… or the Reason why we ban certain cards.
Of course there are Millions of different people playing Magic. And of course as everyone has his or her own individual way to play Magic, we mostly do it to have fun. There might be persons out there who play Magic for profit, who play in a very competetive field, but even most of the competetive players like to have fun.
While it is nice to have fun, in a game like Chess or in Sports which is based on a competetive fundamental idea, it is also the goal to win a game. So, though you may not agree to me on this point, sports or competetion (especially when money is involved) may not have the noble principle of everyone having fun, or granting the enemy to have fun, but sports is about winning the game in first playce no matter what it takes comes first. A football club won’t let the enemy team shoot a goal so they feel good or enjoy the match and have fun.
But luckily, there are two things which interfere with the principle of winning being most important over anything else.
- First, most of us aren’t playing for money. We are playing with friends, with fellow gamers, mostly on our level of competition, and so we respect the other players, and we expect them to play fair and nice – we don’t want to be wrecked, beaten up without a chance ourselves – so we should also be a bit fair about our card choices and let other players play with us a game and get involved in the match.
- Second, even when a world class soccer team plays against a school team, they wouldn’t use all their tricks they have up their sleeves and wreck the school team and embaress them in front of anyone. Sure they don’t let them win just because of false pity but they would also (if they are a noble, fair and sportsmanshiplike team) show a bit of respect and treat them fair. In Magic, this would come by the term gentleman’s agreement – or not playing the most devestating combos and cards which will wreck the enemy team within a few turns.
While it is sure nice to see a good tuned Commander deck constantly work out and win, playing its combo-cards, neatlessly synergizing and putting all pieces together and then – bam ! – win the game, it is cheap. Yes, we all did own such Decks, played them, shuffled them properly, and again they just win by turn 2 or 3, that some opponents even might think you stacked your deck. And yes, some might argue: You all who lose against such cEDH Decks could just rebuild your decks, if you can’t counter or interrupt such a deck because your manacurve starts with 3 mana and your Deck even includes cards with 6 or 7 Mana, you are doing something wrong – it is exactly the other way round.
Decks shouldn’t win in Commander by turn 2 or 3. Heck, not even in turn 4 or 5. And Decks should include Cards with 6 and 7 and more mana, even an ELDER DRAGON should be playable in EDH (Elder Dragon Highlander), which is now called Commander.
And that’s actually what is the Art of Playing Magic. There are lots of cEDH lists around, and nowadays with the internet being omnipresent it’s no big deal to print out such a list and rebuild that Deck, and consistantly win in Turn 2 or 3, beating most other „normal“ Commander Decks out there. This neither takes genius nor anything else. Playing such a Deck might look fun seeing the Deck expand and evolve its cards and combos, but it has nothing to do with granting the other players fun, respect or sportsmanship behaviour. Don’t misunderstand the point: sure you should build a Deck which has the goal to win, sure you shouldn’t hold back and play your cards in your hand, sure we also have our staple cards, but you should also try to play Magic in a classy way: build a deck which noone ever dreamt of, win with an Elder Dragon Legend the game or an army of absurdly overdimensionally pumped Plant Tokens. This is classy. This shows genius. This is fun for everyone, this is the stuff epic games are build of. Not a Doomsday combo on turn 2. But even a beaten opponent must admit: hey, I lost today a game to a 50/50 flying Wombat, that was classy.
While the official Commander philosophy sums it up : you can’t ban all combo cards. You can’t ban a top card without pushing the next card in line on a new level of now being the next most powerful card instead.
But at least we can try to keep the game on a level of friendlyness and playworthyness that players have the impression they are participating in a game and not being left out by having no land ressources or no cards they can play or „instantly“ loose the game before they played a single card beside some lands. Some players might feel pushed and might not see the necessarity of certain cards being banned or even might feel we oppress a whole type of Magic Decks while telling we want every Decktype to be viable. We think we still do so. You can still play combos. Maybe not by drawing a Godo, Bandit Warlord,play him, search for the [C]Helm of the Host[/c] and win by just having drawn a single card – but there are other combos. They might include more cards, and not be that easy and fast to assemble. And that’s our goal. You can play landdestruction when that’s what you are really into. You just can’t play an Armageddon (Banned!) anymore while having 2 Manaartifacts by yourself and your partner drawing all mana into his pool and after letting the Armageddon resolve, then he plays a fatty threat, and bc all oppnents are down to 
Mana they simple loose the game. Okay, I guess no more examples are needed, right ? You get it, I am sure.
(The Armageddon example also illustrates that certain cards might even have a bigger impact/synergy/exploitation potential in a Team play: while in a one-on-one situation you can normally either play the Armageddon OR a threat. Or you have to play a threat one turn before, making it vulnerable to being killed one turn long. In a team game, your Teammate can play the creature with his mana the same turn, which leads to a much more deadly outcome.)
Hope we succeded in trying to infuse the spirit of „winning is easy, but can you do it with a red Merfolk-Ninja from hell?“ to the more competetive players.
Your Team Commander Team