EDH’s banlist needs a complete rework. The problem with the format is fast mana (artifact mana especially) and tutors. Banning Jeweled Lotus and Mana Crypt was a good thing. And the same needs to be done to Mana Vault, Chrome Mox, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Demonic Tutor, etc. Then a lot of cards could be taken off. Sway the Stars is a 10 mana sorcery. If you let your opponent resolve such a card, you deserve whatever comes after it. Cards like Upheaval are only a problem because of cards like Sol Ring and Mox Amber.

EDH players and the RC don’t want to swallow the hard pill it’s currently a $5,000 turn three format. If you want it to be cheaper, there needs to be more viable strategies instead of goodstuff piles using staples tacked together. If you want it to be slower, you need to ban things that allow consistent play patterns.

Prismatic was the “big deck” format for years on MODO and it’s what EDH could be with the right banlist. People played with four copies of Darksteel Colossus and would hard cast them into play. That was only possible because Prismatic understood the power of cards like Tooth and Nail and moxen. EDH players want to live in some magical Christmas land where they can use Vampiric Tutor or Survival of the Fittest, but not have anyone do anything broken that ends the game on turn two.

Sad but necessary for the Professor to spend the first 7 minutes telling magic players to not harass or threaten people online anonymously.

But onto the video - I have to disagree with the Professor entirely on this:

[08:57] I was much more in favor of reasonably reprinting these cards so that they became affordable

He first says that Commander will be more fun in 3 months, and then says he thinks WoTC should have just re-printed the problem cards to make them more available. I can’t understand how any entrenched player could believe this. Especially given just how long and how many reprints were needed for Sol Ring to get the cost down.

But beyond that, if you first agree that the format is better without the cards, how and why are you suggesting to first reprint them to oblivion? There is a clear problem with fast mana in commander (and tutors and other things) and there’s no amount of reprinting that will ever solve this.

He also says that Jeweled Lotus should never have been printed, but then says it should not have been banned? And instead just printed MORE? A card that should never have been printed should now be printed more? This makes no sense, and it’s inconsistent, which is very out of character for someone who approaches things very logically.

Also, the comparisons to other formats like Pioneer make no sense to me. There is no comparison with these formats, Commander is completely unique compared to competitive 60-card formats. It’s not even apples and oranges, it’s apples and baseballs.

Finally, his suggestion to put the cards on a watchlist as a waiting period does a huge disservice to players who don’t follow news closely. It would create a cash-out event for entrenched players and leave non-entrenched players as the bag-holders. That is nuts to me, and this is yet another reason why I agree with the path they took here.