I don't think having a turn 1 win that requires turn 0 disruption to counter it would be at all healthy in any meta-game, let alone ones where standard turn 0 disruption like Artifact Blast and Mental Misstep wouldn't work.

Well, not a known turn-one kill. All I'm arguing for is to drop the turn-one-kill ban in the format description, and take care of known ones with bans. That way, we reward innovation, which to me is much more interesting than meta-game-guessing.

But that only covers the unusual case where there is a first turn kill but only one player knows about it. That's rare in any round rule set.

The more likely scenarios are that there's a first turn kill that many know about, in which case it's a meta guess whether to play that, the disrupt for that, or a deck that beasts the disrupt for that.

Or worse, when there are multiple turn 1 kills, where the guesswork is even more scattershot. The kills just 3-3 each other, and people try to guess which kill to target if they're playing disrupt. Which is kinda what happened here - Edacade played to disrupt elemental resonance, which resulted in being weak to lotus. If people played the silver billet for lotus they'd have gotten eaten alive by elemental resonance.

I find it very entertaining when people assume I've put more strategic thought into my choices than I actually have.

i'm pretty sure that it's black lotus, as that's the enabler

(the real issue is that many upside formats have a critical turn of 1 like this one did, don't think there's a real solution because some alternate formats increase the number of fast mana options which is the real danger)

Leyline of Vitality (Elemental Resonance) + Quirion Sentinel (Canopy Cover) + Gore Vassal (Gift of Immortality) would have done nice work.

key card there is elemental resonance as otherwise it doesn't work at all (it could be reworked to use lotus as well)

on the other hand, nice arbitrarily large life total combo

That was my point - that infinite combo and good deck wasn't reliant on Lotus.

You could always point to the mana source of any deck and say it's the enabler. Plains - Savannah Lions - Path to Exile? Why, without that Plains or some equivalent mana enabler, it would never work!

fast mana is the enabler for formats with a critical turn of 1, without the fast mana a slower mana source would be necessary thus making disruption better

whether or not that's a good thing is another debate entirely

I got up at 2:30am this morning! How was your day?

Season 21 Awards
Consolation Prizes
Edacade (banned Tidehollow Sculler)
CommanderJim (banned Bitterblossom)

Round Winners
Vanilla: thatmarkguy
Vanilla Redux: Golgari_Spy
Storm Scale: CommanderJim
Auras!: CommanderJim
You may each submit a new alternate format to be added to next season's poll. (Repeat winners may suggest multiple formats.)

Grand Prizes!
1st place (due Friday, 23:00 PST): CommanderJim
2nd place (due Thursday, 23:00 PST): thatmarkguy
3rd place (due Wednesday, 23:00 PST): POSValkir
Each change awarded allows you to either add a card or remove a card from the vanilla banned list. First place gets three changes, second place gets two, and third place gets one.
Note: Cards that were banned at the beginning of the season cannot be unbanned.
Don't forget to submit before your deadline!

Your average match points for each round are summed together to generate your score.
Rank|Name|Total Score|Round 1|Round 2|Round 3|Round 4
1|CommanderJim|15.77|3.17|2.40|4.80|5.40
2|thatmarkguy|13.87|4.67|2.80|2.00|4.40
3|POSValkir|13.40|4.00|2.40|4.00|3.00
4|Golgari_Spy|10.60|3.00|4.80|1.00|1.80
5|Edacade|7.20|1.00|2.40|0.80|3.00
6|Zlehtnoba|6.00|3.00|2.80|0.00|0.20
7|door (dooooooooooor)|3.60|0.00|0.00|3.60|0.00
8|Cgalcic|2.00|2.00|0.00|0.00|0.00

I really need to try harder next season to not win.

It's a grind, getting up at 2:30, turning on Gatherer, poring through your old posts, thinking about the metagame in your sleepless moments ... Maybe you really should relax a bit, let us grubs snatch a win now and then

I'll ban Lodestone Golem

finally, lodestone golem gets the respect it deserves

I'll knock down Lotus Bloom and Mana Crypt.

I feel like tax permanents are over-powered when fast mana isnt an option. Or control in general is too strong. Andnow I feel like we're in a spot where theban list may need a reset because we have too much banned.

taxing permanents are actually better when quality fast mana is an option

When the artifact mana is banned, storage land decks get room to breathe. And storage land decks eat tax decks for breakfast.

i think storage land decks can compete with some amount of artifact mana, just not the top tier (black lotus in particular)

While that seems true on the surface, in our little group Tax decks have been more successful when fast mana is banned. Not many go the route of Storage Lands, opting rather for the fastest single mana (or mana + mox) deck or the cycle of Depletion lands. Given how, like, everything, is banned now though Storage Lands seem a bit more practical.

That's because storage land decks have been unviable because first turn threat+disruption has been a thing. Tidehollow Sculler, Mesmeric Fiend, Brain Maggot, Meddling Mage... these have been problems, and their existence has been either dissuading storage and depletion land decks, or squishing them. They've been slowly getting banned one by one, and now we're at the point that complaints about too long a banlist are coming up. Would things get better if these ruled again?

I am beginning to think the real problem is T1 disruption, mtgs' game has long banned all first turn hand disruption, and I'm beginning to see the wisdom in that. When so many decks can wreck any hand that doesn't play out on T1, that just pushes all decks towards being able to play out on T1.

I am also wondering if we want to make LandRule (each turn you can play a basic land from outside the game) a part of 'vanilla' - decks could have more varied threats and more of a long game if they didn't have to devote slots to land and have to play the speed-or-storage guessing game. And a single disrupt wouldn't likely be game-over.