Cheers everyone,
thank you very much for your replies! I really appreciate you as Council-Members taking the time to respond to my thoughts. Sorry for taking my time to respond, but I wanted to wait and see if someone else might chime in. For the sake of brevity and finding common ground in the discussion, let me just address some of the points most pressing for me.
In regard to TNN - I get that people became increasingly annoyed by the card and now came to accept this as a valid reason to ban a card. Nevertheless, I think - in hindsight - we banned it at a time when it actually would have become less and less of a problem in light of the new printings. Honestly, I am currently wishing for such a resilient boardpresence that helps to get back into planeswalker-centric early and midgames..
Your responses to Birthing Pod were quite interesting and I did not expect such a reserved stance towards reintroducing the card. For me, it is not clear how much of an additional shot in the arm Birthing Pod would be for Hermit as this deck is already saturated with cheaper tutors for their main line that also require less setup (of course they would play it, but it is located at a similar and even later spot in the curve than the deck conventionally wins anyways and is more prone to being disrupted). On a second note, of course Birthing Pod grows in powerlevel the more mature the format eventually becomes, but this is already factored into my plea for unbanning the card. In my point of view, this card (re-)introduces so many cards and playpatterns and has the potential to revitalize players' interest in different strategies or even getting back into the format in the first place. This is something that we shouldn't underestimate regarding ban-related decisions, and out of all my proposals, BP can make its presence felt the most. After three years of not having an unban, i think that would be a positive sign to the community from the council. It might well prove very strong, but why not giving the playerbase some new food for thought, let them explore their deckbuilding skills and enjoy the potential experience of "having broken" the format?! What is there to lose if you can simply ban it in the next installment? A quick poll on facebook might reveal whether more people would be satisfied than dissatisfied with a potential unban (?!)
Regarding the equipments: I am fine with both Jitte and Clamp. However, I do strongly believe that Clamp would be played in much more decks than Jitte. Outside of Mana-Elf-decks, this card will 100% show up in jeskai/+b decks as they already play Young Pyromancer, Bitterblossom, Lingering Souls, Monastery Mentor (and Clarion Spirit) - decks which are already centered around drawing cards for cheap and are better equipped into converting small advantages and create an avalanche out of steady cardflows. This, i think, will overall outweigh the occasional benefit green decks get from it, which does not stike me as something the council intends with this unban. Umezawa's Jitte, irrespective of how powerful it is, would not and does not slot into every "fair" deck. I would even go so far as to say unless you play Stoneforge Mystic (and a correspondingly creature-heavy shell), you do not touch the card. It still consumes a decent amount of mana given how compressed the early game sometimes feels and is much more matchup-dependend than Clamp (while also suffering from the traditional problems of the equipment-cardtype). Overall, I do think Jitte adds more to the format than Skullclamp as it only clearly strenghtens one strand of decks (which deserve some powerup).
In sum, I am urging you to please not take this criticism on a personal level. But given that in your announcement you were explicitly asking for people to make suggestions regarding potential unbans, your responses are conveying a very hesitant (conservative even) basic attitude. I get that this stems from your degree of responsibility for the format, but at this point I think the community deserves more trust and tools to actively shape the face of the meta and counteract dominant strategies. Apart from Uro and Thassa's Oracle, the metagame has been comparatively stagnant, while some decktypes seemed to have overtaken others to a degree of insurmountability unless competitive alternatives emerge.
thank you very much for your replies! I really appreciate you as Council-Members taking the time to respond to my thoughts. Sorry for taking my time to respond, but I wanted to wait and see if someone else might chime in. For the sake of brevity and finding common ground in the discussion, let me just address some of the points most pressing for me.
In regard to TNN - I get that people became increasingly annoyed by the card and now came to accept this as a valid reason to ban a card. Nevertheless, I think - in hindsight - we banned it at a time when it actually would have become less and less of a problem in light of the new printings. Honestly, I am currently wishing for such a resilient boardpresence that helps to get back into planeswalker-centric early and midgames..
Your responses to Birthing Pod were quite interesting and I did not expect such a reserved stance towards reintroducing the card. For me, it is not clear how much of an additional shot in the arm Birthing Pod would be for Hermit as this deck is already saturated with cheaper tutors for their main line that also require less setup (of course they would play it, but it is located at a similar and even later spot in the curve than the deck conventionally wins anyways and is more prone to being disrupted). On a second note, of course Birthing Pod grows in powerlevel the more mature the format eventually becomes, but this is already factored into my plea for unbanning the card. In my point of view, this card (re-)introduces so many cards and playpatterns and has the potential to revitalize players' interest in different strategies or even getting back into the format in the first place. This is something that we shouldn't underestimate regarding ban-related decisions, and out of all my proposals, BP can make its presence felt the most. After three years of not having an unban, i think that would be a positive sign to the community from the council. It might well prove very strong, but why not giving the playerbase some new food for thought, let them explore their deckbuilding skills and enjoy the potential experience of "having broken" the format?! What is there to lose if you can simply ban it in the next installment? A quick poll on facebook might reveal whether more people would be satisfied than dissatisfied with a potential unban (?!)
Regarding the equipments: I am fine with both Jitte and Clamp. However, I do strongly believe that Clamp would be played in much more decks than Jitte. Outside of Mana-Elf-decks, this card will 100% show up in jeskai/+b decks as they already play Young Pyromancer, Bitterblossom, Lingering Souls, Monastery Mentor (and Clarion Spirit) - decks which are already centered around drawing cards for cheap and are better equipped into converting small advantages and create an avalanche out of steady cardflows. This, i think, will overall outweigh the occasional benefit green decks get from it, which does not stike me as something the council intends with this unban. Umezawa's Jitte, irrespective of how powerful it is, would not and does not slot into every "fair" deck. I would even go so far as to say unless you play Stoneforge Mystic (and a correspondingly creature-heavy shell), you do not touch the card. It still consumes a decent amount of mana given how compressed the early game sometimes feels and is much more matchup-dependend than Clamp (while also suffering from the traditional problems of the equipment-cardtype). Overall, I do think Jitte adds more to the format than Skullclamp as it only clearly strenghtens one strand of decks (which deserve some powerup).
In sum, I am urging you to please not take this criticism on a personal level. But given that in your announcement you were explicitly asking for people to make suggestions regarding potential unbans, your responses are conveying a very hesitant (conservative even) basic attitude. I get that this stems from your degree of responsibility for the format, but at this point I think the community deserves more trust and tools to actively shape the face of the meta and counteract dominant strategies. Apart from Uro and Thassa's Oracle, the metagame has been comparatively stagnant, while some decktypes seemed to have overtaken others to a degree of insurmountability unless competitive alternatives emerge.