Hopefully, nobody.

Given the recent debates regarding Force of Will in Extended, I thought I'd toss in my own two cents. First of all, is everyone sick and tired of this debate yet? I know I am... and I haven't even been participating! That said, I'm going to keep this as concise as possible while still clearly stating my points.

To those people who are pressuring the DCI to ban Force of Will, well, your arguments are right on time. Banning day comes in two months, and these articles are perfectly timed to give the DCI enough time to analyze, interpret, and respond. Regardless, I write this article, not so much to request the DCI not to ban Force of Will (although that is definitely a sub-theme here), but rather, to make people think a little bit more about why or why not it (or any card for that matter) should be banned.

The banning of Rishadan Port in Masques Block may serve as a reasonable template for the consideration of banning Force of Will in Extended. Why did the DCI ban Port in Masques block, anyway? Reason number one:

"When four copies of a card appear in almost every deck, that card is too strong for the environment."

I'll be the first to say that if this is the ONLY reason to ban a card, then Force of Will should definitely be banned. Clearly the majority of the decks in Extended utilize it. However, we must also not be so hasty as to ban cards merely on whether they appear in many archetypes or only a few, nor whether or not they are played by many people or only a couple.

What about the DCI's second reason for banning Rishadan Port in Masques block?

"Another good reason to ban Rishadan Port is that it strongly discourages multicolor decks. The pressure against multicolor decks in Masques Block is significant, and the Port is preventing a large number of multicolor deck archetypes from being successful."

In that environment, I have no question whether or not Rishadan Port should have been banned. The DCI made the right choice. Regardless, Masques block is not the same as Extended. Right now, multicolor decks are very viable in Extended, despite the presence of Dustbowl, Wasteland, Back to Basics, and Price of Progress. Dual lands, painlands, City of Brass, Thran Quarry, Birds of Paradise, Mox Diamond, and others all make multi-colored decks very viable. Though there are clearly successful mono-colored archetypes in Extended, there are considerably more multi-colored successful archetypes as well. So this rationale for banning a card does not apply to Force of Will in Extended.

I believe the most indicative factor of whether a card should be banned or not is whether it causes an environment to be stagnant. Masques block clearly was stagnant. Only time will tell, however. Regardless, Extended is far from stagnant. Though Trix is clearly doing well, there are several other archetypes that have made Top 8s, like Merfolk, Hatred, Rec/Sur, B/G Oath, U/W Oath, Slivers, Tradewind/Survival, Squeebind, Sligh, Forbidian, and Pandeburst.

Look at that wide variety of decks. The top decks consisted of beatdown, combo, direct damage, and control, as well as some other decks such as PT Junk, "Full English Breakfast," and "Life," to name a few. Extended is far from a stagnant environment; in fact, it is quite healthy, and Force of Will actually enables the playability of many of the current Extended decks. Not only would banning it would hurt far too many of those decks, it would also ultimately cause more harm than help to the Extended environment.

So let's all be real about this issue: Banning any card that does not hurt an environment is ridiculous, especially when that card actually allows several archetypes to maintain viability and prevent environmental stagnation.

Force of Will is one of those cards.

-Chris Cade
"Better Lucky Than Good!"