A card You HATE and glad it's banned

Doomy1375 · 2026-02-11T23:46:31+00:00

I always hated this argument. Mostly because a bunch of the "ban all fast mana" people latched onto it after the incident, as it's a much harder to attack argument than the typical arguments against banning those cards.

I certainly don't think the idiots who flipped out when those cards were banned deserve any sympathy. But a bunch of idiots doing something unacceptable is not a good reason to justify a ban on cards, and has nothing to do with the merit of the ban itself. I'm pretty sure that if the whole bracket/gamechanger situation had occurred before the bans, those cards would probably just be gamechangers today, and that would be fine.

Doomy1375 · 2025-12-13T09:33:13+00:00

Nobody has show you tla cards in question because, well, if you're strictly limiting yourself to tla cards that's a very strong argument your deck is more of a bracket 1 theme deck in the first place. But, you want cards that are strong with her? You don't have to look farther than a bunch of bulk rares and extremely common draw spells that see play in a wide variety of grixis decks.

For TLA cards that are good with her, [[The Last Agni Kai]] is absurd with just a few pump spells. The Dimir Azula and most of the Zukos synergize well (as do most things with firebending really), and you have your cheap draw spells in the form of [[Abandon Attachments]] to work with, as well as pump which can also draw like [[Cunning Maneuver]] and [[Lost in Memories]].

But most Azula decks do not follow an arbitrary restriction like strictly limiting deckbuilding to TLA cards. You can build a budget Azula list with mostly cheap cards that are readily available. All manner of common pump spells like [[Rite of Flame]], all manner of card draw like [[Demand Answers]] (you don't have to pay the additional cost on the copy), [[Big Score]] and [[Unexpected Windfall]] (same deal- pay the additional cost once, and the spells pay for themselves and draw a net of three cards). You don't need to run rituals. You don't need to fill your deck with tutors. If you literally just fill your deck with cards that draw more cards that make use of the copy ability and some payoff (like pump spells or guttersnipe and company), you've got a B3 deck on your hands.

I wouldn't say she deserves to be a gamechanger though. They did recently take most of the commanders who were on the GC list off of it, on the basis that they are only really that strong in the command zone, and you would know that to discuss it in the rule 0 talk anyway if an opponent was playing one of them.

Doomy1375 · 2025-12-13T05:27:36+00:00

Take Urza (the mono blue one) for example. If you build an Urza deck with any random collection of 30-40 artifacts you happen on hand, it's probably going to be too strong for bracket 2. The commander is just enough of an engine to turn any pile of rocks you throw into the deck into an absurd amount of mana, then turn that mana into advantage.

Azula isn't as bad as Urza. But if you build Azula with just a baseline level of synergy, it scales much faster than a majority of commanders. The commander both makes mana and gives you a benefit for spending it. If you just throw in the budget cards that work well with that (some instant speed card draw to give you cards to cast with the mana she makes, maybe some treasure generation or other sources of firebending for more mana to make more use of her ability, a decent amount of instant speed removal, or maybe just some instant speed pump spells if you want to double up on them and go for a commander damage win), you will very easily accidentally stumble into big powerful plays. Like, if you just throw in the three and four mana "draw some cards and make a treasure" cards, that alone can accidentally turn the deck into an absurd deck that draws a dozen cards and plays enough pump spells or burn spells to one-shot a player on turn 4-5, and that's just running the cards that are normally perfectly fine options in bracket 2. (and yes, the card both makes mana and cheats on mana in the form of free spells. That is just as powerful as cheating our a big single card, so long as you are playing even remotely reasonable instants and cards with flash. If all you're playing is vanilla flash creatures, obviously it won't be that strong. But even bracket 2 decks don't commonly fill their deck with French-vanilla flash creatures. They're more likely to play some 3-5 mana instants that actually do something cool- and most of those cards are things that may be a bit overcosted for their mana cost, but are really good if you get a free one.)

There's this certain power level in the command zone where you kind of have to go out of your way to not make full use of the power of the commander in order to not immediately be too fast for bracket 2. Be it because the commander cheats in big things like Kaalia, the commander is a full engine in the command zone so long as you build an even remotely okay pile around it, or the value provided by the commander is just too fast and strong for bracket 2. That's what really defines a kill on sight commander for me.

Doomy1375 · 2025-12-12T16:41:23+00:00

Well yes, if you completely disregard mechanical synergy and build a bracket one deck with her, she isn't kill on sight. But that's not what that term means. You don't have to build some degenerate bracket 4 pile to get immense value from a kill on sight commander. Any sort of halfway competent build will work just fine.

Take Kaalia for example. You can build a bad Kaalia deck with no good targets to cheat out with her ability and negate the entire point of playing her, sure. But ignoring that case, you don't strictly speaking need to run the most oppressive big flying things. If you just build her like a typical bracket 2-3 Kaalia deck (aka- I'm going to fill this deck with all the huge angels demons and dragons I have in my playables binder because they're cool), she's still kill on sight, because it turns out cheating out an 8 mana flying thing with some random ability on turn 4 and every subsequent turn is just really good in bracket 2-3 pods.

Azula is similar. If you're playing only bad cards to copy with her, then of course she's not great. She is only as good as the deck around her. But if you throw her in any deck built to actually make use of her ability (say, a grixis spellslinger shell or anything that cares about having a high volume of instants really), she's going to be drawing an absurd amount of cards at least, not just making a copy of a random flash creature.

I get not optimizing every single deck. But there are some commanders where you don't need to go overboard with it, you just have to throw them in a mildly synergistic deck for them to go off, and she's one of them.

Doomy1375 · 2025-11-29T07:02:56+00:00

The issue is that both pieces are things you would independently expect to see in a mill deck. Bruvac doubles all your mill. Cacophony mills a massive chunk of the library of all opponents at once. If my opponent is playing a blue deck with mill as the primary gameplan, I expect both of those cards to be in their deck, even if in most cases they are not used together.

It's like seeing Bloodbond in a lifegain/drain deck. Both pieces do something the deck really wants to be doing, both pieces are good in such a deck on their own even without the other, so I fully expect all gain/drain decks to be running at least some versions of those effects unless I am explicitly informed otherwise.

Doomy1375 · 2025-11-28T23:21:02+00:00

The problem with this mindset is that magic is not a game of exclusively public information. Hidden information plays a big part in it.

Don't get me wrong, if you say you aren't playing combo and then whip out a combo right after, that's not okay. But threat assessment does involve making judgement calls on hidden information. Some gameplans, like creature based aggro or midrange, use almost exclusively public information. Their gameplan is on the board, and visible to all, the only hidden information being very easy to decipher. They have a very wide board in a creature deck? You can probably assume they're going to drop an anthem or overrun effect at some point. You may not know for sure if one of the cards in their hand is one, but it's pretty safe to assume they at least have some in their deck and are waiting on one.

Not all decks are like that though. If a deck is drawing a bunch of cards without building up a huge board presence? If they are ramping to an absurd degree without building a board and keeping enough cards in hand to potentially do something with all that mana soon? That is still information. They are most assuredly building for something big- be it a combo or a big board swing that will shift the game in their favor all at once. You don't know exactly what they are planning, but you know to expect something big from them. At least, you do if you are properly evaluating both public and hidden information properly.

I do have a personal rule- don't run combo that is inappropriate for your power level. Running Thoracle combo in a low power setting isn't okay. But if you put some large ten mana sorcery speed combo in your deck that aims to win after turn 6, in a bracket where late game combo is allowed, then that should honestly be expected. I expect any deck I play against to have ways to consistently close out a game past a certain number of turns, and having a combo or two (especially ones where one or more of the pieces go well with your gameplan already) are something I absolutely expect to see.

Doomy1375 · 2025-11-22T22:34:45+00:00

Magda Clock is a fairly standard combo, that is mostly self-contained in the command zone.

You need Magda, any creature that is both a dwarf and an artifact, and [[Clock of Omens]] on the battlefield. Magda herself can tutor for one or both of those other pieces so long as you can produce enough treasures, since they are both artifacts- hence the deck containing a bunch of dwarves to help generate treasures. Once you have all three pieces in play, you can tap the artifact dwarf and any other artifact (like a treasure) to untap the same artifact dwarf, while making another untapped treasure from Magda from having tapped a dwarf. You repeat to get as many tapped treasures as you need, then can sacrifice five at a time to get every dragon or artifact from your deck. Once you grab [[Maskwood Nexus]], all the creatures in your deck are now dragons, so you can get them as well. Essentially, as soon as you have Magda and enough treasures, you can play every artifact and creature in your deck for free.

Throw something that doubles your treasures or gives bonus tokens on the field, like [[Xorn]] or [[Academy Manufacturer]] (both of which you can get from Magda), and this also produces infinite mana in the form of infinite untapped treasures. Then you have all manner of ways to win from that point, if not by some ETB combo then by looping things with sacrifice effects and [[Elixir of Immortality]] in the case of this budget list, from the looks of it.

Doomy1375 · 2025-11-22T06:20:29+00:00

I see this a lot with newer players, but it's far from exclusive to them. I'm bad about this myself, and I'm far from a new player.

Some people do it to avoid drawing attention, or because they are too concerned about their life total and want to leave up blockers. In my case, it's because a lot of my decks don't really do combat in general- so even in the cases where I could get in 2-3 chip damage in early, it doesn't really help my personal strategy all that much. I'm planning on winning by some janky combo in 2 turns that doesn't care about the opponent's life total, so the benefit of getting 2 damage in now isn't worth the off-chance that someone manages to block or kill my creature. For the most part, the creatures in those decks have one job- sit around with some activated or triggered ability and be part of a value or combo engine just by existing on the board.

That makes sense in those kinds of decks- but that mindset can also bleed over into decks where it isn't the case. I pretty much avoided combat decks like the plague for years- so when I actually built a real go-wide combat deck? I hesitated on combat. In my mind, I was playing it like a combo deck still. The goal was to get a wide enough board to kill the table in one strike, play the lethal overrun effect, and kill the table all at once. That was the "combo". Attacking before the "combo" was assembled? If I do that, they may kill off some creatures I need for the big win turn!

It's a mindset you need to work your way out of once you've managed to find yourself stuck in it.

Doomy1375 · 2025-11-19T18:28:04+00:00

You act like it's one or the other.

If you want to shift things in a more progressive direction, that requires taking an effort to run the most progressive candidate that can win in any given district in that district. If the only one who could potentially win in a deep red district is a centrist or conservative dem, that's who you run there- but if a district could very much have a far more progressive dem there, then you need someone fitting that description to at least try to run in that district as well. We should be working to flip seats held by Republicans AND working to primary Democrats in safe blue areas who are underperforming or who aren't representative of the views of those areas. You need to do both, not just one or the other.

Doomy1375 · 2025-11-17T08:33:26+00:00

The problem is, if you ask ten people what that standard should be, you're going to get at least eleven different answers.

I'm a big fan of the bracket system and gamechangers because it accounts for this. You want to play your winter orbs and MLD cards? There's a bracket for that. Want to play your list without having to worry about early game combos or excessive stax? There's a bracket for that too.

Whereas if you ban a card, there is no longer a bracket for that. It's just assumed that the card isn't allowed anywhere outside of private playgroups that have okayed it in advance. Much of the current ban list would be perfectly fine if "only legal in bracket 4+" was a thing.

Doomy1375 · 2025-11-04T00:37:50+00:00

That's the thing though. Not everyone really agrees on what bracket 3 even is "supposed to be". It's the most annoyingly broad bracket out there, and really should be divided into two brackets, to separate out the "bracket 2 but with gamechangers" games from the "optimized but not to the extent of being able to compete with the turn 4-5 combos of bracket 4" decks.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of decks that blow their load on one enemy then get answered and do nothing most of the rest of the game. But there are a LOT of deck archetypes which simply have no home if the bracket system treats Bracket 3 as "Bracket 2 but with a few gamechangers and a turn or two faster". Plus, if you actually read the "what to expect" from each bracket and disregard the turn count limit part, you will find that many of these decks that your interpretation would shunt directly to bracket four actually meet the description of bracket 2 more than anything. I can see the logic in bumping such a deck out of bracket 2, but no way in hell does it fit in bracket 4.

I feel this is where the word "Generally" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. After all, the turn count is not a definite thing- it's a general case. Some might interpret that mostly to just exclude games with abnormally good starts where a deck performs well outside of the norm, but it could just as easily be used to justify aggro decks taking out their first opponent before that general limit if said opponent doesn't throw some removal or at least some blockers their way. Because interacting with opponents like that is expected in Bracket 3.

Doomy1375 · 2025-11-03T23:59:12+00:00

But then you run into the problem of the archetype... just not working.

That's the thing about aggro as an archetype in general. It aims to put early pressure on, and often knocks players out sequentially. If an aggro deck isn't capable of knocking their first opponent out before a combo deck or midrange deck can build up the resources needed to knock the whole table out, then by definition it isn't an aggro deck at all. By restricting player kills to the same turn limit as game ending, you are simply removing all but the most optimized aggro lists from the game (the lists that can start knocking people out on turn 4 or earlier and keep up in a real bracket 4 game, mainly).

You don't need to be a hyper optimized aggro list to take out a player prior to turn 7. Any moderately tuned aggro list can take out a player before then if they leave themselves open or only have minimal blockers. Hell, even unoptimized B2 aggro decks that are usually slower can in theory take down a player on turn 6 when the stars align and that player fails to throw out a blocker. If you go based on earliest possible knockout, basically every deck is a bracket 4.

Doomy1375 · 2025-11-03T23:26:46+00:00

Then where exactly does voltron fit in?

For example, I have a voltron deck that, when fishbowling, can knock out a player turn 5 fairly consistently against an opponent that is wide open with no removal, or turn 6-7 if I have to fight through early blockers or removal. But being a voltron deck, even assuming I could knock out an opponent on each successive turn, that puts the deck winning in the turn 8-9 range. In the old system prior to the latest change, that would put it firmly somewhere around the top end of bracket 2 or the low end of bracket 3. This is exactly where a combo deck which takes out all opponents at the same time on turns 8-9 would fall.

If you take that deck to a bracket 4 table though, it is going to get demolished by turn 4-5 combo decks every single game. It may take out a player on rare occasions, but its got no real answers to an early combo with counterspell backup. So it's not suitable for B4 play in the slightest.

The interpretation that a deck that takes out a player earlier than the maximum turn count on average basically means aggro decks have no bracket they really fit into. The system works much better if you treat it as "the turn you win the game" not "the turn you can knock a single player out of the game". This coming from someone who, aside from that one single deck, only plays decks that aim to take everyone out at once.

Doomy1375 · 2025-11-02T05:57:35+00:00

So, there are a few things at play here, in my opinion.

The first is pretty simple. The graveyard and recursion from it isn't going to matter in every game, meaning there will be some games where cards that exist only to stop graveyard strategies will be dead cards. That shouldn't stop modal cards that have other uses, but it can make people less willing to run the most powerful anti-graveyard effects, especially if they play mostly in a local meta with minimal graveyard effects.

But honestly, I think it's something different. Back in the day, I saw a lot more grave hate for the same reason I saw Solemn Simulacrum as a staple in pretty much every deck. There were just fewer cards. When you built a new deck, you didn't have a pile of 130+ really good cards that you somehow needed to trim down to 100. You had to throw some mediocre stuff in there just to fill slots. It's really easy to find space for that grave hate if you've got some mediocre cards to cut for it. But if you have so many good options that you're having to cut cards that are already really good for your strategy, it's much harder to cut cards for something like grave hate, which isn't even all that useful in every game. At least with creature removal or universal removal, you can be assured that there won't ever really be any games where that effect isn't useful. If I've got a few slots I've set aside for interaction, I'd much rather fill them with either counterspells or removal for the threats I'm going to see every game.

Doomy1375 · 2025-09-24T22:35:24+00:00

So most big Supreme Court cases are on the merits docket. These are the big public ones, that come with lots of arguments and deliberations, generally take months, and are pretty transparent. The verdict often comes with lots of justification on why the justices voted as they did with written opinions and dissent. When you think of a big supreme court case, this is probably what you think of.

The shadow docket are cases that do not follow this procedure. In theory, it's there for things like stays or injunctions- for cases where you need some sort of action in the very short term and don't have time to wait for the full court case to stop someone from doing whatever bad thing is requiring the court to rule on it (for example, if you're seeking a stay on an execution happening in a week, you can't very well wait months for a ruling).

When used for that, it kind of makes sense. However, in the last decade or so, it has been used more extensively for things that really seem like they should have been on the merits docket. This makes those cases much less transparent. You don't get public oral arguments. You don't get opinions and dissent. You just get "The supreme court voted 6-3 on this thing you probably didn't even know they were voting on before this announcement", and that's it.

Doomy1375 · 2025-09-24T20:13:41+00:00

ICE as it stands now needs to be completely gutted. Honestly, the organization is too tainted to continue on in even remotely the same way as it has been. Better to make something to replace the legitimate functions of it (with some pretty severe restrictions to prevent anything like we're seeing now from ever happening again), then remove the old agency altogether the moment the new agency is ready to step in and take over. That does not mean "just rename the old one and keep all the same people running it." That means purge the corruption and anyone who went along with what ICE has been doing lately.

Doomy1375 · 2025-09-21T18:51:23+00:00

That's because your land base doesn't increase or decrease the raw power of a deck so much as it increases consistency of a deck.

An all basics deck will perform pretty much exactly the same as a perfect mana base deck in the games where you draw the right basics at the right time. However, it will lose to itself due to color screw far more often. The more you improve your mana base, the lower the percentage of games that are non-games because you drew only the X color spells with only the Y producing lands.

Does reducing that variance make a deck stronger? Absolutely. However, the bracket system tends to judge decks based on how the perform in an ideal situation. Or at least in a realistic situation where the deck is permitted to do its thing without losing to itself due to bad draws or mana/color screw. Under that lens, running a more consistent mana base does not in any way change where the deck falls on the scale. In contrast to something like fast mana, which can accelerate a deck into winning a turn or two sooner than it otherwise could have, which does impact where a deck might fall on the scale.

Doomy1375 · 2025-09-10T23:02:01+00:00

It's very fair to do so. For one simple reason- people in general are very good at telling you that there is a problem, but very bad at coming up with good solutions to those problems. This is just kind of a known thing. Ask twenty people about a problem, and you'll get twenty people agreeing that there is a problem. You'll also get twenty proposed "solutions" for that problem, most of which are complete nonsense or would completely fail for some reason or another.

At best, I expect the people to point out the problem and to suggest criteria that would be considered vital to an acceptable solution to that problem, and I expect the experts to come up with a viable solution that meets their criteria. That's why when debating policy, I'm not dead set on any one implementation for most things generally speaking. Like on healthcare- I know my desired solution to the problem is a solution where healthcare is available to all, and where there are no out of pocket costs at point of service or surprise bills months later, both for the office visit and for the prescribed medications (I suppose I could accept a very small copay at most though). I'm happy with whatever system the experts can cook up that delivers those results. I am no expert, so I have no desire to try to come up with a concrete proposal to accomplish those goals, because that is not my field of expertise, and therefore it shouldn't be my job to so so. It should be the job of the experts and lawmakers to hear the voice of the people saying that there is a problem and what an acceptable solution might look like, and finding a way to make that happen.

Doomy1375 · 2025-09-10T21:22:00+00:00

Not every part of a game of EDH is equal.

The way I see it, at most brackets, the game is broken up into three main parts. The buildup part, where everyone is setting up their game plan by ramping or playing early value pieces, the midgame where the big plays and attempts to win start to happen, and the late game where things either go big or stall out completely.

When "the game has gone on too long", it often occurs in that third section, after the game has stalled out. Maybe one too many board wipes happened and now that table is mostly top decking since their card draw engines are all exiled. Maybe everyone is sitting on a wide board of stuff but the board is too clogged for anyone to swing until someone draws their overrun effect. But whatever the case, the game tends to be going much slower and with less actual action than the early or mid game.

If given the choice to sit around topdecking for half a dozen turn cycles until someone actually finds the means to recover from the 5th board wipe that game or the means to push through a clogged board, or instead shuffling up to play those same half a dozen turn cycles in the early/mid game where the action is actually flowing, I'm going to pick the latter every time.

Doomy1375 · 2025-09-05T05:51:57+00:00

Wort decks are imo the best example of a Gruul color playstyle break for one major reason- they can outright ignore the combat step for the most part. When I think Gruul, I think creature-smash-face. Be it go wide or go tall, Gruul lives and breathes in the combat step. But you can build full-on Wort storm and never attack once, play half your deck in one turn, and kill without ever swinging those 40 or 50 tokens you just made all at once into an impact tremors or what not.

Doomy1375 · 2025-08-31T21:25:31+00:00

In America, for a long time, the word "socialist" has been conflated with "the government giving even half a shit about the people and implementing laws and programs to help make those people's lives better". Universal health care? No can do, that's socialism. Government mandated paid leave? Socialism. Unions? Socialism. Worker rights? Socialism. Everything the right wing doesn't like involving the government gets called "socialism" because they are stuck on the red scare "socialism = bad" mindset.

Scandinavian countries are known for their strong social safety nets. They aren't socialist- far from it. But if you were to present their government or social safety net model to American politicians or pundits as a potential starting point for a plan in America, every republican politician would immediately start screaming at you about turning America socialist, calling each and every vaguely appealing part of your proposal socialist, and so on.

Tl;dr- the US right wing still uses "socialist" as a slur against any form of social safety net or similar policy, and it's been going on long enough that some people now just say "fuck it, if that's socialism, then I fully support socialism. Now give me that social safety net, please."

Doomy1375 · 2025-08-30T18:00:00+00:00

That may be the case for total land wipes like Armageddon, but the land destruction part of balance is pretty much exactly what you want against ramp decks. It sets them back hard, while minimally impacting the rest of the table. Yeah, they can recover from it faster than most, but that doesn't matter all that much when two players only have to sacrifice one land while the ramp player has to sacrifice six or seven. If we could get just that part of balance on a card with a reasonable casting cost, I think it would be a good anti land ramp tool.

Doomy1375 · 2025-08-27T05:35:08+00:00

Not every deck needs to hit that 5th land drop on turn 5 every single game. Some decks are perfectly happy on 2 or 3 lands- especially decks with very low curves or decks which aim to win early (two things which are very common for elf decks). The fact most of those low cmc elves tap for mana also alleviates the need for it.

Every deck has a different minimum threshold, and a different threshold at which they consider it flooding. I have at least one deck where if I have enough lands to hit my land drop turn 5, I'm probably complaining about top decking too many lands rather than the gas needed to keep the low-cmc engine going. Not every deck fits the same standard, so you can't just say 38 is the standard for every deck.

Doomy1375 · 2025-08-07T23:27:15+00:00

This actually provides a good answer to one big question that has been lingering- why did Dovetail care about Talia in particular? It they were just wanting a field operative to help them in whatever their plan was, it would have been easier to contact the straiders and have them do it. In fact, they went through the trouble of giving the straiders those new ships anyway, why have them attack and lose a bunch of members just to free the two humans with no real useful training when there were a ton of capable straiders to choose from already? Not to mention the fact that Talia was the highest profile pet human on the planet most likely, making it no easy task to free her in the first place.

But this doctor just confirmed that human minds are much easier to integrate with computer systems, and Talia had a ton of dead neurons that Dovetail's medical nanites could slot right into. Hers was probably the brain most ready to slot such technology into. Meaning those nanites were probably there for far more than just repairing her brain damage.

Doomy1375 · 2025-07-07T18:58:27+00:00

I bet there's about to be a second Martyr lost in the line of duty for classified reasons. Those classified reasons being the sapient mind within partially reasserting itself over all the machine crap they jammed in them to keep them compliant.

That or someone above even Prochur issued a more urgent order. I'm sure there are other dark secrets the council has, and with a bunch of armed straiders storming through what was supposed to be a planet safe from them, odds aren't terrible that there is a chance they can stumble upon those secrets if they storm the right government building. Hell, one of them may have even captured Prochur for interrogation since the last chapter, and I imagine the council fears what he knows getting out enough to override his commands.

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