First of all, I never thought I would get much response to my original article on banning cards in multiplayer - and to boot, the response was mostly negative. The list was compiled through observation, meaning that I have seen other people struggle against these cards and of course personal experience. It being the list was not merely intended to put cards I particularly hated or disliked because then Patrick Selk's evil army of Mother of Runes would be on it as well; it was intended for a more broader scope. As stated in my original article, the goal of causal gamers of Magic is to maximize fun and not to maximize winning, although some say it is one in the same. What most people suggest to solve the problem is akin to the flavor text of Land Leeches. (The standard cure for leeches requires the application of burning embers. Alternative methods must be devised should an ember of sufficient size prove more harmful than the leech. - Vervamon the Elder)

Here is my some background information that might give you insight into my view. Using the Magic profiling guide, I am a Johnny/Timmy amalgamation, as are probably most fans of multiplayer. (Johnny plays a weird assortment of cards and wins with style, while Timmy believes bigger = better especially when it comes to creatures) I'm probably more Johnny, though, because I did feature Tahngarth's Rage (it won me a game once when a guy had out Ensnaring Bridge and no cards in hand ) in many tournament decks when Tempest was in Standard. Furthermore, I hear,"What the hell does that card do?" or"Only you would make a deck with that card" a lot at the local card shop. My gaming environment has a restricted list that is quite similar to the Type 1 restricted list with a few exceptions, which puts the kibosh on some combo engines. So you can play with broken cards - but broken cards don't dominate the environment.

I learned in one of my Philosophy classes that attacking the speaker is a common flaw that most novice speakers use. So calling me a scrub or noob doesn't benefit the argument at all; however, I will respond to those people and defend myself. I do know the game and its mechanics, (get ready to chime in with your Nelson-like"ha-ha"), although I do have a rating of about 1600 (due to the fact that most DCI tournaments I played in were over three years ago and back then I was a bad player - remember Tahngarth's Rage?)

A fairer assessment was my Magic Online ( when it was free ) composite rating which was as high as 1850 before I started to tinker around with decks and toy with new draft strategies. To quell the rumors, I do play with mass removal and artifact/enchantment removal in most of my decks - but some people don't and the list would benefit those who do not. Lastly, as examples of my deckbuilding skills, I had two top 8 finishes in the Grimmoire-sponsored Constructed tournaments that were around in Beta testing of Magic Online with original decks, and both never included a smiling reptile-like creature.

There are always solutions to problem cards - but wouldn't it be better if the environment would be free of these cards? And yes, many of these solutions do involve mass removal or removal of some sort, but I never said or implied that there weren't any solutions. The be-all and end-all to almost any threat can be answered by the board sweeping power of Nevinyrral's Disk - and because it is an artifact it can be dumped into any deck. With this power, then, it makes sense that four slots should be dedicated for Nevinyrral's Disk in every deck especially for black and red decks. If we expand this out to the most extreme scenario, where every deck has Disks, then there is no flow to the game - and would be much like a football game with penalties every other play. People would play out stuff, then someone would disk away, killing all momentum and the process would repeat several times. Is it effective? Yes! Is this fun? Not really.

So the dilemma arises: Is it good for the environment that every deck have mass removal or not?

One of the problems with mass removal is that the majority of them are rares. So is it worth the money to go out and shell out a few bucks (to those who would say,"Spend the money, you cheap bastard," I have them already) so you can win a few more games or invest it in more productive ways - like rares for tournament play? (Although some mass removal cards like Wrath of God are good in almost every level of play.) If you really feel the need to win, tournaments are the outlet - since winning actually matters there. Plus, it is disheartening to tell kids,"Buy rares or lose!"

Another solution usually comes by tapping lands that produce mana of the blue variety and having your card mysteriously go to the graveyard. Counters do an effective job of stopping problem cards - but no one likes having to announce a spell, then hold your card above the graveyard in anticipation of it going there. (In the rare instance when the card hits play, you get to act all surprised.) The more counters you have in your deck, the more likely you will befall the fate of being hated out - and quite early too. This is a reason why people don't play decks with tons of counterspells in them. These decks are also quite boring to play and annoying to play against.

The other blue suggestion (well, I guess it could be red too) was theft - not physically taking the cards, but gaining control of them by the way of blue enchantments like Confiscate, which is the most flexible at this task. (Physically stealing so they can't play problem cards would work as well, but no one condones this course of action.) This solves the problem for the controller of the enchantment - but the rest of the table still has to deal with the problem card. So basically, you have traded places with the former controller of the problem card and therefore it isn't actually a solution... It just transfers the problem to another player.

(And that's not a solution? I mean, is this some sort of Communist Magic where everyone should benefit equally from all cards? - The Ferrett)

One of the other solutions deals with something I consider pure cheese - and its name is burn. I equate burn, whether it is for a million damage or just enough to deliver the fatal blow, to taking a gun to a knife fight. Most of the time, there is very little you can do against it other than just take it. The problem with burn is that the efficient burn doesn't do enough damage and the mana intensive ones (the ones with X in the casting cost) take too long for the mana base to be developed. Most of the non-targeted board sweepers, like Earthquake and Fault Line, also have the drawback of damaging the caster. However, burn does win games against shadow creatures, since shadow creatures have a low toughness - and against Slivers, untargetable creatures are useless if you are burnt to a crisp. It does win against Opposition too, if you have burn that are instants like Ghitu Fire and/or Urza's Rage or just lots of burn that are instants.

The reason why I consider burn a dishonorable deck choice is that it doesn't really interact with other players and is just concerned with the big"Woosh" (as my friend would say) that it deals with regular frequency.

If burn was cheese, then combo is king of fromage. It seems rather hypocritical when the Ferrett suggested he likes burn but hates combo; he stated that if he made a banned list that it would include cards that power the combos. Like your the evil twin brother you keep chained in your attic, combo decks should not be unleashed into the unprepared masses. It is sometimes fun to play a combo deck once in awhile - but if you play it every week, you start to hear the moans and groans of"You aren't playing that deck again?" and"Why can't you make a real deck?" I think that Wizards probably wished combo decks didn't exist - because just like burn, they don't really get you to interact with other players. Combo decks should be discouraged, whether they are an elaborate seven-card combo or a simple two or three card combo.

The non-card solution to keep cards in check and probably the most effective way is politics. Politics more than any card unless you are playing combo decks ultimately decides who wins or loses almost any game of multi-player Magic. It is always easy to say,"Look! Card X has been played," and act like a mob and beat the tar out of the player who played card X.

However, sometimes once card X hits the table it is already too late. Politics usually requires that you know the contents of your opponent's decks, which may not always be the case. The downside of politics is that it can swing both ways; if you have a Clay (How did this redneck hillbilly get to be second?) to your Brian (a Survivor reference) or a Vader for the Emperor, you can assert control and help protect each other's stuff and almost assure one of you will win. This isn't a fun scenario, especially if you aren't in the alliance.

The common sense solution and the one I use most often is to play with targeted enchantment and/or artifact removal. It doesn't win you any style points and doesn't give you card advantage, but it also isn't obtrusive and doesn't create waves with your opponents. Problems arise in the rare instances when you can't target artifacts or enchantments, but those are the risks.

The following were some of many solutions for my original banned list; some have worse side-effect than others, but most of them do work. So coming back to the Land Leeches analogy, what is better - having some problem cards banned, or having to play against dull, uninspired decks? I (and I hope many others) would choose the former. May your environment benefit from your choice.