#Bannings

[wronghands1]

[niuttuc]

What are your opinions on the Commander bans?

(Putting this out of the blue, this will be about the fast mana. Nadu also got banned, but Nadu doesn't really matter here. It's good that he's gone, though it doesn't make a ton of difference considering people already identified him as a broken card and pushed it away. Also this post became long but there's a TL;DR at the end if you want.

And for context if someone somehow missed the announcement this week: Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus and Dockside Extortionist were just banned in Commander. A bunch of controversy has ensued.)

Alright, tackling this can of worms. It will be a long one. Well, I have very positive thoughts about the bannings themselves, they can only be positive for the gameplay end, my only slight bad feeling personally is that I've traded my mana crypt (I wasn't playing with it) to someone I know three or four months back and I feel bad for them, but they found a home for it in a cube, so it stays being played.

I have generally believed fast mana makes for worse games, and I have for years removed my Sol Rings from my decks, didn't play my mana crypt even after I opened it, and never tried to even obtain a dockside even when I knew it could be a great card in several of my decks. I am plenty surprised at the announcement that seemed to come out of the blue after so long of no changes, especially since these cards have been issues in the way the ban announcement describes for years at this point. But at some point the band-aid needs to be ripped off. I also understand why Sol Ring isn't banned, even if I believe the format's gameplay would be better if it didn't exist in it. There are more factors at play here, and most people, particularly casual people, would want to keep it in their decks than have it banned, and that's more important. I'll just keep not putting it in mine.

I've seen some people claim that it would negatively impact cEDH metagame. Now, I do not play cEDH so feel free to disregard my opinion on this if you do and think I'm completely off-base. But my understanding of cEDH is NOT that it's a healthy metagame or an actually good competitive environment. The rules of the format are designed to make commander awful to compete in. And the banlist has, from its inception, explicitly not been aimed at regulating a balanced competitive format. This is also why, in my mind, the idea of splitting cEDH and Commander into separate banlists and formats is a nonstarter. As I'll get to later, there are already separations like that, the only thing that'd change is that there would be a new niche format, and actual competitive commander using Commander's rules would keep on, because using Commander's rules is the point of it.

cEDH comes from the will to take the rules as they are, NOT meant for this, and see what happens when you push them to the extreme. cEDH's meta as far as I can tell is basically just a bunch of flavors of combo decks pitted against each other, with a handful of hyper-targeted combo-killers in the meta too. This is reminiscent of combo winter, widely regarded as one of the least healthy metagames of all time, but stretched to years and years.

There are certainly people that will appeal to, since it's not actually about a healthy metagame and more about tiny optimizations and ultra-tight piloting and navigating a pod. But this also means a banning doesn't change the fundamental nature of all this, nor should it take it into account. If someone wanted an actual singleton competitive experience designed for a more healthy and balanced metagame, they could look at Duel Commander, now officially supported on MTGO and that walks back many of the uncompetitive rules changes of Commander to allow it, or even Highlander formats of all kinds, designed for the ground up for a diverse and balanced but powerful competitive experience.

Now, with that aside, the main complaints I've seen about the bannings have overwhelmingly been along the lines of "I lost money so this decision sucks", either outright or behind a thin veil. While it does suck that people lost money, the monetary value of a card cannot shield it from banning if it's egregious. The next argument, then is that there should have been more of a warning that the RC was looking at those cards and considering banning them. But for how long? And for what purpose? Relatively few actually read what the RC writes, particularly when there are no changes, and thus far it hadn't resulted in actual changes in years. And if the warning was stronger, what would be the result? People in the know selling their cards in advance to people who aren't so they aren't the ones left holding the bag? That just pushes the problem away to different people. If the price goes down by half, it doesn't matter if it's over the course of three months or two days, someone is "losing" that money somewhere.

And yes, a banning cut the price of those cards in a bunch, but so do reprintings. If the cards were reprinted regularly, and not at mythic in masters sets, they'd not climb this high to have so much to lose. If they were a positive on the format, reprints would even be welcome by all, allowing more people into the format. WotC is the one handling that end of things, and they see more profit in starving players than in overflooding a market.

I've also occasionally seen the argument that "they shouldn't have banned Jeweled Lotus because Jeweled Lotus was made for Commander and only works in Commander and now there's nothing to do with it (meme Legacy deck aside.)" It is true that Jeweled Lotus is now essentially a blank piece of cardboard. But if it is such an issue in the ONE FORMAT IT WAS MADE FOR, then that isn't a reason to just ignore it and carry on. That's a reason that WotC shouldn't have made the card in the first place, yes, since the result is the same except a lot of players got burned. It's not like Jeweled Lotus being an issue was a surprise, there was plenty of commentary on that end when it was revealed, and the most optimistic ones on the impact on the format were along the lines of "I don't know how this could make the format better, but maybe it doesn't make it worse."

With all of that, I must add and condemn people who used this as a pretext to attack individuals, most prominently members of the Rules Committee and Commander Advisory Group (the latter of which had no idea this was coming), or more generally people trying to support the ban, and probably some directed at people protesting it too, though I've seen less in the way of very public examples of the latter. Emotions runs hot, the knee-jerk reaction to change is already negative and it's even worse if you feel like you've lost money, but that's no excuse for the kinds of insults, threats and other name-calling that has occurred in startling amounts over the past week. Only a tiny percentage got there, but any amount is too much.

I believe that the negative reactions (the regular ones, not the actively harmful ones), as loud as they are, only represent a small portion of the overall community. The people discussing Magic: The Gathering on the internet are, overall, a small fraction of the playerbase, and tend to be way more into the game than the average player. As such, they're also way more likely to have obtained some of these expensive cards that were banned, and therefore to feel affected by these bans, both monetarily and by needing to remove the cards from their decks. To further that, negative comments are much more likely to get posted (and to linger days later, and keep being posted), than positive ones, or people that don't care enough to post their thoughts to begin with. So even if you see a lot of negativity on this ban in places, I believe it to be the product of a loud minority.

I've also seen people arguing that since Commander is a casual format, it doesn't need a banlist at all and they'll just ignore this one. That's true! If it works for you, that's great, that's the format working as intended! But many people don't have the luxury to curate a personal experience with a specific group, or don't have the time and knowledge to do so. For those, the official banlist provides a good base, and now that base states that stuff that makes a ton of mana early is usually makes for worse games.

TL;DR:

I like the bans on a gameplay perspective, the announcement was out of the blue but the band-aid needed to be ripped off, cEDH will be fine because that's what it was made for, sorry if you lost money on this, but it shouldn't be more important than the health of the entire format, the people shouting loudly are likely a minority, and the people attacking others over it a small minority within that one, but don't be a part of that select group. A banlist is good and one that actually tries to fix things instead of claiming the issues are smaller than they are is also something positive.

[singinginthecar]

south africa was banned in the olympics in 1964, 1968, 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988 & 1992. a total of 8 times. for 28 years they didn't set foot in the olympics. you know why? apartheid. apparently the olympics disagreed with the apartheid regime in south africa. russia & belarus aren't allowed to take part in the olympics this year. you know why? because of their involvement in the war in ukraine. several countries throughout history haven't been allowed to participate in the olympics because of various reason from their involvement in war to human rights abuses. now if the olympics aren't blind to all that... why in the world are they blind to what israel has been doing to gaza for the past 10 months? why is a genocidal apartheid nation allowed to participate in the olympics when any other country in its place would've been banned?

[fly-chicken]

A Pragmatic and surprisingly comforting perspective about the Trump 2nd Presidency from the ACLU

***Apologies if this is how you found out the 2024 election results***

Blacked out part is my name.

I’m not going to let this make me give up. It’s disheartening, and today I will wallow, probably tomorrow too

AND

I will continue to do my part in my community to spread the activism and promote change for the world I want to live in. I want to change the world AND help with the dishes.

And I won’t let an orange pit stain be what stops me from trying to be better.

A link to donate to the ACLU if able and inclined. I know I am

[assiraphales]

so the house of representatives just passed a bill that will now move to the senate to BAN tik tok completely in the united states and they are expected to argue that “national security risks” outweigh the freedom of speech and first amendment rights. biden has already said that if it gets to him, he will sign it. whether or not you use the app…….this is something to be worried about

[whydidisavethistomyphone]

Elon got twitter banned in Brazil, big win for bluesky.

[sunnysatyr]

Hey, if you have half a minute and care about the LGTBQIA+ community in the EU, I'd suggest you take a look at this initiative to ban conversion therapies in the EU.

1 million people are required to sign, but there's barely 100k. The form takes less than a minute, it only requires your ID, name and surname.

Please, help spread the initiative so that it can reach the goal ASAP! If you're not from the EU and can't sign, at least reblog! Thanks in advance.

[zinniajones]

We won! After more than a year since the passage of SB 254, nurse practitioners can prescribe HRT to trans adults in Florida again 💊💉🧑‍⚕️✌️ https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flnd.460963/gov.uscourts.flnd.460963.223.0.pdf

[oldtvandcomics]

The local queer centrum asked us all to support the ban on conversion therapy in the EU initiative, so now it's My Job to do it seriously.

We still need so many signatures. Damn. So. Many. Signatures.

Come on people, we can do this!!

[thekidsfromyestergay]

Insane to me that the UK government is slowly trying to legislate trans people out of existence and I have not seen a single person talk about it

[booksinmythorax]

I'm already seeing advice from people in the US to purchase queer books and other banned or "controversial" books on paper as a way to combat the wave of government censorship that is coming. While this is a good idea (it is! absolutely!), it's not accessible to everyone, and truly, we're not going to be able to consumerism our way out of this one.

If you can buy the books, do. Whether you can buy the books or not, borrow them from your library.

Borrow the paper versions. Borrow the ebook or audiobook versions. Request the titles you want that your library doesn't have. The more a title circulates or is requested, the better librarians are going to be able to defend keeping it if and when it's ever challenged.

Use libraries like @queerliblib too. The more members they have, the better they'll be able to fundraise.

Your community resources depend on you using them. Borrow the books before they go away.

InB4: Piracy is not the solution here. We're trying to keep community resources available, not make sure individual people can read individual books. Different problems.

The books are still available. Borrowing them from your library and returning them on time and in good condition will help keep them that way.

[cremanata]

brazilian miku ♡

twitter | ig | patreon

[toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account]

hey since it's coming up again: no it's not a good thing that the government wants to ban tiktok. no you should not be glad that the government might ban tiktok. no you should not respond to this with "good riddance" or "hurry up I hate that app". I should not have to explain this to you but the government banning a social media app is still a bad thing even if you don't like the UI or booktok or having to say "unalive" or how you think it's killing the very notion of attention spans. It's still bad. It's bad.

[gwydionmisha]

We warned you this is where this is going.

[libraford]

A bill to restrict HRT to age 21+ has been proposed in Ohio.

They are currently taking comments on the issue via the MHA website linked above. The commentary phase ends January 19th at 5pm.

Please take this opportunity to make your voice heard while the window is open.