#dockside extortionist

Dockside Extortionist

The fine print is illegible scribbles, but it *is* legally binding.

I'll start with what the RC said about Dockside in their January 2023 Quarterly Update:

We’ve publicly had our eye on Dockside Extortionist for a while now, and have ultimately concluded that, unless there’s a sudden surge into more casual spaces – where it hasn’t really thrived due to the lower density of cheap, fast mana – we don’t anticipate taking action on it. It’s a ridiculously powerful card, but scales with the rest of the table, and at the point it becomes broken, plenty of other broken stuff is already happening.

The key point here is the scaling power level. There isn't a preponderance of 0-2 MV artifacts or enchantments in the early game at lower-power tables, whereas there absolutely is at the hyper-tuned/cEDH power level. This means that Dockside's power is more limited most of the time and as such the nature of the metagame at various power levels lets its power scale correctly.

Cards like Primeval Titan and Sylvan Primordial weren't banned because of their power level. They were banned because of how they warped games, with the game becoming all about controlling, copying, or removing them. This isn't the case with Dockside since it's a less appealing copy target when it's only going to make you four or five treasures on turn 4.

"A small price to keep such pretty things safe!" 

Shoutouts to the fallen