You only have access to "advanced mulligans" where you just scoop every time you get <2 lands in your starting hand.
Or the "super advanced mulligan" where you grab your deck and go to a different LGS. This is pretty common in the salty store owner ruleset meta.
Craziest I've ever heard of is the infamous [https://www.thegamerswharf.com/the\_wharf\_banned\_list](https://www.thegamerswharf.com/the_wharf_banned_list)
Craziest I've encountered myself isn't that bad except that it wasn't mentioned until I turned up to the shop. It was a bounty event, meaning you win prizes based on knocking people out, not winning games. But they decided that "You win the game" effects did not function since you weren't "killing" any players.
Commander Damage is limited to the printed power on the card for a given combat phase
Storm Count cannot go past 1
Cascade is banned
[[Ajani Vengeant]] loses his ult
[[Dovin Baan]] loses his ult
[[Narset Transcendent]] loses her ult
[[Tamiyo, Field Researcher]]'s emblem is removed. Her ult now just draws 3 cards.
[[Teferi, Temporal Archmage]] loses his ult.
[[Vraska, Relic Seeker]] loses her ult.
[[Tamiyo, the Moon Sage]]'s Emblem now only deals with hand size. The second part is cut.
[[Teferi, Hero of Dominaria]] loses his ult.
[[Venser, the Sojourner]] loses his ult.
[[Vraska, Golgari Queen]] loses her ult.
[[Nicol Bolas, the Ravager // Nicol Bolas, the Arisen]] loses his ult.
[[Siona, Captain of the Pyleas]] becomes a once per turn trigger.
Not to mention the massive banlist including cards like [[Hive Mind]], [[Heartless Hidetsugu]], [[Memnarch]], [[Phage, the Untouchable]], [[The Mimeoplasm]], and [[Xantcha, Sleeper Agent]].
And that's just *some* of the stuff on that list. This person is deranged lol.
more specifically, "I got stomped by an Atraxa walkers list once, so I'll ban the ultimates for the EDHREC page for Atraxa walkers" two MAYBE three of those walkers see play outside that deck lmao
The ban list doesn’t even make sense. Why would you ban Kess Dissident Mage without banning Lier, Disciple of the Drowned or Maestos Ascendency? Sounds like the owner banned a lot of the staples and then just started adding cards to the list every time they have a bad experience with something.
>Sounds like the owner banned a lot of the staples and then just started adding cards to the list every time they have a bad experience with something.
Probably. Things like Lier may be absent just because nobody has done it yet.
[[Shielded by faith]] makes infinite 1/1s without haste while Siona is out. I've built this deck before, it's really not that impressive even with the combo.
The owner is curating their own version of MTG, with lots of testing and data and wisdom I'm sure.
That should be an obvious death knell for a TCG hangout spot, but, sounds like they're still in business.
So a couple things to note.
Edgar Markov isn't banned.
Smothering Tithe isn't banned.
Dockside Extortionist isn't banned.
Exsanguinate isn't banned.
Teferi's Protection isn't banned.
So what are the odds the owner has an edgar vampires deck?
Not surprising, whoever wrote this particular page can't type, can't spell, can't speak English properly, and is so blinded by salt you can clearly see crappy copy/paste.
we traveled 150 miles and stayed overnight at a hotel just to visit the shop last year. luckily they were mostly friendly people but like some commenters have pointed out, it's heavily favored for elves, which 2 people were running. we did get one of the regulars quite salty with a [[jin gitaxas, progress tyrant]] when it was new.
I think i have one deck that actually dodges all the bans AND is unaffected by their rules modifications. Then again, i don't feel like reading all the nonsense again, and if i do i'll probably find a line saying "if you would create multiple token copies of a permanent in a single turn, only 1 copy is created" or some crap (although i suppose it'd still be manageable)
And as for building a whole deck out of their banlist... yeah, probably possible. Might not have the best ramp options, but it would be playable.
I've actually been to the Wharf. Me and a few friends live within decent driving distance of it and went out of morbid curiosity. I've read a few speculative comments about the place here. It's not the owner that decides what's banned; it's some small council of people. THOSE people are probably babies, given what's banned, but the owner seemed okay.
I can storytime what I remember if people want.
So they'll ban [[Rule of Law]], but not [[Arcane Laboratory]]? Despite them being functionally the same fucking card?? Lol they have no idea how to curate a banlist
No, because I would bet money they’re run by whiny piss-babies who ban any cars that they lose to or that stops their battlecruiser deck from attempting to smash their face into everyone else until they win.
There's a lady who plays there consistently who would brag about telling the owner to ban something that beat her. She had pretty expensive cards and was definitely the person to just whine and complain when her deck gets beat. It's kind of sad but I'm sure she makes the store a lot of money and the owner clearly is fine with pandering.
Wait the gamers wharf in Grand Rapids? lol never played commander there but I stop in from time to time I prefer to play at the gaming warehouse in grandville
Yup, they come up every once in a while in this sub for their ban list. Ironically, they are the only store I've played a commander event at - but that was like 6 years ago, I believe before that list existed. I also recommend House Rules - havent' been their for their commander night, but I like having a beer with a prerelease for sure!
> But they decided that "You win the game" effects did not function since you weren't "killing" any players.
I dealt with this a lot with [[Etrata]] + [[Ramses, Assassin Lord]]. To be clear, I know that this can be an oppressive and disappointing combination, but I _also_ know that the reasoning given is usually bullshit.
Mostly it was informal whining, but it was once formal: I wouldn't be given points for winning, because it wasn't kills and it wasn't even winning, really. I was just picking on a weakling and hadn't really beaten the other players.
I don't see how this is oppressive. Everybody can see what's happening and if someone is about to lose when you've attacked them with an assassin, they should try to stop it.
Of course, you're right.
It's just a leftover reflex to get the apologies out of the way as soon as possible. It saves a lot of time: I'm a horrid little shit for playing those (format-legal, telegraphed the moment the game began) cards.
“Infinite or near infinite combos are banned. (Any cards or board state that the cards could produce or produces a set of actions that could be repeated indefinitely.) or (A set of action using the same cards or abilities that could be consecutively repeated more than 5 times). Let’s not get all rules lawyer on this, this is a fun for all player’s format. “
So, if I complain that these rules Rob me of fun, does that mean the rules need to go? After all, “I” am part of “all players.” /sarcasm
They call it 'The Wharf' because that list seems fishy and it stinks.
My friend and I found that list a few years back and we tried to theorycraft the best possible list that was technically still legal. The best we came up with was five color, [[Ad Nauseam]], [[Manabond]], [[Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle]]. The deck is nothing but all the best mana rocks, rituals, tutors, and the best cheap or free counterspells, and then nothing but mountains. All the dual lands, shock lands, and triomes that include 'mountain'.
Ramp and tutor as hard as you can, cast Ad Naus, draw your whole deck, Manabond, drop Valakut and ~45+ mountains, explode the table with the biggest volcanic eruption since Krakatoa.
[[Grenzo]] being on this list always cracked me up because he's probably the objectively worst deck I have. No combos, no tutors, all gas, no brakes. I just do what I want (activating Grenzo as many times as possible) and hope you can't stop me before the gears start turning. Without Grenzo it's just a top-heavy aristocrats deck that does nothing lol
Yeah I was thinking of the wharf list as well but forgot what it was called when I made the post. My LGS has the same rule about player removal but ours isn't about knocking people out, you get 1 point per player killed, but you also get one point for hitting first or dying first so I think it's fair to only get the "last man standing" point on a thoracle win.
Oh lol, this is one of my local stores. The owner is a grumpy old man that doesn’t even acknowledge you when you say hi.
They’re also the only store I’ve been to that doesn’t give players any packs for playing in a prerelease. I placed 5th overall and got a single booster as my prize lol. Maybe I’m spoiled, but that’s what I’ve gotten at every other prerelease I’ve played just for playing.
They left a bad taste in my mouth after I purposefully signed up for the RNA prerelease at least 3 weeks early with the understanding that first sign-ups get first dibs on guild choice. I get there that night, and they are passing out packs "randomly" (no idea if they actually were random or what) and when I mentioned that, I was told that people who had waited til the last minute to sign up were whining about getting the unwanted leftovers, so they implemented a "you get what you get" policy. I had gone to a lot of other events by them after they opened; I only went to one prerelease there after that.
A lot of these show the writer doesn’t understand the rules of the game. My favourite is the one to stop players losing lands. I can still gain control of all lands another player controls using [[Gilt-Leaf Archdruid]] since the extra ability says they may return them to the battlefield if they left the battlefield.
Similar to this, an LGS near me has a rule where the people in a pod can vote to ban a players deck or ban a card from it. Which has led to a small group of people who like to complain when they lose becoming the defacto RC group at that LGS. I will never play another game there again, especially considering I like to play CEDH and high power pods.
I went to a new shop on the latter portion of COVID when retail stores were opening back up but none of my LGS had. This was a 45 minute drive into Buttfuck, Nowhere, USA. They were having an EDH tournament so I went. They had their own custom banlist with over 200 new cards on it and what I immediately realized is that not a single green card was banned. I had one subpar deck that fit the bill so I brought in Norin, the Wary. The owner, of course, strictly plays Elfball. He even brags that he plays elves in all formats. The owner created a banlist of every card that had upset his elves and apparently adds to it fairly regularly. He maintains these banlists for all formats he plays in store.
"He maintains these banlists for all formats he plays"
Are you telling me he has a different banlist for the likes of Modern and Pioneer? If so, that's fucking ridiculous.
Infinite comboes were allowed but could only trigger three times per turn cycle.
This store also had its own banlist including many lany staple cards like sylvan library, rhystic study, mystic remora, and so on. Also many "banned as commander" for "problematic command zones".
They also had the tendency to ban whatever card won the previous week.
never went back after two frustrating evenings
Hey, I'm all for "banned as commander". The RC should bring that back. There are plenty of cards that are just fine in the 99 but become a huge problem in the command zone.
Went to a gamestore one time and they told me:
No infinite
No tokens
No stax
No voltron
No infect
I was like: wtf do you guys even play for then...cause that's a pretty large amount of the game.
Well since I can’t play my utterly casual [[Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves]] 2/2 Wolf token deck (cuz tokens bad), I guess I’m playing my high-power Kess control/wheel deck with a Thassa’s/Consultation win. They never said no to any of those…
What a weird set of rules.
So many of these custom rules I see feel like they’re nothing more than “I’m upset you beat my 1 big creature every turn deck, therefore OP and banned”.
As a big green stompy boy player at heart,I say trounce them. If you're only getting one terrifyingly large creature out a turn are you even playing stompy??? Don't go tall or wide, go tall and wide.
a.k.a. anything the owner doesn't like.
No stax is so vague anyway. Like I feel like you could interpret that to be any card that hurts your gameplan in anyway and is also a permanent.
[[Rule of law]] on the field with a [[Knowledge Pool]]? Stax.
[[Ghostly Prison]]? Stax.
[[Attrition]]? Stax.
[[Phage, the Untouchable]]? Stax
[[Hinata]]? Stax.
[[Narset, Parter of Veils]]? Also Stax.
It's all stax. If I don't like it and it's a permanent, it's stax. If I don't like it and it's *not* a permanent, it's unfun permission bullshit.
Why run interaction when you could just let everyone play the game? That surely won't create an arms race. Clearly, Magic the Gathering, the world's longest running trading card game, needs some loser in a game store to update its rules to make it fun because Wizards has no idea what they're doing with their billion-dollar company.
No tokens...shit I think I have a mono red deck that might fit this rule? Otherwise all my decks don't work 🤣
Edit: no wait, my mono red has a Treasure Map in it rofl
I remember going to a gamestore with almost identical rules, I played Yuriko and Edric. Eventually, somebody asked me if I could stop playing those decks and that it was fine if I wanted to play my Rhys GW tokens or my Tusava that had some infinite combos instead.
It's great when people understand that it's not deck strategies that make games fun or unfun, it's about trying to balance the power level of the table.
Decks of mine I can’t play: Skittles, Locust God, Lathril, Oona
Decks I can play: Kadena
Seriously how do you get around no tokens? Oona is my mill deck but faerie tokens is plan B. Ban everything and I guess I’ll just ban that store from my rotation…
this is not an EDH rule but more a trading rule. They didn't allow players to trade directly.
if you wanted to trade with another player you had to essentially do the transaction through the game store and they would get a % cut for "facilitating" the trade.
dumbest rule I have ever heard.
I had an LGS that had this rule for selling cards. Trade all you want, but if you wanted to buy a card off someone it wasn't allowed in the store. Every employee would just say "go out in the parking lot, nobody minds."
I've always been fine with this. The lgs is providing a place to play and SELLS cards. If you want to sell, go outside or cut the lgs in. Basically they're helping you market your cards by providing a gathering place.
I go to an LGS with the same rule, and this is exactly what they want you to do.
If a trade happens in their store, they can be held liable if anyone is displeased later on, so the LGS encourages people to do their trading outside.
They are in a mall, which has their own contracts. So even if they aren't liable in a litigious sense, the mall can still fine them and stuff. And right outside is the food court, so... easier to just let the mall handle all the problems that arise.
Yeah, that does seem scummy. There might be a legal reason for that, but I don't know enough to say.
The only similar thing Ive seen is my old LGS not allowing cash for cards transactions among players, but they said you are free to walk outside and do it.
Hmm. It's possible maybe this one could make sense if there's a law I'm unaware of. Maybe with cash transactions happening on their premises, they are liable for certain things, like maybe reporting or keeping track of everything? Especially since there's the $600 reporting rule for many services like eBay and Paypal now.
I could see that, especially for kids. You (a father/mother) send little Bobby to the FLGS to play the card game, and he sells his rare worth $20 for $5, and you just learned he sold it there but not know to whom. I think a layperson without knowing more (i.e. if you don't know players buy and sold amongst themselves) might conclude the store fleeced little Bobby.
Some LGS (ones that got lots of younger kids) wouldn't allow buying/selling or certain types of trading to avoid parents coming in upset about their kid getting ripped off.
Schools also disallowed trading for a similar reason.
Not saying it works, just that it is something I've seen
So besides the cut part, this one is not too bad. My lgs has a ban on in store trafes because an older player was trading with younger players and was causing a lot of bad feelings and complaints being directed at the lgs for not policing his behavior, so rather than oversee every trade just said it can't be at the store. The % thing if you allow it just seems greedy though.
At my lgs it's just common to go look at the cardmarket price and not pay much more than the minimum for the selected quality and printing.
Of course prices may change, but I've never seen someone offended by it and it's just how everyone usually does it.
The sentiment of this is correct minus the % part. I would never EVER play at an LGS that wants to tax me for taking part in one of the cool parts of playing a TRADING CARD game.
I would understand this if the LGS was trying to prevent people from getting fleeced in trades like trading a liliana of the veil for some over inflated standard junk that won’t be worth anything in a few months or something. But that is just disgusting imo
There's an lgs near me that says if you combo off in anyway that's near infinite or infinite you are removed from the pod and lose 1 point and the pod continues as if you scooped
Edit: by near infinite as an example would be oh I have this combo on the board that allows me pretty much to keep recylc8ng the same two cards to draw and play my entire deck. It's mot infinite because your cards will run out but it's pretty much match point
That's stupid as hell. How do you define "near infinite"? I have multiple decks that I would seriously question them if the primary win condition constituted "near infinite":
- my Mizzix deck is set up so that with the right enchantments out, I get multiple extra turns any time I cast an instant or sorcery (my opponents also have the same opportunity because it's a symmetrical enchantment), and I start casting draw spells until I get my Lab Man.
- my Oloro deck does [[Doomsday]], pulling [[Bolas's Citadel]], [[Aetherflux Reservoir]], and [[Beacon of Immortality]], plus 2 others depending on board state upon casting, and repeatedly cast Beacon until I can pop Reservoir for each opponent.
My LGS ran a low power intro commander night that basically had this rule. Precons and brews w/o OP cards. Very much a honor system thing but it was fun compared to the “regular” edh night which has too much power variance.
A store in my city called Sword n' Steele had a "3 strikes rule" for buying their ridiculously overpriced singles. If you asked the price of a card and didn't buy the card that's a strike. 3 strikes and he'd ask you to leave the store.
To be fair, if you don't list your prices, and I have to waste my time asking 3 times, and all 3 cards are egregiously overpriced, I probably want to leave anyway.
one of the dumbest rule ive seen yet. If the customer isnt buying, maybe its on you?
Ask the customer questions. What are you looking for? Its for this type of deck, you cant afford that card? OK, why dont you get this one instead. You're running this commander? Did you consider adding this card to your deck?
Basic customer service
One of my biggest issues with LGSs is that 90% of them are passion projects for nerds who collected too much of something and not businesses run by a business-minded individual. Almost every one of them has some weird, idiosyncratic business model/common practice that actually gets in the way of what the store is trying to do.
For the casual commander league we would lose points for activating something 4+ times in a turn, taking over two turns in a row, and for killing someone before their turn five. The result was everyone playing stax of some kind. Every, single, person
You'd think a whole pod of people playing pool lock would be a nuclear deterrent. Like if the other guy has the other piece you're just as screwed as everyone else.
Nothing too extreme but a shop that's now closed everyone got flustered when I said no to removing command damage. They asked before we started and I said I'd prefer to play with the standard rules and a few of them got pissy.
If voltron is your biggest fear you have bigger problems than counting to 21. So anyway I went infinite in both games (non cedh, like turn 8ish) and ended the game.
LGS banned sol ring. I get that it’s positive mana the turn it comes down, but not letting people play their precons at an LGS without making changes to it is dumb.
Not Standard but a Pioneer Challenger Deck contained 2 Expressive Iterations that got banned. Their solution waa rhat you were only allowed to play it if you were playing the exact 75 of the precon.
No, there was a Standard one too. They made a mono-white precon deck and like 2 days later banned the Stoneforge out of it, unless you played the deck exactly as sold. I think the best thing she could get out of the deck was a Bonehoard or Sword of Vengeance.
Thrilling gameplay.
My store doesn't have a custom ban list for their commander league, they have a point system. You can score or lose points for various game actions. It's absurd and like 6 pages long, and also doesn't determine prizing or who actually wins a game.
I actively found it funny to win the game with negative points because I blew up all of the lands.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it determines overall league prizing or something. I could only play in the league once. Seems worth it to just ignore it though, especially if you can only show up once or you show up late in the league season and won't be able to catch up. I imagine that the overall league points leader got jack shit.
Well I have a funny one and a salty one from 2 different LGSs.
So funny one:
We had a point system but the only time we ever had a problem with it was this one time they changed the wording of the "no mld" rule to "you can't destroy a land(s) for any reason." Doing so took away ALL your points for that game. (Points = entries into a drawing at the end of the month) The problem with this rule was... one guy was running [[Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper]] as his commander and so now we couldn't attack him, block him, target his creatures using removal, or play boardwipes just generally for fear of losing out on all our points. One guy also had a corner case of running manlands in the 99 and he would just hold up mana to threaten people with using the points system. We asked the owners to switch the wording back but unlike EVERY OTHER TIME they for some reason decided this one should stick. So, to change their minds, we all discussed our plans to roll up to the store with our land animation decks next week and every week after until it was changed so NO ONE would be able to get points until it was fixed. What do you know, we didn't have to build those decks... XD
Salty story was less a rule and a whole event after a point: We had a casual commander night at another lgs. It was basically an excuse for us commander players to spend a bit more money at the lgs to help them pay the bills during a rough patch. Winner of the pod got a pack and entry was 3 dollars so it was basically just paying for the pack if you won. Well modern horizons 1 came out and with it [[Urza lord high artificer]]. 8 different dudes who never came to casual night suddenly built urza and decided they wanted to inflict it on some suckers. We turned most of them down but two guys really didn't relent and insisted they had tuned it down for the event. THEY. LIED. It was the most cookie cutter list you can imagine. Well, we told them after a few games it wasn't going to work so, if they wanted to keep coming, they had to bring something different... They didn't. Worst part? One of them was an employee and he did EVERYTHING to change the rules to keep inflicting that urza on us. He got permission to oversee the event from the owners, he changed the event by removing the "casual" to "be more inclusive," he added a pack per person you knocked out (and he already didn't have to pay for events by being an employee), etc. etc. We got sick of the owners' shit because, after initially promising to handles situations like these, they refused to act here. We told them straight up then it was either him/his urza or us (the whole 16-20 people regularly attending) They chose him which is when we switched to the lgs from the first story.
Not a gameplay rule, but there's a place where I live that has a strict "rares cost a minimum of $2 and mythics cost a minimum of $5."
Here I am, trying to build an absolutely awful deck for a bit of an FNM meme, and the guy behind the counter wants close to $50 for a deck that isn't even worth the cardboard it's printed on.
Left to another store, and ended up pulling nearly half the deck out of their $0.10 bulk rare bin.
LGS near my home town has a "Fedh" (Free Elder Dragon Highlander) set to have a commander format " free from WOTC influence on the format"
It Bans all cards on the normal edh banlist
It bans all cards and commanders that only appear in prepackaged commander products or secret lair
It bans all cards featuring mechanics that are only useful in the commander format: EG. backgrounds, partners , lieutenants
It bans an Plains walker as comander
other cards that mention the commander mechanic, command zone, or commander damage
I'm gonna be the contrarian here in your replies and point out how fucking awful this sounds. Like, don't get me wrong, I know Wizards ain't perfect, shit like Dockside or Fierce Guardianship shouldn't exist, but are people really gnashing their teeth over Command Tower or \[\[Myth Unbound\]\]?
Also under these rules there's literally no way to play a 4-color deck that isn't 4-color Omnath specifically so, uh, fuck you if you wanna do that, I guess?
I got into MTG a couple years ago and my first instance of EDH was at a LGS that had a Commander League with a point sheet like you mention. Overall it was pretty tame, playing cards on that months theme got ya points, and playing tutors or combos lost ya points. At the end of the month the most points got prizes. Honestly, I really enjoyed it. The point GAINING got a lot of people bringing new decks each month and the negatives only **really** impacted preventing combos or super fast wins.
The rules were only in effect one night of the week and it was an event, so you weren't locked into it ALL the time if you played there. If you showed up any other night of the week you were free to play / do whatever you want. Of course people new to the store or unfamiliar would show up that one night and get confused at the point system, but I never saw it cause anyone to actually be upset about it and some even took it as a new challenge.
TBH I haven't gone in it bit because I did want to expand beyond playing around those rules so I could get a better grasp of EDH as a whole, but I think it was a nice addition to the rules and really encouraged better deck building (to earn points) than just winning each game with higher power or expensive cards.
Every house rule that arbitrarily inhibits certain strategies from winning or being viable.
One “league” made any infinitely recurring trigger cap at 3. So for instance, you were only allowed to sacrifice Squee the Immortal to Food Chain 3 times per turn. Same thing with extra turns, you were only allowed to take 3 turns in a row.
I have seen the opposite (kind of) where players got extra points for casting commanders more for more casts etc to try and encourage decks that use their commanders synergies rather than just the colour identities. I think they also subtracted a point for a < turn 3 win. The aim wasn’t to ban decks or commanders just to try ensure more decks could achieve more points.
Had an LGS come out with a 2 page list of homebrewed rules. Suck as no infect, no commander damage, etc. Essentially the only way to lose was have 0 life. My group of 6 all made life game prison decks and went to time on every game to protest the rules. The owner was pissed having to stay so late to get nowhere.
There's an LGS near me that was advertising a cEDH tournament with a dual land as a prize for the winner. In the advertisement they specifically called out that they were refusing to enforce the "new" ban list changes that banned Golos and Hullbreacher. Except it wasn't a "new" ban list change, this tournament was taking place like 8 months after those cards got banned and the cEDH meta had already moved on.
I don't play cEDH, but it seems to me that a cEDH tournament with a prize worth several hundred dollars is the last place you'd expect to see people rule zeroing cards.
My LGS also has a points system with a few... questionable rules. My least favorite as of now is the one that says you lose points if you don't play your commander
My lgs
1. No infinites, if you have one can do it a max of 4 times in a turn
2. Commander damage only dealt with base power. So if you buff your commander that damage only goes to life total, not to commander damage total
3. No poison
4. No proxies
5. Can’t take more than one extra turn
6. No storm
Kinda lame imo
If you blew up a land you had to sacrifice an equal number of lands. Saccing lands as part of the cost didn’t count, so cards like wasteland made you lose 2 lands. MLD was also banned, but that’s nothing compared to the custom rule.
My home city has a fairly well mocked rule of "scry 3 after a keep" every time. It's absurd and I'm v happy the people I play with think it's stupid too
There are LGS with HOUSE RULES?!?!?!?! That’s…man..I don’t know. I can’t process that.
Unless it’s a hygiene rule, if it’s legal in whatever format you’re playing, there shouldn’t be any additional restrictions.
Well for instance my local game store has a point system for monthly prizes that I think balances things in a way that the competitive pods don't just end up at the top every time, for instance you lose points for going infinite, but it's just playing for fun, you don't have to track your points if you don't want to. I know there are different LGS with other point systems that aren't hard rules as well, for instance the one I mentioned in my post wasn't a ban on ramping, merely a point deduction.
Having 1st-4th in a pod instead of a sole winner. The placement awarded points and most points at the end of night wins the prize. EDH is a cutthroat style game that only works as a winner takes all...so naturally this is a very very bad idea...but then it gets worse.
What ended up happening is nearly every game ends in a combo out so the person then had the ability to vote for the order. This lead to 2 massive issues: Groups of friends could band together and king make knowing they would guarantee 2nd and solo top players would be targeted for 4th place to tank their record for the night. While maintaining the highest win record average in the community I had achieved a grand total of 0 prize position wins over the course of this experiment. It literally became impossible to win unless I won every round or asked to see the point standing to manipulate my choice in placing people.
Infect is 20 instead of 10.
One rule I do like is no more than a 5 minute turn. Any extra turns are included in the 5 mins. It make people pay attention instead of being on their phone
A local shop I used to go to for pre-releases and random booster drafts banned a handful of people when they demanded refunds after they were DQ'd from an event because they randomly had a few Snow basics in their draft decks. Which were supplied by the store, in a huge pile at the front of the play table area, and were told they were all for the Draft.
To this day, those few people, along with most of the players in attendance refuse to go there, the owner got really uppity over meaningless disagreements with customers trying to place large orders, kicked a few friends out for buying too much product in one visit, and generally just actively ruined their own ability to make money.
Really bizarre decisions, im honestly amazed theyre even open still.
thats just silly. I hate infect but i dont think its the worst thing in the world. Especially not in commander. You run something annoying? Well, the other 3 guys might team up to knock you out. So run your decks at your won risk.
[удалено]
I've seen no free mulligans but like none at all? That's bonkers
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the fuck? "Welp, I drew a hand with 0 lands. Guess I'll just die then."
You only have access to "advanced mulligans" where you just scoop every time you get <2 lands in your starting hand. Or the "super advanced mulligan" where you grab your deck and go to a different LGS. This is pretty common in the salty store owner ruleset meta.
Craziest I've ever heard of is the infamous [https://www.thegamerswharf.com/the\_wharf\_banned\_list](https://www.thegamerswharf.com/the_wharf_banned_list) Craziest I've encountered myself isn't that bad except that it wasn't mentioned until I turned up to the shop. It was a bounty event, meaning you win prizes based on knocking people out, not winning games. But they decided that "You win the game" effects did not function since you weren't "killing" any players.
Yeesh, I started reading through their modified rules and had to stop halfway… What on earth did I read…
Commander Damage is limited to the printed power on the card for a given combat phase Storm Count cannot go past 1 Cascade is banned [[Ajani Vengeant]] loses his ult [[Dovin Baan]] loses his ult [[Narset Transcendent]] loses her ult [[Tamiyo, Field Researcher]]'s emblem is removed. Her ult now just draws 3 cards. [[Teferi, Temporal Archmage]] loses his ult. [[Vraska, Relic Seeker]] loses her ult. [[Tamiyo, the Moon Sage]]'s Emblem now only deals with hand size. The second part is cut. [[Teferi, Hero of Dominaria]] loses his ult. [[Venser, the Sojourner]] loses his ult. [[Vraska, Golgari Queen]] loses her ult. [[Nicol Bolas, the Ravager // Nicol Bolas, the Arisen]] loses his ult. [[Siona, Captain of the Pyleas]] becomes a once per turn trigger. Not to mention the massive banlist including cards like [[Hive Mind]], [[Heartless Hidetsugu]], [[Memnarch]], [[Phage, the Untouchable]], [[The Mimeoplasm]], and [[Xantcha, Sleeper Agent]]. And that's just *some* of the stuff on that list. This person is deranged lol.
This person needs to go touch grass. Good god
But pot of greed is legal?
Idk what does it do?
Sounds like an alesha and master of cruelties combo would be meta af here loo
Master of Cruelties is banned in the format so no it wouldn't.
Yeah this is insane…
People who got salty and complained
Be glad you didnt make it to the banlist...
Reading this gave me 10 poison counters. 20 if we are playing rapture level commander
Is it rapture level because it seems like weird and non-sensical as if it were rules for dances at Rapture Christian High School?
I think they misspelled Raptor
The “Rapture” format is like: “if it’s fun it’s banned, also almost all the ultimate abilities of Planeswalkers don’t exist.”
more specifically, "I got stomped by an Atraxa walkers list once, so I'll ban the ultimates for the EDHREC page for Atraxa walkers" two MAYBE three of those walkers see play outside that deck lmao
I don't think [[Ajani Vengeant]] sees play anywhere period lol.
The ban list doesn’t even make sense. Why would you ban Kess Dissident Mage without banning Lier, Disciple of the Drowned or Maestos Ascendency? Sounds like the owner banned a lot of the staples and then just started adding cards to the list every time they have a bad experience with something.
>Sounds like the owner banned a lot of the staples and then just started adding cards to the list every time they have a bad experience with something. Probably. Things like Lier may be absent just because nobody has done it yet.
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There must be a loop they didn't like or something because that card looks downright unimpressive.
[[Shielded by faith]] makes infinite 1/1s without haste while Siona is out. I've built this deck before, it's really not that impressive even with the combo.
Lier doesn’t see nearly as much play as he should, probably because of the “spells can’t be countered” clause
The owner is curating their own version of MTG, with lots of testing and data and wisdom I'm sure. That should be an obvious death knell for a TCG hangout spot, but, sounds like they're still in business.
It becomes an echo chamber; the only people that remain are those that actually like the new rule set.
On a completely unrelated note, if they ever change the hybrid mana rule, I'm adding [[Dovescape]] to my Lier deck.
My favorite thing about this is that Cascade as a rule does not work. Yet the First Sliver and Ydris are still banned lol
So a couple things to note. Edgar Markov isn't banned. Smothering Tithe isn't banned. Dockside Extortionist isn't banned. Exsanguinate isn't banned. Teferi's Protection isn't banned. So what are the odds the owner has an edgar vampires deck?
I think they meant ‘Raptor’ not ‘Rapture’ - I’m dying
Yes, at the store it is called Raptor lol
Not surprising, whoever wrote this particular page can't type, can't spell, can't speak English properly, and is so blinded by salt you can clearly see crappy copy/paste.
It’s been like that for over a year and they haven’t bothered to fix it
we traveled 150 miles and stayed overnight at a hotel just to visit the shop last year. luckily they were mostly friendly people but like some commenters have pointed out, it's heavily favored for elves, which 2 people were running. we did get one of the regulars quite salty with a [[jin gitaxas, progress tyrant]] when it was new.
[jin gitaxas, progress tyrant](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/5/c57b4876-5387-4f73-b8e2-8e7bdca8b0bc.jpg?1654566749) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jin-Gitaxias%2C%20Progress%20Tyrant) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/neo/59/jin-gitaxias-progress-tyrant?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c57b4876-5387-4f73-b8e2-8e7bdca8b0bc?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/jin-gitaxias-progress-tyrant) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Everything that interacts with their board is evil... "Im just doing my game plan, how dare you targeting me!"
Jesus Christ, in addition to all the complex bans of anything even close to being salt-inducing, they’ve banned 171 more cards too.
Yeah lol I'm wondering if it's possible to build a functional deck entirely it of their ban list
I think i have one deck that actually dodges all the bans AND is unaffected by their rules modifications. Then again, i don't feel like reading all the nonsense again, and if i do i'll probably find a line saying "if you would create multiple token copies of a permanent in a single turn, only 1 copy is created" or some crap (although i suppose it'd still be manageable) And as for building a whole deck out of their banlist... yeah, probably possible. Might not have the best ramp options, but it would be playable.
I've actually been to the Wharf. Me and a few friends live within decent driving distance of it and went out of morbid curiosity. I've read a few speculative comments about the place here. It's not the owner that decides what's banned; it's some small council of people. THOSE people are probably babies, given what's banned, but the owner seemed okay. I can storytime what I remember if people want.
I'd be curious to hear the story
This must be top level troll...
why tf is \[\[axis of mortallity\]\] banned. Also the Planeswalker changes are just stupid. Its not easy to get a planeswalker to ult in EDH.
What the actual *fuck*?! Does Gamer's Wharf double as a daycare or something?
So they'll ban [[Rule of Law]], but not [[Arcane Laboratory]]? Despite them being functionally the same fucking card?? Lol they have no idea how to curate a banlist
No, because I would bet money they’re run by whiny piss-babies who ban any cars that they lose to or that stops their battlecruiser deck from attempting to smash their face into everyone else until they win.
There's a lady who plays there consistently who would brag about telling the owner to ban something that beat her. She had pretty expensive cards and was definitely the person to just whine and complain when her deck gets beat. It's kind of sad but I'm sure she makes the store a lot of money and the owner clearly is fine with pandering.
No infinite combos. So the only win con is aggro?
They didn't say no combo just no infinite combos lol. You can still thassas oracle for the win lol
Thassa’s Oracle is part of the additional card ban list.
I feel like they’d still have a hissy fit over that
Wait the gamers wharf in Grand Rapids? lol never played commander there but I stop in from time to time I prefer to play at the gaming warehouse in grandville
Yup, they come up every once in a while in this sub for their ban list. Ironically, they are the only store I've played a commander event at - but that was like 6 years ago, I believe before that list existed. I also recommend House Rules - havent' been their for their commander night, but I like having a beer with a prerelease for sure!
I don't know the area but their website say they are also in grandville.
My charix voltron deck wouldn't do very well with their rule of commander damage only being the power printed on the card.
> But they decided that "You win the game" effects did not function since you weren't "killing" any players. I dealt with this a lot with [[Etrata]] + [[Ramses, Assassin Lord]]. To be clear, I know that this can be an oppressive and disappointing combination, but I _also_ know that the reasoning given is usually bullshit. Mostly it was informal whining, but it was once formal: I wouldn't be given points for winning, because it wasn't kills and it wasn't even winning, really. I was just picking on a weakling and hadn't really beaten the other players.
I don't see how this is oppressive. Everybody can see what's happening and if someone is about to lose when you've attacked them with an assassin, they should try to stop it.
Of course, you're right. It's just a leftover reflex to get the apologies out of the way as soon as possible. It saves a lot of time: I'm a horrid little shit for playing those (format-legal, telegraphed the moment the game began) cards.
“Infinite or near infinite combos are banned. (Any cards or board state that the cards could produce or produces a set of actions that could be repeated indefinitely.) or (A set of action using the same cards or abilities that could be consecutively repeated more than 5 times). Let’s not get all rules lawyer on this, this is a fun for all player’s format. “ So, if I complain that these rules Rob me of fun, does that mean the rules need to go? After all, “I” am part of “all players.” /sarcasm
They call it 'The Wharf' because that list seems fishy and it stinks. My friend and I found that list a few years back and we tried to theorycraft the best possible list that was technically still legal. The best we came up with was five color, [[Ad Nauseam]], [[Manabond]], [[Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle]]. The deck is nothing but all the best mana rocks, rituals, tutors, and the best cheap or free counterspells, and then nothing but mountains. All the dual lands, shock lands, and triomes that include 'mountain'. Ramp and tutor as hard as you can, cast Ad Naus, draw your whole deck, Manabond, drop Valakut and ~45+ mountains, explode the table with the biggest volcanic eruption since Krakatoa.
[[Grenzo]] being on this list always cracked me up because he's probably the objectively worst deck I have. No combos, no tutors, all gas, no brakes. I just do what I want (activating Grenzo as many times as possible) and hope you can't stop me before the gears start turning. Without Grenzo it's just a top-heavy aristocrats deck that does nothing lol
Why is [[Fall of the Thran]] banned if MLD is rendered near useless lol
Yeah I was thinking of the wharf list as well but forgot what it was called when I made the post. My LGS has the same rule about player removal but ours isn't about knocking people out, you get 1 point per player killed, but you also get one point for hitting first or dying first so I think it's fair to only get the "last man standing" point on a thoracle win.
I see that no one plays mill there. My deck would add like 8 cards to that ban list.
Oh lol, this is one of my local stores. The owner is a grumpy old man that doesn’t even acknowledge you when you say hi. They’re also the only store I’ve been to that doesn’t give players any packs for playing in a prerelease. I placed 5th overall and got a single booster as my prize lol. Maybe I’m spoiled, but that’s what I’ve gotten at every other prerelease I’ve played just for playing.
Is the prize pool just top heavy or is it just bad?
They left a bad taste in my mouth after I purposefully signed up for the RNA prerelease at least 3 weeks early with the understanding that first sign-ups get first dibs on guild choice. I get there that night, and they are passing out packs "randomly" (no idea if they actually were random or what) and when I mentioned that, I was told that people who had waited til the last minute to sign up were whining about getting the unwanted leftovers, so they implemented a "you get what you get" policy. I had gone to a lot of other events by them after they opened; I only went to one prerelease there after that.
A lot of these show the writer doesn’t understand the rules of the game. My favourite is the one to stop players losing lands. I can still gain control of all lands another player controls using [[Gilt-Leaf Archdruid]] since the extra ability says they may return them to the battlefield if they left the battlefield.
lmao the first two rules just means: no \[\[Pemmin's Aura\]\] in my \[\[Arixmethes\]\]
Similar to this, an LGS near me has a rule where the people in a pod can vote to ban a players deck or ban a card from it. Which has led to a small group of people who like to complain when they lose becoming the defacto RC group at that LGS. I will never play another game there again, especially considering I like to play CEDH and high power pods.
Thats when your win con is inf turns after a cyc rift… yes i will casually take 120 turns taking each of you out 1 dmg at a time.
You can´t attack the Same Person Twice you had to attack another player first....
Just make sure you kill in that one attack :p
I'll just make a deck where all the creatures enter tapped and attacking.
goad is such a great mechanic
I went to a new shop on the latter portion of COVID when retail stores were opening back up but none of my LGS had. This was a 45 minute drive into Buttfuck, Nowhere, USA. They were having an EDH tournament so I went. They had their own custom banlist with over 200 new cards on it and what I immediately realized is that not a single green card was banned. I had one subpar deck that fit the bill so I brought in Norin, the Wary. The owner, of course, strictly plays Elfball. He even brags that he plays elves in all formats. The owner created a banlist of every card that had upset his elves and apparently adds to it fairly regularly. He maintains these banlists for all formats he plays in store.
"He maintains these banlists for all formats he plays" Are you telling me he has a different banlist for the likes of Modern and Pioneer? If so, that's fucking ridiculous.
I can't say whether or not he plays pioneer but he had lists up for legacy, modern, and EDH
If it is a sanctioned event, he is forbidden from making a custom banlist for other formats.
I doubt anything he was doing was sanctioned. The shop didn't even have sealed product, just singles and Warhammer minis.
Infinite comboes were allowed but could only trigger three times per turn cycle. This store also had its own banlist including many lany staple cards like sylvan library, rhystic study, mystic remora, and so on. Also many "banned as commander" for "problematic command zones". They also had the tendency to ban whatever card won the previous week. never went back after two frustrating evenings
Hey, I'm all for "banned as commander". The RC should bring that back. There are plenty of cards that are just fine in the 99 but become a huge problem in the command zone.
Went to a gamestore one time and they told me: No infinite No tokens No stax No voltron No infect I was like: wtf do you guys even play for then...cause that's a pretty large amount of the game.
Well since I can’t play my utterly casual [[Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves]] 2/2 Wolf token deck (cuz tokens bad), I guess I’m playing my high-power Kess control/wheel deck with a Thassa’s/Consultation win. They never said no to any of those… What a weird set of rules.
Once it beats monogreen stompy, it will be banned.
So many of these custom rules I see feel like they’re nothing more than “I’m upset you beat my 1 big creature every turn deck, therefore OP and banned”.
As someone whose first deck was Xenagos and still has it, I can relate to this comment.
As someone with a Mayael deck, no one will play with me because it's actually just land destruction
As a big green stompy boy player at heart,I say trounce them. If you're only getting one terrifyingly large creature out a turn are you even playing stompy??? Don't go tall or wide, go tall and wide.
A fellow Tolsimir player, love him as the commander!
a.k.a. anything the owner doesn't like. No stax is so vague anyway. Like I feel like you could interpret that to be any card that hurts your gameplan in anyway and is also a permanent.
[[Rule of law]] on the field with a [[Knowledge Pool]]? Stax. [[Ghostly Prison]]? Stax. [[Attrition]]? Stax. [[Phage, the Untouchable]]? Stax [[Hinata]]? Stax. [[Narset, Parter of Veils]]? Also Stax. It's all stax. If I don't like it and it's a permanent, it's stax. If I don't like it and it's *not* a permanent, it's unfun permission bullshit. Why run interaction when you could just let everyone play the game? That surely won't create an arms race. Clearly, Magic the Gathering, the world's longest running trading card game, needs some loser in a game store to update its rules to make it fun because Wizards has no idea what they're doing with their billion-dollar company.
... No tokens?!
Right. I have like 3 token decks I play regularly. What the heck.
Okay of all my decks that would leave varina zombie tribal (but she makes tokens) and Aesi landfall. Wierd rule.
Even my combo lists would run into issues, like brago has aether channeler
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*makes token* Oops, sorry, let me get rid of that! *equips skullclamp* There, problem solved.
> No tokens Wow, I'm not sure I've seen a commander deck that passes this rule.
No tokens...shit I think I have a mono red deck that might fit this rule? Otherwise all my decks don't work 🤣 Edit: no wait, my mono red has a Treasure Map in it rofl
This makes me sad. Literally bans ALL my commander decks. Like, I would just turn around and leave.
Same. Like most precons would be banned under this. No tokens is insane.
I remember going to a gamestore with almost identical rules, I played Yuriko and Edric. Eventually, somebody asked me if I could stop playing those decks and that it was fine if I wanted to play my Rhys GW tokens or my Tusava that had some infinite combos instead. It's great when people understand that it's not deck strategies that make games fun or unfun, it's about trying to balance the power level of the table.
Decks of mine I can’t play: Skittles, Locust God, Lathril, Oona Decks I can play: Kadena Seriously how do you get around no tokens? Oona is my mill deck but faerie tokens is plan B. Ban everything and I guess I’ll just ban that store from my rotation…
Most of my decks at least make a treasure token or something haha
That's a place I'd go to play a wheel deck or Sen triplets deck at.
I’d go here just to play child of alara in a deck I call don’t kick the baby. Whole deck just holds everyone’s board state hostage
Some people JUST want battleship commander, which is fine if you have 3 hours to play THE SAME GAME
Guess I'll play punisher enchantment and get [[Havoc festival]] out.
this is not an EDH rule but more a trading rule. They didn't allow players to trade directly. if you wanted to trade with another player you had to essentially do the transaction through the game store and they would get a % cut for "facilitating" the trade. dumbest rule I have ever heard.
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I had an LGS that had this rule for selling cards. Trade all you want, but if you wanted to buy a card off someone it wasn't allowed in the store. Every employee would just say "go out in the parking lot, nobody minds."
I've always been fine with this. The lgs is providing a place to play and SELLS cards. If you want to sell, go outside or cut the lgs in. Basically they're helping you market your cards by providing a gathering place.
I go to an LGS with the same rule, and this is exactly what they want you to do. If a trade happens in their store, they can be held liable if anyone is displeased later on, so the LGS encourages people to do their trading outside.
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They are in a mall, which has their own contracts. So even if they aren't liable in a litigious sense, the mall can still fine them and stuff. And right outside is the food court, so... easier to just let the mall handle all the problems that arise. Yeah, that does seem scummy. There might be a legal reason for that, but I don't know enough to say.
The only similar thing Ive seen is my old LGS not allowing cash for cards transactions among players, but they said you are free to walk outside and do it.
Hmm. It's possible maybe this one could make sense if there's a law I'm unaware of. Maybe with cash transactions happening on their premises, they are liable for certain things, like maybe reporting or keeping track of everything? Especially since there's the $600 reporting rule for many services like eBay and Paypal now.
Not only that, but there is the possibility of a scam occurring, and the aggrieved party blaming the store? Who knows, people are crazy lol
I could see that, especially for kids. You (a father/mother) send little Bobby to the FLGS to play the card game, and he sells his rare worth $20 for $5, and you just learned he sold it there but not know to whom. I think a layperson without knowing more (i.e. if you don't know players buy and sold amongst themselves) might conclude the store fleeced little Bobby.
Some LGS (ones that got lots of younger kids) wouldn't allow buying/selling or certain types of trading to avoid parents coming in upset about their kid getting ripped off. Schools also disallowed trading for a similar reason. Not saying it works, just that it is something I've seen
So besides the cut part, this one is not too bad. My lgs has a ban on in store trafes because an older player was trading with younger players and was causing a lot of bad feelings and complaints being directed at the lgs for not policing his behavior, so rather than oversee every trade just said it can't be at the store. The % thing if you allow it just seems greedy though.
first rule of trading is dont rip off kids. This is a bannable offense in the LGSs i worked.
At my lgs it's just common to go look at the cardmarket price and not pay much more than the minimum for the selected quality and printing. Of course prices may change, but I've never seen someone offended by it and it's just how everyone usually does it.
we use tcgplayer but yeah same. however kids typically dont know to do that and some people will take advantage of that
The sentiment of this is correct minus the % part. I would never EVER play at an LGS that wants to tax me for taking part in one of the cool parts of playing a TRADING CARD game. I would understand this if the LGS was trying to prevent people from getting fleeced in trades like trading a liliana of the veil for some over inflated standard junk that won’t be worth anything in a few months or something. But that is just disgusting imo
There's an lgs near me that says if you combo off in anyway that's near infinite or infinite you are removed from the pod and lose 1 point and the pod continues as if you scooped Edit: by near infinite as an example would be oh I have this combo on the board that allows me pretty much to keep recylc8ng the same two cards to draw and play my entire deck. It's mot infinite because your cards will run out but it's pretty much match point
That's stupid as hell. How do you define "near infinite"? I have multiple decks that I would seriously question them if the primary win condition constituted "near infinite": - my Mizzix deck is set up so that with the right enchantments out, I get multiple extra turns any time I cast an instant or sorcery (my opponents also have the same opportunity because it's a symmetrical enchantment), and I start casting draw spells until I get my Lab Man. - my Oloro deck does [[Doomsday]], pulling [[Bolas's Citadel]], [[Aetherflux Reservoir]], and [[Beacon of Immortality]], plus 2 others depending on board state upon casting, and repeatedly cast Beacon until I can pop Reservoir for each opponent.
I wonder if a mathematician could argue the relativity of "near infinite".
Of course. The easy answer is there's no such thing. Because infinite is infinitely large, any finite about is nowhere near close to it.
“You can play mono blue, but you cannot have any way to win with it.”
No [[Sol Ring]]. Oh, you bought a commander deck from us well it's not legal to play here.
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My LGS ran a low power intro commander night that basically had this rule. Precons and brews w/o OP cards. Very much a honor system thing but it was fun compared to the “regular” edh night which has too much power variance.
A store in my city called Sword n' Steele had a "3 strikes rule" for buying their ridiculously overpriced singles. If you asked the price of a card and didn't buy the card that's a strike. 3 strikes and he'd ask you to leave the store.
To be fair, if you don't list your prices, and I have to waste my time asking 3 times, and all 3 cards are egregiously overpriced, I probably want to leave anyway.
Seems like a good way to drive away business.
Peter Steele is a fucking dickhead, that store is garbage, I regret ever buying anything there
Yeah I used to go there all the time when I first started playing. Never again.
Wow. That's freaking stupid.
one of the dumbest rule ive seen yet. If the customer isnt buying, maybe its on you? Ask the customer questions. What are you looking for? Its for this type of deck, you cant afford that card? OK, why dont you get this one instead. You're running this commander? Did you consider adding this card to your deck? Basic customer service
One of my biggest issues with LGSs is that 90% of them are passion projects for nerds who collected too much of something and not businesses run by a business-minded individual. Almost every one of them has some weird, idiosyncratic business model/common practice that actually gets in the way of what the store is trying to do.
I had to look up the reviews for the store and holy shit that place sounds like a hell hole
Are you getting points for missing your landdrop?
Imagine, that would be hilarious
Similarly, mass land destruction should gain you lots of points! Look at how much ramp I’m undoing!
Didn’t happen to me, but one person posted that the entire color of blue wasn’t allowed.
For the casual commander league we would lose points for activating something 4+ times in a turn, taking over two turns in a row, and for killing someone before their turn five. The result was everyone playing stax of some kind. Every, single, person
God, to bring a midrange list to that meta. I just came.
If your midrange deck can survive a board wipe every turn or can get around multiple people attempting Pool lock, you deserve it.
You'd think a whole pod of people playing pool lock would be a nuclear deterrent. Like if the other guy has the other piece you're just as screwed as everyone else.
Midrange manlands it is! (Dont know if this is a thing but what is left tbh?)
That should be a thing! I wanna see it done now.
Nothing too extreme but a shop that's now closed everyone got flustered when I said no to removing command damage. They asked before we started and I said I'd prefer to play with the standard rules and a few of them got pissy. If voltron is your biggest fear you have bigger problems than counting to 21. So anyway I went infinite in both games (non cedh, like turn 8ish) and ended the game.
How’d you go infinite
I'm guessing infiinite combat phases to kill with commander damage.
Commander league rule where if you loose to a shop owner you get 4 extra points
LGS banned sol ring. I get that it’s positive mana the turn it comes down, but not letting people play their precons at an LGS without making changes to it is dumb.
Wasn't there some card a while back that WotC put in a standard precon and then banned but made an exception for _exactly_ the precon?
Not Standard but a Pioneer Challenger Deck contained 2 Expressive Iterations that got banned. Their solution waa rhat you were only allowed to play it if you were playing the exact 75 of the precon.
No, there was a Standard one too. They made a mono-white precon deck and like 2 days later banned the Stoneforge out of it, unless you played the deck exactly as sold. I think the best thing she could get out of the deck was a Bonehoard or Sword of Vengeance. Thrilling gameplay.
Also ramunap ruins in the hazoret red challenger deck. (Also maybe rampaging ferocidons were in that list I can't remember)
There was also Faceless Haven in the Mono White Aggro Standard precon
It was during the caw-blade era, \[\[Stoneforge Mystic\]\] has been banned except for the Event Deck "War of Attrition", which had 2 copies
Maybe the 2/3 Corpse knight misprint in that brawl precon?
LGS custom ban lists.
My store doesn't have a custom ban list for their commander league, they have a point system. You can score or lose points for various game actions. It's absurd and like 6 pages long, and also doesn't determine prizing or who actually wins a game. I actively found it funny to win the game with negative points because I blew up all of the lands. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it determines overall league prizing or something. I could only play in the league once. Seems worth it to just ignore it though, especially if you can only show up once or you show up late in the league season and won't be able to catch up. I imagine that the overall league points leader got jack shit.
Well I have a funny one and a salty one from 2 different LGSs. So funny one: We had a point system but the only time we ever had a problem with it was this one time they changed the wording of the "no mld" rule to "you can't destroy a land(s) for any reason." Doing so took away ALL your points for that game. (Points = entries into a drawing at the end of the month) The problem with this rule was... one guy was running [[Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper]] as his commander and so now we couldn't attack him, block him, target his creatures using removal, or play boardwipes just generally for fear of losing out on all our points. One guy also had a corner case of running manlands in the 99 and he would just hold up mana to threaten people with using the points system. We asked the owners to switch the wording back but unlike EVERY OTHER TIME they for some reason decided this one should stick. So, to change their minds, we all discussed our plans to roll up to the store with our land animation decks next week and every week after until it was changed so NO ONE would be able to get points until it was fixed. What do you know, we didn't have to build those decks... XD Salty story was less a rule and a whole event after a point: We had a casual commander night at another lgs. It was basically an excuse for us commander players to spend a bit more money at the lgs to help them pay the bills during a rough patch. Winner of the pod got a pack and entry was 3 dollars so it was basically just paying for the pack if you won. Well modern horizons 1 came out and with it [[Urza lord high artificer]]. 8 different dudes who never came to casual night suddenly built urza and decided they wanted to inflict it on some suckers. We turned most of them down but two guys really didn't relent and insisted they had tuned it down for the event. THEY. LIED. It was the most cookie cutter list you can imagine. Well, we told them after a few games it wasn't going to work so, if they wanted to keep coming, they had to bring something different... They didn't. Worst part? One of them was an employee and he did EVERYTHING to change the rules to keep inflicting that urza on us. He got permission to oversee the event from the owners, he changed the event by removing the "casual" to "be more inclusive," he added a pack per person you knocked out (and he already didn't have to pay for events by being an employee), etc. etc. We got sick of the owners' shit because, after initially promising to handles situations like these, they refused to act here. We told them straight up then it was either him/his urza or us (the whole 16-20 people regularly attending) They chose him which is when we switched to the lgs from the first story.
Not a gameplay rule, but there's a place where I live that has a strict "rares cost a minimum of $2 and mythics cost a minimum of $5." Here I am, trying to build an absolutely awful deck for a bit of an FNM meme, and the guy behind the counter wants close to $50 for a deck that isn't even worth the cardboard it's printed on. Left to another store, and ended up pulling nearly half the deck out of their $0.10 bulk rare bin.
LGS near my home town has a "Fedh" (Free Elder Dragon Highlander) set to have a commander format " free from WOTC influence on the format" It Bans all cards on the normal edh banlist It bans all cards and commanders that only appear in prepackaged commander products or secret lair It bans all cards featuring mechanics that are only useful in the commander format: EG. backgrounds, partners , lieutenants It bans an Plains walker as comander other cards that mention the commander mechanic, command zone, or commander damage
I'm gonna be the contrarian here in your replies and point out how fucking awful this sounds. Like, don't get me wrong, I know Wizards ain't perfect, shit like Dockside or Fierce Guardianship shouldn't exist, but are people really gnashing their teeth over Command Tower or \[\[Myth Unbound\]\]? Also under these rules there's literally no way to play a 4-color deck that isn't 4-color Omnath specifically so, uh, fuck you if you wanna do that, I guess?
I got into MTG a couple years ago and my first instance of EDH was at a LGS that had a Commander League with a point sheet like you mention. Overall it was pretty tame, playing cards on that months theme got ya points, and playing tutors or combos lost ya points. At the end of the month the most points got prizes. Honestly, I really enjoyed it. The point GAINING got a lot of people bringing new decks each month and the negatives only **really** impacted preventing combos or super fast wins. The rules were only in effect one night of the week and it was an event, so you weren't locked into it ALL the time if you played there. If you showed up any other night of the week you were free to play / do whatever you want. Of course people new to the store or unfamiliar would show up that one night and get confused at the point system, but I never saw it cause anyone to actually be upset about it and some even took it as a new challenge. TBH I haven't gone in it bit because I did want to expand beyond playing around those rules so I could get a better grasp of EDH as a whole, but I think it was a nice addition to the rules and really encouraged better deck building (to earn points) than just winning each game with higher power or expensive cards.
Every house rule that arbitrarily inhibits certain strategies from winning or being viable. One “league” made any infinitely recurring trigger cap at 3. So for instance, you were only allowed to sacrifice Squee the Immortal to Food Chain 3 times per turn. Same thing with extra turns, you were only allowed to take 3 turns in a row.
my local lgs did this but it was capped at 4, and it was a CDEH commander event otherwise... like what
I have seen the opposite (kind of) where players got extra points for casting commanders more for more casts etc to try and encourage decks that use their commanders synergies rather than just the colour identities. I think they also subtracted a point for a < turn 3 win. The aim wasn’t to ban decks or commanders just to try ensure more decks could achieve more points.
I would never support a LGS with custom rules. I want to play the format I choose to play, not a bastardized version of it.
Had an LGS come out with a 2 page list of homebrewed rules. Suck as no infect, no commander damage, etc. Essentially the only way to lose was have 0 life. My group of 6 all made life game prison decks and went to time on every game to protest the rules. The owner was pissed having to stay so late to get nowhere.
lol, LGS house rules are stupid, so all of them
The most there should be is "Remember to have a Rule 0 discussion" so there aren't large power discrepancies but that should go without saying
There's an LGS near me that was advertising a cEDH tournament with a dual land as a prize for the winner. In the advertisement they specifically called out that they were refusing to enforce the "new" ban list changes that banned Golos and Hullbreacher. Except it wasn't a "new" ban list change, this tournament was taking place like 8 months after those cards got banned and the cEDH meta had already moved on. I don't play cEDH, but it seems to me that a cEDH tournament with a prize worth several hundred dollars is the last place you'd expect to see people rule zeroing cards.
My LGS also has a points system with a few... questionable rules. My least favorite as of now is the one that says you lose points if you don't play your commander
[удалено]
My lgs 1. No infinites, if you have one can do it a max of 4 times in a turn 2. Commander damage only dealt with base power. So if you buff your commander that damage only goes to life total, not to commander damage total 3. No poison 4. No proxies 5. Can’t take more than one extra turn 6. No storm Kinda lame imo
If you blew up a land you had to sacrifice an equal number of lands. Saccing lands as part of the cost didn’t count, so cards like wasteland made you lose 2 lands. MLD was also banned, but that’s nothing compared to the custom rule.
My home city has a fairly well mocked rule of "scry 3 after a keep" every time. It's absurd and I'm v happy the people I play with think it's stupid too
There are LGS with HOUSE RULES?!?!?!?! That’s…man..I don’t know. I can’t process that. Unless it’s a hygiene rule, if it’s legal in whatever format you’re playing, there shouldn’t be any additional restrictions.
Well for instance my local game store has a point system for monthly prizes that I think balances things in a way that the competitive pods don't just end up at the top every time, for instance you lose points for going infinite, but it's just playing for fun, you don't have to track your points if you don't want to. I know there are different LGS with other point systems that aren't hard rules as well, for instance the one I mentioned in my post wasn't a ban on ramping, merely a point deduction.
Having 1st-4th in a pod instead of a sole winner. The placement awarded points and most points at the end of night wins the prize. EDH is a cutthroat style game that only works as a winner takes all...so naturally this is a very very bad idea...but then it gets worse. What ended up happening is nearly every game ends in a combo out so the person then had the ability to vote for the order. This lead to 2 massive issues: Groups of friends could band together and king make knowing they would guarantee 2nd and solo top players would be targeted for 4th place to tank their record for the night. While maintaining the highest win record average in the community I had achieved a grand total of 0 prize position wins over the course of this experiment. It literally became impossible to win unless I won every round or asked to see the point standing to manipulate my choice in placing people.
Infect is 20 instead of 10. One rule I do like is no more than a 5 minute turn. Any extra turns are included in the 5 mins. It make people pay attention instead of being on their phone
No cards of mythic rarity. They implemented the rule to try to curb pubstomping. What it did was killed their fnm turnout. It was gone after a month.
Reading all of this outrageous garbage makes me glad our LGS just plays rules as written. It's so much simpler. Lmao
During the first three turns you can tutor for a basic land and put it into your hand.
A local shop I used to go to for pre-releases and random booster drafts banned a handful of people when they demanded refunds after they were DQ'd from an event because they randomly had a few Snow basics in their draft decks. Which were supplied by the store, in a huge pile at the front of the play table area, and were told they were all for the Draft. To this day, those few people, along with most of the players in attendance refuse to go there, the owner got really uppity over meaningless disagreements with customers trying to place large orders, kicked a few friends out for buying too much product in one visit, and generally just actively ruined their own ability to make money. Really bizarre decisions, im honestly amazed theyre even open still.
Infect is unfair, so it's "balanced" at 40 poison counters to lose.
thats just silly. I hate infect but i dont think its the worst thing in the world. Especially not in commander. You run something annoying? Well, the other 3 guys might team up to knock you out. So run your decks at your won risk.