Hello and happy Friday my fine foxy friends! We’re back for another Fan Favorite Friday after a week off due to Krampus Con preparations! And then another week off because I was working on something super special! What kind of special, you might ask? Don’t worry, you’ll find out. *winks conspiratorily* Krampus Con was stinkin’ amazing, and I’m so pumped I got to be here for it this year. It was a crazy day for me, but even more crazy for all of the people involved in putting it on!
I want to give a huge shoutout to Turbo Comics and the Fangirls Guild for putting on such an awesome convention! And of course, another huge shout out to all the awesome guests and vendors I got to meet throughout the day! Our Instagram is chock full of fun Krampus Con photos right now, so head over there if you want to take a peek!
So for this week, I took another look at the suggestions on that post from the Boise Magic Players page on Facebook, and my interest was piqued by some of Bradley’s old school suggestions!
So what won out? Chaos Orb and Sol Ring! Apparently, the old school fans were not as rabid as our EDH followers though, because Sol Ring stomped its competition in the votes! I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, it’s one of the most powerful cards ever printed, after all (even if I personally think Chaos Orb is waaay funnier to actually play)!
First, before we dig into the one ring to rule them all, we need to give away that shiny Teramorphic Expanse from last time! Yep, from the Evolving Wilds FFF. Google’s random number generator has spoken, and Nick Wheeler – you are the winner! Congratulations man.
What are we going to give away this week? Well, a playset of Sol Rings of course! I haven’t picked them out yet, but they’ll be from the Commander sets.
Cool, enough of that! Let us get down to business!
LOOK AT IT IN ALL ITS GLORY
History
Sol Ring has been around for a long time! It was printed in the very first Magic set, debuting in August 1993. It never saw another “standard” printing after Revised but has seen around 15 total paper printings. If it wasn’t being printed in normal, “standard” sets, then where did all of those other printings come from? Good question, friend!
When Wizard’s decided to start making Commander precons, they also decided that Sol Ring was one of those cards that HAD to be in every deck. It’s such an awesome card that it’s just become synonymous with EDH now. It’s also, apparently, been a pretty big source of contention amongst the community as well.
If you search “should Sol Ring be banned in Commander” you’re going to be assaulted with all sorts of forum posts where people are either violently defending Sol Ring’s existence of loudly advocating for a ban because “Sol Ring is a blight on the format.” All I know, as someone who very rarely plays EDH, is that every time I drop a turn one Sol Ring from my precon I get dunked on because everyone in my playgroup freaks out and makes me the target (Ben, I swear I don’t know what I’m doing it’s okay.)
What Makes This Card So Cool?
It’s mana acceleration! Pay one mana of any color to get a card that lets you tap for two colorless immediately? That’s just straight value! You can see why it’s banned in like, almost everything. Can you imagine rocking a playset of these suckers? VALUE TOWN. The fact that it’s an artifact is also awesome because that means you can do things like print it for every single Commander precon and have it work. Any deck gets a chance to play it no matter their color identity!
I chatted with Tyler from our buylist department (he’s my go-to for EDH talk, if you haven’t noticed) about his feelings on Sol Ring and whether or not it was good for the format.
"Sol Ring, next to Cyclonic Rift, is the most divisive card in EDH. If it wasn't played in everything, it might be on the ban list. It's horrifying! Especially when decks are specially tuned for it. I think that Sol Ring is still overrated though. It's the easiest card to get your hands on that immediately gives you a higher mana output than you put in. That being said, I've seen entire tables turn on the guy who played turn 1 Sol Ring because they think it's the boogeyman. Sol Ring is too iconic to be touched! It's so ingrained in the format. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of it. It's not inherently unfair, it's just that I've seen it so often that I've started to not like it. Nothing quite gets a groan out of me like seeing it on turn 1."
He also brought up a recent Command Zone video that discussed Sol Ring statistics, and apparently, if you play a turn 1 Sol Ring you are decreasing your chance of winning by something like 3.4 percent. It sounds like a small sample size, but I still think that’s crazy! Apparently, it’s a combination of people targeting the player and also being more likely to keep a bad hand based off of it having an early Sol Ring. I haven’t gotten a chance to watch the whole video myself yet, but it sounds sweet if you’re into awesome statistics!
What Decks Is This Card Played In?
Well, we kind of talked about how this goes in ALMOST every single EDH deck out there, or at least can, so let’s take a peek at these two awesome Vintage lists I found:
Don’t those look sweet? You know you’re playing with a crazy card when it’s restricted in a format that lets you play some of the craziest stuff out there!
Well, that’s all for today folks! What do you think, is Sol Ring bannable? I don’t think it will ever happen, personally. But then again, I’m not really a Commander player so what do I know?
I’ve been brainstorming ways to mix up FFF, so if you have any ideas on stuff you’d like to see please give me a shoutout with your ideas! I appreciate you all, take care of yourselves!
