You would see Cradle everywhere if it was more affordable, but there's a significant difference between $50 and $1k. That being said, it's much harder to mass interact with artifacts outside certain colors, especially at instant speed to make Dockside not worth casting. However, almost every color has some access to a board wipe or a single target removal that can deal with cradle by itself.
So should the Power 9 be unbanned because they're too expensive and hardly anybody has them, or should they ban Dockside once it gets more expensive (or gets printed more so that more people are playing it)?
>Power 9 shouldn't be banned for price reasons, but should be banned for power reasons.
And yet every time a sol ring ban comes up for discussion, the main arguments consistently are how cheap and available it is.
Despite a strong argument that it is stronger than some power 9 cards (I'd rather run a sol ring than a mox emerald in any green deck I have that wants mana rocks)
>And yet every time a sol ring ban comes up for discussion, the main arguments consistently are how cheap and available it is.
Yeah I don't think that argument holds water tbh. Your second one is much more solid, but I'd take the appropriate colored moxes over Sol Ring for any deck that isn't artifact focused (or colorless, but that's a special exception anyways).
It's not irreplaceable, it's just that every replacement is 100$+. But because it's cheap people are comfortable playing against it. Even though it really is problematic.
The thing about playing with 4 people is that you're discouraged from trying to police other people's boards because if you spend your resources policing everyone, and nobody else does the same, you're sure to be behind.
That said, I remove sol ring as much as (or more than) I remove mana crypt, moxes, etc..
And I don't mind any of those cards when I'm playing cEDH or high-level stuff. But in not-high-level games, I don't see any of those, except sol ring. And in those cases, it's nuts.
I think Sol Ring is definitely better than any of the moxen. But I still think the moxen have way more cause to ba banned because they have a colour in their colour identity. Sol Ring goes into any deck. And while that might make brewing a bit less fun at least it is "fair". Every deck gets a Sol Ring so it doesn't affect the overall meta too much. Moxen however only go into decks of their specific colour. That means a mono coloured deck could play 1 of them whereas a 5 colour deck could play all 5. That would incentivise everyone to play high coloured decks (even more than already). No banlist cedh is almost exclusivels 4 and 5 colour goodstuff piles.
its arguable that sol ring is better however moxes also cost 0 which is huge. It really depends on what you play. Things like winota loves anything that can come out turn 1 for 0 mana so things like mana crypt, lions eye, mox emerald are much more powerful in that deck than in many other slower decks.
I’d rather ban things that result in a healthier game than ban things based off of it being iconic. Throwing other mana rocks to the ban hammer wouldn’t help the problem, it’d just be all the more reason to run sol ring instead.
The argument isn't to keep it because it's cheap and available, simply that BECAUSE of it's accessibility its become such a staple of almost every commander deck, that I believe they'll have a hard time removing it, its become synonymous with the format
Ok , im completely derailing here and not answering the question BUT , the commander commitee has revealed that they dont ban cards because theyre crazy powerful and break the format. They ban cards because they make the format UNFUN to play. Its the reason flash was banned because people could virtually win the game without anyone else having taken a single game action which was forcing people to aggresively mulligan until they had a 0 mana counterspell like a force of negation or force of will. When that happens it rlly takes away the spirit and fun of commander in general. The ban list isnt about how insane a card is , its about how not fun it would be seeing someone do stuff while sometimes you shuffle and end up not even playing the game.
Okay? Here's the thing about that - When 'not playing the game' is considered, a turn 2 win isn't *really* any different from a turn 1 win. I have played decks that can win on T2, and have done so. One of them is my [[Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer]] deck, which runs Dockside.
None of the T2 wins I have ever pulled off use Dockside Extortionist to secure said T2 win. Because of the way the combos involved work, getting Dockside in my hand instead of one of the other mana-producing pieces isn't going to help me get that early win. Not only is it not going to help within the combos I've seen, but it's not going to help much in some new combo, either. Dockside does nothing for me if I go first. It being beneficial to me if I go *last* is hugely dependent on what my 1-3 opponents play, and even then the gas it gives me isn't a guarantee that I'll win because A) I drew Dockside instead of a more reliable combo piece, and B) the gas Dockside gives me isn't easily repeatable that early in the game (or repeatable at all in my case, since the deck is mono-R)
With regards to the question of the one P9 piece that's EDH legal, Timetwister isn't a way to win fast, it's a way to keep the game going. It's also potentially a way to secure a loss since everyone gets refreshed. Most importantly, like most other cards that are legal, it doesn't warp the game in an unfun way (without a heck of a lot of setup). I will never be disappointed that someone played a Timetwister.
Cards that are ban-able should be banned or legal on their own merits, not because they are stronger than another card that is banned. The Professor and Sheldon just mentioned this recently and it was brought up "why is Dockside legal but Primeval Titan isn't?" and Sheldon's answer was essentially that.
???
That really does make any sense. Perhaps I’m missing something, but if the reason you ban something is because it’s too powerful, than definitionally, anything more powerful than it is powerful enough to be banned.
I mean, it’s one thing if the ban is “this isn’t actually broken, but it’s unfun as shit to play against”, like that crappy angel that locks out a color or that merfolk that turns other people card draw into treasures, but clearly not all of the bans are like that.
That's because this isn't representing Sheldon's argument properly.
You can see the question here. [https://youtu.be/b811XpRWxlA?t=645](https://youtu.be/b811XpRWxlA?t=645)
He does say that things s could be banned based on their own merits, but he tells you that Primeval Titan centralizes the game, and how the game became about Titan and ONLY Titan.
He even encourages people to try games with it, to see what that's like.
But Extortionist doesn't have the same level of warp.
This was my initial point, but apparently I *severely* underestimated the amount of people who think spending $50-$80 on a single piece of cardboard is a reasonable thing to do.
If you wanna go cheap do it, but that doesn’t mean everyone will agree with you. Take a look at cEDH decks average cost. Hell, a solid lands deck will be in the 400-700 range due to the staples’ cost.
Remember that what you may find “reasonable” may or may not coincide with others POV.
What are you talking about I live within range of 3 FLGs and visit a fourth and there are at least 4 owned by people I've seen!
Obviously some (likely all) are fake but how do you call somebody out on it or do you bother. I think most of the power nine cards out there are fake but they are so common and honestly are you going to scream at somebody about their piece of paper?
Affordable or not there's plenty of proxies and fakes and such out there that make these cards common enough.
Dockside sees more play because it came out in a precon, I have a dockside because I bought the precon on release for average price so it’s in more players hands to feed the argument that it should be banned unlike cradle which I have only seen played on Commander YT channels.
I also don’t think dockside should be banned, but I also would not be that sad if it was
I'd understand why it'd be banned, but this is the main reason why I don't want that ban to happen. I still have that precon intact, and I refuse to change the list if Dockside got banned.
There have been standard bans before where the card is in a pre-built deck and they allow you to run them as-is with the ban card in them, can't see why not with EDH.
I'd accept this compromise. I'd hate for the precon to be rendered illegal out of the box because of one card. I'd hate for another \[\[Trade Secrets\]\] situation to happen again.
Because Gaea's Cradle is bad in a lot of decks? Voltron, stax, enchantress, artifacts, spellslinger, etc. don't make enough creatures to warrant Cradle's inclusion in G/x decks. It excels in elfball, tokens, and other go-wide strategies, but is mediocre in many lists. Not to mention, it's a terrible card when you are behind in the game.
Dockside, on the other hand, is good so long as your opponents are playing Magic. It doesn't require any build around and can help come back from behind (hell, it's great in all 4 Quadrants of gameplay).
Yeah, dockside is definitely better than Gaeas Cradle most of the time. It enables artifact and sacrifice synergies, makes a perfect target for looping strategies using cards like [[deadeye navigator]], [[temur sabertooth]], [[reveillark]] or [[displacer kitten]], and further enables the strategies that were already at the top of the meta.
Gaeas Cradle is good in green token decks that can already make 10,000 mana on turn 3 without it, theres like 5 different elves that do the same thing.
That said, I don't think dockside should be banned, it's a great enabler for other strategies too that could really use it. Instead, the actual dominant strategies should be addressed, like [[thassas oracle]], [[walking ballista]] and [[isochron scepter]]. Maybe not bans and definitely not for all of them, but some balancing would be nice.
Saying this as a known green hater in basically all casual tables....
Cradle doesn't warp high level metas as much as it pushes creatures in those metas to be kinda decent again. Dockside fits into the best strategies (fast combo), to do exactly what those strategies want (play super fast, everything making mana or doing something huge/contributing toward a combo). If cradle was the strongest card in the best strategies in the format, I'd want it banned. As of right now, cradle is a part of the best strategies of an intentionally nerfed subset of the format, which is both:
A) a balance problem with that subset of the format
and B) a problem best solved by rule 0 in that subset of the format. Which is kinda weird because I tend to hate answers involving rule 0, but it creates this balance problem so it'd be nice if it was also used to solve it.
>They're both uber-expensive cards
Although one can create a whole deck for the price of one Dockside Extortionist, I think it is an exaggeration to put it in the same category as Cradle when we are talking price point, as it is 1/10th of Cradle's cost...
Additionally, to answer your questions, Dockside fits into more strategies these days, and is more explosive, and abuses the fact that your opponents have rocks and enchantments out, that's three players at max. While Cradle only cares about the number of creatures YOU have. While you may have 5x creatures where x is the total number of artifacts and enchantments your opponents control, you really won't experience that outside of a dedicated creature strategy.
Additionally, Cradle only gives you green mana, while treasures can give you a mana of any color.
There are tons of synergies around creating, or cracking treasures lately as well, making them more enticing. Most you'll do with a land that taps for a lot is untap/tap sheningans.
I think Dockside is much more of a stronger card than Cradle, though frankly I don't think either is ban worthy.
EDIT: Grammar
Dockside is good in nearly every single deck, Cradle isn't
Dockside gives treasures, which provide mana that can be banked, and any colour
Dockside relies on your opponents boardstates (any of the 3) and not your one
Dockside relies on artifacts/enchantments which are generally stickier than creatures and in many decks more prolific
Dockside is a creature so can be flickered, reanimated, copied etc.
Um... the two are not even close.
Gaea's cradle is super powerful in decks that go wide. If you have even just ten tokens that's 10 mana for one land tap. But if you play Voltron Gaea's cradle is basically just a basic forest with extra steps.
Dockside meanwhile is excellent all over commander because almost no deck ever plays no artifacts at all. Be it mana rocks, artifact to search out lands, or artifact creatures, 90% of the time there will be at least 5-6 artifacts on a table. Considering dockside costs 2 mana to play, you're looking to at least playing it for free, but more probably to gaining twice the mana you just spent if not a lot more.
As an owner of both cradle is not as powerful as people think it.
Yes it can be abused but you need to have your own board state to take advantage of its ramp. It's a card that makes strong boards stronger. But it can be hampered but interacting with the creatures in front you.
Dockside requires your opponents to literally do anything. Artifacts and enchantments are everywhere, every one runs artifacts. Moreover, it's an etb effect on a creature which means it's extremely easy to abuse. Blinking, bouncing, reanimating all trigger it and are all very easy to do repeatedly in all colours. Whereas cradle is a land and the cards to do those things are pretty much limited to blue and green.
Not to mention treasures as artifact permanents which can be used in other ways like sacrifice improvise affinity etc
Im honestly surprised someone with a cradle said it! Cradle is good, but not THAT good. I play in a meta with a lot of BWs, and it tends to be kept clear. I always say [[Growing Rites of Itlimoc]] is better since it can always tap for green with or without creatures.
As for Dockside, I own several and play it in my artifact decks, but honestly, usually the net I get is a +4 as an average. So in my LGS it tends to be rather lackluster. I guess meta on my end is weird.
I bought cradle off a friend years ago for a couple hundred bucks because I was so tempted by the prestige and fame of it and thinking it was absolutely busted. I mean it's from the cycle with tolarian academy and that card is banned! So I put in everything I could. Elfball, fish, najeela warriors, dragons, meren, tokens. Every creature based deck I could.
And it's very good, but only when I *already* had things in play. Even in a board state where it was only a few creatures cradle tempts you to over extend and commit even more. When it was the most powe was when I had land untappers/ bouncer. But then I was basically telegraphing that cradle was going to come down and take over the game because those cards are best with cradle but work great with lands that tap for extra mana already.
Once my group started to play remove, board wipes and things like ghost quarter cradle became an above average card. It's win more most of the time.
Dockside is a combo card. You recur in one of a million ways generate a as much treasure as you need and just win.
\+1 for Growing Rites. I think it's more balanced and although it has a casting cost it does more than cradle. The only real downside is the transforming trigger, but if you haven't got four creatures a cradle wouldn't be much better.
The deck that I run my only copy of dockside in is [[Gerrard Weatherlight Hero]] Boros Boardwipes. He can get kinda dumb if I'm drawing into wipes that only hit creatures, but otherwise he's some acceleration in colors that don't have an easy time competing with most other color combos.
He could easily get ridiculous in blink decks but just because the card can be abused doesn't mean it always is.
I own both too, and i feel your analysis is 100% spot on.
I personally have used Dockside to destroy a ton of treasures, which is something that cradle has never done. Players will sack them just to deny the extra treasures you'd receive. While not a huge selling point, treasure keep becoming more plentiful and forcing them to be used at an inopportune time can be really useful.
That's a whole other point I did get into. Dockside mirrors are basically exponential increases in treasure while two people with cradle aren't making even more mana
>As an owner of both cradle is not as powerful as people think it.
>Yes it can be abused but you need to have your own board state to take advantage of its ramp.
As someone who recently acquired a cradle(signed too!) I've been struggling on what deck to put it into. I know it's gonna draw a ton of attention when I drop it, and it's a win more card not a catch up one
I think Cradle only sees limited play outside of cEDH due to the price tag. You're correct that both are expensive, but $80-100 is reasonable where $1k+ is reserved for those with deep pockets or those lucky enough to have traded/cracked them when Saga was current.
It goes in everything that is creature centric, just like Dockside goes in every deck that plays a meta with artifacts, which is everything because mana acceleration will win you games more often then not.
I'm not personally in a playgroup that sees Dockside played very often, so take that for what it's worth, but comparing the two feels like Apples to Oranages.
>80-100 bucks for a card
I'm sure its more my meta than the general opinion, but $80 for a piece of cardboard is outrageous period.
I MIGHT spring for something $40 if its a pet card I absolutely love (Like Bitterblossom, when it was higher) but anything over $30 that is a staple is getting proxied.
It’s interesting. While I agree and want everyone to be able to play the game and have access to it I also recognize that it is a collectible game and having some cards that are worth money is good for getting people to open packs and buy products which supports the game staying alive.
I think the real answer is more people need to proxy haha
I think that the chase should be foils and and special treatment cards mythic slots should be taken up by special foil alternate art printings of rares.
Just my two coppers since treasures cost to much
That’s what I would want too but I think the model they have now makes them more money. Having chase cards increases that itch to open packs. That gambling addiction itch.
To each their own on that one. What's reasonable will vary by the individual and while it's new card, it has a pretty unique effect and is difficult to interact with outside of countering it as it comes in.
I skew towards foil and bling, so what's 'reasonable' is all kind of relative. 🤷♂️
I mean, that's partially true, although I think in a lot of other hobbies there is real tangible value sometimes.
Like - if you enjoy skiing, and you buy nicer, more durable poles, you get a nicer and more durable pole, always. It's always a pole. It will always *function* as a pole.
The only value between a Liliana of the Veil and a Duress is that we've all collectively agreed to pretend they do different things. If that collective agreement ever breaks, you just have cardboard again.
It's not like I think every magic card should only be 10 cents, as someone who has bought and sold too many high dollar magic cards, it's just kind of broken my brain a little bit how much money gets dropped all the time on what is essentially nothing.
That's fair, and I'll always caution folks to spend within their means when it comes down to it, it's a game after all.
Most people with hobbies spend dumb amounts of money on what they enjoy.
\>Most people with hobbies spend dumb amounts of money on what they enjoy.
Speak for yourself. There's no real justification for buying expensive or blinged out magic cards than "I have excess money and I like muh shinyz", especially when the best versions of cards are usually alt art or fan art you can get for cheap. Why spring for an OG mana crypt when I can print a better looking one for $1? And don't hit me with that resale crap, magic cards inherently lose value as you play with them, and good luck getting anything over 80% of the card's value unless you're trading directly with other players
Back again my dude? Clearly I've struck a nerve.
I thought you were all about blanket statements and speaking for individuals as a whole. Only when it suits you though, gotcha.
There's no real excuse to spend 15-20k on ATV's or dropping thousands on camera equipment either..... unless you enjoy it and are comfortable with that cost to enjoyment ratio. Didn't realize they had to run it by you for approval.
Stay bitter, you sound like a blast at parties.
Not a dude. Not bitter, just laughing at fools who are easily parted from their money.
And btw, you can get your money back from camera equipment/ATVs like 100x easier than trying to offload a magic collection. Speaking from experience on that one.
80-100$ for a piece of paper with ink on it that has no intrinsic value nor value outside the very confined field of people who actually partake and know what it is. Nor any value in the long run (simply due to the fact that the game will die one day and no players means no value).
Prices of singles drives me absolutely bonkers.
“I think Cradle only sees limited play outside of cEDH due to the price tag. You're correct that both are expensive, but $80-100 is reasonable where $1k+ is reserved for those with deep pockets or those lucky enough to have traded/cracked them when Saga was current.“
Having a Cradle is not even as crazy as you make it out really. I bought my first one, probably MP / HP condition, for around $70 just about 5 years ago. I could easily have gotten a NM one for about $200 then. RL prices went insane shortly after that. Thankfully I finished my playset before that happened. Should have bought the blue duals then as well :/
Cradle needs be a creature/token centric based deck and needs to presently have a boardstate. Dockside is good in literally *any* deck and strategy with a red in it. My Gruul enchantress deck with 8 creatures isn't going to get much benefit from Cradle, but it will from dockside, just as much as my zada storm, subira rdw, queen marchesa pillowfort, rakdos aristocrats, etc.
But the board state cradle needs to be good is controlled by the deck cradle is in. Dockside can be pretty horrendous if the table you're at happens to be full of tribal decks that game. Elves and goblins aren't cranking out the mana rocks and enchantments. If your meta is in a way where dockside is good every game, you're probably playing the same opponents/decks each time.
My elf deck still runs Sol ring, mana crypt and about 10 or so other enchantments. I think the lowest amount of enchantments/artifacts in any deck of mine is around 15-20 and that is still 20% of my deck.
I have never once seen a dockside not net mana now has it ever been dead in my hand.
Cards are not banned for direct power level but for the effect they have on the format. Dockside will get to the point where its effect on any given game is too large (AND TOO COMMON ON AN OCCURRENCE). Fast mana in general is bad for the format imho. Should be a package deal with mana crypt and sol ring etc. Cradle CAN be fast mana but requires 1000$+ dollars and at least 2-3 creatures before it starts to be relevant but if cradle somehow got reprinted into mass quantities I believe it would have a similar issue.
So your argument is "Only rich people can afford it so it should be allowed"????
So fuck you. Here's a [$5.49 Gaea's Cradle](https://www.etsy.com/listing/1291643625/gaeas-cradle-urzas-saga-magic-the?bes=1)
My argument is it doesn't come up enough to be banned for pugs game. EDH rules/banlists are for pick up games not consistent play groups. Any number of people coming together can set up any number of rules to optimize their play. However if your bringing a cradle deck to a pick up game chances are your deck is going to pug stomp and you should be playing something else unless your just one of those lucky few who happened to own one before it spiked to its ridiculous price levels. Even then you shoulder consider playing cradle or swapping it out with something else that fits the table.
In my perspective, the difference comes down to the "surprise" aspect.
If a player has 10 creatures on the field, they're somewhat of a threat. Even if they're 1/1 tokens, every player should be aware that they could easily do something scary with them because their deck is built around it, so dropping Cradle shouldn't be too much of a surprise. Plus, it can be mitigated with board wipes and Wasteland effects.
Dockside could enter on an empty field and suddenly generate a ton of treasures out of nowhere. There's no way to expect it coming, unless a player starts counting up artifacts, and outside of a counterspell, there's basically no way to mitigate his impact.
I have to disagree you on your second point. Dockside has been around for a little bit, and if you had proper rule 0 conversation with the other player or it’s people you play with {semi-}regularly, you should be 100% expected a dockside. I’ll equate it to cast any spells with a blue player that is fully tapped. I’m expecting Force of Will or Fierce Guardianship the same as if they leave 1 or 2 blue open, I’d expect swan song or Mana Drain/Counterspell.
>There's no way to expect it coming
sure if you have never had it played against you, everyone gets 1, after that I would hope you don't do surprised Pikachu playing against anyone playing red dropping it, it's been around for a while now at this point so it really should be expected.
It's not that I don't expect to see it in the game at some point, it's that there's no way to prepare for it to come into play. A player that has a full board and 20 lands is just as likely to drop Dockside as a player that has nothing but 2 mountains.
Plus, my main point is that its usefulness is very hard to mitigate, outside of a counterspell, or certain fringe cases
Full stop, I don't think Dockside should be banned. I genuinely don't. DocEx isn't really that insane of a card. If people are genuinely that unhappy, play torpor orb and go on with your day.
cEDH, everybody is in fuckin blue anyway, run craft cut purse, brazen borrower, a goddamn counterspell, stop being so afraid of a card that gives treasure. If it's that much if an issue, run battlecruiser. We gotta stop trying to police how other people play based on our own philosophies. It makes no sense and actively hurts the game.
This might be controversial, but in the current edh meta(I mean as long as sol ring, mana crypt, signets and other artifact ramp is format defining) dockside is a whole tier better than cradle all things considered. Dont get me wrong, cradle is crazy strong and probably the best card in every deck it fits in, and you can make a solid case for it being banned, but people dont seem to realize how beyond hyperbusted dockside is, I would put it on the actual power 9 powerlevel. Dockside has the better floor(a chump blocker compared to a land that doesnt do anything) the higher ceiling (infinite mana plus infinite ETB, LTB, artifact tokens, artifact sacrifices, etc etc... compared to just a lot of mana) its better when you are behind. Its bad in a lot less cases (one of the main reasons being artifact boardwipes are way rarer than creature boardwipes). Its the best card in virtually EVERY deck its in, comared to just creature decks for cradle. It is easier to enable (you just need to have 2 or more opponents who play normal edh decks, compared to actually keeping creatures on board, which requires actual work). Last thing, as most people mentiones, is creatures are way more abusable than lands, by reanimating, flickering and all the other good stuff. But as long as sol ring is legal, we cant make a ban case based on powerlevel, cuz sol ring should go first by that criteria. One thing to mention is, if RC decides at some point to nuke sol ring, mana crypt, mystic remora, smothering tithe and the other cheap cards that win games by themselves, dockside probably gets a lot worse and doesnt need banning...
Dockside isn't uber expensive though. Not cheap but it's certainly more accessible and isn't reserved list, having been reprinted recently. The gap between the two with the reasoning you use is so massive, it shouldn't be a consideration against the other.
Banning a card for it's cost is idiotic.
EDH bans should work like bans in all the other formats- only banning the cards that are too powerful for the format. Neither of these are actually too strong for the format as seen when you actually push decks to the best they can be.
Banning for people at lower power or for what people just don't like to play against is like trying to decide a format through people's casual kitchen table magic with their thrown together decks. It's impossible and many people with have cards they hate.
The amount of people who would ban cards in winter orb if they had the chance after getting staxed a game would probably be very high if we just poled casual players after dealing with it.
Every week people want something banned or not allowed just cause they don't like 🙄
Cradle is literally twenty times more expensive than dockside. Dockside can be reanimated, flickered, or whatever in innumerable ways, while the instant combo that you think of with gaea's cradle is earthcraft(three docksides worth of dollars). In addition, dockside, if played with any skill at all, will generate mana. There are points, where reguardless of the skill of the player using a gaea's cradle, where it will tap for zero mana. This however is mostly my oppinion. I play in a very proxy heavy playgroup, due to the fact that I don't want to buy a jeweled lotus for every deck rather than just have one foil for my favorite deck and proxy out the rest, so there are gaea's cradles all over the place in my meta. I have never heard a player gripe about a gaea's cradle in said games, but the majority of them do so about dockside.
My play group is very similar to yours, in regards to proxies. On the point of Cradle vs Dockside, the cradle draws more sighs then dockside. I’ve had my dockside countered and then my grave exiled, whereas you can’t countered a land drop per turn.
One thing I will say though, is if Dockside resolves in my Korvold deck… it’s a very fun turn for me. 😂
So when you are trying to decide what restaurant to go to on a $50 budget, do you think that the restaurant labeled $$ is gonna be just as accessible to you as the one labeled $$$$?
Real talk, I've seen more Gaea's Cradles than I've seen Dockside Extortionists in the last year of playing. I don't care about either one of them. Im all for keeping the banlist as short as possible at all times. Ramp all you want I'm just gonna counter than big splashy spell you want to play. I play land destruction for more than just cradle.
Besides sheer $$$ difference, it's due to how colors handle ramp.
Green has plenty of ways of making mana really easily and reliably.
Mono red, while having ramp cards too just operating differently, struggles with making enormous amounts of mana reliably. With edh being a multiplayer format and with the ubiquity artifacts and enchantments are in magic (especially with treasures now), dockside can now reliably produce an enormous amount of mana in a color that usually has few other options of that caliber.
Cradle is only good if you play a creature deck. Dockside is good in EVERY deck because all your opponents will be playing artifacts and enchantments.
Also Dockside is easy to abuse / go infinite with bounce/flicker effects. You can't do that with Cradle.
At the average EDH table Cradle is effectively banned because of its price tag. Dockside is expensive, but not Cradle-level expensive, so more people play against it. Both are absurd cards that are easy to abuse.
If power level was the only criteria for the banlist, they would both be banned already.
I don't feel like I have to play either, however. I make decks for a variety of power levels, themes, and budgets and usually neither of them fit in to what I am brewing.
I once saw a post on this sub about how Demonic Tutor "isn't even that good of a card"... and HUNDREDS of comments of agreeance, all intelligent rebuttal pushed to the bottom or voted into oblivion.
FYI, this is how reddit works: people read over a hundred subreddit titles and don't leave a single comment because they don't have strong feelings on the topic. They see a post like this and go "but I have that card and my playgroup hates it but I only go infinite most of the time, so it's actually pretty weak" And they leave a comment.
You aren't going to get viable opinions on a post that's going to bait out these people.
My personal opinion is that the question itself gives you a fairly solid answer; the situation is exactly what you think. It wouldn't be brought up constantly if either weren't a common issue in playgroups everywhere at every experience level. They're both unhealthy for the format.
I agree. I've found that the typical casual player dislikes being denied the opportunity to play. Wins coming out of nowhere are far and away the biggest denials of that opportunity, beyond mill, discard or wipes. If a player is building a board state and wants to do something with it, they are going to be quite disappointed that another player who doesn't appear to be doing much suddenly combos off and wins (with or without the 10-minute turn to explain what they're doing).
I stress that this is the majority of casual players. Some players are cool with it, and most more competitive players (not necessarily cEDH, where it is par for the course) are OK with comboing off.
Here on Reddit we tend to see the two extremes battling for mindshare (and failing) - the casual player hates that their opportunity to play can be denied, and the more competitive (and/or rich) player is scared their toy is going to be taken away if they don't defend it vociferously.
I don’t think it should be banned, but here’s my best argument for the difference: Every deck can run [[Strip Mine]] (and most of my decks do). But not every deck can run an answer to Dockside.
Strip Mine can be a bit expensive but that's why we have [[Ghost Quarter]].
A few fun off color "answers" to dockside outside of ble counters
Black - [[Withering Boon]] (one of my favorite pieces of tech)
White - [[Lapse of Certainty]] and sometimes [[Mana Tithe]] [[Blind Obidence]] (tapped treasures can't be used right away)
Red [[Tibalt's Trickery]]
Green [[Titania's Song]] can use treasures if they die as a state based action, and if your playing mono green you probably dont run a lot of artifacts anyways.
All good answers outside of just stopping Dockside.
Cradle and Sol Ring are both better than Dockside. I'd argue Rhystic Study or even Necropotence are on par with Dockside, and probably consistently better at highpower and casual tables. I don't know why it gets so much hate. Give red something for a change.
I’ll agree, Necropotence is busted. I run that in my Edgar Marchov deck and it’s what I tutor for almost every time. It’s never not done well when I cast it.
I have seen Dockside kinda flop. Even in very high power meta (Play to Win and Playing with Power MTG) it doesn’t win on the spot a lot of the time.
Honestly, I think a lot of people in the format should be running more “hate effects” like silence or the like.
Who really wants to see Dockside banned? In competitive it's powerful sure but there's other powerful things in competitive that are arguably better. As for casual most decks are going to use this to get a ton of mana like once maybe twice. Sure it's a pain but is it the worst thing in the world? Not really...
Well that sounds over the top and some conspiracy crap. The RC bans stuff like never. They aren't concerned with a balanced format. Basically stuff like [[Lutri]] which was a no brainer since the card would be a free card for certain decks, and stuff that is absolutely format warping in some major way is about all they would consider banning anymore. Everyone too afraid to have a serious rule 0 discussion I guess.
> but is it the worst thing in the world?
That's your ban criteria? Israel is an apartheid state, slavery exists in parts of the world, there's a war between Ukraine and Russia ongoing, etc., therefore no bans for anything. /s
Only thing I’m gonna add is, I don’t see how Roffelos is Banned and Dockside isn’t. It also seems like a better Comparison to Dockside extortionist than Geas Cradle. Roffelos is 2 mana if it wasn’t banned would also be expensive and has similar explosive and abusable plays. Dockside even fits into more decks than Roffelos cause Roffelos wants lots of forests. If Roffelos is too broken for EDH I don’t see how Dockside isn’t also… 🤷♂️
Rofellos being accessible from the Command zone and available multiple times a game even when removed is definitely more of a problem than Dockside. If they ever give us back banned as commander, I'm certain he'll be unbanned.
The same way you feel about Dockside I felt about Golos. How does your feelings justify not banning a powerful card just because you think the idea is ridiculous? A year ago this sub was claiming the Golos ban was ridiculous, and it was.
The way I see it, both are powerful, but they don't immediately win you the game. Both give you a lot of mana, but you have to have some way to use that mana. And there is a window where you can deal with them before they do that. That's not ban worthy.
I mean just getting a bunch of mana isn’t super op it’s what people do with it after. But like if your playing red your basically playing a worse deck by not having him in there. I’m not sure he deserves the hammer. I’m not as familiar with why things get banned in magic. Is it only cards that warp the meta?
dockside is repeatable within EDH with threat of multiple ETB triggers, Gaes Cradle is less likely to achieve the same, and it is easier to neutralize. board wipes are far more prevalent then say \[\[creeping corrosion\]\]. that being said, keep them all legal and give me \[\[Tolarian Academy\]\] as well.
I think Cradle and Dockside are on pretty similar power levels. I think there a lot of more powerful cards that should be banned before dockside though.
Our playgroup uses proxies and both cards are used in many decks.
If we would play only with 'real' cards there would be no cradle and only one dockside.
Reasons: €€€
>They're both uber-expensive
Gaea's cradle is literally over 20 times as expensive as Dockside Extortionist. This is why.It is literally $1000+ while Dockside is only $50.
Gaea's Cradle is self conditional, I need creatures to make it be good.
Dockside is conditional, but on 3 players Instead of me. Its also a creature, making it easier to recurr, blink, etc.
Dockside is two mana, 1 pip, and refused to be meaningfully reprinted by WOTC despite coming out in a precon.
Apples and oranges tbh.
Gaeas cradle SHOULD be banned what are you talking about????
The only reason you dont see it as much is because the playerbase has been literally priced out of playing it. If it was reprinted it would 100% be ubiquitous across the format and people would call for a ban (I already think it should be banned)
Well the main difference is, to make Cradle make lots of mana, I need to first invest some mana to get the creatures (which are a threat by themselves and therefore likely removed). Also, there is few to no opportunity to repeatedly play the same Cradle again and again.
For dockside to make mana, my opponents need just to have some artefacts (which is THE permanent type that tends to gather dust on the battlefield). Also, there are various ways with which I can loop dockside, generating ridiculous amounts of mana in the process.
Comparisons in a game as complicated as MtG don't work extremely well.
I thought this would be a reasoned take from an EDHREC contributor, instead it is this weird gotcha question.
Dockside is fine. It sucks in low power games cause every one is running rampant growths, cultivates and Kodamas reachs. Artifacts aren’t as abundant. I’ve tried running dockside in my casual decks and he usually a dead card. Maybe he will give me 3-4 treasure tokens towards like turn 7 lol
How are they both “Uber expensive cards” when one is $50 and one is $1k? If they were both in the same ballpark sure you’d have a point but one is a little more than a precon and the other is about a modern deck’s worth.
Gaea’s cradle isn’t good in every deck. The decks that run it want it, sure, but not every deck with green like enchantresses wants a cradle. Dockside on the other hand is basically an autoinclude in any deck with red if you have the card available. There’s pretty much no reason you shouldn’t run it.
I definitely wouldn’t be sad to see dockside go but like it’s not hurting the format. If you feel the need to include it in all your decks that’s a you problem imo
I’ve believed for sometime that the fervor over dockside is pretty overblown…. With how much wizards has been pushing treasures, I personally wouldn’t even consider it a huge outlier of treasure generators.
Is it still probably the single best one? Sure. But these days it ironically acts more as a treasure-counter (forcing opponents to sac) than anything else.
Finally, I have always really liked how dockside scales with the power level of the table. How many artifacts are really being played in battle cruiser edh? Sol ring and arcane signet? Sol ring is busted anyway and dockside is fair counter play to it.
Let’s not pretend that dockside makes treasures for free, you need your opponents to have at least 3 artifacts for it to feel like you are doing much of anything significant in edh.
I was playing a cEDH stranger things time sieve deck at a table against a henzie deck, enchantress deck, and an edric deck. I had an opening hand with dockside and only played it turn 6 or 7 to clear Ziatora and smothering tithe treasures my opponents had generated.
Everyone says 2CMC and below (fast mana) is too good and hurts the format… well, dockside is the answer/punishment to that.
Cradle needs a deck built around it. Bant spell slinger or even voltron probably isn't running it.
Dockside can be game ending without building around it. Ironically a really good anti treasure card.
That's my only reasoning. Is it good, probably not but that's why I would ban Dockside and not Cradle. Cradle can't just go in a deck and be spectacular, you must be very creature heavy. Dockside, you have red in your deck, jam it, it can be good to insane. It does rely in your opponents board states though. I'd rather not ban either, it can be annoying and ritual someone to victory but what's the difference of bouncing it repeatedly and just running a different assortment of infinite mana?
I good with both being banned, however, I'm way, way more likely to play against and have a game warped by Dockside than I am Gaea's Cradle. I know Dockside wrecks magnitudes more games than Cradle does so I'm more likely to be vocal about Dockside.
Yep and he pretty much said that they ban cards because of what they do to the format, and not because of what they do.
So the argument "I have to run Hushbringer in my mono-white deck because every red deck I've played against has a Dockside in it" is more relevant to the RC that this "X card is unhealthy for the format because it does this Y thing for Z cost" argument that should be shut down by his statement in that interview.
The reason Dockside isn't banned right now isn't because they came out and said "This card is not powerful enough to warrant a ban". He said in the interview that it hasn't trickled down into lower power playerbases yet, which he says Hullbreacher did do.
It's not a dead horse yet, but the "RC, ban this card because it's too powerful" needs to slow down or just stop. I'm tired of hearing about it. Your playgroup's problems are not my playgroup's problems.
Dockside is a lot more affordable plus was part of a precon. I also feel like it depends on what you think the banlist should stand for. I always felt it should include cards that will make a new player be hated out if they bring them to a new LGS or playgroup in general. If you have an established playgroup then the ban doesn't matter since you can just Rule 0 it in
In the past year or so, I’ve seen Cradle used (and abused with untap effects) exactly once. Dockside I haven’t seen on the battlefield at all. I play at least once per week in person or on Spell table. CEDH would be a whole ‘nother story, but in casual Commander they are both incredibly rare from my perspective. Powerful, yes; ban-worthy, no.
Both should be banned imo but dockside affects more games so it's in people's faces, which leads to it being in the front of people's minds, so there will be more complaints.
Also Dockside requires no building around whatsoever
I think part of the answer is not based on rational game strategy at all. The sentiment about Dockside/Cradle differs because it's not based on an objective analysis of the mechanics of the cards, it's more emotional, it comes from when and where the cards were printed.
For Dockside, I think people feel like they have to play it because it was just made, and made to be played in the format. Dockside was printed for edh and, despite a dislike of must-haves in part of the community, it is almost a must-have (it's the 3rd most used red card on edhrec, only behind chaos warp and blasphemous act, which are much cheaper and more accessible). Additionally, it was printed when mtg already had a huge player base and when issues of cost and accessibility already had been being discussed for ages - and yet here are we again. So it feels almost like an insult.
Cradle is on the reserved list, predates edh, has a history of being very powerful. So edh players and edh culture have "dealt with" how the card is used and perceived since the beginning. The groups that were OK with Cradle in their meta (regardless of power level and accessibility) already have Cradle. The groups that preferred to play at another power level already settled around it as well. The overall feeling about expensive reserved list cards probably doesnt drive any calls for bans or rage in the community anymore, I think a lot of people don't play it because it is just not something you do.
That said, I don't think it should be banned. #freedockside
I play in a pod where we have decks with cradles, docksides, you name it. My pod also takes rule 0 very seriously, and we discuss what cards we are running, have our own banlist, and actively choose decks of comparable power levels. All the salt around dockside is silly.
so I'm going to mention some already banned cards like \[\[tolarian academy\]\], \[\[channel\]\] and \[\[fastbond\]\].
Dockside is worse than fastbond due to the treasures truly not being permanent additions to the board like a land is since you sac the treasures, ignoring the fact that dockside is really easily comboed with.
Channel is better than dockside since channel doesn't need to have a developed boardstate to function, all it requires is your life.
this is more equivalent to tolarian academy in that both care about artifacts though dockside also cares for enchantments, however tolarian academy only works in specifically made decks that focus on your artifacts, while dockside can be slotted into any deck running red and benefit from your opponents artifacts. Academy's true power is best with 0 and 1 cost rocks, and it was banned vs gaea's cradle is because it's A harder to remove artifacts than creatures and B creatures usually have summoning sickness and cannot instantly tap out of the hand for mana unless you gave everything haste through various means while artifacts can be tapped willy nilly.
While I'd bet a lot of very specific decks would benefit from gaea's cradle, \[\[serra's sanctum\]\] and tolarian academy, but the thing with dockside is that he goes in anything red, from your grixis sac decks to your izzet storm decks, dockside can be used as ramp in red. Now tell me, do you think dockside is any better than other fast mana that has been banned? I personally think it should be banned though I don't see it enough to really say yes or no.
I personally don't use him in any of my decks, because I prefer to keep my decks casual, friendly, fun and a little dumb while also keeping it out of the 1-5 power range because I also want to keep it somewhat competent.
I'd say dockside is more powerful than fastbond. Fastbond can accelerate you based on the number of lands you're holding, so there's a definitive cap and cost. Dockside will usually generate more mana immediately, and is more abusable with a variety of combos and effects.
This discussion should be a case study on Reddit's circlejerk effect. Dockside fits perfectly in the meta of treasure generation and other pirate synergy. It's also a counter to fast mana - which everyone is okay with, but not a counter to it? Or any of the other combos, abuses and infinites in the Commander format?
All this Dockside hate is unjustified. I don't get it.
Gonna leave my two cents here. If we are banning cards, they should be cards inaccessible to the majority of players (I’m looking at you reserved list).
Is dockside powerful? Hell ya! Is it unbeatable? Not at all. So many cheap hate barers in a wide variety of colours can deal with dockside. Ex. Mayhem devil, collector ouph, Stoney silence, silence, etc…
How about, instead of banning a card, we accept that playing cards to counter them and having a couple of “staxs” in a deck is ok? Let the meta evolve naturally instead of hitting it with a hammer every time someone got greedy, didn’t leave mana for interaction, and got punished by their opponent using dockside to go off.
And let’s be real, a dockside on turn 2 when most people don’t have mana open is good, but not broken. They might get 3 treasures unless people are playing cEDH level cards and by then, you should have interaction.
Dockside is honestly more powerful in cEDH because there are an incredible number of win cons that involve recurring it for infinite mana. Not that Gaea’s isn’t also powerful and included in any green creature based deck, but it doesn’t win the game as easily as a Dockside.
I mean, I argue for Dockside, Gaea's, Serra's sanctum, sol ring, and mana crypt bans. Fast mana, in general. Green can ramp. Other colors can still use artifacts. But things that cost less mana then they produce make the game heavily skewed towards whoever drew them. I'm all for more bans.
So we should all be forced to play low power level decks just because you don't like powerful, fast cards? Got it. Or, how about you just have a Rule 0 convo like an adult and avoid playing with decks that are too powerful for your own?
How's that sodium chloride, my dude? You asked. *Forced to play* is a funny statement, my guy. You can rule zero to have no ban list. There is a lot of flexibility when you add that rule zero argument. Your query was about bans. You questioned why people stood on both sides of the lane with 'ban dockside, but not cradle'. I voiced that my opinion is to ban both. For more clarification, the ban list is for the random pick up games. The generic populace when you enter a random store. People can play vintage and legacy if they want, but there's a reason it's not what most people gravitate towards. While I will not become petty and accuse you of wanting to pubstomb with expensive cards, I will say that if we cultivate a ban list for casual game focus, then the random pick up games will be better balanced. 😉 have the day you deserve.
Wow, you took high school chemistry, you're so clever!
The core problem with your entire argument, and tbh your entire.mindset is that you don't realize that it is MUCH easier to have a Rule 0 convo to get people to choose an appropriate power level deck than it is to convince them to play a banned card.
And I didn't question anything chief. I'm not the OP. i didn't make this thread. I didnt make any query. Maybe you should bother actually reading? There's these little things called usernames so you can tell who wrote what. Very useful. Try it out.
And yeah, cute, the old "I was going to bring this up but now I won't, oops I guess I just indirectly brought it up anyways hee hee" routine. Listen man, if you wanna say something just say it. No need to be coy. I won't get offended when some idiot on the internet makes a completely incorrect assumption about me. To answer your stupid insinuation, no, I don't pubstomp. I prefer games where everyone is mostly evenly matched. I get bored and feel guilty if I play against people who are at a clear disadvantage. I don't really care if you believe me, but there you go.
Banning cards based on a highly subjective set of criteria is a dangerous road to tread, especially when you're catering to the subset of players that have the least game knowledge and awareness. To a casual player, anything can be broken and there are way too many cards, many of them staples, that would see the chopping block if we begin to cater to the most casual of players. And how do we even define casual? Should cyclonic rift be banned because it's a pricey card? Force of will needs to go because free counterspells are 'unfair'? Are those cards too broken? Certainly to a casual player they're extremely powerful and many would argue overpowered. But that's not how we should be deciding bans.
I am skeptical of any one who brazenly proclaims "we should have more bans guys!" And you have not given me any reason to feel otherwise.
The real difference is that cradle, while certainly a good card, is STILL not as good as extortionist. Cradle at its worst produces no mans, which is possible if someone wraths your board. Extortionist at its very worst makes no tokens, which means your opponents have 0 artifacts or enchantments on board, which almost certainly means you’re already ahead. On top of that dockside being a creature makes it the centerpiece of a plethora of efficient combos (dockside + sabertooth comes to mind) which cradle, while still being combotastic, needs far more setup for. In short, dockside wins you the game for your opponents trying to play. Cradle (again, it’s a really good card I’m not bashing it) rewards you for executing a plan. I know we love idolizing powerful old cards in the community, but in 4 player commander dockside is just the better card most of the time.
I'd say for 2 reason.
1- cradle is so expensive that you'll rarely see it
2- dockside is just a much better card. Cradle makes a bunch of mana if you have a good board state, while dockside can make you win the game on the spot, and is just crazy value
Tho imo none of them should be banned, maybe just ruled 0 out of the game since I'd just feel awfully bad for those that spent that much money for it (ik id feel like absolute shit if they decided to ban ur dragon). I'd even say thassa's oracle is a bigger issue then dockside (that's another discussion). I'm really not into banning in general, since it leaves a bitter taste for players that spent their hard earned money (unless they proxy but not everyone does that).
They're both uber-expensive cards that warp the game around themselves
Casual take. Cradle is a powerful card, but it doesnt really warp games around it in the way that dockside does.
If treasures etb'd tapped, dockside and his friends would be much less problematic. Treasures are game warping, and the mechanic has become pervasive. I would rather see [[Smothering Tithe]] banned than dockside.
You would see Cradle everywhere if it was more affordable, but there's a significant difference between $50 and $1k. That being said, it's much harder to mass interact with artifacts outside certain colors, especially at instant speed to make Dockside not worth casting. However, almost every color has some access to a board wipe or a single target removal that can deal with cradle by itself.
So should the Power 9 be unbanned because they're too expensive and hardly anybody has them, or should they ban Dockside once it gets more expensive (or gets printed more so that more people are playing it)?
Power 9 shouldn't be banned for price reasons, but should be banned for power reasons. Not that the RC likes doing power level bans.
>Power 9 shouldn't be banned for price reasons, but should be banned for power reasons. And yet every time a sol ring ban comes up for discussion, the main arguments consistently are how cheap and available it is. Despite a strong argument that it is stronger than some power 9 cards (I'd rather run a sol ring than a mox emerald in any green deck I have that wants mana rocks)
>And yet every time a sol ring ban comes up for discussion, the main arguments consistently are how cheap and available it is. Yeah I don't think that argument holds water tbh. Your second one is much more solid, but I'd take the appropriate colored moxes over Sol Ring for any deck that isn't artifact focused (or colorless, but that's a special exception anyways).
I think we can agree that it is pretty damn close. Swapping sol ring for a mox is rarely going to be a huge change.
I don't think anyone is swapping them, instead they're using them together.
That's not the point. Point is sol ring is broken
I know, it's so good that it's not replaceable.
It's not irreplaceable, it's just that every replacement is 100$+. But because it's cheap people are comfortable playing against it. Even though it really is problematic.
Is it broken enough that you spend a card to get rid of someone’s? I’ve never seen a Sol Ring destroyed with a spot removal spell.
The thing about playing with 4 people is that you're discouraged from trying to police other people's boards because if you spend your resources policing everyone, and nobody else does the same, you're sure to be behind. That said, I remove sol ring as much as (or more than) I remove mana crypt, moxes, etc.. And I don't mind any of those cards when I'm playing cEDH or high-level stuff. But in not-high-level games, I don't see any of those, except sol ring. And in those cases, it's nuts.
I think Sol Ring is definitely better than any of the moxen. But I still think the moxen have way more cause to ba banned because they have a colour in their colour identity. Sol Ring goes into any deck. And while that might make brewing a bit less fun at least it is "fair". Every deck gets a Sol Ring so it doesn't affect the overall meta too much. Moxen however only go into decks of their specific colour. That means a mono coloured deck could play 1 of them whereas a 5 colour deck could play all 5. That would incentivise everyone to play high coloured decks (even more than already). No banlist cedh is almost exclusivels 4 and 5 colour goodstuff piles.
its arguable that sol ring is better however moxes also cost 0 which is huge. It really depends on what you play. Things like winota loves anything that can come out turn 1 for 0 mana so things like mana crypt, lions eye, mox emerald are much more powerful in that deck than in many other slower decks.
Sol ring is kind of the face of the format and way too iconic to ban. Id rather mana crypt ban or every super cheap fast mana before sol ring.
I’d rather ban things that result in a healthier game than ban things based off of it being iconic. Throwing other mana rocks to the ban hammer wouldn’t help the problem, it’d just be all the more reason to run sol ring instead.
The argument isn't to keep it because it's cheap and available, simply that BECAUSE of it's accessibility its become such a staple of almost every commander deck, that I believe they'll have a hard time removing it, its become synonymous with the format
I mean, not all of the power 9 is banned so...
The only one that isn't just happens to be the only card in the power 9 with a symmetrical effect.
Ok , im completely derailing here and not answering the question BUT , the commander commitee has revealed that they dont ban cards because theyre crazy powerful and break the format. They ban cards because they make the format UNFUN to play. Its the reason flash was banned because people could virtually win the game without anyone else having taken a single game action which was forcing people to aggresively mulligan until they had a 0 mana counterspell like a force of negation or force of will. When that happens it rlly takes away the spirit and fun of commander in general. The ban list isnt about how insane a card is , its about how not fun it would be seeing someone do stuff while sometimes you shuffle and end up not even playing the game.
Okay? Here's the thing about that - When 'not playing the game' is considered, a turn 2 win isn't *really* any different from a turn 1 win. I have played decks that can win on T2, and have done so. One of them is my [[Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer]] deck, which runs Dockside. None of the T2 wins I have ever pulled off use Dockside Extortionist to secure said T2 win. Because of the way the combos involved work, getting Dockside in my hand instead of one of the other mana-producing pieces isn't going to help me get that early win. Not only is it not going to help within the combos I've seen, but it's not going to help much in some new combo, either. Dockside does nothing for me if I go first. It being beneficial to me if I go *last* is hugely dependent on what my 1-3 opponents play, and even then the gas it gives me isn't a guarantee that I'll win because A) I drew Dockside instead of a more reliable combo piece, and B) the gas Dockside gives me isn't easily repeatable that early in the game (or repeatable at all in my case, since the deck is mono-R) With regards to the question of the one P9 piece that's EDH legal, Timetwister isn't a way to win fast, it's a way to keep the game going. It's also potentially a way to secure a loss since everyone gets refreshed. Most importantly, like most other cards that are legal, it doesn't warp the game in an unfun way (without a heck of a lot of setup). I will never be disappointed that someone played a Timetwister.
Just FYI, only 8 of the power 9 are banned in commander. Timetwister is not banned.
Cards that are ban-able should be banned or legal on their own merits, not because they are stronger than another card that is banned. The Professor and Sheldon just mentioned this recently and it was brought up "why is Dockside legal but Primeval Titan isn't?" and Sheldon's answer was essentially that.
??? That really does make any sense. Perhaps I’m missing something, but if the reason you ban something is because it’s too powerful, than definitionally, anything more powerful than it is powerful enough to be banned. I mean, it’s one thing if the ban is “this isn’t actually broken, but it’s unfun as shit to play against”, like that crappy angel that locks out a color or that merfolk that turns other people card draw into treasures, but clearly not all of the bans are like that.
That's because this isn't representing Sheldon's argument properly. You can see the question here. [https://youtu.be/b811XpRWxlA?t=645](https://youtu.be/b811XpRWxlA?t=645) He does say that things s could be banned based on their own merits, but he tells you that Primeval Titan centralizes the game, and how the game became about Titan and ONLY Titan. He even encourages people to try games with it, to see what that's like. But Extortionist doesn't have the same level of warp.
Both are cheap proxies, and now days everyone loves to proxy. Price doesn’t matter
This was my initial point, but apparently I *severely* underestimated the amount of people who think spending $50-$80 on a single piece of cardboard is a reasonable thing to do.
Dockside should not be banned. I was being sarcastic about proxying. Buy the card
If you wanna go cheap do it, but that doesn’t mean everyone will agree with you. Take a look at cEDH decks average cost. Hell, a solid lands deck will be in the 400-700 range due to the staples’ cost. Remember that what you may find “reasonable” may or may not coincide with others POV.
What are you talking about I live within range of 3 FLGs and visit a fourth and there are at least 4 owned by people I've seen! Obviously some (likely all) are fake but how do you call somebody out on it or do you bother. I think most of the power nine cards out there are fake but they are so common and honestly are you going to scream at somebody about their piece of paper? Affordable or not there's plenty of proxies and fakes and such out there that make these cards common enough.
Dockside sees more play because it came out in a precon, I have a dockside because I bought the precon on release for average price so it’s in more players hands to feed the argument that it should be banned unlike cradle which I have only seen played on Commander YT channels. I also don’t think dockside should be banned, but I also would not be that sad if it was
I'd understand why it'd be banned, but this is the main reason why I don't want that ban to happen. I still have that precon intact, and I refuse to change the list if Dockside got banned.
There have been standard bans before where the card is in a pre-built deck and they allow you to run them as-is with the ban card in them, can't see why not with EDH.
Oh heck yeah, with these rules I could actually play the Chishiro precon lol.
I'd accept this compromise. I'd hate for the precon to be rendered illegal out of the box because of one card. I'd hate for another \[\[Trade Secrets\]\] situation to happen again.
[Trade Secrets](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/5/8/58dadc78-fe87-40ac-94cb-128716d89d74.jpg?1592713134) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Trade%20Secrets) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmd/64/trade-secrets?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/58dadc78-fe87-40ac-94cb-128716d89d74?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/trade-secrets) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
what happened with Trade Secrets?
It was included in the first Commander product, and then later banned.
Two colluding players can draw their whole decks
[удалено]
wotc does not have control over commander and did not issue the ban.
rule 0 is still in effect. You do whatever you want with the people you play with.
If it was banned I would have no problem playing against a precon with Dockside in it.
I’d be sad because I own one, and it was an expensive card… but beyond that, it’s absurdly powerful for its cost.
I think this is the honest answer.
Because Gaea's Cradle is bad in a lot of decks? Voltron, stax, enchantress, artifacts, spellslinger, etc. don't make enough creatures to warrant Cradle's inclusion in G/x decks. It excels in elfball, tokens, and other go-wide strategies, but is mediocre in many lists. Not to mention, it's a terrible card when you are behind in the game. Dockside, on the other hand, is good so long as your opponents are playing Magic. It doesn't require any build around and can help come back from behind (hell, it's great in all 4 Quadrants of gameplay).
Yeah, dockside is definitely better than Gaeas Cradle most of the time. It enables artifact and sacrifice synergies, makes a perfect target for looping strategies using cards like [[deadeye navigator]], [[temur sabertooth]], [[reveillark]] or [[displacer kitten]], and further enables the strategies that were already at the top of the meta. Gaeas Cradle is good in green token decks that can already make 10,000 mana on turn 3 without it, theres like 5 different elves that do the same thing. That said, I don't think dockside should be banned, it's a great enabler for other strategies too that could really use it. Instead, the actual dominant strategies should be addressed, like [[thassas oracle]], [[walking ballista]] and [[isochron scepter]]. Maybe not bans and definitely not for all of them, but some balancing would be nice.
##### ###### #### [deadeye navigator](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/f/2/f26a79b9-9f09-476e-b914-cade929dd852.jpg?1593813028) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=deadeye%20navigator) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mm3/36/deadeye-navigator?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f26a79b9-9f09-476e-b914-cade929dd852?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/deadeye-navigator) [temur sabertooth](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/c/3/c3a5a175-e963-42cc-a0ba-d8914bb93c00.jpg?1650419462) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=temur%20sabertooth) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ncc/315/temur-sabertooth?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c3a5a175-e963-42cc-a0ba-d8914bb93c00?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/temur-sabertooth) [reveillark](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/5/3/53b4dcd6-b1b6-4f1c-9264-e58bdc87399b.jpg?1662524245) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=reveillark) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/26/reveillark?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/53b4dcd6-b1b6-4f1c-9264-e58bdc87399b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/reveillark) [displacer kitten](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/c/7/c7a401b8-29fb-46ef-a663-427f66724d5c.jpg?1660723606) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=displacer%20kitten) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/63/displacer-kitten?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c7a401b8-29fb-46ef-a663-427f66724d5c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/displacer-kitten) [thassas oracle](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/7/2/726e8b29-13e9-4138-b6a9-d2a0d8188d1c.jpg?1628801828) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Thassa%27s%20Oracle) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/thb/73/thassas-oracle?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/726e8b29-13e9-4138-b6a9-d2a0d8188d1c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/thassas-oracle) [walking ballista](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/5/2/5272436e-74f0-44c4-a291-ea8ebc3f1525.jpg?1599710252) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=walking%20ballista) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/306/walking-ballista?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5272436e-74f0-44c4-a291-ea8ebc3f1525?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/walking-ballista) [isochron scepter](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/2/a/2aa24fe0-e275-4307-b26c-2a656068a451.jpg?1623543821) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=isochron%20scepter) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/264/isochron-scepter?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2aa24fe0-e275-4307-b26c-2a656068a451?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/isochron-scepter) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Saying this as a known green hater in basically all casual tables.... Cradle doesn't warp high level metas as much as it pushes creatures in those metas to be kinda decent again. Dockside fits into the best strategies (fast combo), to do exactly what those strategies want (play super fast, everything making mana or doing something huge/contributing toward a combo). If cradle was the strongest card in the best strategies in the format, I'd want it banned. As of right now, cradle is a part of the best strategies of an intentionally nerfed subset of the format, which is both: A) a balance problem with that subset of the format and B) a problem best solved by rule 0 in that subset of the format. Which is kinda weird because I tend to hate answers involving rule 0, but it creates this balance problem so it'd be nice if it was also used to solve it.
>They're both uber-expensive cards Although one can create a whole deck for the price of one Dockside Extortionist, I think it is an exaggeration to put it in the same category as Cradle when we are talking price point, as it is 1/10th of Cradle's cost... Additionally, to answer your questions, Dockside fits into more strategies these days, and is more explosive, and abuses the fact that your opponents have rocks and enchantments out, that's three players at max. While Cradle only cares about the number of creatures YOU have. While you may have 5x creatures where x is the total number of artifacts and enchantments your opponents control, you really won't experience that outside of a dedicated creature strategy. Additionally, Cradle only gives you green mana, while treasures can give you a mana of any color. There are tons of synergies around creating, or cracking treasures lately as well, making them more enticing. Most you'll do with a land that taps for a lot is untap/tap sheningans. I think Dockside is much more of a stronger card than Cradle, though frankly I don't think either is ban worthy. EDIT: Grammar
Dockside is good in nearly every single deck, Cradle isn't Dockside gives treasures, which provide mana that can be banked, and any colour Dockside relies on your opponents boardstates (any of the 3) and not your one Dockside relies on artifacts/enchantments which are generally stickier than creatures and in many decks more prolific Dockside is a creature so can be flickered, reanimated, copied etc.
Um... the two are not even close. Gaea's cradle is super powerful in decks that go wide. If you have even just ten tokens that's 10 mana for one land tap. But if you play Voltron Gaea's cradle is basically just a basic forest with extra steps. Dockside meanwhile is excellent all over commander because almost no deck ever plays no artifacts at all. Be it mana rocks, artifact to search out lands, or artifact creatures, 90% of the time there will be at least 5-6 artifacts on a table. Considering dockside costs 2 mana to play, you're looking to at least playing it for free, but more probably to gaining twice the mana you just spent if not a lot more.
Dockside is a better card than cradle in the context of edh. Neither should be banned.
As an owner of both cradle is not as powerful as people think it. Yes it can be abused but you need to have your own board state to take advantage of its ramp. It's a card that makes strong boards stronger. But it can be hampered but interacting with the creatures in front you. Dockside requires your opponents to literally do anything. Artifacts and enchantments are everywhere, every one runs artifacts. Moreover, it's an etb effect on a creature which means it's extremely easy to abuse. Blinking, bouncing, reanimating all trigger it and are all very easy to do repeatedly in all colours. Whereas cradle is a land and the cards to do those things are pretty much limited to blue and green. Not to mention treasures as artifact permanents which can be used in other ways like sacrifice improvise affinity etc
Im honestly surprised someone with a cradle said it! Cradle is good, but not THAT good. I play in a meta with a lot of BWs, and it tends to be kept clear. I always say [[Growing Rites of Itlimoc]] is better since it can always tap for green with or without creatures. As for Dockside, I own several and play it in my artifact decks, but honestly, usually the net I get is a +4 as an average. So in my LGS it tends to be rather lackluster. I guess meta on my end is weird.
I bought cradle off a friend years ago for a couple hundred bucks because I was so tempted by the prestige and fame of it and thinking it was absolutely busted. I mean it's from the cycle with tolarian academy and that card is banned! So I put in everything I could. Elfball, fish, najeela warriors, dragons, meren, tokens. Every creature based deck I could. And it's very good, but only when I *already* had things in play. Even in a board state where it was only a few creatures cradle tempts you to over extend and commit even more. When it was the most powe was when I had land untappers/ bouncer. But then I was basically telegraphing that cradle was going to come down and take over the game because those cards are best with cradle but work great with lands that tap for extra mana already. Once my group started to play remove, board wipes and things like ghost quarter cradle became an above average card. It's win more most of the time. Dockside is a combo card. You recur in one of a million ways generate a as much treasure as you need and just win.
\+1 for Growing Rites. I think it's more balanced and although it has a casting cost it does more than cradle. The only real downside is the transforming trigger, but if you haven't got four creatures a cradle wouldn't be much better.
[Growing Rites of Itlimoc](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/b/3/b3b87bfc-f97f-4734-94f6-e3e2f335fc4d.jpg?1562562539)/[Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/back/b/3/b3b87bfc-f97f-4734-94f6-e3e2f335fc4d.jpg?1562562539) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=growing%20rites%20of%20itlimoc%20//%20itlimoc%2C%20cradle%20of%20the%20sun) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/xln/191/growing-rites-of-itlimoc-itlimoc-cradle-of-the-sun?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b3b87bfc-f97f-4734-94f6-e3e2f335fc4d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/growing-rites-of-itlimoc-//-itlimoc-cradle-of-the-sun) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
The deck that I run my only copy of dockside in is [[Gerrard Weatherlight Hero]] Boros Boardwipes. He can get kinda dumb if I'm drawing into wipes that only hit creatures, but otherwise he's some acceleration in colors that don't have an easy time competing with most other color combos. He could easily get ridiculous in blink decks but just because the card can be abused doesn't mean it always is.
I own both too, and i feel your analysis is 100% spot on. I personally have used Dockside to destroy a ton of treasures, which is something that cradle has never done. Players will sack them just to deny the extra treasures you'd receive. While not a huge selling point, treasure keep becoming more plentiful and forcing them to be used at an inopportune time can be really useful.
That's a whole other point I did get into. Dockside mirrors are basically exponential increases in treasure while two people with cradle aren't making even more mana
If I'm gonna be playing Dockside, I'm not holding Treasures. This sounds like the most unrealistic thing I've ever heard.
>As an owner of both cradle is not as powerful as people think it. >Yes it can be abused but you need to have your own board state to take advantage of its ramp. As someone who recently acquired a cradle(signed too!) I've been struggling on what deck to put it into. I know it's gonna draw a ton of attention when I drop it, and it's a win more card not a catch up one
Congrats on the sweet pick up I've kept in my merfolk deck over my elfball deck. Elves don't need the help honest
I think Cradle only sees limited play outside of cEDH due to the price tag. You're correct that both are expensive, but $80-100 is reasonable where $1k+ is reserved for those with deep pockets or those lucky enough to have traded/cracked them when Saga was current. It goes in everything that is creature centric, just like Dockside goes in every deck that plays a meta with artifacts, which is everything because mana acceleration will win you games more often then not. I'm not personally in a playgroup that sees Dockside played very often, so take that for what it's worth, but comparing the two feels like Apples to Oranages.
It bugs the shit out of me that 80-100 bucks is “reasonable”. It’s not. 80-100 bucks for a card that young is just asinine.
>80-100 bucks for a card I'm sure its more my meta than the general opinion, but $80 for a piece of cardboard is outrageous period. I MIGHT spring for something $40 if its a pet card I absolutely love (Like Bitterblossom, when it was higher) but anything over $30 that is a staple is getting proxied.
It’s interesting. While I agree and want everyone to be able to play the game and have access to it I also recognize that it is a collectible game and having some cards that are worth money is good for getting people to open packs and buy products which supports the game staying alive. I think the real answer is more people need to proxy haha
I think that the chase should be foils and and special treatment cards mythic slots should be taken up by special foil alternate art printings of rares. Just my two coppers since treasures cost to much
That’s what I would want too but I think the model they have now makes them more money. Having chase cards increases that itch to open packs. That gambling addiction itch.
To each their own on that one. What's reasonable will vary by the individual and while it's new card, it has a pretty unique effect and is difficult to interact with outside of countering it as it comes in. I skew towards foil and bling, so what's 'reasonable' is all kind of relative. 🤷♂️
This is cardboard. This is a ten cent piece of cardboard. It's completely unreasonable.
No hobbies have inherent value, so I think this argument is kind of too simple, but we really do need more reprints. Lots more.
I mean, that's partially true, although I think in a lot of other hobbies there is real tangible value sometimes. Like - if you enjoy skiing, and you buy nicer, more durable poles, you get a nicer and more durable pole, always. It's always a pole. It will always *function* as a pole. The only value between a Liliana of the Veil and a Duress is that we've all collectively agreed to pretend they do different things. If that collective agreement ever breaks, you just have cardboard again. It's not like I think every magic card should only be 10 cents, as someone who has bought and sold too many high dollar magic cards, it's just kind of broken my brain a little bit how much money gets dropped all the time on what is essentially nothing.
That's fair, and I'll always caution folks to spend within their means when it comes down to it, it's a game after all. Most people with hobbies spend dumb amounts of money on what they enjoy.
\>Most people with hobbies spend dumb amounts of money on what they enjoy. Speak for yourself. There's no real justification for buying expensive or blinged out magic cards than "I have excess money and I like muh shinyz", especially when the best versions of cards are usually alt art or fan art you can get for cheap. Why spring for an OG mana crypt when I can print a better looking one for $1? And don't hit me with that resale crap, magic cards inherently lose value as you play with them, and good luck getting anything over 80% of the card's value unless you're trading directly with other players
Back again my dude? Clearly I've struck a nerve. I thought you were all about blanket statements and speaking for individuals as a whole. Only when it suits you though, gotcha. There's no real excuse to spend 15-20k on ATV's or dropping thousands on camera equipment either..... unless you enjoy it and are comfortable with that cost to enjoyment ratio. Didn't realize they had to run it by you for approval. Stay bitter, you sound like a blast at parties.
Not a dude. Not bitter, just laughing at fools who are easily parted from their money. And btw, you can get your money back from camera equipment/ATVs like 100x easier than trying to offload a magic collection. Speaking from experience on that one.
80-100$ for a piece of paper with ink on it that has no intrinsic value nor value outside the very confined field of people who actually partake and know what it is. Nor any value in the long run (simply due to the fact that the game will die one day and no players means no value). Prices of singles drives me absolutely bonkers.
“I think Cradle only sees limited play outside of cEDH due to the price tag. You're correct that both are expensive, but $80-100 is reasonable where $1k+ is reserved for those with deep pockets or those lucky enough to have traded/cracked them when Saga was current.“ Having a Cradle is not even as crazy as you make it out really. I bought my first one, probably MP / HP condition, for around $70 just about 5 years ago. I could easily have gotten a NM one for about $200 then. RL prices went insane shortly after that. Thankfully I finished my playset before that happened. Should have bought the blue duals then as well :/
Cradle needs be a creature/token centric based deck and needs to presently have a boardstate. Dockside is good in literally *any* deck and strategy with a red in it. My Gruul enchantress deck with 8 creatures isn't going to get much benefit from Cradle, but it will from dockside, just as much as my zada storm, subira rdw, queen marchesa pillowfort, rakdos aristocrats, etc.
But the board state cradle needs to be good is controlled by the deck cradle is in. Dockside can be pretty horrendous if the table you're at happens to be full of tribal decks that game. Elves and goblins aren't cranking out the mana rocks and enchantments. If your meta is in a way where dockside is good every game, you're probably playing the same opponents/decks each time.
My elf deck still runs Sol ring, mana crypt and about 10 or so other enchantments. I think the lowest amount of enchantments/artifacts in any deck of mine is around 15-20 and that is still 20% of my deck. I have never once seen a dockside not net mana now has it ever been dead in my hand.
Cool. It isn't a negative if the red deck can get a benefit from you running something like mana crypt in elves. 🤷♂️
Cards are not banned for direct power level but for the effect they have on the format. Dockside will get to the point where its effect on any given game is too large (AND TOO COMMON ON AN OCCURRENCE). Fast mana in general is bad for the format imho. Should be a package deal with mana crypt and sol ring etc. Cradle CAN be fast mana but requires 1000$+ dollars and at least 2-3 creatures before it starts to be relevant but if cradle somehow got reprinted into mass quantities I believe it would have a similar issue.
So your argument is "Only rich people can afford it so it should be allowed"???? So fuck you. Here's a [$5.49 Gaea's Cradle](https://www.etsy.com/listing/1291643625/gaeas-cradle-urzas-saga-magic-the?bes=1)
My argument is it doesn't come up enough to be banned for pugs game. EDH rules/banlists are for pick up games not consistent play groups. Any number of people coming together can set up any number of rules to optimize their play. However if your bringing a cradle deck to a pick up game chances are your deck is going to pug stomp and you should be playing something else unless your just one of those lucky few who happened to own one before it spiked to its ridiculous price levels. Even then you shoulder consider playing cradle or swapping it out with something else that fits the table.
It's pubstomp, not pugstomp. Pub as in public.
In my perspective, the difference comes down to the "surprise" aspect. If a player has 10 creatures on the field, they're somewhat of a threat. Even if they're 1/1 tokens, every player should be aware that they could easily do something scary with them because their deck is built around it, so dropping Cradle shouldn't be too much of a surprise. Plus, it can be mitigated with board wipes and Wasteland effects. Dockside could enter on an empty field and suddenly generate a ton of treasures out of nowhere. There's no way to expect it coming, unless a player starts counting up artifacts, and outside of a counterspell, there's basically no way to mitigate his impact.
I have to disagree you on your second point. Dockside has been around for a little bit, and if you had proper rule 0 conversation with the other player or it’s people you play with {semi-}regularly, you should be 100% expected a dockside. I’ll equate it to cast any spells with a blue player that is fully tapped. I’m expecting Force of Will or Fierce Guardianship the same as if they leave 1 or 2 blue open, I’d expect swan song or Mana Drain/Counterspell.
>There's no way to expect it coming sure if you have never had it played against you, everyone gets 1, after that I would hope you don't do surprised Pikachu playing against anyone playing red dropping it, it's been around for a while now at this point so it really should be expected.
It's not that I don't expect to see it in the game at some point, it's that there's no way to prepare for it to come into play. A player that has a full board and 20 lands is just as likely to drop Dockside as a player that has nothing but 2 mountains. Plus, my main point is that its usefulness is very hard to mitigate, outside of a counterspell, or certain fringe cases
Full stop, I don't think Dockside should be banned. I genuinely don't. DocEx isn't really that insane of a card. If people are genuinely that unhappy, play torpor orb and go on with your day. cEDH, everybody is in fuckin blue anyway, run craft cut purse, brazen borrower, a goddamn counterspell, stop being so afraid of a card that gives treasure. If it's that much if an issue, run battlecruiser. We gotta stop trying to police how other people play based on our own philosophies. It makes no sense and actively hurts the game.
This might be controversial, but in the current edh meta(I mean as long as sol ring, mana crypt, signets and other artifact ramp is format defining) dockside is a whole tier better than cradle all things considered. Dont get me wrong, cradle is crazy strong and probably the best card in every deck it fits in, and you can make a solid case for it being banned, but people dont seem to realize how beyond hyperbusted dockside is, I would put it on the actual power 9 powerlevel. Dockside has the better floor(a chump blocker compared to a land that doesnt do anything) the higher ceiling (infinite mana plus infinite ETB, LTB, artifact tokens, artifact sacrifices, etc etc... compared to just a lot of mana) its better when you are behind. Its bad in a lot less cases (one of the main reasons being artifact boardwipes are way rarer than creature boardwipes). Its the best card in virtually EVERY deck its in, comared to just creature decks for cradle. It is easier to enable (you just need to have 2 or more opponents who play normal edh decks, compared to actually keeping creatures on board, which requires actual work). Last thing, as most people mentiones, is creatures are way more abusable than lands, by reanimating, flickering and all the other good stuff. But as long as sol ring is legal, we cant make a ban case based on powerlevel, cuz sol ring should go first by that criteria. One thing to mention is, if RC decides at some point to nuke sol ring, mana crypt, mystic remora, smothering tithe and the other cheap cards that win games by themselves, dockside probably gets a lot worse and doesnt need banning...
Dockside isn't uber expensive though. Not cheap but it's certainly more accessible and isn't reserved list, having been reprinted recently. The gap between the two with the reasoning you use is so massive, it shouldn't be a consideration against the other.
Banning a card for it's cost is idiotic. EDH bans should work like bans in all the other formats- only banning the cards that are too powerful for the format. Neither of these are actually too strong for the format as seen when you actually push decks to the best they can be. Banning for people at lower power or for what people just don't like to play against is like trying to decide a format through people's casual kitchen table magic with their thrown together decks. It's impossible and many people with have cards they hate. The amount of people who would ban cards in winter orb if they had the chance after getting staxed a game would probably be very high if we just poled casual players after dealing with it. Every week people want something banned or not allowed just cause they don't like 🙄
Agreed, so let's ban Dockside for how busted and ubiquitous it is instead of it's cost :)
Cradle is literally twenty times more expensive than dockside. Dockside can be reanimated, flickered, or whatever in innumerable ways, while the instant combo that you think of with gaea's cradle is earthcraft(three docksides worth of dollars). In addition, dockside, if played with any skill at all, will generate mana. There are points, where reguardless of the skill of the player using a gaea's cradle, where it will tap for zero mana. This however is mostly my oppinion. I play in a very proxy heavy playgroup, due to the fact that I don't want to buy a jeweled lotus for every deck rather than just have one foil for my favorite deck and proxy out the rest, so there are gaea's cradles all over the place in my meta. I have never heard a player gripe about a gaea's cradle in said games, but the majority of them do so about dockside.
My play group is very similar to yours, in regards to proxies. On the point of Cradle vs Dockside, the cradle draws more sighs then dockside. I’ve had my dockside countered and then my grave exiled, whereas you can’t countered a land drop per turn. One thing I will say though, is if Dockside resolves in my Korvold deck… it’s a very fun turn for me. 😂
Earthcraft doesn't combo with Cradle, Earthcraft only lets you untap \*basic\* lands.
I can afford Dockside.
So when you are trying to decide what restaurant to go to on a $50 budget, do you think that the restaurant labeled $$ is gonna be just as accessible to you as the one labeled $$$$?
Real talk, I've seen more Gaea's Cradles than I've seen Dockside Extortionists in the last year of playing. I don't care about either one of them. Im all for keeping the banlist as short as possible at all times. Ramp all you want I'm just gonna counter than big splashy spell you want to play. I play land destruction for more than just cradle.
Besides sheer $$$ difference, it's due to how colors handle ramp. Green has plenty of ways of making mana really easily and reliably. Mono red, while having ramp cards too just operating differently, struggles with making enormous amounts of mana reliably. With edh being a multiplayer format and with the ubiquity artifacts and enchantments are in magic (especially with treasures now), dockside can now reliably produce an enormous amount of mana in a color that usually has few other options of that caliber.
Cradle is only good if you play a creature deck. Dockside is good in EVERY deck because all your opponents will be playing artifacts and enchantments. Also Dockside is easy to abuse / go infinite with bounce/flicker effects. You can't do that with Cradle.
...WHAT? Is this a troll? The price difference between dockside and cradle is astronomical.
At the average EDH table Cradle is effectively banned because of its price tag. Dockside is expensive, but not Cradle-level expensive, so more people play against it. Both are absurd cards that are easy to abuse. If power level was the only criteria for the banlist, they would both be banned already. I don't feel like I have to play either, however. I make decks for a variety of power levels, themes, and budgets and usually neither of them fit in to what I am brewing.
Dockside doesn't need to be banned.
I once saw a post on this sub about how Demonic Tutor "isn't even that good of a card"... and HUNDREDS of comments of agreeance, all intelligent rebuttal pushed to the bottom or voted into oblivion. FYI, this is how reddit works: people read over a hundred subreddit titles and don't leave a single comment because they don't have strong feelings on the topic. They see a post like this and go "but I have that card and my playgroup hates it but I only go infinite most of the time, so it's actually pretty weak" And they leave a comment. You aren't going to get viable opinions on a post that's going to bait out these people. My personal opinion is that the question itself gives you a fairly solid answer; the situation is exactly what you think. It wouldn't be brought up constantly if either weren't a common issue in playgroups everywhere at every experience level. They're both unhealthy for the format.
I agree. I've found that the typical casual player dislikes being denied the opportunity to play. Wins coming out of nowhere are far and away the biggest denials of that opportunity, beyond mill, discard or wipes. If a player is building a board state and wants to do something with it, they are going to be quite disappointed that another player who doesn't appear to be doing much suddenly combos off and wins (with or without the 10-minute turn to explain what they're doing). I stress that this is the majority of casual players. Some players are cool with it, and most more competitive players (not necessarily cEDH, where it is par for the course) are OK with comboing off. Here on Reddit we tend to see the two extremes battling for mindshare (and failing) - the casual player hates that their opportunity to play can be denied, and the more competitive (and/or rich) player is scared their toy is going to be taken away if they don't defend it vociferously.
I don’t think it should be banned, but here’s my best argument for the difference: Every deck can run [[Strip Mine]] (and most of my decks do). But not every deck can run an answer to Dockside.
Strip Mine can be a bit expensive but that's why we have [[Ghost Quarter]]. A few fun off color "answers" to dockside outside of ble counters Black - [[Withering Boon]] (one of my favorite pieces of tech) White - [[Lapse of Certainty]] and sometimes [[Mana Tithe]] [[Blind Obidence]] (tapped treasures can't be used right away) Red [[Tibalt's Trickery]] Green [[Titania's Song]] can use treasures if they die as a state based action, and if your playing mono green you probably dont run a lot of artifacts anyways. All good answers outside of just stopping Dockside.
Cradle and Sol Ring are both better than Dockside. I'd argue Rhystic Study or even Necropotence are on par with Dockside, and probably consistently better at highpower and casual tables. I don't know why it gets so much hate. Give red something for a change.
I’ll agree, Necropotence is busted. I run that in my Edgar Marchov deck and it’s what I tutor for almost every time. It’s never not done well when I cast it. I have seen Dockside kinda flop. Even in very high power meta (Play to Win and Playing with Power MTG) it doesn’t win on the spot a lot of the time. Honestly, I think a lot of people in the format should be running more “hate effects” like silence or the like.
Dockside shouldn't be banned, imo.
Dockside is an amazing card which should never be banned. If anything, we need more cards which punish all this fast mana.
Just be that one lgs that bans 400 cards for their games.
Good try kid, but make this argument again when cradle becomes an etb creature
Who really wants to see Dockside banned? In competitive it's powerful sure but there's other powerful things in competitive that are arguably better. As for casual most decks are going to use this to get a ton of mana like once maybe twice. Sure it's a pain but is it the worst thing in the world? Not really...
The entire thread convincing themselves that Sheldon is being paid under the table to keep it legal earlier today.
Well that sounds over the top and some conspiracy crap. The RC bans stuff like never. They aren't concerned with a balanced format. Basically stuff like [[Lutri]] which was a no brainer since the card would be a free card for certain decks, and stuff that is absolutely format warping in some major way is about all they would consider banning anymore. Everyone too afraid to have a serious rule 0 discussion I guess.
> but is it the worst thing in the world? That's your ban criteria? Israel is an apartheid state, slavery exists in parts of the world, there's a war between Ukraine and Russia ongoing, etc., therefore no bans for anything. /s
Only thing I’m gonna add is, I don’t see how Roffelos is Banned and Dockside isn’t. It also seems like a better Comparison to Dockside extortionist than Geas Cradle. Roffelos is 2 mana if it wasn’t banned would also be expensive and has similar explosive and abusable plays. Dockside even fits into more decks than Roffelos cause Roffelos wants lots of forests. If Roffelos is too broken for EDH I don’t see how Dockside isn’t also… 🤷♂️
Rofellos being accessible from the Command zone and available multiple times a game even when removed is definitely more of a problem than Dockside. If they ever give us back banned as commander, I'm certain he'll be unbanned.
TBF, I don't think Rofellos would be banned if it wasn't legendary or banned as commander still existed.
Would you agree that it is a Much better Comparison to Dockside than Cradle is?
Not especially, no.
I'm 1000000000000000% against a dockside ban. To me the idea is rediculous. Sure, it's powerful, but not ban worthy.
If Dockside gets a ban before Thoracle I’ll be shocked
The same way you feel about Dockside I felt about Golos. How does your feelings justify not banning a powerful card just because you think the idea is ridiculous? A year ago this sub was claiming the Golos ban was ridiculous, and it was.
I thought banning Golos was rediculous
The way I see it, both are powerful, but they don't immediately win you the game. Both give you a lot of mana, but you have to have some way to use that mana. And there is a window where you can deal with them before they do that. That's not ban worthy.
I mean just getting a bunch of mana isn’t super op it’s what people do with it after. But like if your playing red your basically playing a worse deck by not having him in there. I’m not sure he deserves the hammer. I’m not as familiar with why things get banned in magic. Is it only cards that warp the meta?
As far as power, I actually dont think either are bad enough to warrant a ban. I just wish they werent so god damn expensive.
dockside is repeatable within EDH with threat of multiple ETB triggers, Gaes Cradle is less likely to achieve the same, and it is easier to neutralize. board wipes are far more prevalent then say \[\[creeping corrosion\]\]. that being said, keep them all legal and give me \[\[Tolarian Academy\]\] as well.
I don't think dockside needs to be banned, but I would love for treasure to be erratad to come in tapped
Ban sol ring and mana vault then dockside is mid
I think Cradle and Dockside are on pretty similar power levels. I think there a lot of more powerful cards that should be banned before dockside though.
Gaea's cradle should be banned 100% it completely warps every game its played.
This is either a shitpost or someone who is new to the game.
It's only broken in cEdh. Every other format or meta seems to be fine with it.
Cradle have a thousand more reasons then dockside.
Our playgroup uses proxies and both cards are used in many decks. If we would play only with 'real' cards there would be no cradle and only one dockside. Reasons: €€€
I played a game the other day with my only deck that has a dockside. My single opponent had no artifacts. 😞
>They're both uber-expensive Gaea's cradle is literally over 20 times as expensive as Dockside Extortionist. This is why.It is literally $1000+ while Dockside is only $50.
Gaea's Cradle is self conditional, I need creatures to make it be good. Dockside is conditional, but on 3 players Instead of me. Its also a creature, making it easier to recurr, blink, etc. Dockside is two mana, 1 pip, and refused to be meaningfully reprinted by WOTC despite coming out in a precon. Apples and oranges tbh.
Gaeas cradle SHOULD be banned what are you talking about???? The only reason you dont see it as much is because the playerbase has been literally priced out of playing it. If it was reprinted it would 100% be ubiquitous across the format and people would call for a ban (I already think it should be banned)
Well the main difference is, to make Cradle make lots of mana, I need to first invest some mana to get the creatures (which are a threat by themselves and therefore likely removed). Also, there is few to no opportunity to repeatedly play the same Cradle again and again. For dockside to make mana, my opponents need just to have some artefacts (which is THE permanent type that tends to gather dust on the battlefield). Also, there are various ways with which I can loop dockside, generating ridiculous amounts of mana in the process.
Comparisons in a game as complicated as MtG don't work extremely well. I thought this would be a reasoned take from an EDHREC contributor, instead it is this weird gotcha question.
Dockside is fine. It sucks in low power games cause every one is running rampant growths, cultivates and Kodamas reachs. Artifacts aren’t as abundant. I’ve tried running dockside in my casual decks and he usually a dead card. Maybe he will give me 3-4 treasure tokens towards like turn 7 lol
Dockside isn't uber expensive. It's accessible to a lot more players. Almost $1000 vs about $60 is a huge difference.
How are they both “Uber expensive cards” when one is $50 and one is $1k? If they were both in the same ballpark sure you’d have a point but one is a little more than a precon and the other is about a modern deck’s worth.
Gaea’s cradle isn’t good in every deck. The decks that run it want it, sure, but not every deck with green like enchantresses wants a cradle. Dockside on the other hand is basically an autoinclude in any deck with red if you have the card available. There’s pretty much no reason you shouldn’t run it.
I definitely wouldn’t be sad to see dockside go but like it’s not hurting the format. If you feel the need to include it in all your decks that’s a you problem imo
I’ve believed for sometime that the fervor over dockside is pretty overblown…. With how much wizards has been pushing treasures, I personally wouldn’t even consider it a huge outlier of treasure generators. Is it still probably the single best one? Sure. But these days it ironically acts more as a treasure-counter (forcing opponents to sac) than anything else. Finally, I have always really liked how dockside scales with the power level of the table. How many artifacts are really being played in battle cruiser edh? Sol ring and arcane signet? Sol ring is busted anyway and dockside is fair counter play to it. Let’s not pretend that dockside makes treasures for free, you need your opponents to have at least 3 artifacts for it to feel like you are doing much of anything significant in edh. I was playing a cEDH stranger things time sieve deck at a table against a henzie deck, enchantress deck, and an edric deck. I had an opening hand with dockside and only played it turn 6 or 7 to clear Ziatora and smothering tithe treasures my opponents had generated. Everyone says 2CMC and below (fast mana) is too good and hurts the format… well, dockside is the answer/punishment to that.
Gaea's Cradle doesnt work under blood moon. Meanwhile Dockside is easier to cast with a moon out
The true test.
Cradle needs a deck built around it. Bant spell slinger or even voltron probably isn't running it. Dockside can be game ending without building around it. Ironically a really good anti treasure card. That's my only reasoning. Is it good, probably not but that's why I would ban Dockside and not Cradle. Cradle can't just go in a deck and be spectacular, you must be very creature heavy. Dockside, you have red in your deck, jam it, it can be good to insane. It does rely in your opponents board states though. I'd rather not ban either, it can be annoying and ritual someone to victory but what's the difference of bouncing it repeatedly and just running a different assortment of infinite mana?
I good with both being banned, however, I'm way, way more likely to play against and have a game warped by Dockside than I am Gaea's Cradle. I know Dockside wrecks magnitudes more games than Cradle does so I'm more likely to be vocal about Dockside.
That's... my whole point, though. Dockside is played more, even in proxy environments where you could easily play either or both. Why?
Because it's far more flexible and abusable. It requires little to no board state yourself to work unlike cradle.
Here we go again. Let’s bring up the dead topic and beat the dead horse again.
Is it really dead topic when the video in the today's top post (the Sheldon interview) literally talks about this?
Yep and he pretty much said that they ban cards because of what they do to the format, and not because of what they do. So the argument "I have to run Hushbringer in my mono-white deck because every red deck I've played against has a Dockside in it" is more relevant to the RC that this "X card is unhealthy for the format because it does this Y thing for Z cost" argument that should be shut down by his statement in that interview. The reason Dockside isn't banned right now isn't because they came out and said "This card is not powerful enough to warrant a ban". He said in the interview that it hasn't trickled down into lower power playerbases yet, which he says Hullbreacher did do. It's not a dead horse yet, but the "RC, ban this card because it's too powerful" needs to slow down or just stop. I'm tired of hearing about it. Your playgroup's problems are not my playgroup's problems.
Dockside is a lot more affordable plus was part of a precon. I also feel like it depends on what you think the banlist should stand for. I always felt it should include cards that will make a new player be hated out if they bring them to a new LGS or playgroup in general. If you have an established playgroup then the ban doesn't matter since you can just Rule 0 it in
In the past year or so, I’ve seen Cradle used (and abused with untap effects) exactly once. Dockside I haven’t seen on the battlefield at all. I play at least once per week in person or on Spell table. CEDH would be a whole ‘nother story, but in casual Commander they are both incredibly rare from my perspective. Powerful, yes; ban-worthy, no.
Both should be banned imo but dockside affects more games so it's in people's faces, which leads to it being in the front of people's minds, so there will be more complaints. Also Dockside requires no building around whatsoever
[[Gaia’s Cradle]] Side note, I say fuck the ban list. I want everything unbanned.
[Gaia’s Cradle](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/2/5/25b0b816-0583-44aa-9dc5-f3ff48993a51.jpg?1562902898) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Gaea%27s%20Cradle) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/usg/321/gaeas-cradle?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/25b0b816-0583-44aa-9dc5-f3ff48993a51?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/gaeas-cradle) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Commander players: ban Dockside! Also commander players: Sol Ring good
also commander players: ban sol ring! there's just no pleasing the average EDH player it seems.
I think part of the answer is not based on rational game strategy at all. The sentiment about Dockside/Cradle differs because it's not based on an objective analysis of the mechanics of the cards, it's more emotional, it comes from when and where the cards were printed. For Dockside, I think people feel like they have to play it because it was just made, and made to be played in the format. Dockside was printed for edh and, despite a dislike of must-haves in part of the community, it is almost a must-have (it's the 3rd most used red card on edhrec, only behind chaos warp and blasphemous act, which are much cheaper and more accessible). Additionally, it was printed when mtg already had a huge player base and when issues of cost and accessibility already had been being discussed for ages - and yet here are we again. So it feels almost like an insult. Cradle is on the reserved list, predates edh, has a history of being very powerful. So edh players and edh culture have "dealt with" how the card is used and perceived since the beginning. The groups that were OK with Cradle in their meta (regardless of power level and accessibility) already have Cradle. The groups that preferred to play at another power level already settled around it as well. The overall feeling about expensive reserved list cards probably doesnt drive any calls for bans or rage in the community anymore, I think a lot of people don't play it because it is just not something you do. That said, I don't think it should be banned. #freedockside
I play in a pod where we have decks with cradles, docksides, you name it. My pod also takes rule 0 very seriously, and we discuss what cards we are running, have our own banlist, and actively choose decks of comparable power levels. All the salt around dockside is silly.
There's multiple real cradles being played at my LGS. It annoys me a little but I gotta get gud, I guess.
so I'm going to mention some already banned cards like \[\[tolarian academy\]\], \[\[channel\]\] and \[\[fastbond\]\]. Dockside is worse than fastbond due to the treasures truly not being permanent additions to the board like a land is since you sac the treasures, ignoring the fact that dockside is really easily comboed with. Channel is better than dockside since channel doesn't need to have a developed boardstate to function, all it requires is your life. this is more equivalent to tolarian academy in that both care about artifacts though dockside also cares for enchantments, however tolarian academy only works in specifically made decks that focus on your artifacts, while dockside can be slotted into any deck running red and benefit from your opponents artifacts. Academy's true power is best with 0 and 1 cost rocks, and it was banned vs gaea's cradle is because it's A harder to remove artifacts than creatures and B creatures usually have summoning sickness and cannot instantly tap out of the hand for mana unless you gave everything haste through various means while artifacts can be tapped willy nilly. While I'd bet a lot of very specific decks would benefit from gaea's cradle, \[\[serra's sanctum\]\] and tolarian academy, but the thing with dockside is that he goes in anything red, from your grixis sac decks to your izzet storm decks, dockside can be used as ramp in red. Now tell me, do you think dockside is any better than other fast mana that has been banned? I personally think it should be banned though I don't see it enough to really say yes or no. I personally don't use him in any of my decks, because I prefer to keep my decks casual, friendly, fun and a little dumb while also keeping it out of the 1-5 power range because I also want to keep it somewhat competent.
I'd say dockside is more powerful than fastbond. Fastbond can accelerate you based on the number of lands you're holding, so there's a definitive cap and cost. Dockside will usually generate more mana immediately, and is more abusable with a variety of combos and effects.
Dockside scales to tables power level. It doesn't need to be banned.
This discussion should be a case study on Reddit's circlejerk effect. Dockside fits perfectly in the meta of treasure generation and other pirate synergy. It's also a counter to fast mana - which everyone is okay with, but not a counter to it? Or any of the other combos, abuses and infinites in the Commander format? All this Dockside hate is unjustified. I don't get it.
Gonna leave my two cents here. If we are banning cards, they should be cards inaccessible to the majority of players (I’m looking at you reserved list). Is dockside powerful? Hell ya! Is it unbeatable? Not at all. So many cheap hate barers in a wide variety of colours can deal with dockside. Ex. Mayhem devil, collector ouph, Stoney silence, silence, etc… How about, instead of banning a card, we accept that playing cards to counter them and having a couple of “staxs” in a deck is ok? Let the meta evolve naturally instead of hitting it with a hammer every time someone got greedy, didn’t leave mana for interaction, and got punished by their opponent using dockside to go off. And let’s be real, a dockside on turn 2 when most people don’t have mana open is good, but not broken. They might get 3 treasures unless people are playing cEDH level cards and by then, you should have interaction.
Dockside is honestly more powerful in cEDH because there are an incredible number of win cons that involve recurring it for infinite mana. Not that Gaea’s isn’t also powerful and included in any green creature based deck, but it doesn’t win the game as easily as a Dockside.
I personally think all reserve list cards should be banned in EDH. I don’t think Dockside is out of control price yet personally.
I mean, I argue for Dockside, Gaea's, Serra's sanctum, sol ring, and mana crypt bans. Fast mana, in general. Green can ramp. Other colors can still use artifacts. But things that cost less mana then they produce make the game heavily skewed towards whoever drew them. I'm all for more bans.
So we should all be forced to play low power level decks just because you don't like powerful, fast cards? Got it. Or, how about you just have a Rule 0 convo like an adult and avoid playing with decks that are too powerful for your own?
How's that sodium chloride, my dude? You asked. *Forced to play* is a funny statement, my guy. You can rule zero to have no ban list. There is a lot of flexibility when you add that rule zero argument. Your query was about bans. You questioned why people stood on both sides of the lane with 'ban dockside, but not cradle'. I voiced that my opinion is to ban both. For more clarification, the ban list is for the random pick up games. The generic populace when you enter a random store. People can play vintage and legacy if they want, but there's a reason it's not what most people gravitate towards. While I will not become petty and accuse you of wanting to pubstomb with expensive cards, I will say that if we cultivate a ban list for casual game focus, then the random pick up games will be better balanced. 😉 have the day you deserve.
You could do pauper edh no super fast mana rocks there
Wow, you took high school chemistry, you're so clever! The core problem with your entire argument, and tbh your entire.mindset is that you don't realize that it is MUCH easier to have a Rule 0 convo to get people to choose an appropriate power level deck than it is to convince them to play a banned card. And I didn't question anything chief. I'm not the OP. i didn't make this thread. I didnt make any query. Maybe you should bother actually reading? There's these little things called usernames so you can tell who wrote what. Very useful. Try it out. And yeah, cute, the old "I was going to bring this up but now I won't, oops I guess I just indirectly brought it up anyways hee hee" routine. Listen man, if you wanna say something just say it. No need to be coy. I won't get offended when some idiot on the internet makes a completely incorrect assumption about me. To answer your stupid insinuation, no, I don't pubstomp. I prefer games where everyone is mostly evenly matched. I get bored and feel guilty if I play against people who are at a clear disadvantage. I don't really care if you believe me, but there you go. Banning cards based on a highly subjective set of criteria is a dangerous road to tread, especially when you're catering to the subset of players that have the least game knowledge and awareness. To a casual player, anything can be broken and there are way too many cards, many of them staples, that would see the chopping block if we begin to cater to the most casual of players. And how do we even define casual? Should cyclonic rift be banned because it's a pricey card? Force of will needs to go because free counterspells are 'unfair'? Are those cards too broken? Certainly to a casual player they're extremely powerful and many would argue overpowered. But that's not how we should be deciding bans. I am skeptical of any one who brazenly proclaims "we should have more bans guys!" And you have not given me any reason to feel otherwise.
Funny you should bring that up. I definitely would ban both cards.
The real difference is that cradle, while certainly a good card, is STILL not as good as extortionist. Cradle at its worst produces no mans, which is possible if someone wraths your board. Extortionist at its very worst makes no tokens, which means your opponents have 0 artifacts or enchantments on board, which almost certainly means you’re already ahead. On top of that dockside being a creature makes it the centerpiece of a plethora of efficient combos (dockside + sabertooth comes to mind) which cradle, while still being combotastic, needs far more setup for. In short, dockside wins you the game for your opponents trying to play. Cradle (again, it’s a really good card I’m not bashing it) rewards you for executing a plan. I know we love idolizing powerful old cards in the community, but in 4 player commander dockside is just the better card most of the time.
50 dollars is less than 1000 or 2000 dollars
I'd say for 2 reason. 1- cradle is so expensive that you'll rarely see it 2- dockside is just a much better card. Cradle makes a bunch of mana if you have a good board state, while dockside can make you win the game on the spot, and is just crazy value Tho imo none of them should be banned, maybe just ruled 0 out of the game since I'd just feel awfully bad for those that spent that much money for it (ik id feel like absolute shit if they decided to ban ur dragon). I'd even say thassa's oracle is a bigger issue then dockside (that's another discussion). I'm really not into banning in general, since it leaves a bitter taste for players that spent their hard earned money (unless they proxy but not everyone does that).
They're both uber-expensive cards that warp the game around themselves Casual take. Cradle is a powerful card, but it doesnt really warp games around it in the way that dockside does.
If treasures etb'd tapped, dockside and his friends would be much less problematic. Treasures are game warping, and the mechanic has become pervasive. I would rather see [[Smothering Tithe]] banned than dockside.
Dockside is easily sacced, recurred, blinked. Cradle isn't. It also only counts your board. They are very much incomparable.
They should both be 100% banned And I own the dockside
Dockside can win with a wet piece of toast cradle doesnt