Is Protean Hulk Safe To Unban?

Protean Hulk is one of those banned cards which generates a great deal of chatter (especially now that Prophet of Kruphix is gone).

I’d like to engage in a little discussion regarding the card in advance of this weekend’s Commander Rules Committee (RC) meeting. Before we do, I want to offer a few caveats.

Disclaimers Ahoy

First of all, this is not a prelude to anything. This article is not a setup for any particular movement of the card one way or the other. It’s recognition of the discussion that is ongoing in the community. I have no particular dog in this hunt. As I’ll present, there are reasonable arguments for both sides. If Protean Hulk stays on the banned list or comes off, I’ll be just as happy either way. I want to have the conversation, I want the conversation to be fruitful, and in the end I want us (us being the RC) to make a sound decision regarding the card.

There is no absolute right or wrong here. There’s no moral value to banning or unbanning the card (or any card). The decision comes down to what makes the most sense regarding the format as we’ve described our banned list criteria (which are admittedly and intentionally subjective).

We’re doing a quiet little test with Protean Hulk in our Commander Rotisserie Draft League. We decided to let Keith, with the Abzan deck (he rotates through playing Daghatar the Adamant; Teneb, the Harvester; and Doran, the Siege Tower) give it a whirl since (weirdly enough) his deck is the one least likely to abuse it. He’s done nothing else with his deck to take advantage of the card (like add sacrifice outlets or a combo package). The card has shown up in three games so far. Once, Keith cast it and it got exiled nearly immediately. It impacted the other two games.

In Game 1 last week, Todd cast Bribery targeting Keith, getting Protean Hulk. I had Gigantoplasm on the battlefield, which was copying Solemn Simulacrum. I also had Restoration Angel in my hand. At the end of Todd’s turn, I flashed in Restoration Angel to blink Gigantoplasm, copying Protean Hulk when it came back, knowing that I had Planar Cleansing in my hand and the battlefield is otherwise uncomfortable for me. That’s when the nonsense started, since I had Karmic Guide and Clones already in my graveyard.

After casting Planar Cleansing, I pulled Reveillark out of my library (and nothing else, since I don’t have a one-drop). I blinked Reveillark, returned my graveyard to the battlefield via bringing back Karmic Guide and a clone for Reveillark (you can’t bring back Karmic Guide and a clone to copy it off of a Reveillark trigger because they enter the battlefield at the same time), and then just started resurrecting Clones. It wasn’t all that dangerous because I didn’t have the Protean Hulk itself and a sacrifice outlet (plus, half my creatures at that point are just copies of Karmic Guide), but I definitely had all the other cards to go nuts with on subsequent turns.

Fortunately for the rest of the table, Michael had the answer on his turn: Ugin, the Spirit Dragon for five. I was left with all my pieces in exile and only Solemn Simulacrum on the battlefield. Sure, I still got a trigger off Reveillark leaving for one final time, but since there was nothing in my graveyard, it didn’t much matter.

I ended up going on a beatdown plan later in that game with Sigarda, Host of Herons and actually winning it, but it had nothing to do with copying Protean Hulk. It had more to do with Sensei’s Divining Top letting me take the best picks off the top of my deck for several turns.

In Game 2, Keith cast Protean Hulk and I Cloned it. When Michael, sitting to my left and between me and Keith, wiped the battlefield, I played it quite conservatively, since my triggers resolved before his. Knowing that Keith in the Abzan colors has a number of ways to just eat whatever I put onto the battlefield (like False Prophet), instead of going for something too splashy, I pulled Solemn Simulacrum and Saffi, attempting to play more of a long game.

Keith also took a conservative tack, going with Undercity Informer and Athreos, God of Passage. He said afterward that he should have gotten Anafenza, the Foremost to blank any graveyard recursion. In the long run, it didn’t matter much, since Todd ended up with Zendikar Resurgent, a pile of mana, and Maelstrom Wander into Avenger of Zendikar and Time Warp. He crushed all of our faces. We didn’t even count the damage, just rounded it to 150.

Obviously, the statistical sampling of the above-mentioned games isn’t significant enough to draw any broad conclusions, but it is representative of the types of games we’re likely to see with these decks when Protean Hulk is involved. I’m the only one who is really set up to abuse it, and that’s not based on the card itself, but the other contents of my deck—which is part of the concern (I’ll get into that a little below).

It’s worth mentioning that Todd cast Bribery to get it initially onto the battlefield. He certainly had other choices in Keith’s deck, such as Karametra, God of Harvests; Phantom Nishoba; Dragonlord Dromoka; Emeria Shepherd; and Champion of Lambholt. One of the reasons he chose the Protean Hulk was that we want to see what it can do (which probably taints any “scientific” testing method) and the other is that it’s just great value. You know you’re going to recover from most battlefield wipes better than other players.

We did a broader, but still closed, test a while back (two years-ish, if memory serves), in which we asked about a dozen of our best regulars to just put it into their decks with no other modifications (and only play it within the closed group). The trial went on for a few weeks, and I personally didn’t participate in very many games in which it showed up. The feedback we received—even from people who were hoping to bring it off the list—was that it was broken in nearly every deck in which it got played. Armada Games owner Aaron Fortino is one of those people. He has one deck: Karador, Ghost Chieftain.

He went in hoping to prove Protean Hulk wasn’t all that bad. When I asked him a month later, he just shook his head and called it “silly,” adding that it simply added another piece to already-borderline shenanigans. I don’t have details on exactly what that meant to the people who said that it should stay banned, only the broad impression that it overcentralized and devolved those games.

Again, the sampling here is pretty small, but it’s something to go on. These two little spins around the block are hardly what I’d call rigorous testing (and the one in the Draft League is still ongoing). The question becomes, “Is the card broken by itself or only when you build around it?” Let’s look at the choices.

The Case for Keeping It Banned

This is the easier case of the two to make, since the preponderance of evidence would have to emerge in favor of taking it off. If a card is on the banned list, we need a compelling reason to take it off (just like needing compelling reasons to ban an unbanned card).

“Test unbanning” isn’t an option. The messaging itself would be problematic. As we’ve seen before, making any kind of change has its difficulties. Making a change and then reversing it would be an order of magnitude worse, so we keep a relatively conservative line there.

“There’s another card that’s somewhat like it” is not a compelling reason, because the idea of cascading bans (“if you ban this, then you have to ban that”) ends up in a terrible place. I get why people think that Tooth and Nail is similar to Protean Hulk; the committee simply disagrees with the equivalence. As a creature, Protean Hulk is simply orders of magnitude easier to reuse and recur.

The card itself still reasonably fits into the cross-section of the two criteria “Creates Undesirable Game States” and “Warps the Format Strategically.” Obviously, we have the presumption of the latter, since it’s not getting played (you know, being banned and all). We have some evidence that it would (see above). In the long run, even though the sampling is small, the evidence is reasonably compelling enough to take no action on removing the card.

I’ll go back to Gavin’s note when we banned the card, back when the format was still called EDH: “The key here is that the kinds of cards required to answer Protean Hulk combo (cheap permission, hand disruption, or RFG-creature removal) aren’t the kinds of cards we feel people should have to fill their EDH decks with.”

Running answers is smart. People feeling that their decks need to be full of answers is contrary to the goals of the format. The multiplicative effect of Hulk combo being so easily assembled and that so many existing decks already carry pieces of those combos makes it worth keeping on the list. Our suspicion is that it takes decks and combos which are borderline and pushes them over the edge.

If Protean Hulk were never banned, there would be a considerable lobby arguing for it to go on the list right now. That this argument would exist creates enough doubt to maintain the inertia regarding this particular card. Unbanning it might not break the format, but there’s no evidence that it will make it better, so why take the chance? The burden of proof must always be on the desired movement, whether that is to take it off or put it on the list. The argument here is strong enough to keep it on.

The Case for Unbanning It

“The game has changed and the conditions under which it was banned don’t exist” is a compelling reason to unban a card. Such was the case with Kokusho, the Evening Star.

The simple truth is that people don’t need to run deck full of answers to some combos because the answers we have in 2016 are better and more prevalent than the answers we had in 2008. Like Mindslaver, one resolution of Protean Hulk might be okay, but multiples are oppressive. Exile effects, especially for creatures, exist in such greater numbers today compared to back then as to make a significant difference. Further fueling the argument that it’s okay to take the card off the list is that, even when we banned it, we did so grudgingly because we thought there was plenty of room for cool uses of Protean Hulk.

In Gavin’s words from that same announcement, “This one really hurt.” We like the card. As I said above, I’m not particularly committed to the card’s disposition, but we like it (but liking a card is not enough; some of us also like Recurring Nightmare, and that’s a way tougher argument).

We can even avoid using the argument that “there are other combos cheaper and easier to assemble” in arguing for Protean Hulk. Just because it’s a card which provides good value doesn’t mean it’s broken. There are plenty of cards which provide good value. The argument is that Protean Hulk is only busted if it’s built around, which makes it a little like Hermit Druid—except the conditions for Protean Hulk to be abused are far less narrow.

Protean Hulk is a creature. In 2016, creatures are way easier to deal with. The conditions in the broader format are right. The idea that the secret to the format lies in not breaking it resonates with a significant enough portion of the player base that, while it will occasionally get abused (like any number of other cards), it will for the most part get played for good value and not to create oppressive battlefield states. It’s time to give Protean Hulk its day.

There are the two sides of the coin. Again, I haven’t presented these brief arguments to presage anything, simply to recognize that the conversation is happening. The RC will talk about the card this weekend. When we make the next announcement, you’ll know how the discussion went.

Comments from Last Week

I’m going to take the opportunity each week to answer a few of the questions and comments regarding the previous week’s article. Last week, I talked about how I would rebuild Ezuri, Claw of Progress, from scratch.

Terry Richardson commented, “Needs more Old Man of the Sea!”

Old Man of the Sea is a cool card from the earliest days of Magic. One of the sub-themes I considered was some creature theft (remarkably, I think I’m still without a deck with Vedalken Shackles in it, since I ran across a foil version while sorting some cards the other day). The idea was leveraging the synergy between Willbreaker and Opposition (or a number of other cards), but since that was part of the original deck, I laid aside the idea.

Blake N Brandi Criminger asked, “I assume Sage of Hours was too oppressive to include?”

Helpful reader Jordan Andrews answered the same that I will: infinite turns simply isn’t fun.

And with Ezuri, this combo is way too easy to pull off. I want to play interactive games, and everyone else watching me take all the turns isn’t particularly interactive.

Emma Handy of SCG Tour^® fame responded, “If you’re into Morph Commanders, Animar is a pretty sweet one that a local friend played.”

Emma, you and your friend should definitely check out the link to my Animar deck down at the bottom of the page. It is also pretty sweet and has plenty of morphs in it. I wonder how many cards we have in common?

This week’s Deck Without Comment is Glissa, Glissa.

Glissa, Glissa

Sheldon Menery

0th Place at Test deck on 07-31-2014

Commander

Creatures (27)

Lands (37)

Check out our awesome Deck List Database for the last versions of all my decks:

ADUN’S TOOLBOX;
ANIMAR’S SWARM;
AURELIA GOES TO WAR;
CHILDREN of a LESSER GOD;
DEMONS OF KAALIA;
EREBOS and the HALLS OF THE DEAD;
GLISSA, GLISSA;
HELIOD, GOD OF ENCHANTMENTS;
DREAMING OF INTET;
FORGE OF PURPHOROS;
KARN, BEATDOWN GOLEM;
HALLOWEEN WITH KARADOR;
KARRTHUS, WHO RAINS FIRE FROM THE SKY;
KRESH INTO THE RED ZONE;
LAVINIA BLINKS;
LAZAV, SHAPESHIFTING MASTERMIND;
ZOMBIES OF TRESSERHORN;
MELEK’S MOLTEN MIND GRIND;
MERIEKE’S ESPER CONTROL;
THE MILL-MEOPLASM;
MIMEOPLASM DO-OVER;
NATH of the VALUE LEAF;
NYLEA OF THE WOODLAND REALM;
OBZEDAT, GHOST KILLER;
PURPLE HIPPOS and MARO SORCERERS;
ZEGANA and a DICE BAG;
RITH’S TOKENS;
YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF;
RURIC THAR AND HIS BEASTLY FIGHT CLUB;
THASSA, GOD OF MERFOLK;
THE ALTAR of THRAXIMUNDAR;
TROSTANI and HER ANGELS;
THE THREAT OF YASOVA;
RUHAN DO-OVER;
KARADOR DO-OVER;
KARRTHUS DO-OVER

If you’d like to follow the adventures of my Monday Night RPG group (in a campaign that’s been alive since 1987 and is just now getting started with a new mini-series called Who Mourns for Adonis? which will set up the saga called (The Lost Cities of Nevinor), ask for an invitation to the Facebook group “Sheldon Menery’s Monday Night Gamers.”