This? this is my kind of crazy. Magnificent, Cotton.

The spam aside, the comments here are pretty much what I would say via the pws. I did build an all pw deck but decided it was too horrible to inflict on anyone without a sense of humor (99% of the juff crowd on a bad day. On a good day, the whole scene is humor-filled and not unintentionally.)

Also I do believe AJ did something similar a while back. Still you wrote an article about it. :) I probably would build something entirely different from your decks but my tastes tend to run differently because while I am somewhat of a Johnny, I am more influenced by Timmy sensibilities. (Or some such psychobabble relating to demographics that really makes little sense, even in the framework of selling cards to people.)

Thanks guys. I agree that people will definitely test the Tap Auras and Inspire creatures together, especially the Servant of Tyramet. But ultimately, I don't think it will prove to be Tier 1, and thus will not be widely played as the new metagame develops.

Where is the announcement of the ban of Sylvan Primordial?
The official DCI announcement says: "Changes to Magic Online-only formats are now announced monthly in the Magic Online Community Group blog." Providing a link to the homepage of the community site. Finding things there is nearly impossible. And how is Commander still a "Magic Online-only format" if they have an ongoing line of paper products advertised as Commander?

The link to mtgcommander.net goes (again) to their (spartan) homepage. There's an "update" link there, but it only shows a raw log with "February 2nd, 2014: Sylvan Primoridal banned." (sic)

No motivation? Is this ban effective immediately?
What gives?

Of course you came up with this two months later! :P

If you evaluate the ultimates thinking of what's the one that's most likely to end the game, Jace the Mind Sculptor is unbeatable. It's not unlikely to be an insta-win.

Ral Zarek's is meh to me, it's the one ultimate that has a chance to entirely fizzle (it's 1 chance out of 32 possible outcomes, so not likely but not even astronomically unlikely). Statistically it gives you 2.5 extra turns (10/32 outcomes for both 2 and 3). It's a good advantage, but so is killing half the permanents of the opponent. It wins you a game if you were already set to win the game. If your board was empty, or your creatures couldn't get through, it equals to casting Concentrate.

And Karn goes up in loyalty by exiling cards from the opponent's hand. They'll usually be a bunch of non-permanents or lands. You can actively exile your own hand in order to restart the game with heavy stuff in play, but at that point you're giving up a board position where you have an active Karn on the board, which usually is enough to be ahead.

I think the best (=scariest) ultimates are the ones that work in a vacuum, not depending on a particular game state.

Not in mine, maybe I should hunt down a photo with some?

Is there even facial hair in this picture?

You say you don't mean to sound offensive and then you launch right into a personal attack. I think you overreacted because someone disagreed with you. That's life, me bucko.

Just what I needed today: some dude with cheesy facial hair going on a rant because I didn't agree with him.

I agree with all of your supporting arguments but I still feel for the guys with Beta Llanowars because when I had a serious paper collection that guy was me.

I strongly agree about the functional reprints. There are shockingly few cards from Alpha and the early sets that are both A) not too powerful/complex to see print today and B) powerful *enough* to see tournament play. Llanowar Elves is one of the few that is still a perfectly reasonable card after 20 years, and I would like to be able to play my Alpha/Beta copies. I want to be able to use the artwork I like, or the old card frames.

Arc Lightning becoming "Flames of the Firebrand" was also an egregious error in this category, as Fred points out. Arc Lightning is a highly flavorful name, and perfectly describes what the card does. But it gets a clunkier reprint name for purely branding purposes, to associate a card with a named character.

Pete, I believe your functional reprint argument is blown out of proportions. It's strange that you didn't collect data to support your claim first, since you always do, and well.
How many new functional reprints are there in a set these days? Let's check (MTG Salvation wiki lists all of them per set).

Born of the Gods has 3 of them.
Theros: 4
Magic 2014: 1
Dragon's Maze: 0
Gatecrash: 4
Return to Ravnica: 3

So, that makes about 8-12 per year. Even more interesting is what happens when we go further back:

Magic 2013: 6
Avacyn Restored: 8
Dark Ascension: 6
Innistrad: 6
Magic 2012: 5
New Phyrexia: 0
Mirrodin Besieged: 1
Scars of Mirrodin: 1

Which means the trend has actually decreased since Innistrad, which was a particularly blatant case (and this without even mentioning the absolute irrelevance of most of them: who cares about Pillarfield Ox or Volunteer Militia being functionally reprinted?)

Now, 8-12 per year, probably 90% of which are irrelevant for Constructed. With these numbers, how can you possibly say that there are high odds that a given Constructed card will get functionally reprinted? I'd say the odds are actually negligible. Other than for Elvish Mystic and Lightning Strike, how many cards that you would actually play in Constructed have been functionally reprinted recently?
Plus, when you say "The odds that I will ever again need [old cards] are simply way too low", what you mean is actually "ever again need them for Standard". What is stopping you to play your old anything in any other format?

Bazaar, your heart is in the right place, yet I don't share any of your solutions (I can get behind just number 3, essentially).

But I need to make a (long) premise first.
As a player, I'm entitled to my opinions on the format. As the host of the event, these opinions clearly influence my mandate. As much as I try to listen to every voice, I won't change my opinions, and those in turn will shape the event as long as I run it.

My strongest opinion, which I'm aware is a divisive one, is that Tribal Wars is sometimes subject to a big misunderstanding. What it is is a creature-based Legacy format. It's not a Vorthos format. It has one rule (with a corollary): "Your deck must be composed by at least one third, rounded down, of creatures sharing at least one type (and since we don't have a way to check that this will still be the case after sideboarding, sideboarding is shut down)".
That's it. It's called Tribal Wars because it's a cool name, but it's not the format where Magic turns into Warhammer Fantasy Battle (which actually is also not entirely Vorthos, but you get what I mean).

But you know what? Actually the armies in Warhammer Fantasy Battle resemble more what we get when we DON'T advocate "tribal purity" (a concept that irks me for a variety of reasons, not last of which is the real life sound of it.) Because they have allies. They create synergies between races that share one common goal. So if I want to be Vorthos, and cool, I try to recreate that feel with my deck.

Many off-tribe creatures are off-tribe in virtue of technicalities. Avenger of Zendikar belongs to a Plant deck. Lord of the Unreal freaking belongs to an Illusion deck. And so on. These are obvious examples, because they're off-tribe lords (and there's plenty of them), and yet they're not playable in Pure events or within a "pure" conception of the format. Which a) makes no sense, and b) actively DAMAGES the format and the flavor.

But it's not even that simple. Some off-tribe creatures aren't off-tribe lords, and yet belong to another tribe because they complete what that tribe is trying to do, in general or in the specific setup you gave to it in your deck.
I played with a Gnome deck yesterday. I'll do a complete deck tech for it in the next article, but what the Gnomes do is that they can put any artifact on the battlefield or the graveyard, put themselves into the graveyard, protect artifacts. Given their abilities they clearly aren't meant to interact with each other: you don't pay 4 and sacrifice Copper Gnomes to cheat into play a Bottle Gnomes. You don't spend 3 mana to regenerate a Gnome that already regenerates on its own. My take on it is a reference to the typical gnome flavor: they're good at building mechanical wonders. So when they go to battle, they build big robots (there's actually plenty of pop culture examples about that). That's what my deck does.

I could have put Dark Confidant in it. Now, that would have been annoying. Why a Human Wizard that whispers demonic-inspired words on your ear should go to battle alongside a bunch of gnomes? It would just be a strong card for the sake of a strong card. Sundering Titan, instead? That's of course one of the Gnomes' best creations (plus, they're all colorless, so they don't care about the mana wheel and attack it directly).

This is my position, my deckbuilding approach. If you try and tell me that I should play "pure Gnome", we're speaking different languages. And I don't care for your language, because it's a language that limits my play, my fun, my flavor, and push a tribe like Gnome out of the meta (if I can't play it like that, I won't play it), encouraging only the biggest, baddest, most obvious tribes that are able to survive on their own.

On your points:

1) & 2) I keep saying it but it keeps being brought up: there's no reason to ban a degenerate combo that nobody plays or it's played once per year. Banning it doesn't help the format in the least. You ban things that are actively affecting the meta. Otherwise it's just a ban for the sake of a ban. We don't have any problem with combo decks. Look at the list of winners, I don't even know whe was the last time a heavy combo deck ended undefeated. Most events are won by fast efficient aggro: Myr Affinity, Merfolk, Berserker, Soltari, only to mention the last 4 winners. The active players at the top of the winners' list aren't combo players. Robin88 does play Cephalid Breakfast a lot (it's in his right to like that deck, and he's only one of two players who ever played it, so his example didn't spread), but also other decks that have nothing to do with that - in fact he only won with Breakfast once.

3) I'm all for taking out, even temporarily, cards that have become lazy ways to complete your lineup with generic strong stuff that goes everywhere. Swords and Jace (now that it's more affordable) qualify.

4) That would damage the smaller tribes. The exact opposite of improving variety. Spirit and Elemental can field 24 strong members. Kithkin and Soldier already do most of the times. Gorgon? Not so much.

Also, let's be clear on two things: a) at the core, I want this to be Legacy Tribal Wars, not Our Own Kitchen Table Mad Format; and b) I won't, I repeat WON'T do anything that increases my workload. I already spend many hours working on TribAp before and after the events. It's a pleasure, but always at risk of becoming a chore (it requires about 20 times the effort my other PREs require). It was becoming a chore before we joined Gatherling. So everything needs to be done within Gatherling and its filters, or else it won't stand.

5) See point 4b. Plus I don't like heirloom as a concept. It will never become a supported format by WotC because it's based on the secondary market. And again, see point 4b. Not only I won't check the lists in a format that's already super-complicate to handle; I won't even check if my opponent has illegal cards. I think that wold be true of most players: they're here to play, not be the judges of their games. And if they do, they'll come to me complaining, and I'll have to disqualify people or issue automatic losses, and there will be arguments, and angry people, and more arguments. I won't wish this to my worst enemy.

6) See points 4a and 4b. In order to play Tribal Wars with a sideboard, you would have to create Legacy tables. Again, I wouldn't check legality on that. I want to play in peace the only tournament I play all week. And I don't want endless debates during the events.
And mostly, if one feels like the Legacy Tribal Wars format should have a sideboard (and I don't, but this post is already too long to explain why), by all means, write to WotC, start a petition to have it changed. I don't think they would even be technically able to do it even if they cared, but I won't stop you.

7) Some strong arguments against the limitation of rares. Strong commons cost more than bulk rares (0.08 or more vs. 0.05). The average, competitive pauper deck costs more than all of the decks listed in the section price that won Tribal Apocalypse events. If you go back and check the price section, you'll find out that most 1st place decks are in the acceptable $50-100 range. Hence we don't have a financial problem.
Plus, good commons are simple and efficient. Rarely fun. Rarely Johnny worthy. I believe the variety wouldn't be enhanced, quite the opposite: the meta would become even more the absolute dominion of fast, efficient aggro with 1- or 2-drop removals. To me, a nightmare.

General arguments against further rules: we should stop the complexity creep, not make it worse. Some players are overwhelmed. New players are overwhelmed. We stop recruiting new players = we die.

Also: don't fix what ain't broken.
Finding new ways to improve what's good is a positive approach. But there's no emergency here. I just said, "Man, the Swords are annoying and lazy". I'm already over it and look forward to Naturalize them all. If the upcoming poll will say that many players feel like they can live without them, I'll ban them, and probably Batterskull, either in Pure or in general (in the latter case the silver lining is that it would bring back Stoneforge Mystic). Otherwise, nothing has to change.