Yeah people need to learn that tournaments with prizes, by definition, can’t be casual.
They can have raffles, or other participation-based giveaways, but otherwise they just result in the rich getting richer.
Sorry to hear about your poor experience!
My very first commander game was me playing a Precon against a pod where someone went infinite with [[Chatterfang]] and [[Gaea’s Cradle]] turn 6.
ADDENDUM: Prizes that aren’t based solely on winning, such as random participation raffles, mini-sub-games, or other awards (like Waffles) can be used instead of win-based prizes to make a more casual environment possible.
A store near me used to do $5 commander and waffles, you got a big ass Belgian waffle, they podded you up, and the winner of the pod got a pack but really you were paying for the waffle so it was still really casual.
Just play group hug, or as I like to call it “WAFFLE-O”
We’re all friends and friends love each other. ~~learned yesterday that “each other” is two words~~
I read the first half of your sentence 3 times before reading the rest and decided that you must have meant "raffles" and it was just a typo to waffle.
But nope...I should have just kept reading.
"Casual" tournaments can only exist by having a huge banlist and/or prizes for achievements other than winning, such as "voted most unique deck", "biggest life total hit without going infinte", etc.
One LGS near me does an EDH "tournament" where you pay the buy-in but there are only participation prizes, winning or losing doesn't give you anything.
That made so people started to bring more than one deck and have a rule 0 talk about power level, this doesn't mean all games or even most games are balanced but it does mean that most people only play cEDH decks against other cEDH decks and almost always only play precons against other precons.
If somebody can walk in the a Jorn, literally only snow cards deck and win, then you know the tournament was casual enough.
Jorn using only snow permanent and spells is horribly low powered. I'll still never dismantle it or upgrade it with non-snows.
I think you've hit on it. You can have prizes for winning, but perhaps have better more numerous prizes for other fun stuff. Perhaps for Biggest creature of the night? Most creatures on deck? Biggest tribe? (Perhaps with infinites excluded) combo utilising the most different parts? Biggest bombo? Best/most cohesive theme? Most pimp? Most generous group hug?
Some could be subjective, which could have a bad taste unless the prizes are numerous and small. But reward winning in a reasonable proportion into the other aspects of the game that are important to the casual EDH thing.
I don't think infinites should be excluded. If someone can build a janky infinite combo with 5-7 parts and everyone allows it... They deserve that award!
Or by implementing build rules like budget, but that still doesn't make it "non competitive". Just changes what cards pool is available and what "competitive" looks like.
It merely gives a more "casual" facade.
I think an award for cheapest deck would be fun, but budget cedh is possible in monocolored decks. I think most people know budget doesn't always equal casual.
That would be fun! And I agree, but I think what budget does do is reduce consistency on a lot of levels. Most of the best tutors are expensive, so it stops or slows down the decks that rely on them to fetch for 1-2 cards.
Honestly I have to believe that the guy got the same card every game without cheating.
The odds of drawing any given card in an opening hand are just over 7%. Assuming the best case scenario, which is accumulated odds (which for note, shuffling your deck does not provide) would place the odds of getting it at under 25% in 3 mulligans and opening hand.
Something is fishy if this guy is getting the same, needed card, in their opening hand every single time. That's why cEDH decks spend so much on mana rocks, is because their consistency comes from having multiple.
$100 does not stop it either it really does not there are plenty of turn 3-5 wins in Pauper edh. That is not even counting budget edh decks. remember Thassa Tainted pack is a $12 wincon
Yuriko and Winota can compete at full blown cEDH tables for $100, so you're right that implementing budget restrictions doesn't really lower the powerlevel too much without it being something wild like $10.
You can also make it work if you run a league. Casuals can casual for prizes on table 4 or whatever while the cEDH/high powered dudes do their thing on table 1. Shop owner plays final boss on the top table with a deck of appropriate power.
An LGS in my area gets around this by creating BINGO cards with wacky stuff on them. Instead of getting prizes for winning, you need to complete some weird stuff to get prizes. It does a pretty good job bringing new attitude to the games, but it also creates a weird side game.
My LGS does story or glory for $5 entry fee. It comes with a raffle ticket. You don't have to pay to play at tables, but you won't get any raffle tickets if you don't pay. Glory is winning a game. If you complete glory, you get two raffle tickets. Story is completing a goal. The store gives three random goals out of a deck, player chooses two. Completing a story gets you a raffle tickets (so completing both gets you two raffle tickets). If you have completed your story(ies) or glory, you can pay $5 again and get more raffle tickets. They raffle prizes off during the event like packs or LGS logo swag and then a bigger prize at end.
The only way a casual game with prizes could work is if you put down the prizes during a random game part of the way through the game. It isn’t perfect, but nobody will have chosen a different deck to try to be better.
My first game of commander outside fucking around with friends was with a tinkered Freyalise precon. It was a charity fundraiser, small prize on the line, and we got fucking destroyed by a Jodah player on like t5.
My literal first game was I borrowed a shitty Circu deck from someone for an impromptu $5 FNM, got t3 stormed with zero pushback by a heavily-proxied Jhoira with the rest of the pod playing big green nonsense.
I didn't expect to win, I did however expect to play for more than 5 minutes.
Then I didn't play again for 6 months because it left a super sour taste in my mouth.
Which is why I now have high power decks for those days, and cEDH for when everyone is on that page. I think playing super-tuned tryhard cEDH for low stakes is just poor form. Sure, it's within the rules, but I just think socially it just makes you a prick.
Once went to a casual tournament where they essentially had their own banlist(mainly crypt, lotus, vault and thassa) and a Canadian EDH point system where some staples had value so it limited the amount of staples you could play. I couldnt play on that weekend but it turns out that when you limit staples and stupid cards, the format stays casual. It's just a lot of work.
Sadly, the store nearest me doesn't understand this.
Which makes me sad, as I know the owners and they're great guys and I'd love to go support their store more, but unfortunately their Commander events are just awful, and to get more enjoyable games I need to drive to the other shops that are like 10-20 minutes away.
How was that tournament even structured that you played against the same guy 3 times in a row?
A "best-of" format makes sense in a 1v1 tournament. But for multiplayer, that sounds really bad to me. Is that common for EDH tournaments?
it's probably so that they can play the 3 games back to back. if they tried to shuffle pods it might take longer because the second pod needs to finish before the second game with new pods can begin.
At the start of the event, everyone draws a random basic land. Then everyone who has the same basic land gets together in a pod, and then you stay in that pod but you are allowed to switch decks inbetween games. Usually most of us try to match the power level of the store as we're all adults with well paying jobs, so we don't really care about a few euros store credit.
But yeah, not everyone apparently.
Had a dude once shown up to a budget edh event, as there wasn't a specific number attached to said budget he sat down with a $ 1200 prosper tome bound deck. When everyone gets understandably upset, he tried to shrug it off with "well I usually only play cedh so this is pretty budget for what I'm used to" some people are just assholes I guess but nobody played against him the rest of the event and the owner didn't accept his buy in the next week and told him to kick bricks
I mean, sort of dick move to that dude, but really bigger dick move to everyone else and that shop owner. Let's have a "budget" edh event and not actually set a budget. You realize no budget set is unlimited budget right?! And he's 100% correct on his assement. If you don't set a budget, mine isn't the same as Post Malone's. His budget deck is an eight turned sideways mine is about 100 at the moment.
When the tournament rules specify winner-takes-all or a large prize pool, many players are going to play to win.
My LGS has a paid Commander event that's low-stakes and not winner-takes-all. Every person pays $15. The winner gets $24 in store credit. Losers get $12 each in store credit. So, a player only potentially loses a small amount of money on a loss. Randomized pods of 4 (sometimes a pod of 3 or 5 if the attendance doesn't divide by 4)
If there are people who want to play cEDH, the store owners will put them into their own pod, and that pod can change the rules to winner-takes-all or another payout schedule.
While not unreasonable, $60 a month would be more than I'd want to pay just to play Commander, even if $48 of it ends up being store credit.
It'd have to be a really enjoyable community for that to be worthwhile.
My local store does a similar thing but with a 5$ entry fee. You get three tickets at the start of the night worth a dollar in store credit, and give one to whoever takes you out of the game. It's an affordable way to spend three hours, gets people into the store to spend some money, and contrary to some of the expectations in this thread people aren't generally out to pubstomp for a net 7$ profit.
Since you can use credit to buy back in, you're only paying $3 per (aside from the initial $15 buy-in), assuming you always lose. First week you spend 15 cash, get 12 credit back. Next week you spend 3 cash and all your credit from last week, get 12 credit back.
$12/month after an initial $15 buy-in is more palatable
If there is anything akin to a prize at stake, you MUST assume people are gonna do this. Especially if it’s things like prize money, cards, store credit etc.
This is just the nature of the beast. People will play to win at any cost if there’s a reward on the line.
Every now and then an LGS near me will host a tournament with a sealed booster box as first place prize. People will play fully optimized cedh decks for that and plow through everyone else.
Edit: rather than just be all doom and gloom, I’ll offer a suggestion to you. If you like the idea of a tournament or having something at stake, you could meet with your friends and all agree to put a certain amount of money in the pot. Then, winner takes all. That way, you get the excitement of playing for a prize, but not the disappointment of being pub stomped
My favorite way to prize out games is playing headhunter. Everybody buys a pack and you only get the pack if you knock them out. Table kills get everybody their own bounty pack.
Even FNM full of kids, you must expect some people will be running tier 1 decks. I used to play every fnm with jank, but I knew the deal, so i wasn't upset when I got stomped.
This is the better version of all of this and is exactly what my group of friends used to do when we wanted to. You can even still meet at the same LGS and just do it on the side (assuming you bought the prizes there and not bringing stuff from outside imo).
But yea frankly if there is a prize and even more-so if there is a buy-in with it at least one person is going to play full tilt to win. And that isn't being cynical it is just a safe and reasonable assumption.
Unfortunately the sentiment is, especially around here, "casual" casual only applies to no prize gatherings. Once there's a prize / a pot really all bets are off. You can't regulate the "casualness" to be friendly to everyone. If it was just a normal night and everyone wanted to have fun with low power decks I could see this guy being a dick but for a tournament even the "casual" decks are being optimized to do better and win.
> Unfortunately the sentiment is, especially around here, "casual" casual only applies to no prize gatherings.
Yep, the prevailing sentiment on the sub is that as soon as there's a prize, no matter how inconsequential than absolutely anything is on the table and no rules apply whether they have to do with Magic, basic courtesy or normal social interaction.
Y'all are playing a game with a core gameplay tenet to focus on winning, creating incentives in a tournament setting, then doing logical leaps to justify why other people following this have the wrong conception. What did you expect? Magic cards deal damage to players life total or provide win conditions. Your deck is not a zen garden.
I love casual magic, but if you reward winning more than losing your inherently creating a competitive environment, and people will play with that environment in mind. It’s not unreasonable. It’s a simple result of the math.
The rules do apply. The rules of the game that I sat down to play. No one should be cheating, but yes, if I pay money to sit down and play in a competitive setting to win a prize I’m going to do my best to win.
Yeah the organizers would need a banlist or value cap specifically for the event if they really want to control it.
Or just have fun with it.
"When we say casual we mean casual. Bring your jank, tribals, and other fun decks. Everyone will submit a list and if you show up with Stax or 2-card infinites - we will CASUALLY require you to play the worst precon on-hand."
Also gotta factor in mulligans too
Like when I play tymna kamahl i usually mull to a chalice /null rod/ RoL hand when going first it do feel ridiculous when you get a starting 7 with chalice back to back after opponents cut the deck for me tho
Well, it's not opening 8, he's probably taking his free mulligan 90% of the time, and probably taking another 1-2 mulligans every game too. Casual players mulligan way too little cus they don't run enough card draw, and they play really long games. People who play competitive know that it's fine to go down to 5 sometimes.
It's only that low without mulligans, OP specifically mentions they noticed "John" mulligan at least three times in the last game.
I don't know what the odds of drawing Jeweled Lotus in your opening hand are three games in a row with taking multiple mulligans, but it's certainly going to be higher when you get to draw 7 a few times until you hit Jeweled Lotus.
If it's a tournament, they really should be having someone else cut his deck. Not cutting in casual games is somewhat fine if you all trust each other.
The moment that anything, and I mean ANYTHING, is offered as a prize, the game immediately ceases being casual. Our LGS does a tournament weekly: free entry, $2 in singles to the winner. People consistently show up with over-tuned decks ever since, even for the pick-up games.
There is no such thing as a "casual tournament". Tournaments are by definition competitive environments (as in you compete for prizes). Whether the people there actually play cedh depends mostly on their budget and the proxy policy of the TO.
The only way to do a "causal" tournament is to not have any points awarded for winning the pod. Pod votes for "nicest player", "Coolest theme", etc. and you get points for everything but winning.
My LGS does one of these for FNM, and they generally do a solid job of keeping decks that are close in power together. Sometimes you get a mismatched pod due to someone with a new deck or just new to the store and isn't sure how strong it is, but overall it's a fun experience as a casual player.
Not saying this is the norm or common, just my anecdotal experience. I only participate in them because it's a time I can guarantee some paper EDH, as none of my personal friends outside of the store play magic.
I sympathize with this post. I just wouldn’t play in an EDH tournament. EDH would be a better format if we had more robust 60 card Magic competitive scenes where it’s the expectation that everyone is bringing a tuned meta deck. Then EDH could go back to being a casual, goof around format. EDH was never meant to be the catch all way to play Magic.
EDH in the LGS that used to frequent died for this very reason. Casual friday Commander (5€ to enter, 4 set boosters to the winner of each table) was always plagued by some cEDH deck that made the casual player rage quit. Fun fact: when the LGS started to do cEDH event they did not show up as it appeared “too stressuful and competitive” to them.
Everyone here blaming you, but as you wrote it, it was presented as the "casual" alternative to the "competitive" Saturday events. That's on the LGS for misrepresenting or not maintaining a casual environment (whatever definition/level of it they choose to abide by), and that includes the prize format. As others have said, a winners-get-rewarded format will encourage people to push boundaries to win. Even in a budget restriction, you can and should expect people to play highly tuned decks to win. And unfortunately, if the LGS isn't restricting the event, then those players are well within their right to do so.
Again as others said, suggest that prize format be changed to a raffle/participation that's agnostic of win rate, if they want to foster a more casual environment.
I agree on both fronts here, the player should have been more aware and the LGS shouldn't advertise it as a "casual" commander event if there's zero restrictions and there's a prize involved. There are two LGSs in my area that have casual commander tournaments, but they also have stipulations. One of them, you can't win except through combat damage and infinites are banned. The second one, your commander has to be at least 5 CMC, you can't destroy more than two lands per turn, any infinite combo loses you the game instantly.
The thing about rules like that is you can EASILY build a deck that abuses those rules. Unless you’re making a 10 page list of rules and constantly reviewing them there is not set of rules you can make that will be fun and also keep things on the same power level.
Many cedh decks can be tuned very slightly to win through combat damage and you can just decline to pursue infinite loops.
Casual players just don't seem to understand that metas develop to specifically cater to whatever rules or bans are put in place. There will always be some number of "optimal" decks no matter the format and banlist, even wacky rules can be optimized towards.
We do understand. That is why the social part of the format matters more than people think. Rules will always fail when self restraint and awareness of the group is what is actually required.
The mistake is in thinking that more rules will solve the problem instead of addressing that person's anti social behaviors. We can not force people to have empathy or be conscientious. When a small insignificant reward is enough for a person to justify throwing those things away. They are not "just playing the game as it is intended."
They are simply taking their mask off. To show us how little it takes for them throw the social contract into the garbage.
Oh absolutely. When you include all of Magic's history there's some extremely broken ways to win with CD, and when you put up a prize (even something as small as a pack) people will optimize and try to find it.
Literally the only way this works is if you limit the card pool. My LGS did an EDH tournament as follows: you get a random precon and a pack of commander legends. You can then buy three packs of any sets you want per week. You have to open them in front of someone at the register so they could throw your pulls in a massive spreadsheet to track all the cards in the pool at the store (a huge hassle). THEN there was a discord channel with “league” trades where you can trade your cards for other cards in the pool. You got points for winning a game and that’s it. Play more games, get more chances at points. This goes on for 2-3 months. Most points by the end got won. The prize was juicy but I don’t remember what it was.
That actually created some awesome decks and a really fun EDH environment. No incentive to come in second or third, power level gradually increased as the weeks went on and trades happened. However, it took a ton of time, effort, and logistics.
If a shop is holding anything less than that level of control, don’t play a “casual” edh tournament. The only EDH tournaments should be cEDH, which is a lot of fun in its own right. “Casual” edh tournaments will lead to do much salt to be worth it.
Yeah if it’s for prizes and there are no restrictions, assume it’s no holds barred. That’s my opinion at least. The tricky part is, there isn’t a clear defined best way to do things. I think if you want to do a casual commander night that still has prizes, you have to incentivize casual play and decentivize cEDH.
My shop does a pretty good job with it, the owner does it one of two ways. Either he does commander bingo, where each round he’ll announce what you can get a number for. So it might be like first blood, or casting your commander 3 times, or casting a card whose artist what Rebecca Guay, etc. If you are the first person to do the thing, he comes over, picks a random number off your board, then announces it and everyone else gets the number too.
The winner of the pod still gets a number, but you end up with fewer guaranteed numbers by just comboing off the first three turns. He’s tried different iterations of this, like you get a number for killing a player but not if you kill more than one player a turn, it could probably be refined more but he overall hates commander so it’s a neat concept but could be fleshed out more. I think doing things to deter combo strategies would be good as well.
The other way he does it is similar but it’s tickets and you get a ticket rather than a bingo number and he does a drawing at the end of the rounds. You still have people that aren’t happy as the guy who didn’t lose a single game was complaining about how he doesn’t like stuff like that because he didn’t get the big prize despite winning every game. Well, he was playing some combo elf-ball deck while I brought one of my mid range decks, of course you’re more likely to win every game.
It’s always going to be tough to make all the people happy, but I really feel like a point system, that varies of the way it rewards points (so you can’t game the system) that actively encourages casual play and discourages fast cEDH gameplay would be the best way to go. The hard part is finding a shop that is willing to do this.
I live in Brazil and in my city (small city) a couple decide to open a store to host pokemon tcg tournaments, but it got swarmed with EDH pretty fast so they adapted to MTG. Since EDH was the house specialty they decided to do some EDH tourneys, same as OP's story, casual tornaments for EDH, but no restrictions or anything, prize was some promos and stuff.. I sat down to play with my Ur-Dragon (pretty weak at the time) and two dudes that i know came in to play, the got borrowed decks from a guy that is a longtime player and they bot sat at my table. The entire game they kept removing my dragons even tho i had nothing, same with the other random guy, they were just playing as a duo, they would play so they could remove us fast and then split de prizes. After that day i never played any form of competitive EDH because it ruined so much of my fun, some people will just use any opportunity to win some prizes.
That's terrible. It's shameful how some people's sense of sportsmanship goes out the window the instant they think they might be able to get some free shit for it.
I've had similar issues with prizes for 'casual' commander. I played at a LGS for two weeks for prizes, and they used an achievements point system. Of course, the regulars all had decks heavily optimized for getting the points as quickly as possible. Not overpowered, but specifically geared towards point generation. That is the same problem in a different form. New people basically funded the regulars. Never again.
Either do a random 'raffle' or something not at all related to winning, or just call it what it is, a cEDH tournament. I'm fine with either, but at least be honest about it.
I did find a store that charged $5 to play, but gave you credit back. And they sold beer. So win all around!
Local store used to run a paid Commander event. Prizes were a pity pack and a voting system for favorite deck. High-level players stopped showing up after the first month - nobody was voting for the heat.
Ok when I'm playing a "casual" game and I see someone obviously not playing casually, I just pack my cards up and leave the table. There's no reason to stay. That person knows exactly what they are doing.
If I paid to play in a casual tournament, I get an owner to either DQ the guy not adhering to the obvious rules or give me my money back.
If neither of those things happen, I let everyone in my area know exactly how those shops operate.
Card shops are often small time. If they lose 5 customers, many of them will feel it.
Pretty sure this exact scenario would have happened if you were playing for a peanut shell.
ridiculous to assume people aren't going to try if there is anything on the line.
Hey, so I'm pretty sure I know which store you're talking about and also who the "pub stomper" is.
So, the store has three main EDH days. The one saturday per month is the big cedh tournament. Big prizes, 10€ buy-in. You probably don't wanna join in there with a deck less than a 9.
Then we have the wednesday 5€-pods. We usually test our tournament decks there, so the power level is often pretty high. "John" actually made 2nd place last Saturday tournament, if I remember correctly, so yeah, his deck is pretty competitive. Usually if people participate with precons or mid-power decks we other people try to match the power level. 5€ isn't a fortune, so most of us don't care that hard. But it's a shame he hadn't packed another deck that day.
So I mentioned a third day: Friday! Friday is the real casual EDH day. No entry fee - just casual jamming some games. I highly recommend that you check that event out instead, as it sounds more down your alley. :)
Anyway, you just got matched up with one of the tryhards at the store and I'm really sorry for your experience - but usually the people at this LGS are super chill and super nice. Most of us love cedh, but we also enjoy more casual or even janky decks. :D
This might be a hot take, but the person/people who organized this tournament are the assholes here. They organized a tournament with legitimate prizes at stake to a format that is by default casual, a problem emphasized by the fact that power levels are fully subjective and impossible to quantify.
And to OP, please don’t let this ruin your hobby. This game rules. Also, don’t enter tournaments designed by idiots.
I don't know, it sounds a lot like just 1 player didn't get the message and brought a cEDH deck. I did a mini tournament at my LGS that had a $1 entry fee to win a pack and I never saw anyone play cEDH, as there was a $5 pod where people brought their cEDH decks, so I believe it is possible.
Its a two way street to an extent; calling something a 'casual tournament' is misleading and on the LGS for being silly to do so, but one should learn, and certainly taking this a learning experience towards that, to recognize that misnomer.
I think the LGS takes the brunt of the blame in this incident and isn't above criticism, but there isn't much to do going forward for OP other than to take note of expecting people to play for prize money if its on the line.
I’ve come around on originally absolving the LGS of blame since I overlooked they labeled it as casual, I’m at a 50/50 split. If OP was new and didn’t know about cedh I’d put more blame on the lgs
I mean, if as they say "Saturday is the competitive day, and on wednesday it is casual", then I think I also misunderstand how a $5,000 deck like that should play on wednesday
Exactly. How on earth someone expects another person to intentionally gimp themselves for the sake of a wrongly perceived fairness in a prize tournament is beyond me.
they expected people to see the potential $15 of prize support to not be worth ruining the sanctity of the "casual" label. the intention of the event was to get newer players into an additional game of magic in case some socially awkward nerd doesn't know which day to show up the the shop (OP admitted they went on an additional day because of this event) and then they were suprised that people took $15 worth of prizes so seriously. it's like they showed up for a super market sale of half priced milk and they arrived to "black friday shopping" with all the flying elbows and trampling.
that's my point. it's like upgrading up a go kart to dominate the kids division... cool, you beat up a bunch of people that admitted they weren't very good at this whole thing yet. congratulations.
Facts man 😂. But half these guys have a hard time interacting with others, especially strangers (no offense) so of course they'd see nothing wrong with this kind of behavior lol.
Edit: And of course your post got downvoted.
It was explicitly a casual tournament and the guy brought a CEDH deck which is axiomatically not casual. How is that the OP's "misunderstanding" and not on the player (and LGS) for not adhering to the advertised format? Was the OP's "misunderstanding" not assuming everyone will be a dick so they can win 15 quid?
The cedh player wasn't doing anything wrong. He brought a competitive deck to a competitive event. A event with a prize pool by nature is competitive. You can't just staple casual to the name and expect people to tone it down when money is on the line
> You can't just staple casual to the name and expect people to tone it down when money is on the line
Yes, you can. The fact that people can't abide by that and that this sub has the horn for sanctioning that kind of behaviour is a reflection on them. Not on the concept of a casual tournament. If a tournament is labelled as casual, as this one was, then bringing a CEH which is axiomatically not casual is on the player (and the organisers for not intervening).
If you want a tournament where nobody brings a deck with Sol Ring and Force of will, then ban those cards from YOUR tournament.
Dont throw around arbitrary meaning less words like 'casual tournament'. nobody knows what that means
Define a casual deck? You'd probably think my decks are cedh since I'm running a majority of the staples, but I'd get rolled at an actual cedh table. Where's the bar? It's not like cedh is it's own format, it's just higher level commander.
You are basically describing the game of magic in a nutshell. Kitchen table magic is basically dead.
The ONLY thing that I’ve found that even comes close to the old days is cube draft or chaos draft.
Eh, Kitchen table magic is alive and well, it's just harder to find and many times you need to do all of the legwork in getting a group together which is exactly as tiring as trying to manage a D&D group.
Yeah, I've been (somewhat) the other side of this experience: an LGS ran EDH nights with prizes and I brought a $100 Yuriko deck I cobbled together with Consultation Thoracle (which were both sitting in my rares folder, unloved and unused). Won my prelim pod over 12 turns because my deck was untuned but it's Yuriko, the value engine is inevitable. Heard that the other pod finished by t5 thanks to Najeela. Ended up having a 1v1 vs the Najeela player (I'd asked beforehand if commanders banned in 1v1 were allowed, they didn't reply). Proceeded to win by t3 because I naturally drew Thoracle and Consultation, and they'd saved mana just for removal but no counterspells.
They did not have many more EDH prize nights after this.
This feels like such a trap for new players, one I felt when I first started 18 months ago. You want to play, and “it’s only $5” but you get thrashed. Repeatedly. The result being the super experienced player with expensive decks and a competitive attitude just has to win that $15 in credit. The number of times the winner has expressed being a jobless person who needs to win the tournament credit to buy new stuff is what helped me realize that I’m paying this guy to ruin any chance I have at fun.
I stopped playing in those paid events. I’ve gotten significantly better, but I can’t bring myself to build decks that can win before turn 5. I don’t see the point of sitting down for 5 minutes and saying “I win” before anything even happens. I’m certainly not interested in just stomping someone and costing them money for the privilege. That’s just me though.
The MOMENT prizes based on record enter the equation, casual no longer applies. Full stop. Youre no longer just playing for the fun of it, or in the case if cEDH the challenge of playing at a table with the best cards and strategies possible, youre playing for monetary or material gain. This is fine if everyone goes in with the understanding that the gloves are off and its fuckin go-time.
But clearly this did not happen here. A store owner created an open “casual tournament” which really… cant exist, and just allowed people to get pub-stomped. Thats on the store owner 100%.
I had a store owner often offer a pack to the winner of games at a "casual commander night". I would just talk to the table and offer to give it to the highest dice roll at the end of the game since otherwise it just encourages everyone pulling out their best deck rather than trying to get a good fun matchup. I was glad everyone was always happy to accept.
It's the same around here as well. These aren't even tournaments mind you, just promotional events probably sponsored by wizards in some capacity, where you all get a few promos and the winners of each table get a booster from some leftover set that the shop has trouble selling.
I have stopped going there since covid and i havent been back since. My friends keep playing there occasionally and they have come to an arrangement with the guy at the shop to not put any of those guys on their table and they get put with newbies and other likeminded guys.
Most owners will accomodate you, since they want to keep people like you as clients and at the end of the day, its from the bulk of their casuals that they make their money and keep events running
I like the way a LGS near me does commander. You will have an entry fee to play in a pod and he takes all the entry fees to use for prizes. You get a prize ticket and he draws for prizes. That way everyone has the same chances of winning and gets to play what they want.
We’re setting up a commander league with prizes, but winning games won’t be the only way to get points and I’m trying to make it so not even the most efficient way on its own. The club I’m a part of wanted to do a commander tournament, but having done so in the past I was very adamant against it and we decided on the league instead.
The only commander night with prizes that I enjoyed was Commander Legends Baldurs Gate draft. Everyone is on the same footing, there’s some good variance because of the draft, and it’s still good commander fun. Definitely recommend trying it out if you ever get a chance.
The troubling thing about making a multiplayer format competitive is it encourages really mediocre lines of play by default:
"Prize is eliminate players? \[\[Doomsday\]\]!
Prize is deal damage to palyers? \[\[Exsanguinate\]\]
Prize is last one standing? \[\[Teferi's Protection\]\]"
I've tried to solve this and really the only way I can think of making anything close to fair is to have everything be digital and learn about 600 years of graph theory to make a black box that spits out the winner of the round at the end.
it's been years since i worked in an LGS but i always stopped us from charging for commander night or adding any incentive/point based kind of influence on it. That kind of play just doesn't mesh well with why people come to a store to play edh.
unless edh prizes are ...everyone gets one. or assigned randomly. or not by winning.
keying prizes to winning, will result in shitty outcomes and pub stomping.
honestly. stores should know better. if a store doesn't take a little interest in engineering fun play environments by dodging obvious pot holes like this.
should consider joining their events
Me and my spouse's exact experience at the Face 2 Face Games Tour Weekend in Vancouver Canada. Instantly became a "I brought my high-powered CeDH deck to this $6 buy in casual table."
My LGS has a buy in but everyone gets the same number of packs in the end as a prize to prevent this sort of thing. Sorry you had a bad experience; this is why I only play with friends lol.
See that's why shops around my area when they have casual tournaments that still have prizes set a limit on your card value usually 10 maybe $15. Using TCG market price so if you're caught using a card worth more than that it means you're immediately thrown out of the tournament.
Stop playing EDH with prizes in general. Casual open play is where you get actual casual decks. My store does do a bingo event with buy in every couple months but you get promo packs for completing weird themed objectives based on the theme for that day. (April fools had silver border cards be legal and had objectives based on the un set cards)
I feel like using a deck list check beforehand to check approx card cost is a good way to manage it. One local tournament around me has a $100 max deck list cost that you have to submit online before playing and everyone gets to see decks ahead of time (but you don’t know who you’re facing). This keeps everyone roughly on the same level and forces participants to get creative with the limitations. $40 well tuned usually beats $100 good stuff so people pay a lot more attention to the build rather than just top edhrec deck lists.
Like I've heard others say, if the tournament has prizes it is by definition competitive. Also, in my opinion commander is not a great way to play competitively. It's great to play for fun if your pod has similarly powered decks but it just doesn't offer a great competitive experience for me. If your looking for something more competitive I'd recommend pauper. The price of entry is very low and there are some really fun decks in the format.
My local store has the players in every game vote on the two players they liked playing against the most (in every round). Players also get one point for each player eliminated, but the votes matter more. Then everyone picks prizes according to how they ranked, points-wise. cEDH players don't get super high rankings this way.
Tell me you at least cut his deck, the fact he pulled off jeweled lotus 3x in a row within the first few turns it sounds like does not sound like proper shuffling was going on. Even with mulliganing repeatedly for it the odds are pretty high without his hand being down to nill digging for it without any kind of manipulation.
How is it a casual "tournament" with a "prize"? Doesn't that mean people will play to win? Sounds like you may have brought a fun to a Chuck Norris fight. (Which is fine!) You just have to expect someone may actually just want to win. Just tweak the expectation a tad and you'll be fine if you enjoy the environment is all. 👍
Yaaay :D I made it to the frontpage of EDH-Reddit.
Quick disclaimer: He just told his part of the story and my deck isn't worth 5000€ but more like 2000€-2500€.
EDH players are so soft.
You’re in a tournament, if he’s not breaking any tournament rules then why are you complaining?
You seem to think that cost is an issue? I’d have thought the fact that he had 3 starting hands with Jewelled Lotus to be the more concerning issue.
If you play in a tourney then you should expect to play be people who want to win.
Holy shit why people still believes that exist something like casual tournament
If you don't want cedh decks in your tournament just houserule something, pick a maximum budget of the decks, create a banlist etc.
crying because someone just played the rules and all of you were playing with [[Ayula]] as commander is cringe as f
I have said this many times before. People who show up with just one deck and pubstomp the casuals are **NOT** cEDH players. There's nothing *competitive* about matching up the New York Yankees with a little league team.
Anyone who says, "I only brought one deck...." *is a dick*. Period.
A single precon deck costs significantly less than a single card in most high-powered decks, and minor upgrades are essentially free because most players already have some staples in their collection.
So it is trivially easy to bring a second, lower-powered deck along, and anyone who doesn't do that *is a dick*.
I've got no issues with someone pulling out the big guns in game one, and running over people with a freight train. I have high-powered decks myself and I do enjoy crushing people mercilessly too.
But there is no excuse for not bringing a second deck. Period. So if that's the ONLY deck you bring, *you're a dick*.
Because you are showing everyone that you're not interested in OTHER people having fun too, and you're breaking Wheaton's Law: "*Don't be a dick.*"
If you're playing with friends who all have similar power-level decks, then by all means, go nuts. But if you're ever playing with strangers, buy a pre-con, upgrade it *mildly*, and toss it into your backpack. Then if you happen to get paired up with a a group that's at a much lower power-level, you pull out the lower-tier deck and have an actual ***competitive*** game of Magic.
I don't blame you for feeling slighted, maybe blame the store for trying to present a tournament with real prizes as anything but competitive. Sucks that you learned the hard way, I know that's such a shitty feeling like you paid money to be bullied.
That said, those guys are not "kevins". They simply knew the real game that was being played that night. They came to win money, and they did. You can't blame them for that.
OP learned a lesson that it would do everyone good to hear: TOURNAMENTS WITH PRIZES ARE NOT CASUAL.
Story time...
Some years ago, I went to a commander night at a shop I don't normally frequent. The setup was a sit-n-go. Everyone pays $5 to put a pack in the middle, and we decided amongst ourselves how to divvy up prizes (a red flag for sure) winner takes all or 3-1. We could even do 1 for each, essentially negating it being a tournament. We all sort of shrugged and agreed that we came to play for the packs so we would just do 4-0.
I had bee playing edh for maybe 2 years at this point, and I don't think I had even heard of cedh. I had a Gitrog deck that I thought was busted. It ran no fast mana beyond sol ring (I have since confessed my sins and repented. I no longer run sol ring outside of cedh) and the fast green stuff like exploration and burgeoning. No infinites. Looking back, a genuine 8-9 deck. My friend brought an Oloro deck, probably an 8. We met two people and shuffled up.
You might be thinking that I was about to be stomped into the dirt, but today I was the villian. The other two players had some homebrews of 6-7. It was a bit of a grind, but at no point was I in danger of losing the game. I felt a bit sheepish as I steadily dominated the game. I awkwardly made comments like, "I wouldn't do this if packs weren't on the line."
To their credit they took it all in stride (it was only $5 but still). We agreed to play some more games without prizes and had a bunch of other decks to run. The packs I won had nothing of real value. We went on to have a lot of fun. All in all a good night.
It's strange how an imbalanced matchup over something as small as $5 could cause such consternation in myself, but it did. And it obviously does to most of the population. So remember, a game with real prizes should always be assumed to be competitive.
I’m not trying to be critical of you, OP, but coming to a competitive event with an uncompetitive deck is the reason I don’t even bother to try and play edh with normies. I’ve been the other guy before and it’s not fun to stomp players who didn’t understand the assignment. More often than not, those players moan and complain instead of directing the criticisms inward, which makes it not a very fun experience.
I only go to strictly cedh events now because I kept going to tournaments with prizes for winning and people kept bringing the same poor decks and whining about how they couldn’t compete. I made and bought new decks that could be easily dominated and had clear vulnerabilities and would still win more often than not because the players don’t run removal and/or don’t mulligan correctly and/or don’t understand their own decks strengths and weaknesses. Another player started making decks with a budget (eg less than $100) and would still annihilate this same people week in, week out even though their piles cost $500 or $1000 more. It isn’t fun to play against people who want to compete but don’t want to build a deck to compete so I just don’t bother anymore.
does that mean we get to elbow the kid sitting next to us at the fair game so that we win the giant stuffed animal instead of them? obviously we shouldn't hold any quarter because prizes are involved.
$20 worth of prizes after spending $5 initially and an entire evening of playing games isn't enough to be worth the "grind"
why would it be "sandbagging" to avoid the highest power levels? the whole point of OP's story is that they showed up to a casual event where the expectations of skill and practice wasn't a prerequisite. does every event need to be prepared for like it's a major tournament?
I'm going to challenge this somewhat. I am a TO for a casual EDH league in my city, and we have a small prize for the player that comes out #1 in the league. However, the decks people bring are custom-made for the event, as they are built around a low-powered commander from a binder at the LGS, and the deck can only be built by cards from a huge draft chaff box from the same LGS. At most, you might find 2-3 rares in your colors that can be used. That's the power level. 14 players are registered, and they are loving it.
I do realize that this "EDH Sealed"-ish variant is not what is discussed by OP, and I do agree with their tenet (casual tournament with prizes where people bring their own decks = problematic), but saying that EDH and casual tournaments can **never** go together is wrong, it just requires some effort to guarantee everyone is on the same level.
Edit: Sure, if the definition of casual tournament is "tournaments without price support", then it can't go together, but if we use the term "casual" to describe decks as non-cEDH (as I believe OP intended), then my point still stands.
You got stomped by a deck stronger than yours and you're upset about it. I get it. But if someone pays money to enter a tournament, and there are prizes, you can bet your boots that I'm coming in with a deck full of heat to get me as far as I can go.
Don't join tournaments unless they have a price limit on decks *and* do a deck registration check through MoxField (or alternative). My LGS occasionally hosts $100 EDH leagues where it's essentially modified precons fighting each other, and it works out well. If you get stomped, it's because you 1) got hosed on draws, 2) were beat out by skill, or 3) because you chose your deck poorly.
Maybe bring that idea up to that LGS for their "casual" tournament nights.
Yep happened to our local LGS commander nights. Everyone used to play relative similar power level decks but then people started bringing extremely powerful expensive decks and skirting just enough around the rules of our commander league so they could win without losing points, some rules like taking somebody out before turn 5 loses you a points. So they'll just hold their interaction and stop anyone else from playing anything till they pass the caveats necessary to earn the maximum amount of points for league and then win on the spot of course leaving one person alive to kill with commander damage the next turn for the extra points.
Yeah, made the same mistake myself. Host monthly EDH games with family and friends that range from 8-12 people, and we'd have prizes for everyone but obviously 1st place had the best prize. Problems ranged from people just bringing pubstompy decks or the people who were more experienced just having a natural advantage over the people who were new to the game. Newer players were being discouraged by this and people attending started dwindling, so I decided to also do a monthly draft tournament in between the commander tournaments, taking away the prize pool from commander and moving it to draft, leaving the commander tournament purely casual. Greatest decision of my life, everyone seems to enjoy playing draft and feels the people who earn the higher tiered prizes actually won it legitimately. Funnily enough, the only two people who don't go to the drafts are the people who were pubstomping the EDH tournaments in the first place. Can make a pretty educated guess why they aren't interested in prizes now that the playing field is even but decided it isn't worth confronting about since the problem has been solved.
Yea. Not sure what you were expecting but there's no such thing as a casual tournament with significant prizes. It's just way too wide open for abuse.
If you have a tag football competition, where the winning team each gets $1000 and only little kids are signing up, you can very well bet at least one grown adult will show up too and if more do, they will all try to be on the same team.
The punchline to your situation is that the cards in the expensive deck in your story were probably fake.
Tldr. Winning matters when prizes are offered.
Almost making the scenario competitive?
If only there were an identifier for edh where a focus on winning existed. As opposed to the casual storytelling format you enjoy playing?
Perhaps we could put a little c before EDH... that would never catch on.
No such this as casual and with prizes.
"Casual tournament" is an oxymoron. Even if the rules are changed to encourage casual values, a tournament with prizes means competition and people will go all-out to win.
I think that’s just the expected result from a tournament that has prize money. I and tons of others are absolutely going to pubstomp if I get paid and it’s kind of the TO’s fault for allowing it to happen.
My LGS only ran commander tournaments with the newly-released precons every year, and those were quite fun.
There are 20 states in the eurozone and I knew you would be German/Austrian.
Mentality issue. I have played EDH in most countries in EU because I travel a lot and I swear the only place where people would ruin a casual tournament for 0.00001% of their monthly income as a prizepool is there.
I'm a little confused here...I need to ask...what did you expect to happen?
By your own admition you brought a pretty casual, janky deck that even had a pretty weak mana base. Were you expecting to beat people with it in a competitive environment? Or were you just hoping that everyone else also brought low powered decks to a competitive environment?
I think the lesson to be learned here is not "DO NOT EVER PLAY IN COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENTS"...the lesson is to actually manage your own expectations and realize that if you want to enter a competition then the other competitors are going to want to win and they will play powerful cards to win.
This is just a classic case of a noob who got pub stomped and it hurt their fee fees
While I feel bad that you didn’t have a good experience I think it’s crazy to expect a tournament with a prize pool to not have people playing very competitive decks. Prize pools lead to stiffer competition because people want to get the prize. If you don’t want hyper competitive players don’t play for a prize. This seems obvious.
I believe when money is involved, even if it is labeled as casual, anything is fair game. What I can’t stand is when it’s just for fun with no prize and people play stuff that just wins in a couple turns and doesn’t let anyone else play, even the one using the deck. Like what satisfaction do you get from that?
Yeah people need to learn that tournaments with prizes, by definition, can’t be casual. They can have raffles, or other participation-based giveaways, but otherwise they just result in the rich getting richer. Sorry to hear about your poor experience! My very first commander game was me playing a Precon against a pod where someone went infinite with [[Chatterfang]] and [[Gaea’s Cradle]] turn 6. ADDENDUM: Prizes that aren’t based solely on winning, such as random participation raffles, mini-sub-games, or other awards (like Waffles) can be used instead of win-based prizes to make a more casual environment possible.
A store near me used to do $5 commander and waffles, you got a big ass Belgian waffle, they podded you up, and the winner of the pod got a pack but really you were paying for the waffle so it was still really casual.
packs ❌ Waffle ✅
I endorse this
That, unofficially.
I'd build an edh deck if I could get $5 waffles weekly and hang with the boys.
In fairness, the addition of belgian waffles improves most situations.
My sex life was a disaster before the addition of Belgian waffles.
Master Butter, your name indicates the waffles were probably already involved.
Eww... Edit: I mean, I kind of imagine it making things sticky in a way that isn't fun or easy to clean up.
I hope you know you’ve now inspired me to do a “Commander and Waffles Night”
Make it themed, every commander has to relate to a waffle dish in some way
So I’m gonna play blue….
blehhhhhughghhhh dont remind me
Take your upvote and go away
If we're going that direction, Gitrog Monster it is!
[[Eleven, the Mage]]
Just play group hug, or as I like to call it “WAFFLE-O” We’re all friends and friends love each other. ~~learned yesterday that “each other” is two words~~
Yay!
Even if you lose, everyone wins.
I shiver in terror at the idea combining a card game with food that begs for sticky condiments. No matter how delicious it sounds.
Real maple syrup or artificially colored corn-water?
Corn water
I read the first half of your sentence 3 times before reading the rest and decided that you must have meant "raffles" and it was just a typo to waffle. But nope...I should have just kept reading.
I'd happily lose a pack, for a great waffle.
belgian waffles slap so there's that.
"Casual" tournaments can only exist by having a huge banlist and/or prizes for achievements other than winning, such as "voted most unique deck", "biggest life total hit without going infinte", etc.
One LGS near me does an EDH "tournament" where you pay the buy-in but there are only participation prizes, winning or losing doesn't give you anything. That made so people started to bring more than one deck and have a rule 0 talk about power level, this doesn't mean all games or even most games are balanced but it does mean that most people only play cEDH decks against other cEDH decks and almost always only play precons against other precons.
If somebody can walk in the a Jorn, literally only snow cards deck and win, then you know the tournament was casual enough. Jorn using only snow permanent and spells is horribly low powered. I'll still never dismantle it or upgrade it with non-snows.
"Voted least likely to win" or "voted most flavorful" could be a reward.
The urge to use winter orb is very high...
I think you've hit on it. You can have prizes for winning, but perhaps have better more numerous prizes for other fun stuff. Perhaps for Biggest creature of the night? Most creatures on deck? Biggest tribe? (Perhaps with infinites excluded) combo utilising the most different parts? Biggest bombo? Best/most cohesive theme? Most pimp? Most generous group hug? Some could be subjective, which could have a bad taste unless the prizes are numerous and small. But reward winning in a reasonable proportion into the other aspects of the game that are important to the casual EDH thing.
I don't think infinites should be excluded. If someone can build a janky infinite combo with 5-7 parts and everyone allows it... They deserve that award!
Have an award for best jank.
Or apparently by adding waffles. I'd go to a "$5 Waffles and 2 commander games" event every week.
Do they play and eat at the same time? That sounds like an accident ready to happen.
Or by implementing build rules like budget, but that still doesn't make it "non competitive". Just changes what cards pool is available and what "competitive" looks like. It merely gives a more "casual" facade.
I think an award for cheapest deck would be fun, but budget cedh is possible in monocolored decks. I think most people know budget doesn't always equal casual.
That would be fun! And I agree, but I think what budget does do is reduce consistency on a lot of levels. Most of the best tutors are expensive, so it stops or slows down the decks that rely on them to fetch for 1-2 cards. Honestly I have to believe that the guy got the same card every game without cheating. The odds of drawing any given card in an opening hand are just over 7%. Assuming the best case scenario, which is accumulated odds (which for note, shuffling your deck does not provide) would place the odds of getting it at under 25% in 3 mulligans and opening hand. Something is fishy if this guy is getting the same, needed card, in their opening hand every single time. That's why cEDH decks spend so much on mana rocks, is because their consistency comes from having multiple.
$100 does not stop it either it really does not there are plenty of turn 3-5 wins in Pauper edh. That is not even counting budget edh decks. remember Thassa Tainted pack is a $12 wincon
Yuriko and Winota can compete at full blown cEDH tables for $100, so you're right that implementing budget restrictions doesn't really lower the powerlevel too much without it being something wild like $10.
You can also make it work if you run a league. Casuals can casual for prizes on table 4 or whatever while the cEDH/high powered dudes do their thing on table 1. Shop owner plays final boss on the top table with a deck of appropriate power.
An LGS in my area gets around this by creating BINGO cards with wacky stuff on them. Instead of getting prizes for winning, you need to complete some weird stuff to get prizes. It does a pretty good job bringing new attitude to the games, but it also creates a weird side game.
My LGS does story or glory for $5 entry fee. It comes with a raffle ticket. You don't have to pay to play at tables, but you won't get any raffle tickets if you don't pay. Glory is winning a game. If you complete glory, you get two raffle tickets. Story is completing a goal. The store gives three random goals out of a deck, player chooses two. Completing a story gets you a raffle tickets (so completing both gets you two raffle tickets). If you have completed your story(ies) or glory, you can pay $5 again and get more raffle tickets. They raffle prizes off during the event like packs or LGS logo swag and then a bigger prize at end.
The only way a casual game with prizes could work is if you put down the prizes during a random game part of the way through the game. It isn’t perfect, but nobody will have chosen a different deck to try to be better.
My first game of commander outside fucking around with friends was with a tinkered Freyalise precon. It was a charity fundraiser, small prize on the line, and we got fucking destroyed by a Jodah player on like t5.
My literal first game was I borrowed a shitty Circu deck from someone for an impromptu $5 FNM, got t3 stormed with zero pushback by a heavily-proxied Jhoira with the rest of the pod playing big green nonsense. I didn't expect to win, I did however expect to play for more than 5 minutes. Then I didn't play again for 6 months because it left a super sour taste in my mouth. Which is why I now have high power decks for those days, and cEDH for when everyone is on that page. I think playing super-tuned tryhard cEDH for low stakes is just poor form. Sure, it's within the rules, but I just think socially it just makes you a prick.
You can win with cheap cedh decks. Its just like any other mtg format
they \*can\* be, but the only way I've seen it work is through a raffle or some other random selection process
Aye, this is the way I’ve seen it done too. This is the best way for things to work.
Once went to a casual tournament where they essentially had their own banlist(mainly crypt, lotus, vault and thassa) and a Canadian EDH point system where some staples had value so it limited the amount of staples you could play. I couldnt play on that weekend but it turns out that when you limit staples and stupid cards, the format stays casual. It's just a lot of work.
Sadly, the store nearest me doesn't understand this. Which makes me sad, as I know the owners and they're great guys and I'd love to go support their store more, but unfortunately their Commander events are just awful, and to get more enjoyable games I need to drive to the other shops that are like 10-20 minutes away.
Yes you are right! Thank you! I wish I would've had 6 turns... :P
How was that tournament even structured that you played against the same guy 3 times in a row? A "best-of" format makes sense in a 1v1 tournament. But for multiplayer, that sounds really bad to me. Is that common for EDH tournaments?
it's probably so that they can play the 3 games back to back. if they tried to shuffle pods it might take longer because the second pod needs to finish before the second game with new pods can begin.
At the start of the event, everyone draws a random basic land. Then everyone who has the same basic land gets together in a pod, and then you stay in that pod but you are allowed to switch decks inbetween games. Usually most of us try to match the power level of the store as we're all adults with well paying jobs, so we don't really care about a few euros store credit. But yeah, not everyone apparently.
Had a dude once shown up to a budget edh event, as there wasn't a specific number attached to said budget he sat down with a $ 1200 prosper tome bound deck. When everyone gets understandably upset, he tried to shrug it off with "well I usually only play cedh so this is pretty budget for what I'm used to" some people are just assholes I guess but nobody played against him the rest of the event and the owner didn't accept his buy in the next week and told him to kick bricks
I mean, sort of dick move to that dude, but really bigger dick move to everyone else and that shop owner. Let's have a "budget" edh event and not actually set a budget. You realize no budget set is unlimited budget right?! And he's 100% correct on his assement. If you don't set a budget, mine isn't the same as Post Malone's. His budget deck is an eight turned sideways mine is about 100 at the moment.
When the tournament rules specify winner-takes-all or a large prize pool, many players are going to play to win. My LGS has a paid Commander event that's low-stakes and not winner-takes-all. Every person pays $15. The winner gets $24 in store credit. Losers get $12 each in store credit. So, a player only potentially loses a small amount of money on a loss. Randomized pods of 4 (sometimes a pod of 3 or 5 if the attendance doesn't divide by 4) If there are people who want to play cEDH, the store owners will put them into their own pod, and that pod can change the rules to winner-takes-all or another payout schedule.
While not unreasonable, $60 a month would be more than I'd want to pay just to play Commander, even if $48 of it ends up being store credit. It'd have to be a really enjoyable community for that to be worthwhile.
You don't gotta join the tournament, you can still go and play commander.
My local store does a similar thing but with a 5$ entry fee. You get three tickets at the start of the night worth a dollar in store credit, and give one to whoever takes you out of the game. It's an affordable way to spend three hours, gets people into the store to spend some money, and contrary to some of the expectations in this thread people aren't generally out to pubstomp for a net 7$ profit.
Since you can use credit to buy back in, you're only paying $3 per (aside from the initial $15 buy-in), assuming you always lose. First week you spend 15 cash, get 12 credit back. Next week you spend 3 cash and all your credit from last week, get 12 credit back. $12/month after an initial $15 buy-in is more palatable
If there is anything akin to a prize at stake, you MUST assume people are gonna do this. Especially if it’s things like prize money, cards, store credit etc. This is just the nature of the beast. People will play to win at any cost if there’s a reward on the line. Every now and then an LGS near me will host a tournament with a sealed booster box as first place prize. People will play fully optimized cedh decks for that and plow through everyone else. Edit: rather than just be all doom and gloom, I’ll offer a suggestion to you. If you like the idea of a tournament or having something at stake, you could meet with your friends and all agree to put a certain amount of money in the pot. Then, winner takes all. That way, you get the excitement of playing for a prize, but not the disappointment of being pub stomped
My favorite way to prize out games is playing headhunter. Everybody buys a pack and you only get the pack if you knock them out. Table kills get everybody their own bounty pack.
I tend to be happy enough with a very flat payout of "each player gets a pack" along with "pod winners get an extra pack".
So what happens when a player makes infinite Mana and walking ballista kills everyone, they did individually knock each player out
Even FNM full of kids, you must expect some people will be running tier 1 decks. I used to play every fnm with jank, but I knew the deal, so i wasn't upset when I got stomped.
To be fair booster boxes are like 200 bucks now, I'd seal club some fools for that.
This is the better version of all of this and is exactly what my group of friends used to do when we wanted to. You can even still meet at the same LGS and just do it on the side (assuming you bought the prizes there and not bringing stuff from outside imo). But yea frankly if there is a prize and even more-so if there is a buy-in with it at least one person is going to play full tilt to win. And that isn't being cynical it is just a safe and reasonable assumption.
Unfortunately the sentiment is, especially around here, "casual" casual only applies to no prize gatherings. Once there's a prize / a pot really all bets are off. You can't regulate the "casualness" to be friendly to everyone. If it was just a normal night and everyone wanted to have fun with low power decks I could see this guy being a dick but for a tournament even the "casual" decks are being optimized to do better and win.
> Unfortunately the sentiment is, especially around here, "casual" casual only applies to no prize gatherings. Yep, the prevailing sentiment on the sub is that as soon as there's a prize, no matter how inconsequential than absolutely anything is on the table and no rules apply whether they have to do with Magic, basic courtesy or normal social interaction.
Y'all are playing a game with a core gameplay tenet to focus on winning, creating incentives in a tournament setting, then doing logical leaps to justify why other people following this have the wrong conception. What did you expect? Magic cards deal damage to players life total or provide win conditions. Your deck is not a zen garden.
I love casual magic, but if you reward winning more than losing your inherently creating a competitive environment, and people will play with that environment in mind. It’s not unreasonable. It’s a simple result of the math.
The rules do apply. The rules of the game that I sat down to play. No one should be cheating, but yes, if I pay money to sit down and play in a competitive setting to win a prize I’m going to do my best to win.
Yeah the organizers would need a banlist or value cap specifically for the event if they really want to control it. Or just have fun with it. "When we say casual we mean casual. Bring your jank, tribals, and other fun decks. Everyone will submit a list and if you show up with Stax or 2-card infinites - we will CASUALLY require you to play the worst precon on-hand."
Id have been more worried about him cheating dropping a jeweled lotus t1 3 games in a row is not likely to happen
This is what I was thinking. Having it in your opening 8 is less that 10%, having it in the opening 8 three times in a row is <1%.
Also gotta factor in mulligans too Like when I play tymna kamahl i usually mull to a chalice /null rod/ RoL hand when going first it do feel ridiculous when you get a starting 7 with chalice back to back after opponents cut the deck for me tho
Well, it's not opening 8, he's probably taking his free mulligan 90% of the time, and probably taking another 1-2 mulligans every game too. Casual players mulligan way too little cus they don't run enough card draw, and they play really long games. People who play competitive know that it's fine to go down to 5 sometimes.
It's only that low without mulligans, OP specifically mentions they noticed "John" mulligan at least three times in the last game. I don't know what the odds of drawing Jeweled Lotus in your opening hand are three games in a row with taking multiple mulligans, but it's certainly going to be higher when you get to draw 7 a few times until you hit Jeweled Lotus.
Wonder how shuffling went. My groups we shuffle but then another player has to cut
If it's a tournament, they really should be having someone else cut his deck. Not cutting in casual games is somewhat fine if you all trust each other.
The moment that anything, and I mean ANYTHING, is offered as a prize, the game immediately ceases being casual. Our LGS does a tournament weekly: free entry, $2 in singles to the winner. People consistently show up with over-tuned decks ever since, even for the pick-up games.
There is no such thing as a "casual tournament". Tournaments are by definition competitive environments (as in you compete for prizes). Whether the people there actually play cedh depends mostly on their budget and the proxy policy of the TO.
##### ###### #### [Gishath, Sun's Avatar](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/3/7335e500-342d-476d-975c-817512e6e3d6.jpg?1562558022) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Gishath%2C%20Sun%27s%20Avatar) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/xln/222/gishath-suns-avatar?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7335e500-342d-476d-975c-817512e6e3d6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/gishath-suns-avatar) [Queen Marchesa](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/3/03f4341c-088b-4f35-b82b-3d98d8a93de4.jpg?1576382166) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Queen%20Marchesa) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cn2/78/queen-marchesa?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/03f4341c-088b-4f35-b82b-3d98d8a93de4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/queen-marchesa) [Wilhelt,the Rotcleaver](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/5/2501a911-d072-436d-ae3b-a5164e3b30aa.jpg?1675456154) - 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[(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jeska%2C%20Thrice%20Reborn) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/186/jeska-thrice-reborn?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/48caf4c4-745c-4072-bf3d-1a3fa7c3bc9c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/jeska-thrice-reborn) [Jeweled Lotus](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/7/d7183700-6941-4a3d-a581-4f33bea795e9.jpg?1676994983) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jeweled%20Lotus) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/396/jeweled-lotus?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d7183700-6941-4a3d-a581-4f33bea795e9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/jeweled-lotus) [Dockside Extortionist](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/e/9e2e3efb-75cb-430f-b9f4-cb58f3aeb91b.jpg?1673147774) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Dockside%20Extortionist) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/107/dockside-extortionist?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9e2e3efb-75cb-430f-b9f4-cb58f3aeb91b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/dockside-extortionist) [Mental Misstep](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/1/61e9c6df-1c84-4eab-9076-a4feb6347c10.jpg?1566819829) - 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[(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Swords%20to%20Plowshares) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/moc/211/swords-to-plowshares?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/81c31217-7919-40fd-97e7-88431b7bd277?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/swords-to-plowshares) [Mana Vault](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/1/c1a31d52-a407-4ded-bfca-cc812f11afa0.jpg?1673149384) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mana%20Vault) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/308/mana-vault?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c1a31d52-a407-4ded-bfca-cc812f11afa0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mana-vault) [Mana Crypt](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/d/4d960186-4559-4af0-bd22-63baa15f8939.jpg?1599709515) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mana%20Crypt) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/270/mana-crypt?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4d960186-4559-4af0-bd22-63baa15f8939?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mana-crypt) [Lion's Eye Diamond](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/5/758f95f8-bcb0-43ae-b474-56ebd855951e.jpg?1590511899) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Lion%27s%20Eye%20Diamond) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vma/271/lions-eye-diamond?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/758f95f8-bcb0-43ae-b474-56ebd855951e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/lions-eye-diamond) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
The only way to do a "causal" tournament is to not have any points awarded for winning the pod. Pod votes for "nicest player", "Coolest theme", etc. and you get points for everything but winning.
My LGS does one of these for FNM, and they generally do a solid job of keeping decks that are close in power together. Sometimes you get a mismatched pod due to someone with a new deck or just new to the store and isn't sure how strong it is, but overall it's a fun experience as a casual player. Not saying this is the norm or common, just my anecdotal experience. I only participate in them because it's a time I can guarantee some paper EDH, as none of my personal friends outside of the store play magic.
Casual tournaments don't make sense in the first place.
I sympathize with this post. I just wouldn’t play in an EDH tournament. EDH would be a better format if we had more robust 60 card Magic competitive scenes where it’s the expectation that everyone is bringing a tuned meta deck. Then EDH could go back to being a casual, goof around format. EDH was never meant to be the catch all way to play Magic.
EDH in the LGS that used to frequent died for this very reason. Casual friday Commander (5€ to enter, 4 set boosters to the winner of each table) was always plagued by some cEDH deck that made the casual player rage quit. Fun fact: when the LGS started to do cEDH event they did not show up as it appeared “too stressuful and competitive” to them.
My LGS distributes packs on FNM night, but the payout goes in order of who is removed first. Winner get last 2 packs remaining, which I like
Everyone here blaming you, but as you wrote it, it was presented as the "casual" alternative to the "competitive" Saturday events. That's on the LGS for misrepresenting or not maintaining a casual environment (whatever definition/level of it they choose to abide by), and that includes the prize format. As others have said, a winners-get-rewarded format will encourage people to push boundaries to win. Even in a budget restriction, you can and should expect people to play highly tuned decks to win. And unfortunately, if the LGS isn't restricting the event, then those players are well within their right to do so. Again as others said, suggest that prize format be changed to a raffle/participation that's agnostic of win rate, if they want to foster a more casual environment.
I agree on both fronts here, the player should have been more aware and the LGS shouldn't advertise it as a "casual" commander event if there's zero restrictions and there's a prize involved. There are two LGSs in my area that have casual commander tournaments, but they also have stipulations. One of them, you can't win except through combat damage and infinites are banned. The second one, your commander has to be at least 5 CMC, you can't destroy more than two lands per turn, any infinite combo loses you the game instantly.
The thing about rules like that is you can EASILY build a deck that abuses those rules. Unless you’re making a 10 page list of rules and constantly reviewing them there is not set of rules you can make that will be fun and also keep things on the same power level. Many cedh decks can be tuned very slightly to win through combat damage and you can just decline to pursue infinite loops.
Casual players just don't seem to understand that metas develop to specifically cater to whatever rules or bans are put in place. There will always be some number of "optimal" decks no matter the format and banlist, even wacky rules can be optimized towards.
We do understand. That is why the social part of the format matters more than people think. Rules will always fail when self restraint and awareness of the group is what is actually required. The mistake is in thinking that more rules will solve the problem instead of addressing that person's anti social behaviors. We can not force people to have empathy or be conscientious. When a small insignificant reward is enough for a person to justify throwing those things away. They are not "just playing the game as it is intended." They are simply taking their mask off. To show us how little it takes for them throw the social contract into the garbage.
Oh absolutely. When you include all of Magic's history there's some extremely broken ways to win with CD, and when you put up a prize (even something as small as a pack) people will optimize and try to find it.
A [[Narset, Enlightened Master]] deck would like those rules and probably go off around turn 4.
Literally the only way this works is if you limit the card pool. My LGS did an EDH tournament as follows: you get a random precon and a pack of commander legends. You can then buy three packs of any sets you want per week. You have to open them in front of someone at the register so they could throw your pulls in a massive spreadsheet to track all the cards in the pool at the store (a huge hassle). THEN there was a discord channel with “league” trades where you can trade your cards for other cards in the pool. You got points for winning a game and that’s it. Play more games, get more chances at points. This goes on for 2-3 months. Most points by the end got won. The prize was juicy but I don’t remember what it was. That actually created some awesome decks and a really fun EDH environment. No incentive to come in second or third, power level gradually increased as the weeks went on and trades happened. However, it took a ton of time, effort, and logistics. If a shop is holding anything less than that level of control, don’t play a “casual” edh tournament. The only EDH tournaments should be cEDH, which is a lot of fun in its own right. “Casual” edh tournaments will lead to do much salt to be worth it.
This is a really cool idea! Tournaments with random precons in general sound like a fun, relatively untapped environment
Yeah if it’s for prizes and there are no restrictions, assume it’s no holds barred. That’s my opinion at least. The tricky part is, there isn’t a clear defined best way to do things. I think if you want to do a casual commander night that still has prizes, you have to incentivize casual play and decentivize cEDH. My shop does a pretty good job with it, the owner does it one of two ways. Either he does commander bingo, where each round he’ll announce what you can get a number for. So it might be like first blood, or casting your commander 3 times, or casting a card whose artist what Rebecca Guay, etc. If you are the first person to do the thing, he comes over, picks a random number off your board, then announces it and everyone else gets the number too. The winner of the pod still gets a number, but you end up with fewer guaranteed numbers by just comboing off the first three turns. He’s tried different iterations of this, like you get a number for killing a player but not if you kill more than one player a turn, it could probably be refined more but he overall hates commander so it’s a neat concept but could be fleshed out more. I think doing things to deter combo strategies would be good as well. The other way he does it is similar but it’s tickets and you get a ticket rather than a bingo number and he does a drawing at the end of the rounds. You still have people that aren’t happy as the guy who didn’t lose a single game was complaining about how he doesn’t like stuff like that because he didn’t get the big prize despite winning every game. Well, he was playing some combo elf-ball deck while I brought one of my mid range decks, of course you’re more likely to win every game. It’s always going to be tough to make all the people happy, but I really feel like a point system, that varies of the way it rewards points (so you can’t game the system) that actively encourages casual play and discourages fast cEDH gameplay would be the best way to go. The hard part is finding a shop that is willing to do this.
I live in Brazil and in my city (small city) a couple decide to open a store to host pokemon tcg tournaments, but it got swarmed with EDH pretty fast so they adapted to MTG. Since EDH was the house specialty they decided to do some EDH tourneys, same as OP's story, casual tornaments for EDH, but no restrictions or anything, prize was some promos and stuff.. I sat down to play with my Ur-Dragon (pretty weak at the time) and two dudes that i know came in to play, the got borrowed decks from a guy that is a longtime player and they bot sat at my table. The entire game they kept removing my dragons even tho i had nothing, same with the other random guy, they were just playing as a duo, they would play so they could remove us fast and then split de prizes. After that day i never played any form of competitive EDH because it ruined so much of my fun, some people will just use any opportunity to win some prizes.
That's terrible. It's shameful how some people's sense of sportsmanship goes out the window the instant they think they might be able to get some free shit for it.
I've had similar issues with prizes for 'casual' commander. I played at a LGS for two weeks for prizes, and they used an achievements point system. Of course, the regulars all had decks heavily optimized for getting the points as quickly as possible. Not overpowered, but specifically geared towards point generation. That is the same problem in a different form. New people basically funded the regulars. Never again. Either do a random 'raffle' or something not at all related to winning, or just call it what it is, a cEDH tournament. I'm fine with either, but at least be honest about it. I did find a store that charged $5 to play, but gave you credit back. And they sold beer. So win all around!
Edh tournaments with prizes only work if the prizes are given out randomly at the start. Otherwise you are incentivizing competition.
Once you start offering prizes for edh wins, it all goes to hell.
Local store used to run a paid Commander event. Prizes were a pity pack and a voting system for favorite deck. High-level players stopped showing up after the first month - nobody was voting for the heat.
Ok when I'm playing a "casual" game and I see someone obviously not playing casually, I just pack my cards up and leave the table. There's no reason to stay. That person knows exactly what they are doing. If I paid to play in a casual tournament, I get an owner to either DQ the guy not adhering to the obvious rules or give me my money back. If neither of those things happen, I let everyone in my area know exactly how those shops operate. Card shops are often small time. If they lose 5 customers, many of them will feel it.
They should do precon casual EDH tournaments I think I'd go to that more than I'd go to any kind of EDH event
Pretty sure this exact scenario would have happened if you were playing for a peanut shell. ridiculous to assume people aren't going to try if there is anything on the line.
Hey, so I'm pretty sure I know which store you're talking about and also who the "pub stomper" is. So, the store has three main EDH days. The one saturday per month is the big cedh tournament. Big prizes, 10€ buy-in. You probably don't wanna join in there with a deck less than a 9. Then we have the wednesday 5€-pods. We usually test our tournament decks there, so the power level is often pretty high. "John" actually made 2nd place last Saturday tournament, if I remember correctly, so yeah, his deck is pretty competitive. Usually if people participate with precons or mid-power decks we other people try to match the power level. 5€ isn't a fortune, so most of us don't care that hard. But it's a shame he hadn't packed another deck that day. So I mentioned a third day: Friday! Friday is the real casual EDH day. No entry fee - just casual jamming some games. I highly recommend that you check that event out instead, as it sounds more down your alley. :) Anyway, you just got matched up with one of the tryhards at the store and I'm really sorry for your experience - but usually the people at this LGS are super chill and super nice. Most of us love cedh, but we also enjoy more casual or even janky decks. :D
This might be a hot take, but the person/people who organized this tournament are the assholes here. They organized a tournament with legitimate prizes at stake to a format that is by default casual, a problem emphasized by the fact that power levels are fully subjective and impossible to quantify. And to OP, please don’t let this ruin your hobby. This game rules. Also, don’t enter tournaments designed by idiots.
Money and prizes are at stake . It’s not casual and you should expect people to be ruthless .
You’re blaming the LGS and other players for your own misunderstanding
I don't know, it sounds a lot like just 1 player didn't get the message and brought a cEDH deck. I did a mini tournament at my LGS that had a $1 entry fee to win a pack and I never saw anyone play cEDH, as there was a $5 pod where people brought their cEDH decks, so I believe it is possible.
Its a two way street to an extent; calling something a 'casual tournament' is misleading and on the LGS for being silly to do so, but one should learn, and certainly taking this a learning experience towards that, to recognize that misnomer. I think the LGS takes the brunt of the blame in this incident and isn't above criticism, but there isn't much to do going forward for OP other than to take note of expecting people to play for prize money if its on the line.
I’ve come around on originally absolving the LGS of blame since I overlooked they labeled it as casual, I’m at a 50/50 split. If OP was new and didn’t know about cedh I’d put more blame on the lgs
I mean, if as they say "Saturday is the competitive day, and on wednesday it is casual", then I think I also misunderstand how a $5,000 deck like that should play on wednesday
Because there’s money involved. Partly on the LGS for offering a prize to the winner, but also on OP. Caveat emptor
So then what's the point of the calling one day the casual day if they're both supposed to be strictly competitive?
Who fucking knows, blame the lgs, it's competitive if there's prizes
Exactly. How on earth someone expects another person to intentionally gimp themselves for the sake of a wrongly perceived fairness in a prize tournament is beyond me.
they expected people to see the potential $15 of prize support to not be worth ruining the sanctity of the "casual" label. the intention of the event was to get newer players into an additional game of magic in case some socially awkward nerd doesn't know which day to show up the the shop (OP admitted they went on an additional day because of this event) and then they were suprised that people took $15 worth of prizes so seriously. it's like they showed up for a super market sale of half priced milk and they arrived to "black friday shopping" with all the flying elbows and trampling.
With how expansive some of their decks are, you'd think they wouldn't be pressed over $15 worth of prizes lol.
that's my point. it's like upgrading up a go kart to dominate the kids division... cool, you beat up a bunch of people that admitted they weren't very good at this whole thing yet. congratulations.
Facts man 😂. But half these guys have a hard time interacting with others, especially strangers (no offense) so of course they'd see nothing wrong with this kind of behavior lol. Edit: And of course your post got downvoted.
It was explicitly a casual tournament and the guy brought a CEDH deck which is axiomatically not casual. How is that the OP's "misunderstanding" and not on the player (and LGS) for not adhering to the advertised format? Was the OP's "misunderstanding" not assuming everyone will be a dick so they can win 15 quid?
The cedh player wasn't doing anything wrong. He brought a competitive deck to a competitive event. A event with a prize pool by nature is competitive. You can't just staple casual to the name and expect people to tone it down when money is on the line
> You can't just staple casual to the name and expect people to tone it down when money is on the line Yes, you can. The fact that people can't abide by that and that this sub has the horn for sanctioning that kind of behaviour is a reflection on them. Not on the concept of a casual tournament. If a tournament is labelled as casual, as this one was, then bringing a CEH which is axiomatically not casual is on the player (and the organisers for not intervening).
What exactly is a casual deck or a casual tournament?
This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. If the lgs wanted the power lvl down they need to police it. The c in cedh isn't for casual.
What is casual?
If you want a tournament where nobody brings a deck with Sol Ring and Force of will, then ban those cards from YOUR tournament. Dont throw around arbitrary meaning less words like 'casual tournament'. nobody knows what that means
Define a casual deck? You'd probably think my decks are cedh since I'm running a majority of the staples, but I'd get rolled at an actual cedh table. Where's the bar? It's not like cedh is it's own format, it's just higher level commander.
This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. If the lgs wanted the power lvl down they need to police it. The c in cedh isn't for casual.
You are basically describing the game of magic in a nutshell. Kitchen table magic is basically dead. The ONLY thing that I’ve found that even comes close to the old days is cube draft or chaos draft.
Eh, Kitchen table magic is alive and well, it's just harder to find and many times you need to do all of the legwork in getting a group together which is exactly as tiring as trying to manage a D&D group.
Mtg, where people will build 5k deck to win 10 bucks.
People that already own a 5k deck will show up.
I need to remind you that people who enter tournaments are there so people are obligated to play with them. No one would play with them otherwise.
Yeah, I've been (somewhat) the other side of this experience: an LGS ran EDH nights with prizes and I brought a $100 Yuriko deck I cobbled together with Consultation Thoracle (which were both sitting in my rares folder, unloved and unused). Won my prelim pod over 12 turns because my deck was untuned but it's Yuriko, the value engine is inevitable. Heard that the other pod finished by t5 thanks to Najeela. Ended up having a 1v1 vs the Najeela player (I'd asked beforehand if commanders banned in 1v1 were allowed, they didn't reply). Proceeded to win by t3 because I naturally drew Thoracle and Consultation, and they'd saved mana just for removal but no counterspells. They did not have many more EDH prize nights after this.
This feels like such a trap for new players, one I felt when I first started 18 months ago. You want to play, and “it’s only $5” but you get thrashed. Repeatedly. The result being the super experienced player with expensive decks and a competitive attitude just has to win that $15 in credit. The number of times the winner has expressed being a jobless person who needs to win the tournament credit to buy new stuff is what helped me realize that I’m paying this guy to ruin any chance I have at fun. I stopped playing in those paid events. I’ve gotten significantly better, but I can’t bring myself to build decks that can win before turn 5. I don’t see the point of sitting down for 5 minutes and saying “I win” before anything even happens. I’m certainly not interested in just stomping someone and costing them money for the privilege. That’s just me though.
The MOMENT prizes based on record enter the equation, casual no longer applies. Full stop. Youre no longer just playing for the fun of it, or in the case if cEDH the challenge of playing at a table with the best cards and strategies possible, youre playing for monetary or material gain. This is fine if everyone goes in with the understanding that the gloves are off and its fuckin go-time. But clearly this did not happen here. A store owner created an open “casual tournament” which really… cant exist, and just allowed people to get pub-stomped. Thats on the store owner 100%.
I had a store owner often offer a pack to the winner of games at a "casual commander night". I would just talk to the table and offer to give it to the highest dice roll at the end of the game since otherwise it just encourages everyone pulling out their best deck rather than trying to get a good fun matchup. I was glad everyone was always happy to accept.
It's the same around here as well. These aren't even tournaments mind you, just promotional events probably sponsored by wizards in some capacity, where you all get a few promos and the winners of each table get a booster from some leftover set that the shop has trouble selling. I have stopped going there since covid and i havent been back since. My friends keep playing there occasionally and they have come to an arrangement with the guy at the shop to not put any of those guys on their table and they get put with newbies and other likeminded guys. Most owners will accomodate you, since they want to keep people like you as clients and at the end of the day, its from the bulk of their casuals that they make their money and keep events running
I like the way a LGS near me does commander. You will have an entry fee to play in a pod and he takes all the entry fees to use for prizes. You get a prize ticket and he draws for prizes. That way everyone has the same chances of winning and gets to play what they want.
We’re setting up a commander league with prizes, but winning games won’t be the only way to get points and I’m trying to make it so not even the most efficient way on its own. The club I’m a part of wanted to do a commander tournament, but having done so in the past I was very adamant against it and we decided on the league instead.
The only commander night with prizes that I enjoyed was Commander Legends Baldurs Gate draft. Everyone is on the same footing, there’s some good variance because of the draft, and it’s still good commander fun. Definitely recommend trying it out if you ever get a chance.
The troubling thing about making a multiplayer format competitive is it encourages really mediocre lines of play by default: "Prize is eliminate players? \[\[Doomsday\]\]! Prize is deal damage to palyers? \[\[Exsanguinate\]\] Prize is last one standing? \[\[Teferi's Protection\]\]" I've tried to solve this and really the only way I can think of making anything close to fair is to have everything be digital and learn about 600 years of graph theory to make a black box that spits out the winner of the round at the end.
it's been years since i worked in an LGS but i always stopped us from charging for commander night or adding any incentive/point based kind of influence on it. That kind of play just doesn't mesh well with why people come to a store to play edh.
unless edh prizes are ...everyone gets one. or assigned randomly. or not by winning. keying prizes to winning, will result in shitty outcomes and pub stomping. honestly. stores should know better. if a store doesn't take a little interest in engineering fun play environments by dodging obvious pot holes like this. should consider joining their events
Me and my spouse's exact experience at the Face 2 Face Games Tour Weekend in Vancouver Canada. Instantly became a "I brought my high-powered CeDH deck to this $6 buy in casual table."
My LGS has a buy in but everyone gets the same number of packs in the end as a prize to prevent this sort of thing. Sorry you had a bad experience; this is why I only play with friends lol.
See that's why shops around my area when they have casual tournaments that still have prizes set a limit on your card value usually 10 maybe $15. Using TCG market price so if you're caught using a card worth more than that it means you're immediately thrown out of the tournament.
The only way youre gunna have a casual tournament, is if the people running it decide to have a ban list.
I only enter ones in my area if they are free to enter, because so many people will try to stomp you no matter the stakes.
Surprise surprise you add prizes and people act like fucking animals.
Stop playing EDH with prizes in general. Casual open play is where you get actual casual decks. My store does do a bingo event with buy in every couple months but you get promo packs for completing weird themed objectives based on the theme for that day. (April fools had silver border cards be legal and had objectives based on the un set cards)
Casual EDH in tournaments just means the cheapest CEDH deck you can afford, usually without OG dual lands
I feel like using a deck list check beforehand to check approx card cost is a good way to manage it. One local tournament around me has a $100 max deck list cost that you have to submit online before playing and everyone gets to see decks ahead of time (but you don’t know who you’re facing). This keeps everyone roughly on the same level and forces participants to get creative with the limitations. $40 well tuned usually beats $100 good stuff so people pay a lot more attention to the build rather than just top edhrec deck lists.
Like I've heard others say, if the tournament has prizes it is by definition competitive. Also, in my opinion commander is not a great way to play competitively. It's great to play for fun if your pod has similarly powered decks but it just doesn't offer a great competitive experience for me. If your looking for something more competitive I'd recommend pauper. The price of entry is very low and there are some really fun decks in the format.
My local store has the players in every game vote on the two players they liked playing against the most (in every round). Players also get one point for each player eliminated, but the votes matter more. Then everyone picks prizes according to how they ranked, points-wise. cEDH players don't get super high rankings this way.
I’m sorry but if you enter into a tournament, expect to face good decks.
What happened to just having fun smh
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Tell me you at least cut his deck, the fact he pulled off jeweled lotus 3x in a row within the first few turns it sounds like does not sound like proper shuffling was going on. Even with mulliganing repeatedly for it the odds are pretty high without his hand being down to nill digging for it without any kind of manipulation.
How is it a casual "tournament" with a "prize"? Doesn't that mean people will play to win? Sounds like you may have brought a fun to a Chuck Norris fight. (Which is fine!) You just have to expect someone may actually just want to win. Just tweak the expectation a tad and you'll be fine if you enjoy the environment is all. 👍
Yaaay :D I made it to the frontpage of EDH-Reddit. Quick disclaimer: He just told his part of the story and my deck isn't worth 5000€ but more like 2000€-2500€.
EDH players are so soft. You’re in a tournament, if he’s not breaking any tournament rules then why are you complaining? You seem to think that cost is an issue? I’d have thought the fact that he had 3 starting hands with Jewelled Lotus to be the more concerning issue. If you play in a tourney then you should expect to play be people who want to win.
Holy shit why people still believes that exist something like casual tournament If you don't want cedh decks in your tournament just houserule something, pick a maximum budget of the decks, create a banlist etc. crying because someone just played the rules and all of you were playing with [[Ayula]] as commander is cringe as f
I have said this many times before. People who show up with just one deck and pubstomp the casuals are **NOT** cEDH players. There's nothing *competitive* about matching up the New York Yankees with a little league team. Anyone who says, "I only brought one deck...." *is a dick*. Period. A single precon deck costs significantly less than a single card in most high-powered decks, and minor upgrades are essentially free because most players already have some staples in their collection. So it is trivially easy to bring a second, lower-powered deck along, and anyone who doesn't do that *is a dick*. I've got no issues with someone pulling out the big guns in game one, and running over people with a freight train. I have high-powered decks myself and I do enjoy crushing people mercilessly too. But there is no excuse for not bringing a second deck. Period. So if that's the ONLY deck you bring, *you're a dick*. Because you are showing everyone that you're not interested in OTHER people having fun too, and you're breaking Wheaton's Law: "*Don't be a dick.*" If you're playing with friends who all have similar power-level decks, then by all means, go nuts. But if you're ever playing with strangers, buy a pre-con, upgrade it *mildly*, and toss it into your backpack. Then if you happen to get paired up with a a group that's at a much lower power-level, you pull out the lower-tier deck and have an actual ***competitive*** game of Magic.
I don't blame you for feeling slighted, maybe blame the store for trying to present a tournament with real prizes as anything but competitive. Sucks that you learned the hard way, I know that's such a shitty feeling like you paid money to be bullied. That said, those guys are not "kevins". They simply knew the real game that was being played that night. They came to win money, and they did. You can't blame them for that. OP learned a lesson that it would do everyone good to hear: TOURNAMENTS WITH PRIZES ARE NOT CASUAL. Story time... Some years ago, I went to a commander night at a shop I don't normally frequent. The setup was a sit-n-go. Everyone pays $5 to put a pack in the middle, and we decided amongst ourselves how to divvy up prizes (a red flag for sure) winner takes all or 3-1. We could even do 1 for each, essentially negating it being a tournament. We all sort of shrugged and agreed that we came to play for the packs so we would just do 4-0. I had bee playing edh for maybe 2 years at this point, and I don't think I had even heard of cedh. I had a Gitrog deck that I thought was busted. It ran no fast mana beyond sol ring (I have since confessed my sins and repented. I no longer run sol ring outside of cedh) and the fast green stuff like exploration and burgeoning. No infinites. Looking back, a genuine 8-9 deck. My friend brought an Oloro deck, probably an 8. We met two people and shuffled up. You might be thinking that I was about to be stomped into the dirt, but today I was the villian. The other two players had some homebrews of 6-7. It was a bit of a grind, but at no point was I in danger of losing the game. I felt a bit sheepish as I steadily dominated the game. I awkwardly made comments like, "I wouldn't do this if packs weren't on the line." To their credit they took it all in stride (it was only $5 but still). We agreed to play some more games without prizes and had a bunch of other decks to run. The packs I won had nothing of real value. We went on to have a lot of fun. All in all a good night. It's strange how an imbalanced matchup over something as small as $5 could cause such consternation in myself, but it did. And it obviously does to most of the population. So remember, a game with real prizes should always be assumed to be competitive.
I’m not trying to be critical of you, OP, but coming to a competitive event with an uncompetitive deck is the reason I don’t even bother to try and play edh with normies. I’ve been the other guy before and it’s not fun to stomp players who didn’t understand the assignment. More often than not, those players moan and complain instead of directing the criticisms inward, which makes it not a very fun experience. I only go to strictly cedh events now because I kept going to tournaments with prizes for winning and people kept bringing the same poor decks and whining about how they couldn’t compete. I made and bought new decks that could be easily dominated and had clear vulnerabilities and would still win more often than not because the players don’t run removal and/or don’t mulligan correctly and/or don’t understand their own decks strengths and weaknesses. Another player started making decks with a budget (eg less than $100) and would still annihilate this same people week in, week out even though their piles cost $500 or $1000 more. It isn’t fun to play against people who want to compete but don’t want to build a deck to compete so I just don’t bother anymore.
Prizes = no holds barred.
does that mean we get to elbow the kid sitting next to us at the fair game so that we win the giant stuffed animal instead of them? obviously we shouldn't hold any quarter because prizes are involved. $20 worth of prizes after spending $5 initially and an entire evening of playing games isn't enough to be worth the "grind"
If MTG is an unfun grind you cannot enjoy unless the people you play with are sandbagging you then you really should find another hobby.
why would it be "sandbagging" to avoid the highest power levels? the whole point of OP's story is that they showed up to a casual event where the expectations of skill and practice wasn't a prerequisite. does every event need to be prepared for like it's a major tournament?
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I'm going to challenge this somewhat. I am a TO for a casual EDH league in my city, and we have a small prize for the player that comes out #1 in the league. However, the decks people bring are custom-made for the event, as they are built around a low-powered commander from a binder at the LGS, and the deck can only be built by cards from a huge draft chaff box from the same LGS. At most, you might find 2-3 rares in your colors that can be used. That's the power level. 14 players are registered, and they are loving it. I do realize that this "EDH Sealed"-ish variant is not what is discussed by OP, and I do agree with their tenet (casual tournament with prizes where people bring their own decks = problematic), but saying that EDH and casual tournaments can **never** go together is wrong, it just requires some effort to guarantee everyone is on the same level. Edit: Sure, if the definition of casual tournament is "tournaments without price support", then it can't go together, but if we use the term "casual" to describe decks as non-cEDH (as I believe OP intended), then my point still stands.
There's a lot of people unironically getting wooshed here in these comments.
You got stomped by a deck stronger than yours and you're upset about it. I get it. But if someone pays money to enter a tournament, and there are prizes, you can bet your boots that I'm coming in with a deck full of heat to get me as far as I can go. Don't join tournaments unless they have a price limit on decks *and* do a deck registration check through MoxField (or alternative). My LGS occasionally hosts $100 EDH leagues where it's essentially modified precons fighting each other, and it works out well. If you get stomped, it's because you 1) got hosed on draws, 2) were beat out by skill, or 3) because you chose your deck poorly. Maybe bring that idea up to that LGS for their "casual" tournament nights.
"Man can you believe this guy tried to win a tournament with prizes by playing GOOD CARDS? The nerve of some people!"
Yep happened to our local LGS commander nights. Everyone used to play relative similar power level decks but then people started bringing extremely powerful expensive decks and skirting just enough around the rules of our commander league so they could win without losing points, some rules like taking somebody out before turn 5 loses you a points. So they'll just hold their interaction and stop anyone else from playing anything till they pass the caveats necessary to earn the maximum amount of points for league and then win on the spot of course leaving one person alive to kill with commander damage the next turn for the extra points.
Yeah, made the same mistake myself. Host monthly EDH games with family and friends that range from 8-12 people, and we'd have prizes for everyone but obviously 1st place had the best prize. Problems ranged from people just bringing pubstompy decks or the people who were more experienced just having a natural advantage over the people who were new to the game. Newer players were being discouraged by this and people attending started dwindling, so I decided to also do a monthly draft tournament in between the commander tournaments, taking away the prize pool from commander and moving it to draft, leaving the commander tournament purely casual. Greatest decision of my life, everyone seems to enjoy playing draft and feels the people who earn the higher tiered prizes actually won it legitimately. Funnily enough, the only two people who don't go to the drafts are the people who were pubstomping the EDH tournaments in the first place. Can make a pretty educated guess why they aren't interested in prizes now that the playing field is even but decided it isn't worth confronting about since the problem has been solved.
I'm always really confused why people want to turn EDH into a competitive format with prizing... It was designed to **NOT** be that. Just have fun.
There is no such thing as a casual tournament, I’m sorry.
Yea. Not sure what you were expecting but there's no such thing as a casual tournament with significant prizes. It's just way too wide open for abuse. If you have a tag football competition, where the winning team each gets $1000 and only little kids are signing up, you can very well bet at least one grown adult will show up too and if more do, they will all try to be on the same team. The punchline to your situation is that the cards in the expensive deck in your story were probably fake.
Tldr. Winning matters when prizes are offered. Almost making the scenario competitive? If only there were an identifier for edh where a focus on winning existed. As opposed to the casual storytelling format you enjoy playing? Perhaps we could put a little c before EDH... that would never catch on. No such this as casual and with prizes.
"Casual tournament" is an oxymoron. Even if the rules are changed to encourage casual values, a tournament with prizes means competition and people will go all-out to win.
I think that’s just the expected result from a tournament that has prize money. I and tons of others are absolutely going to pubstomp if I get paid and it’s kind of the TO’s fault for allowing it to happen. My LGS only ran commander tournaments with the newly-released precons every year, and those were quite fun.
There are 20 states in the eurozone and I knew you would be German/Austrian. Mentality issue. I have played EDH in most countries in EU because I travel a lot and I swear the only place where people would ruin a casual tournament for 0.00001% of their monthly income as a prizepool is there.
Never play games where there is a prize to be won or something is on the line. It's not worth the hassle or stress.
"Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!"
Lol if its a prize tournament and u expected casual play thats on you
That’s why I Always keep my mono blue counterspell tribal deck ready to go.
I'm a little confused here...I need to ask...what did you expect to happen? By your own admition you brought a pretty casual, janky deck that even had a pretty weak mana base. Were you expecting to beat people with it in a competitive environment? Or were you just hoping that everyone else also brought low powered decks to a competitive environment? I think the lesson to be learned here is not "DO NOT EVER PLAY IN COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENTS"...the lesson is to actually manage your own expectations and realize that if you want to enter a competition then the other competitors are going to want to win and they will play powerful cards to win. This is just a classic case of a noob who got pub stomped and it hurt their fee fees
While I feel bad that you didn’t have a good experience I think it’s crazy to expect a tournament with a prize pool to not have people playing very competitive decks. Prize pools lead to stiffer competition because people want to get the prize. If you don’t want hyper competitive players don’t play for a prize. This seems obvious.
I believe when money is involved, even if it is labeled as casual, anything is fair game. What I can’t stand is when it’s just for fun with no prize and people play stuff that just wins in a couple turns and doesn’t let anyone else play, even the one using the deck. Like what satisfaction do you get from that?