What would others do ?

So, most players dream of their very own ban list. We have -influenced by our meta- experienced certain cards and decks that ruined some of our game nights, and we don’t want to ever see these cards again. These experiences are of course very indiviualistic. Some may have never seen an Armagaddon crash a game – maybe because noone in their community owns the card, maybe because they made up own rules to prevent such a card from beeing played, or maybe, they don’t feel that such a card is problematic at all ?. We are looking today at other websites, players and thelike, and what they think about banworthy cards.

GET THE BAN-HAMMER !

https://www.coolstuffinc.com/a/abesargent-09032021-top-5-cards-in-commander-id-ban

#6 Expropriate. Why ? Because endless extraturns and playing with and for yourself is boring. This is a community game. If someone would like to just lay out cards and see you can win, you can go for a game of solitaire.

#5 Gaea’s Cradle. Thanks, Abe ! You are one of the few persons who spoke out that lands are hard to answer in Commander and in general is is hard to play against lands – if you autoinclude landdestruction spells (LD) in a reasonable amount so you get sure you draw into such a card, then on the other hand you’d ruin an opponents game by destroying his „normal“ mana producing lands if he doesn’t play a mean land, or you end up with unplayed cards. So LD is a salty playstyle, but very gamechanging lands are undesired, too. Begone !

#4 Survival of the Fittest. This card screams combo. And while we are fair with combos, we try to limit them to the nonsearchable kind. If you just search and search and search for hours and amass piece by piece, this is neither fun nor creative.

#3 Stasis. A slow death is a tortue. stasis just prolongs games, creating a soft or even hard lock, and puts slat into the wound of the outgunned player.

#2 Ad Nauseum. Just the card itself – carddraw at instant speed for life – is not bad by itself. The decks that use this card, and which are accordingly built, just abuse this as an end of turn I will fetch my combo card, and that is not what we prefer. In Teamcommander with 40 life it is even more abusive and unbalanced, so we are amazed that people in FreeforallCommander even think this card is banworthy.

#1 Mana Crypt. Wow, another confession here. So, fast, one sided fast mana without a serious drawback is killing games. It is even reconized that „Sol Ring is a dominant force in this format and can unfairly push someone a few turns ahead“. Great ! So if you don’t want to end up with „if some team draws such a card in their starting hand they win“-games (ok, we exaggerate a bit on this, but sometimes it can feel like this). We are happy to have banned these !

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Well, let’s see: all 6 cards on the list we have also found banworthy and not good cards for the sake of the format – and they are banned in Teamcommander ! So it is a good confirmation.

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But let’s have a look at the new Salt scores at edhrec. What is this ? Salty cards mean cards, which players voted as the most annoying cards which they don’t like to play against, aka ban these cards. The 2021 voting just finished, and while there are more than 3.4 million votings and cards we will just look at the top 6 cards to have a comparison to Abe’s article.

#6 Armageddon. The classic Mass landdestruction spell. No more lands.

#5 Expropriate. Why ? Because endless extraturns and playing with and for yourself is boring. This is a community game. If someone would like to just lay out cards and see you can win, you can go for a game of solitaire.

#4 Vorinclex. The creature form of #2 and #3. While costy and more vulnerable due to being a creature, it also doubles your mana, it can be cheated in, resurrected etc., so when you go for #2 and #3, it is just logically that Vorinclex is also bothering you.

#3 Static Orb. The smaller brother of #2.

# 2 Winter Orb. Completely missing on Abe’s list, but it is a card very similar to Stasis, when timed when playing the card normally the opponents have just 0 untapped lands, will untap a single mana, and, when the decks have higher uncompetetive mana curves, will just untap a land every turn and simply be dead without the possibilty to play any card again before the now boring game ends. Yes, we totally understand the salt in here.

#1 Stasis. Similar to Abe’s list, but on a much higher ranking. Nethertheles we agree.

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Once again: all 6 cards on the list we have also found banworthy and not good cards for the sake of the format – and they are banned in Teamcommander ! So we seem to reflect and fulfil with the Teamcommander list the wishes of a majority of players.

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But, while we banned these annoying cards, you could also argue that our list is just so endlessly long that about every card is listed there. And: the lists have some overlapping cards, but not all cards do match.

Abe’s list centers on 5 things: fast mana (Mana Crypt and Gaea’s Cradle), taking (endless) turns (Expropriate), searching combos (Ad Nauseum and Survival of the fittest). Stasis also adds the hate for cutting players off their ressources / Mana. He doesn’t include Masslanddestruction (MLD) with armageddon, but the mentioning of Stasis or fast mana seems to reflect that he doesn’t like imbalance with mana ressources.

EDHRec’s list is more focussed on mana denial (if you look at cards #7 onwards, you will see Jokulhaups and co). So no MLD, no Winter Orb and co. The main difference is, that combo or searching for combos is also not considered that salty. Overshooting or fast manageneration is also salty but not top priority (Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, Gaea’s cradle), but endless turns / the possibility of taking over or taking several extra turns is also recognized as a threat and potential game ruiner.

So summed up: players tend to dislike mana denial, mass LD, fast, overshooting mana and extra turns. Some dislike the ability to actively and agressively search for combos. Noone is caring for Mass-Discard. Maybe we should overthink this.

Which cards do you like to get banned for Teamcommander ? Which bannings do you disagree with us ?

We are happy for any answer.

Have Fun and Good Games ! – The Team Commander-Team