powered (but still comparatively powerful) card affordable, because the players with bigger budgets buy that card instead.
The natural result is, that most budget decks include such high-power yet affordable cards, and therefore have significant variance in their power level consistency, based on them drawing these cards or not. Even an out-of-the-box precon could rival much more potent decks if it plays the infamous turn 1 Sol Ring into Arcane Signet, but it only does so 1 out of 50 games or so.
That's why I don't like power-level being a single value to describe a deck. The power-level a deck performs at can vary a lot game to game and therefore we need consistency as a second variable to compare the "power" of decks properly. Tutors are a great example for this, because a tutor cannot increase the resulting power-level for a game, since you could have played the same game without the tutors if you simply would have drawn the cards you want instead of the tutors. A tutor therefore doesn't increase the power-level, but instead increases the consistency. Plotted as a 2-dimensional graph (power-level vs. consistency), a tutor will therefore shift the deck along the consistency axis, while fast-mana (like Sol Ring) would shift it along both axis. The resulting "static power" can therefore be described as the area under the curve of such a graph. Many players I've met intuitively understand this, but mix up the power-level axis and the area-under-the-curve in this illustration, during discussions. (you might also call the area-under-the-curve the "power-level" and the axis "potential-power" if that helps, the semantics are interchangeable)
Now - what does this have to do with the point of your video?
I believe that a proper understanding of the relationship between power-level and consistency would result in a much less confusion and bickering. In many cases it's also a good idea to reduce the (potential) power-level of a deck to increase its consistency - which therefore might result in an overall bigger area-under-the-curve and therefore overall "power" of the deck. This makes a lot of sense for more experienced players, but more novice players or players who haven't thought about these concepts enough, might get involved in discussions like your video and that's where a lot of the issue stems from, in my opinion.
“Sweaty, optimized piles” had me on the floor!
I run Sol Ring in exactly 2 of my 9 commander decks. One is a Zaxara the Exemplary deck where having as much mana as possible is the goal, and the sol ring isn't nearly as daunting to my opponents when I'm trying to get up to 10+ mana by turn 5 or 6. The second is in a Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale Knight/Equipment deck where my ramp package needs some help, and the sol ring accellerates my aggro gameplan. In other decks I run more appropriate mana ramp that feels more on theme.
Your videos on deck balance are extremely key to helping me figure out when to run certain cards and how to create decks that have a solid core theme. I've greatly appreciated your takes thus far and I'm looking forward to plenty more!
It's not strictly about classism, it's that your argument promotes excluding people from cards before they even sit down at a table. You want to solve a social problem with how people build their deck with financial exclusion, rather than socially. I would argue against your point at 15:00 that if "must-play" cards like rhystic and great henge were budget, there would be no sunk cost to removing them from the deck once they realize or are convinced that it isn't right for their deck's power level. If 'casual' players really can't build decks at specific power levels, or represent them properly in pre-game discussions, you should teach and not exclude.
So glad you revisited that video, I think you really nailed it this time. Can't overstate how your content is getting better every video - quality and discourse wise. Love it!
I honestly think commander would be a worse format without sol ring, despite being fast mana games are slower because of it. Having dealt with groups that don’t run fast mana rush down becomes king in ways no one can counter because anyone with a commander over 3 value has no chance to build a defence.
Especially to the point of “it makes decks less creative” what creativity is there to locking anything over 4 cmc out of viability?
@@chcc12 Do you really think you need a sol ring to play cards over 4CMC?
Their decks are obscenely bad, if they cant cast smth with CMC 4+ without a Ring
@@IvanKolyadaWhen a game ends around turn 4 then yeah
Big fan of this video. It takes a lot to retread some ground and rethink your old work, and it shows your growth as an essayist.
I always loved the first video. It was the thing thay turned me onto your channel in the first place. But I recognize I am in the minority who, within the first few minutes of your video, understood the ideas you were gesturing at and wanted to hear more. The incredible variance in play dynamic I've experienced based on the answer to "did anyone draw Sol Ring turn 1?" is undeniable, and you seemed to point at that topic clearly enough that I was invested in sticking around.
I agree with your self-criticism. The thesis of "budget warps the way we think about card power" is too obscured by the aimlessness of your essay. And in a way, you proved this over the course of last year by expanding on each of those rambling topics in their own self contained videos.
As you’ve no doubt learned to do, starting from the common ground of your audience can smooth the transition into more controversial ideas. There is some math involved in making points, but ultimately, your ideology is very "vibes" based, so you want to win your audience's trust by relating to them rather than bludgeoning them with an idea that may be harder to stomach.
Anyway, keep it up! I'm excited to see what you publish next
I loved your Sol Ring take. I don't really miss Mana Vault/Crypt in my decks bc my playgroup doesn't run them either, so it would be the same if Sol Ring had a similar $ value.
It was pretty impressive to realise how much improvement has gone into your videos under the hood thanks to the side-by-side comparison! But even when I first watched the old video, the takeaway I had was the one that's most consistent across all your videos -- that more of the less splashy, workhorse cards which you can often even just pull from "chaff" piles will make almost any deck more consistent, and that consistency in deck expectations helps to harmonise most tables for both you and your friends.
I think you can make this argument a lot more simple and concise by just appealing to supply and demand in the aftermarket, and equating them to reprints and power level. Like so:
1: "Demand" for a card strongly correlates to how powerful it is.
2: Thus for a fixed Supply, the Price of a Card directly correlates its power level.
3. If the Supply of all Cards were fixed, the Power Balance of a deck would be very strongly determined by fixing its Budget.
Opinion 1: Since Budget Constraints are a Real and Unavoidable part of the Game, the Power Balance of decks with the Same Budget *should* be roughly the same.
4. "Supply" of a card is actually determined by how many printings it has.
5. Cards that have been Reprinted more often will thus be More Powerful than others at the same Price, and Cheaper than otherwise very similar cards with fewer Prints. (These are the "Budget" Cards).
6. Because of Budget Cards, Power Balance is not achieved by fixing a deck's Budget, and Power Balance as a whole is much more difficult to determine.
7. Moreover, because players tend to Favor stronger decks at a given Budget, decks with almost any fixed budget will disproportionately many Budget Cards, reducing overall deck variety.
Opinion 2: More Deck Variety and Creativity at a fixed Budget and Power level is a Good thing.
Thesis 1: The first Problem with Budget Cards is that they ruin a Player's ability to determine how Fair and Balanced their deck is by just appealing to realistic budget constraints.
Thesis 2: The Second Problem with Budget Cards is that greatly reduce deck variety and creativity, with more depending on generic staples than more suitable choices.
This btw is also why I kinda hate the games WotC plays with Rarity, jacking up the price of certain really fun cards by just printing less of them. PSA: Play more Pauper, please!
One of the hardest things for me to learn about Commander has been determining card quality and card selection. High and low power cards can't be simply determined by price due to the wide variety of formats (the change if price of Gix and Nadu being good exanples). And i think your argument against sol ring is a really good example of that. Sol ring, assuming you have additional cards to fill out your curve, is game warping. Even a pile of jank can become game ending if you are 2 or more turns ahead on mana. Sol Ring, while i don't think is as strong as a card like Doubling Season, Rystic Study, or Smoothering Tide, can be just as game alternating as them and can lead to the same sorta deck inconsistencies as them despite the fact that the card is 30ish dollars cheaper than the rest of them. And additionally it also warps how people view your deck. If your deck which normally struggle for mana is able to break mana parody because of a turn 1 sol ring people might think your deck is strong that it is
My turn 1 sol ring has been naturalized so many times I’ve begun to question its validity
On the plus side, you get to play against decks that run naturalize 😂 so you probably don't need that Sol Ring power.
Probably ran Naturalise because you kept running Sol ring, lmao.
Really like your content and I agree with your message here. I have to say - I definitely didn't really grasp what you were trying to get at in your first video and this clears it up. I definitely agree I think casual commander would be WAY better without sol ring. It's a huge feels bad both when I get it early and others get it early as it just creates this strange early game dynamics, but often times the sol ring player gets ganged up on in my play groups so much so that it feels like they would be way better off never playing it! It's so unnatural and STILL hurts to do, but removing it from decks makes the game more fun.
I am guilty of the disparate power level thing - HUGE example here - I built your $40 Radha deck and LOVED IT. then I replaced 3 cards - putting a GREAT HENGE, a tribute to the world tree, and a lurking predators in there. Absolutely made my deck way more consistent and better whenever any of those cards came up.
Some years back a friend of mine proposed to cut sol rings from the decks of our playground. I was against it because I thought I need sol ring to keep up or anything. However, after some time playing I realized why it actually makes sense and your video underlines that. Thank you for your great content!
The beating heart at the center of this topic and the whole issue surrounding Sol Ring and power levels is that Commander, at it's very core, is a casual format. Every other officially recognized/sanctioned format is competitive. Every other format has tournaments and metas and professionals. They are focused on the objectivity of Winning, whereas EDH is focused on the subjective concept of Fun.
CEDH doesn't really have this issue because of its focus on winning. While it may be using the same rules and banlist of Commander, all cEDH players share the same expectations of how a game will play out. Commander's focus on "casual fun" is really dubious, and more than a little at-odds with its poster child, Sol Ring, being a highly powerful card that's been banned in multiple formats.
More than anything, I think the best thing anyone can do for having fun in EDH is having a good mindset. You're playing an inherently broken format with a paltry ban list that strongly favors the wealthy. Who really cares about the outcome of the game? It's the playing with other people that's the fun part.
The problem comes when one person REALLY cares about the outcome of the game, and they tryhard to always be the winner, and it gets annoying and trite. Everyone else is trying to just have fun, and one dude HAS to make it miserable because he wants to win.
I think the simple and unfortunate answer of this issue would be for wotc to give cards a usage cost beyond slotting it in the deck - like if you had 200 points to spend on cards and sol ring cost ~15. Then you wouldn't need to use money prices to scale the usage of a card, and playgroups can all choose their own point limit whether it's 100, 500, infinite, etc.
It's unfortunate because they'd never really use this, but could be fun with a local meta.
Canadian Highlander has something like this. I think the idea has merit.
It would be a nice thing to do but with tens of thousands of cards to rate vs each other, that's a lot of time invested in something most players don't want.
Most players absolutely don't care about playing at a given powerlevel. They want to win as much as possible and they want to make their decks as strong as possible and only stop when making their deck stronger is too expensive. That's why everything is a 7: "I made it as strong as I could, I just can't afford manacrypt"
@@garak55 I was thinking about that first bit too, some kind of usage based tiering in association with EDHREC could do the trick, giving bottom tier cards a single point cost and going up from there.
You do have a point lots of people don't care, I think the trick woud be to market it as an alternative, hence each table could choose their own point budget (including infinite).
There's certainly not a ton of gain wotc themselves would get out of this though, a pretty nasty nail in the coffin regarding any potential format changes.
@@epicdude8742 Yeah. I had to force my playgroup into a 30$ budget by threatening them to actually go and buy a mana crypt if they refused. Now the decks are much more varied, commanders are very different and the cards used are very synergistic because staples are too expensive(at 30$ you can't even really get swords to plowshares).
The only downside is some cards are too expensive for how good they are: some strategies like tribal decks are very popular amongst the general public and the cards they require are thus very pricey even though they're really not that good tbh.
@@garak55 yeeee, as someone who's tinkered around with lower budgets it's a great way to get people thinking out of the box! Of course, main issue goes back to what snail points out where the power of a card isn't always reflected in the price. Glad y'all got a fun budget going though, certainly!
In an ideal world, every card would be free and people would be able to deck build with anything they want. I 100% agree with the main point, that commander would be a better format if people played less sol ring, but the reason why people play it less should not be price. A card being expensive is never a good thing
So then ban it.
@@shorewall I’m not on the rules committee.
I was someone who was introduced to your channel through that original video and largely agreed and understood what you were getting at back then. I exist largely more on the 'expressive play' end of the spectrum and have largely wanted to take cards like sol ring out of my decks where they don't fit the theme, as playing it in non-artifact decks feels massively underwhelming compared to my artifact themed decks. Sol Ring's position as fast mana is much more obvious and oppressive when played in conjunction with untapping effects (voltaic key, clock of omens, unwinding clock, etc etc) and artifact tutors which mitigate the inherent variance (looking at you, urza's saga, a 0 mana tutor for sol ring which is also quite pricey), on top of generally not being restricted by the fact that it produces colorless mana. If Sol Ring was less ubiquitous, I think players would be more prepared to react appropriately to its presence on the battlefield.
You were right back then and you're right now! There's a kind of confirmation bias to lower-powered players where they remember the time drawing Sol Ring helped them keep up but they forget the dozens of times that more powerful decks ALSO drew Sol Ring and stomped them. It almost always creates an imbalanced game (in casual EDH) and I've started removing it from all of my decks for that reason. Also, the myth that "it's fair cause everyone has one" is pretty thin when it's a 100 card singleton format. If everyone started with it in hand that would be a different story.
Also I couldn't agree more about the supposed "arms race" happening with power creep in the last few years. I don't own a single copy of The One Ring, Rhystic Study, etc. and I win plenty of my games. No one is forcing you to buy those cards, decks can be plenty strong if they just lean on actual synergies and solid deck construction. Also, no one is forcing you to play at a power level where Dockside/Force of Will/Cyc Rift are a necessity. This part is personal preference but I like a game that gets to turn 8 or so, plenty of competition and dynamic shifts in who is in the lead.
Players, whether they realize it or not, use monetary value to gauge a card's power level and your thesis that Sol Ring is an egregious flaw in that system holds completely.
Brother the sol ring video was the first video i saw a week or so ago and now ive watched everything you have posted. The fundamental idea of questioning the one card that i put in all my decks shifted how i was looking at the game and made me so much more invested in my deckbuilding moving forward.
15:10 - 15:58 I came to this video ready to make this argument in the comments after finishing it, and I'm so relieved to see you already included it in the video itself
Regardless of my opinions about EDH and how they relate to yours, I really liked how you approached the same ideas from the previous video, but just expressed them in a different layout and style that more clearly got your point across. After watching a handful of EDH videos from a few different sources, the overall point I end up taking away from these kinds of videos is "be intentional and thoughtful with deckbuilding", and honestly that's a good enough rule of thumb for me. Good video, keep up the good work!
I think having sol ring as a single, clean piece of power that can grant early game initiative and break up thepacing is good. I think having a lot of fast mana, especially unevenly distributed between players, is bad. There's a common gotcha with "well, if you think mana crypt is bad for the format, then logically sol ring is too", and, no, we are allowed to have exceptions kn general principles so long as they are kept limited.
Great gastropod one you should make a video on cards with transmute! I love it and there’s usually a transmute card that’s a cheap tutor for good synergy pieces and tools for situations within the deck.
T1 Sol Ring (especially when immediately followed by a 2cc mana rock) can lead to non-games with no surprises or changes in the lead. But such plays also often lead to the other players coordinating their actions and removal to bring the early leader back in line with the rest of the table. Such a rally to action to stop the emerging archenemy can makes the otherwise boring (if faster to play) first 3-4 turns of Commander interesting with actual stakes that can affect the rest of the game.
Of course if people aren't playing enough of removal/answers then you get more snowball rolling down a hill non-games in those kinds of situations. That's why cutting some synergy/theme cards for removal is a good idea. And I like some of the new flexible cards like the Seasons from Bloomburrow that are removal when you need it and still pretty good card draw or board development when you don't.
The problem with banning Sol Ring from the format is that players will still want to be faster than their opponents and so players seeking speed will just push casual magic towards 1cc mana-making creatures (elves plus bird of paradise mostly). There is counterplay to those creatures but most are pretty bad in commander outside the the prohibitively money-expensive Orcish Bowmasters.
Also slowing down artifact mana acceleration in non-green decks means that between elves and 2cc land ramp green decks would outrace the rest of the table on mana development even more often that it already does. That would probably be worse than the occasional non-game. Slower non-green mana development is also going to push players to choose lower mana cost commanders in non-green decks, constraining player choice and design space. That said, black red and blue treasure mana ramp and white land catch-up ramp means this is a bit less of a problem than it used to be.
More mana dorks would in turn force players building non-green decks to play more mass creature removal to stop the mana dorks from snowballing. More creature wipes in average decks lead to long sluggish games which are less fun. Something long-time players of the format will remember.
I don't know what is so complicated about "strong cards should be played in strong decks against other strong decks, so stop putting sol ring in your timmy decks, that way you'll get more fun", and if you want to play strong cards for cheap, just proxy, but PLEASE keep your strong cards in your strong decks. There is no need to put Sol Ring in every single one of your decks, even if it's cheap and powerful: it's an easy trap to fall into that can make your deck wildly inconsistent with its power level. That being said, I don't want to be a fun police, so do what you want, I don't play at your table, I don't play against you, and I certainly don't play your decks. But the original points always made sense to me.
I actually like having variance in the power of a deck. It makes games have more variance, making that sometimes one deck has an awesome plan in its hand, when others I can see other decks make cool plays. Obviously I don't want any game when I do nothing, but I don't mind being the underdog sometimes.
While I do enjoy your other videos more because of their subject, this was a refreshingly different video that made me realize that I would happily watch your breakdowns of literally anything because the style and approach are absolutely incredible
I feel the most accurate part of this analysis was when you noted that most people didn’t finish watching your video.
Some arguments are simply difficult to make to the general public, particularly if they have an unappealing face value despite the strength of the evidence supporting it.
I suspect what you’ve run into is a similar to talking with the religiously devout. It doesn’t matter what you’re saying if they close their ears in the first minute, and suggesting any cards should be expensive is absolutely that sort of trigger.
I remember people complaining about "why does WOTC print 'bad cards'?" Then you have to tell them that any set will have "relatively" bad cards, and even if you took the 100 best cards in MTG history and put them in a set, some would be "relatively" bad compared to the others. But it's like talking to a brick wall.
@@shorewall To be fair, I sympathize with the sentiment "why does WotC print 'bad cards?'" but when I say it, I specifically mean "why does WotC print cards that are strictly worse than previous cards meant for the same format", like, why did we sometimes see vanilla 2-mana 2/2s, even after the baseline became 2-mana 2/2 with upside. I get that oftentimes it is about limited concerns, but I think most cards they print could be designed in a way that at least means it isn't *strictly* worse than another card.
You're missing the entire point just like everyone else who tries to "debunk" the logic behind people who say "why does work print bad cards. We get that there is relative power level. That doesn't change the fact they sometimes intentionally make cards that are considerably weaker than others, sometimes cards that basically do nothing good(until maybe something new printed years later can make it relevant.) and it creates worthless filler in random packs.
@@rh7474 in my eyes, one major reason is to limit power creep. If every card had to be the same power as similar cards from previous sets, there is no way to introduce "good" or "bomb" cards in a set that excite players without letting the power creep go wild. I believe this is also partly a reason for rotating formats like standard (selling new product cannot be ignored as a reason though). As someone with a collection of 15-20 year old pokemon and yugioh cards that are utterly unplayable compared to their modern counterparts, i think wizards have done a better job with this than many other games.
Everytime I get a notif that you've posted a vid i literally stop everything im doing to watch it. Keep spitting hot takes I live for it
To me a game being casual, and to a lesser extend a decks power level, is more of a personality and vibe thing than dictated by the cards in the deck. You can have high power cards and still play pretty relaxed and non-competetive. That is what creates the casual environment in my opinion. One of my favorite examples is Aura Shards: A lot of people hate on that card and even swear at others for playing it, but that thing has a may ability... so if someone blows up everything all the time, the card isn't the problem, it's the player!
This basically applies to almost everything and -card in MTG. Sure, I can play my Crypt into Sol Ring into Signet on turn 1 and tutor up a combo in turn 2... or I just chill out a bit and play the same hand just a little more stretched out and maybe save my tutor to react to a threat later in the game.
I call this style as higher power ultra casual. Just wanna play and do the thing without the need to win.
I disagree with two things in this video:
1. I think the premise of tying price point to power level is fundamentally flawed. In a casual format like EDH, it's not up to Wizards to regulate deckbuilding culture, its up to the players. While printing flagship cards like Sol Ring may provide some incentive for newer players, the actual decision to include is made by the player. It would be better for the casual community to embrace proxies like cEDH players and just get the power level addiction out of their systems.
2. Adding a Sol Ring to a low-power deck is generally much worse than adding one to a high-power deck. My background is mostly in cEDH so I can tell you that adding a single copy of Sol Ring to my deck is practically the same as adding 10 copies once you factor in all the tutoring options etc. It also dramatically escalates the degree of "brokenness" and consistency that is possible.
I think you are still right on a lot of what you say. I have tried making my decks more unique in card selection and theme and I have found that my opponents enjoy playing with me more than some at my shop that just play all the staples. Keep up the great work! I'm always looking forward to the next upload!
That camel shaped winrate curve is super interesting to think about. When I first started playing commander, my goal was to build decks on a $100 budget that could win 25% of games against much more expensive decks at the local game store. If the deck does absolutely nothing 50% of the time, builds a board state 50% of the time, and can squeak out a win 25% of the time, I'd consider that mission accomplished. What I learned in that first year of playing was that a) building a deck like that wasn't difficult, and that b) decks like that aren't fun to play **or** to play against. Now I'm building decks that only completely flop maybe 15% of the time, that have more protection, more removal, more draw, less tutors, less combos, less infinite hand size, with shorter turns for myself but more to do on other players turns. I still care a lot about winrate, but I find that staying out of "first place" until the right moment does more for my winrate than running more powerful cards.
i appreciate seeing this video. ive been listening to your videos in the background, and ive heard a lot of contradictions between gaps of time. rad to see you being critical of yourself :)!
'i probably wouldn't make this take again'
hot takes are the best way to get people talking, if they aren't trying to be the correct one. id hope you'd make the video again.
Honestly, a lot of your videos are just enjoyable to listen to as a foil to traditionally held EDH notions. Regardless of whether I, the listener, agree with them, they still do their job of opening up the discussion to new trains of thought, and my playgroup and I have certainly enjoyed listening to them as a result. Keep up the great work Mr. Snail! :)
I have to say that original video and your takes within it (particularly on sol ring) is what made me subscribe. Maybe I was one of the few people you alluded to who digested the video fully? Suggesting that sol ring having a high price as a way to keep the number of copies in casual commander low solves a very real problem. Obviously pricing it out of the format its not a perfect solution and reading between the lines I got the impression that was part of your opinion too. As you outlined in this video, sol ring evaluated in a vacuum is not *too* problematic, but the rising tide of power level which it is part of and enables is what causes problems.
Also, the "keeping up" argument is complete nonsense for a casual format. I love competitive magic and played modern for years, and there obviously "keeping up" is a fundamental deckbuilding assumption. But in casual formats like commander everyone should be tuning their decks to their playgroup and/or specific pod of people in that match. I took about a 6 year break from magic and it's crazy to me that as a community we're still having this conversation. The only progress seems to be new content creators with better takes - so thank you for that!
I definitely get the argument that more low power decks will put cheap fast mana pieces in when they may not belong, and I do understand the issues that could be caused by this. I also understand that if someone wants to play higher level decks, many groups of commander players are proxy-friendly. *However*, many LGS events are *not* proxy-friendly, such as the weekly commander tournament at my preferred LGS and the weekly commander night at the LGS I don’t prefer (for many reasons I won’t get into). Events like these, where commander players are pit against each other in a semi-competitive environment, are *inherently* classist. If higher power cards cost more *and* you are in a scenario that isn’t proxy-friendly, those with more money will have a definitive edge and a much higher potential for higher power deck building. I-as a budget-playing college student-am not able to get nearly as close to winning in these events as the person to my right with every fast mana piece and cEDH value engine in their deck. This is bound to happen when higher power cards are more expensive. Playgroups being proxy-friendly really does lighten the load, but I don’t really want to play higher power cards in casual environments, so there’s a mismatch here. I-and many others-want to have a chance in more competitive settings, but those are not the settings in which I can play higher power cards.
My playgroup decided to make rule zero decks banning fast mana, tutors and the free spells cycle plus force of will etc. We thoroughly enjoyed playing those decks against each other. We all still have our higher power level decks including some cedh piles. I disagree with the nothing to keep up with argument, as the never ending power creep in general seeps into commander.
I am a huge cEDH player. I almost exclusively play it at this point unless I'm playing with new players or am with close friends. If it wasn't for the formats proxy friendly nature I would not be able to play the format I find the most fun. Budget and cEDH are just not compatable at this point of the format. I think this is an amazing video deconstructing the relationship between power of a deck to cost to play for the most part.
If they suddenly printed a precon set of Blue Farm, Tivit, Najeela, and Atraxa I think that would alienate the vast majority of players from the wider EDH format. Fast mana and the effects on play are just polarizing and create lots of issues with everyone "doing their thing".
At the start of the video I thought I would disagree with your point but I think around the 15:30 mark my mind changed. I think it would be interesting to see what the wider effect on the format would be if sol ring was left out of recons going forward and more niche weirder cards started being printed.
As a cEDH player to anyone looking to play at the highest level and play cEDH, I want to play against peoples minds and their decks, not a wallet. Proxies should be more welcome at lower power levels as well.
On the side, I would love to see a non-MTG video just about writing I found that part really interesting
One problem with all these expensive ramp/fast mana cards are that if one guy in a playgroup has a deck full of these powerful cards, and the rest doesn't (because they can't afford them).
That just means that that person won't be allowed to play that deck. Because it will most likely steamroll all the other decks.
And that's no fun for anyone.
Even as a somewhat casual Commander player (I used to be a pretty competitive Modern player), I honestly don't mind cards like Sol Ring or Ancient Tomb. To me it just means that decks can start doing fun things faster. There's not really anyone in my group that plays decks that wins turn 1 or so anyway.
Though I do have several decks with infinite combos that might get off a turn or so earlier because of those cards. Though they aren't unstoppable as long as anyone of the other three has removal/counterspell.
Fundamentally, you’re correct on the take that cheap powerful staples causes more similar decks, less balanced decks, and likely less fun for anyone involved. But calling to make such cheap cards more scarce/expensive isn’t correct from both a class division perspective nor a learning/teaching perspective.
The classism argument has people ending up segregated among two groups as you mentioned. People can afford the card and those who can’t. Those who can afford the card get to play the card and those who can’t can’t. These conditions are literally what we play under now. Except by wishing the powerful cards which are cheap by good fortune you’re still not solving that issue. When someone has a lot of high power, expensive staples it creates what I would call envy as opposed to anger or frustration. Someone without the most expensive/powerful cards want them though can’t get them due to price. They play against them and these cards win or make the game unfun due to a lack of even playing field. So there’s the option of everyone having the cards or even fewer people having the cards. Now this isn’t nuclear disarmament so I’m inclined to the make them more accessible camp. By making them more accessible people can play with the cards in both decks that are high power level and those that aren’t. And through these experiences people could learn that perhaps these expensive staples aren’t actually increasing their enjoyment of the game nor making their decks fundamentally better. And by decreasing the overall price of cards envy is eliminated and arguments revolving around you won because you could afford a super expensive card fall flat. It lets people be like let’s change this deck to include this card now since I lost to it and therefore it’s good. And from there people might learn that that card doesn’t fundamentally work with their deck or it makes it boring. By choosing argument make the powerful cards more expensive you’re not giving people that opportunity to learn. The only way they can learn is through thought experiments, videos about the topic like yours, and reflections when they could play against it. And these are much less effective learning techniques than literally experiencing play with them. And not everyone spends their free time doing any of those things. People might realize that perhaps these cards aren’t what they want to use, but at least they can choose to use them in the first place. By choosing the argument of make them more expensive you’d make formats like cedh become more inaccessible to people, you’d end up with more class imbalances, and you’d make people unable to learn your general points about deck construction and synergy more effectively.
Your argument reminds me a lot of an atheists’ argument about how religion is good (or at least useful). People can’t be trusted to be good without religion. So by getting rid of religion, lots of people will become worse people. I’m a atheist and I believe I am good without a God (granted whether or not we have the ability to make moral valuations without a god is very hotly debated among theologians and philosophers), so to claim that I could do it but most people can’t isn’t claimable without assuming you’re better than most people, and most people think that they’re better than most people. Hopefully you can see that most people are not better than most people. Replace the idea of religion with high prices on expensive cards though and hopefully my point comes across.
Of course people can proxy but until proxies are allowed in sanctioned wizards of the coast events (or there are no sanctioned wizards events), I don’t think proxies are our solution
I agree, the issue with powerful cards is the high level of variance it can introduce to a deck.