Sad Events – Rant

It’s obviously old news at this point but a hot topic all over any mtg based reddit thread. Just kinda sharing the damage at this point.

It’s a bit upsetting that I now have pieces for a game that can no longer technically be used. I think playing at my LGS, most of us are going to be choosing to ignore the bans because logically, who the heck cares about what the Commander Rules Committee has to say about some random game with no stakes that were just playing to unwind and have a good time. Even if it is at a competitive level, like cEDH or just some casual commander. It’s what we like playing with and what we’re happy and comfortable with.

Now with the new “banning” of Mana Crypt, JLo, and Dockside (I don’t care about Nadu), I’m sort of forced to take these game pieces out of my decks because of something coming up though. That something approaching would be MagicCon 2024 Las Vegas. I planned on going with the intent of enjoying spending the entire weekend playing EDH and cEDH and now, I’m just a little less excited about going.

A lot of my decks happen to be 3cmc commanders where Mana Crypt and JLo fit perfectly allowing me to play my commander early and enjoy the rest of the game performing other game actions rather than waiting for turn four to step on the gas, so to speak. I’m okay with cards like these because they allow you to perform more game actions which (hot take or not) make games of magic more fun to play. I don’t really want to wait for 8 land drops to resolve any 8cmc spells because by that time maybe someone already got to do their thing first.

To me, it just meant that I could ramp like a green deck, without having to play a green deck. And more so than not, they either don’t turn up in a game or you get them so late into the game that they don’t matter in the first place. It was just a small chance that you could get your deck to “do the thing” it wants to do sooner. And if the game ends by turn two or three, so what. Shuffle up and play the next one.

These cards never really impacted my games because I’m playing with friends and there’s no stakes to play for. If anything these cards just allow your deck to function better. I get to show off what I built my deck to do that much more efficiently. It feels good to resolve those cards and become “the threat” at the table. It makes people have to engage with me in a way that makes games more reactive and exciting. And I’m not at all opposed to asking other players what sort of game we want to sit down and play. Are we okay playing with fast mana rocks? No, okay. I’ll play a different deck or say, this is a basic land for this game.

There’s also the topic of card value. I don’t care that I lost money, I never intended to buy the cards so I could flip them for profit at a later date. I bought them with the sole purpose to put them in an EDH deck. And now some group of people who I don’t even acknowledge as existing and who likewise didn’t even ask me for my or for that matter anyone else’s opinion on this topic are saying I can’t play the game with these game pieces that I bought to play this specific casual game? Okay then I guess these cards will just live in my binder then since the have no value to me otherwise.

The short of it is, I really don’t care what they say cause my friends and I are going to play the cards we want to play and it’s not like the RC is gonna bust down our door because we’re playing with banned cards in a game.

This ban hit 7 of my decks, which I guess I can live without, but man, those two extra turns per game are gonna be boring.

TLDR: Recent bannings right before I’m going to attend MagicCon 2024 Las Vegas make me less excited to go because all I planned on doing was playing casual games of EDH and cEDH. I’ve lost value but I don’t care, I’m more upset about losing access game pieces for a game I enjoy because they make the game more engaging and exciting in the long run.

Just wanted to share my thoughts about this little “Oof” moment in my mtg play experience. I guess this is the one time buying singles kinda bit me in the butt.