The last time I felt this way, Sylvan Primordial was banned in Commander.
It happens like this.
Where I play, Commander is competitive. Lots of people show up (25+). Turn 4 or 5 combos are common. Boards get wrecked. My Commander was tucked (bottom of library) in 4 out of 4 games I played a couple of days ago. With $5 of store credit on the line, they "go hard." <rolls eyes>
This makes for an ultra-competitive meta game. There are no "deals" at the table. No politics. People that stop by to watch a game in progress get shushed, then get asked to leave if they can't keep quiet. Every phase, every trigger is announced and priority is checked around the table. The judge is called, regularly. If a card is good, people run it. If a strategy works, people use it.
I started to see Sylvan Primordial show up in decks. Ok, great. It looked neat in the spoiler. It's big, rampy, and blows stuff up. What's not to love, right? So, it's no surprise that I start seeing it in the decks I see every week. Then, something happened.
Pretty soon, I started seeing green (or more accurately, multi-color with green) in every game. No joke. Everyone had green, just for Sylvan Primordial. Then, I started seeing decks designed to get to Sylvan Primordial as soon as possible. Then, it was decks that were casting and copying or otherwise recurring Sylvan Primordial. Every deck. Every game.
This doesn't sound too bad when you read it, but playing in that environment doesn't work. It's format-warping. The real kicker is when I start thinking something like this: "Gee, if I don't play Sylvan Primordial or a way to punish the guys who do play Sylvan Primordial, I might as well not play." That's not a good sign. That's how I know that something is wrong.
A short while later, Sylvan Primordial was banned. Decks returned to normal (crazy, but normal-crazy). They really did return to normal, overnight. It was like night and day after the banning.
That uneasy feeling is back. Oloro, Ageless Ascetic is a problem.
Esper is already a combo-heavy, controlling color combination. Sharuum decks have always had the ability to assemble the machine and to win suddenly, quickly, and with counter magic to back it up. That's not the problem. That's a typical game where I play. The problem is that Oloro gaining life from the Command zone warps the format.
Here's how I know. When I see Esper, it's Oloro. Not Sharuum. Not Sen Triplets. Not even Zur. I don't see any BW, UW, or UB decks with the exception of a Turn 4 infinite kill Oona deck once in a while. Otherwise, no one runs those combinations because they go for the third color and run Oloro instead.
Out of 25+ players there to play, Oloro shows up in almost every pod of 4, sometimes in multiples. Games with Oloro turn into Archenemy matches where it's 3 on 1, with everyone ganging up on Oloro. When Oloro loses, it requires a coordinated attack almost from the beginning to overcome the card advantage avalanche.
When I start thinking, "I'm going to run Oloro as the Commander of my mono-black deck," something is wrong. The life gain from the Command zone where Oloro can't even be interacted with is very, very strong. Ten turns into the game, I have 20 more life at my disposal than everyone else. That much life in the hands of a good player buys a lot of time, a lot of cards, and a very successful, defensive deck.
You know what else? That much life in the hands of a terrible player buys a lot of time, too. It makes bad players good, good players great, and great players outstanding. It's quite a handicap.
A guaranteed 2 life every turn doesn't sound like a lot when you read this. But, in a deck designed to slow down the game, to buy more turns, to stop damage from coming through, it's a tremendous advantage to gain life like that every turn. Life readily turns into cards, which turn into wins.
What I'm saying is that the meta game, at least where I play, is clearly warped around Oloro. Maybe it's not the same where you play. If it's not, I suggest you try Oloro as your Commander. :)
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