There are many who are for a ban or at minimum a drastic change of Thanos MC, but there are still those who oppose the banning. There have been several arguments for and against the banning and each side has their own valid reasons. There have been a plethora of suggestions on how to deal with the Thanos issue including banning him, errata for the card, changing the ruling on goblin tokens, and changing how the Top 8 is determined. All of these methods have their own merits and flaws. The question is, what should be done?

Hard Decisions

Ultimately, the decision to change the stranglehold (INSERT CARD NAME HERE) has on the format is up Upper Deck Entertainment. It is their place to decide which action is best. Daily topics on social media, primarily on Facebook, complain again and again usually won't change a company's stance on a broken item. For anyone who has played any MMORPG and checked out the class forums, often there are people complaining that their class isn't strong enough or needs help in comparison to other classes.

A company has to figure out when and when not to act. Changing things at the sight of every complaint would be too much for players to keep up with, yet no action ever could result in a stale unchanging game. A company has to get enough data to support their claim for modifying a game, so that they are sure of their actions and that changes aren't too frequent that people have trouble keeping up. It is a delicate balance to maintain. I do have a small history of developing a format and growing a community, so I understand how difficult of a decision it can be.

Stay a while, and listen!

For those who don't know why I go by PauperTim, it is because that is what I like to identify as my name. Well typically that is how names work right, with the exception of our birth name. I didn't get to choose my birth name, but if I did it would probably be Stormageddon or something(kudos if you get the reference). Anyways back on topic, I was one of the three co-founders of the Pauper format for Magic: The Gathering. There is a longer winded story of how that came about in the "About" section in the navigation menu. Essentially we were a small player run community that made what are called Player Run Events that we didn't charge entry for on Magic Online (because it was against the terms of use) but still gave prizes for.

We had a fairly small card pool on Magic Online when we created the format. For those who know Magic Sets, it was from Invasion all the way up to Fifth Dawn, a card pool of 4 years of cards only. It was also limited to only common cards from those sets which limited the card pool even further. After a few tournaments, there was a clear standout deck that was wrecking most decks that were played. A lot of players were complaining and calling for a banning. There were only 3 of us who created the format and a couple of others we let in to discuss and vote in these matters. This also wasn't an official format at the time, just something we did for fun.

These tournaments were usually comprised of the same people roughly. We started with less than 20 players then eventually tracked some attention and started to grow our player base. Several of the stronger players settled on Affinity being the best deck and there were quite a fw raising a fuss about it. There were several arguments and lots of emotional reactions thrown back and forth. Eventually a second tournament group started by a European for a European friendly time. Our core group decided eventually that action needed to be taken against the Affinity deck. I believe we ended up banning the artifact lands after lots of consideration but the European group did not follow suit. While we had created the format, we couldn't dictate what they did with our non regulated format. They already had ideas in mind of what to ban/restrict.

They tried a couple different things for different months and ended up always having a different ban list than us which confused the player base. That part of it was definitely not good for the format. Many times people played with decks that were illegal in our tournament or illegal in theirs. It was very confusing but it did allow for new designs of other decks to be built. More sets started to release which strengthened other archetypes but didn't add much to the Affinity deck.

Our results also showed us that our initial ban was incorrect. After a great deal of time and patience and with sufficient data from competitive practice matches we tested over the course of several months along with supported regular tournament data, we figured out that we had banned the wrong cards. We only needed to ban the card Cranial Plating. Affinity was still a contender but not overwhelming after that ban. That ban still is in effect today and the Affinity deck is a top contender in the metagame, but definitely not the boogeyman that is used to be.

The Pauper format has become an officially sanctioned Magic: The Gathering format since then and the ban list is handled directly by Wizards of the Coast. While they take input from members of the community, they don't ban cards hastily. They make sure there is sufficient time to come up with counter strategies, see if new set releases change anything up, and see if there is enough solid data to support the case of a card or deck being too strong in the first place. I think that team does a great job and sets a great model on how to handle changes in the game. A slow and cautious as you don't want to have to undo or change your ban later on.

What on Earth does that have to do with VS System 2PCG?

With stores being able to be call the shots on their own tournaments, they are able to be their own separate banning entity similar to what the European Pauper tournaments were. For competitive play, there haven't been enough large events with sufficient data to determine if Thanos needs a ban or not. Remember the size of the Origins 2016 tournament was the size of a large FNM in relation to Magic: The Gathering terms. Do you expect them to ban or change cards after only one large FNM sized event? I don't think so. How many people have extensively tested and accurately predicted how the metagame would change with thousands of games under their belt if Thanos wasn't around? How many of these people who are complaining about Thanos or (INSERT CARD NAME HERE) are regular big tournament players?

I've found that quite often when I talk to Pauper Players, the people who were complaining weren't even people who played in a ton of tournaments. I noticed in World of Warcraft, quite a few of the people who complained in the Class forums were not high end raiders or high end PVPers. For casual OP kit tournaments it is up to the tournament organizer, but for a big change to competitive play there has to be signs of a big problem with data supporting it.

Now I'm not saying Thanos, Cosmo or any other cards don't need to be watched or possibly changed, what I'm saying is that there needs to be more frequent large tournaments with data to back up a need for change. There very well might be something that has to be done but we need more evidence. Shock to the System was played in ~60% of decks at Origins , far above most other cards at that tournament but is it warping the format? Cards have to be evaluated on multiple criteria categories to deserve a change and that is something that Upper Deck Entertainment and Super Awesome Games has to evaluate with a long tedious process. If you feel Thanos is the best, play him and show them the data supporting that and perhaps it will make a difference.

Let them do what they need to do and focus on having fun with the people you play with. If you want to have banned cards, then get with a local store, grow a community with meetup groups and recruiting friends, get the local store to run tournaments and get the cards banned in your local community that you want, then grow the community to get sizable enough tournaments to show data to Upper Deck Entertainment. There are far more constructive things we can do rather than arguing about overpowered cards all day long. There have been multiple suggestions on how to handle problematic cards and many have been repeated over and over again. To grow the community we need to try to spread positive messages, not just negative messages. That is the only way this game will grow.

I think it is likely that something will happen to Thanos MC, but until then continue having fun with the game. Thank you for staying tuned in and making it this far. I'd love to hear your opinions in comments.