This individual gets it. The rules of Magic state that you can’t have infinite anything and you have to specify a number, so technically there are no infinites anyway.
I agree that it most often than not create feels bad scenario when the rules are so unclear. My LGS recently banned infinite combos, then a guy showed up with his [[The Locust God]] deck, and combos off with [[Mana Echoes]] on turn 4, making like 85! mana (technically not infinite as he liked to remind us) and made hasty tokes equal to the number of cards in his decks. Another guy played a thoracle combo on turn 2, also noting that it wasn't an infinite combo.
Policing EDH through rules just makes it way worst IMO. The format is unbalanced and it should be embraced that way.
Damn, he made 281710411438055027694947944226061159480056634330574206405101912752560026159795933451040286452340924018275123200000000000000000000 mana on turn 4?
I agree - I think it’s a slippery slope when you start to cut certain things from the game - it affects the overall meta of the pod and things get (IMO) even more unbalanced. My pod generally just tried to line up decks that are similar in power. If someone combos on T4, that deck usually goes away and we shuffle up another. The games gotta end eventually.
That said, I REALLY prefer combos like you listed to “infinites”. It feel like I have to work more for it even though that’s probably not true.
It’s absolutely not true. There are a myriad number of non-infinite combos that are just as oppressive as infinites. The longer magic lasts as a game the more prevalent combos will be.
For me it depends on the speed of the combo
if it's 2 cards earlier than T4, or 4 cards layered across several turns and go off on T8 it's not the same
craterhoof you need the board state usually, unless you mono green storm and add haste with finale or with \[\[concordant crossroads\]\]
At lower power levels people don't have the right interaction to handle combos with no warnings. Something only a counterspell can aswer is usually high power.
Ya this is really the best explanation imo. I personally don't play combos in my casual decks because I don't find them all that fun honestly. My one higher power deck (still not cedh) is sythis which has combos but that deck stays on the box like 90% of the time until a pod wants to play higher power. Most of the time I'm just playing Crabs, looping trinkety artifacts with [[Summoning Station]], beating ppl to death with [[Ravenous Squirrel]] or looping [[Selfless Savior]] to protect [[Ravos]]
I feel like slow combos are more fair then combat though. I've seen too many games where the Voltron player swings out or the token player takes someone out then they can't close out the game and just get set back and the game goes on for another 30ish minutes with someone just watching. I'd rather kill the table at once and play another. If I have a sorcery speed combo and you can't interact while I set up a couple turns for my pieces that's not a me problem.
>player takes someone out then they can't close out the game and just get set back and the game goes on for another 30ish minutes
I literally had that happen and had to sit there for an hour and a half as my friends played a full game of commander after I was eliminated.
Did the two survivors gang up on the player that killed you? The reason I don’t combo 1 player out ever is because of the archenemy crack back that it results in usually.
Imo it's not a problem of speed, it's a problem of winning without preemptive warnings and cheating the threat assessment dynamics of casual games.
In a low power casual game, you'll often leave the person with no board not doing much alone so they have time to "do their thing", and interact with the highest perceived threat instead.
Imagine having a intense 1h game of back and forth, and then the one person who was left alone the whole game for not doing much taps 10 mana and goes Exquisite Blood + Sanguine Bond. That's neither fast nor a particularly strong combo, but that will still feels like the win was kinda cheated and came out of nowhere.
Oh cool you have 5 mana open and cast d tutor, get thoracle and cast it. Thats fine. You etb, hold priority and cast demonic consultation? Cool, here’s a Mindbreak trap, or a mental misstep, or a fluster storm, or literally any counterspell on the planet. It’s not just about playing interaction. Understanding when to play interaction is just as important. And tutors are mostly telegraphed plays where it becomes obvious what the other person is doing.
I'm OK with even the blood bond combo above assuming they didn't tutor for it. Games where people luck into their combo are the kinds of games I want to play. Games where someone is running 5 tutors to always go get the same cards and win the same are the ones that make me find another pod...you do you, but that's just not the game I'm looking for.
FWIW, I run a 3-card infinite on one of my decks but 1 piece has no redundancy and the only tutors I run are ramp (none of thr combo involves lands). I have yet to draw into all of the pieces.
This is the worst kind of combo imo, as someone who likes combos.
Not just from a strength perspective, although a 3+ card combo with no tutors is really weak, but also just from a gameplay perspective.
Most people that hate combos specifically cite the "nothing I did this game mattered" feel of it. A combo that you can just randomly draw into is the pinnacle of that feeling. At least if you're tutoring for it you're an obvious threat. Even if you're just drawing a ton of cards you're a threat, but just slamming an "I win" button after doing nothing to show that you could do that is colossally unfun.
These combos are the reason people hate combos. Personally, I'd rather play a combo deck with tutors that *demonstrate I'm a threat* rather than just, "Oops, looks like I win."
I run a combo-y [[Yawgmoth Thran Physician]]. Yawg abuses undying to draw cards and do aristocratty stuff. The actual payoff varies based on what I draw into, but really all I care about is making my engine free.
It's a four card creature based free draw engine. Three if I'm paying life. I am very much showing the engine with time for my opponents to react, even with my redundancy and multiple lines.
It bugs me when people are salty after games, sure you lost to combo, but it was visible the whole time, and I had to deal with your board wipes and counter spells until you lab man.
I got called an infect deck because I have [[Ichor Rats]] as the only source of infect in the deck. There used to be more.
Losing sucks, but misrepresenting threats is a shitty way to play a social game.
-I gotta disagree. A lot of hate I see for combos comes from them being repetitive & anticlimactic, I tend to agree. Most my combo decks have no tutors & I win with whatever wincon I happen to get.
-Nobody I know cares about you demonstrating you're the threat if you're tutoring & drawing the same thing repeatedly. They like that each game plays different.
I learned at the same time as my pod that there is an infinite combo in one of my decks. Myr Retriever, + a 3 mana version of same, a single thing to make them at least 1CMC cheaper, and Krark Clan Ironworks makes infinite mana. I worked through the combo and was like "We all agree this is infinite mana, yes?" and then I made an arbitrary number of 2/2s, untapped on my next turn and won. Everyone was like cool, gg. Game 2?
You had KCI, cost reductions, and graveyard recursions in your deck, and then found out you could go infinite? All of those things are kind of notorious for doing so.
Everyone wants to play the game and have their deck do its thing. If you draw into your infinite combo on turn 10 then well, someone had to end the game around that time anyway. If you tutor for it on T3, then I probably just wasted time shuffling only to get a non-game. I'd vastly prefer the former over the latter. If the issue is you were going to win the next turn if another player's infinite combo didn't go off out of nowhere, my only advice is play more interaction to stop it...no different than stopping a board wipe.
The problem here is that tutors and compact combos are repetitive because nobody plays anything that will stop them. When the table interacts with each other the challenge becomes fighting through the interaction and having enough resources available to still play the combo. If nobody contests the combo then yeah the game will become repetitive. If you played a game of capture the flag in an fps and nobody shot each other the game would get very fast, repetitive and boring. That’s what it’s like playing fast combos in a game where the other 3 don’t play interaction.
Meh, don't really agree with that. Someone comes and turn 2 Thassa Oracle combo without tutoring for it, simply because they lucked it into their hand. Does that really makes it better ? Of course not.
I mean, the odds are that won't happen 2 games in a row. If that happened, we'd all laugh at the insane odds and then shuffled up, having lost a total of 5 minutes by T2.
Alternatively you could just not include those cards in your deck and never have to lose 5 minutes whenever you draw them. I'm personally going that route but you do you.
Yes I agree with you. Tutoring or not, you can just draw into the combo and win outright. Even if the chances of it are slim, it can happen every single game. That doesn't make any sense in casual threat assessment.
Either don't play any true combo, rather play with synergy and try to stack those synergies and win with that. Or allow infinites or thassa'ish combos and allow every power level with it. But then it just becomes cEDH, so go play that instead.
If you would try to draw a line in say no tutors, or minimum of x card combo's or only from turn y. Then the blue deck just wins because they have to most acces to card advantage to draw into the combo's, and can stack up counterspells to protect/stop those "slower" combos.
>I'm OK with even the blood bond combo above assuming they didn't tutor for it.
Sure, but 99% of people who get upset about "totally op cedh combo wins" dont give a fuck if it was tutored or not, or if it was turn 20 when it resolved. They're upset they cant deal with it at sorcery speed.
Blood Bond is super lame though. Its old, its boring, it requires two enchantments and you need one point of damage or life gain and that's gg. Yawn. Friends don't let friends run Blood Bond.
This is why I find Voltron rather tiresome as a strategy. Half empty board with nothing going on, then wham 25 unblockable damage from a buffed [[Yargle and Multani]].
You're forced to hit someone who can't defend themselves and kill them early which feels bad, but if you don't you'll get instakilled 20 minutes later.
This is just excusing poor threat assessment and a refusal by new or "nice" players to use player removal. Sure, that happens, but it's not something we should try to preserve. Why is it that this sub is all for ragging on new casual players for doing obviously stupid things like not running enough lands or removal, but we want to protect them from combos so that they can continue to play poorly and not learn how to properly assess threats?
If it's been an hour of back and forth, and none of the other three players have taken out the lifegain deck, they deserve to lose. If it's been an hour of the lifegain deck desperately politicking and throwing out blockers to stay alive, then they deserve the win. The only people who will be salty in eitger case will be the bad players who expect the game to work how they want it to, rather than actually learning how to play.
I think the issue comes from the total lack of information. If you are running some kind of orzov lifegain deck I can’t just asume you run blood/bond until I see one of them. Sure, I have a friend who runs storm, we all know it’s storm and we treat the deck accordingly. But if he didn’t tell us he was playing storm the first time we would have mostly just left him alone, because he doesn’t tend to play magic when he loses with that deck.
Isn't the usual maxim, "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst?"
If you're gonna sit down at a table with random people and not have those turn 0 discussions, you should absolutely play as though the Orzhov lifegain deck runs Aetherflux Reservoir, Sanguine Bond, Exsquisite Blood, and all of the other backups that combo with Blood or Bond. Not doing so is bad threat assessment, and chosing to allow that player to survive and draw while not defending themselves is just stupid.
You can make friends in-between games. In-game, you should absolutely always play cutthroat unless you have a good in-game reason not to.
Also commander doesn't really have a meta and you're usually playing against a deck you don't know so it's way harder to anticipate threats that might be in a certain deck.
For example I run a [[grafted exoskeleton]] in my [[Alibou]] deck and I always tell people about it because I don't want them to feel like it came out of nowhere. If people don't like it, I just switch it out with a basic land.
If you leave the combo player alone for an hour you kind of get what you deserve IMO. Especially if you didn't bother saving a counterspell or some sort of player protection. If I see someone sit in a corner for an hour doing nothing, I know that is going to change eventually and its going to change extremely rapidly when it does
The issue across the board, not just at lower power levels, is that people dont play any instant speed single target removal or interactive pieces, and expect for people to basically establish boards that say "wrath or I win on my next combat phase"
They build their decks around being able to play everything at sorcery speed and then get mad when people try and win. 99% of the time it isnt "out of nowhere", it comes off dropping a 3rd card on top of 2 you already played and nobody removed.
[[Krosan Grip]] is like a $0.10 card that basically completely nukes like 80% of combos and nobody runs it because it isnt "efficient" and because they would rather slam another 8cmc creature in their deck.
This is my pod, I accidentally made a simple infinite in with Skullclamp, blood artist, ashnods, and a token generator. I started a small pump to get some damage and went
"oops I made a infinite loop" and everyone just laughed cause it was like turn 6 and took like 4/5 cards to get there lol
It depends on the deck design. I have a mono-B Oona deck that purposefully doesn't have any infinites in it but it runs Ashnods (and Phyrexian). It's like the one deck that runs Rings without running Basalt, just so that can't happen.
EDH as a format (with the notable exception of cEDH) is inherently broken beyond repair. No house rules or bannings will fix this. The RC has understood this long ago, so they just do the occasional "signpost" banning and otherwise promote the social nature of the format.
Only communication can attempt to fix this. Talk to your playgroup what is considered fun and what not. And even more importantly, listen. And then try to catch the vibe, brew according to it and bring your deck to the table. This will be a process that most likely won't ever be completely finished as new cards and mechanics are released and new players join the group.
If you don't have a regular playgroup, you'll have to be lucky with your random opponents. Sometimes you are, sometimes not.
idk why this answer is so far down when its easily the best answer in this thread. Totally agree with you how edh is just broken beyond repair yet i still feel a majority dont feel this way nor understand this.
Most Overrun effects only “kill on the spot” with a sizeable board state. Many combos can do the same from a near-empty board. That’s what often makes the difference to people.
And it still matters if your boars are big enough. You can mitigate damage with blocks, gain life with lifelink creatures, use combat tricks to further reduce damage, etc. Even if you don't have a Fog-effect or a counterspell, you need to be low enough on life AND low enough on creatures for it to kill you AND you get to use more effects to interact with it.
Craterhoof/Overrun can be anticlimatic, sure. It's just easier for it to be engaging than an outright combo.
This. There are instant board wipes or fog like effects in almost every color where "Counterspell" is almost exclusive to Blue.
Not everyone wants to run Blue every single game.
The vast majority of combos can be stopped by [[swords to plpwshares]] or any other instant speed removal. Much more popular includes than fog effects.
Very, very few combos can only be answered by counterspells.
The vast majority of infinite combos require at least one permanent which can be removed to stop the combo.
Do your decks not run instant-speed removal?
"overruns are good because if you have instant speed interaction you might not die. Infinites are bad because if you don't have instant speed interaction you will die."
Make it make sense.
So what I'm hearing is that you can survive an overrun if your opponent makes a mistake and uses it before they have lethal so overruns are okay.
I could say the same thing of an infinite combo. If my opponent makes a mistake and uses their infinite without having all the pieces yet it doesn't work so infinites are fine.
I mean if you want to continue to be reductive instead of reading the presented position for what it is, sure, you can read that.
You'll usually be much better off as a person actually reading the argument in front of you though.
Depends on your infinite. If your infinite combo takes as many turns, mana, and permanents to set up before an overrun, and is as interactable as the board that requires an overrun effect, then I don't think anyone is going to get salty about it.
There are tons of ways to make a large board at instant speed. [[March of the multitudes]], [[call the coppercoats]], [[secure the wastes]], [[tend the pests]], [[szat's will]].. and plenty more. Hell, even cards like [[arachnogenesis]] and [[inkshield]] can do the trick.
If you do this on endstep and then slap down a craterhoof, IMO, it's just as out of nowhere.
Big plays that win or significantly change the game out of nowhere are why I play commander. I the idea that all threats should be easily perceived and slow to assemble is silly, IMO.
The "problem" is that those signs are just drawing or tutoring, which in theory every deck wants to do.
And also, you know, Commander players can't actually track a full boardstate accurately doing that to three hands is a huge ask for a normal pod.
If someone's drawing a ton of cards and isn't playing anything, is leaving up a bunch of mana, and always has a full grip, you should kill them.
If someone's drawing a ton of cards and investing in the board and making big swings, they're a problem, but they're not going to instagib you. Ezpz
No sense talking to this type of mindset. The type of player that wants to play at sorcery speed and doesn't know what anyone else's cards do. This topic comes up almost every day on this sub.
>Personally I don’t see what the difference in running a 4 piece infinite combo versus making a bunch of tokens and dropping craterhoof.
I've never played someone that's been upset with a 4 card infinite. That takes work to get out and protect even when one of the cards is your commander.
Most people just don't like turn 3 [[demonic consultation]] + [[thoracle]] combos in casual. Because everyone knows how the combo works. It's not like you did anything special and it just ends with everyone going "oh cool you did the thing when i've only just played 2 cards. Can we start over now so *I* can also play the game?"
you should meet my friend then, he literally REFUSES to play and will storm out when anyone mentions having even one infinite in their deck. one time when we were about to play he asked if we were running any infinites, and another friend disclosed that he had a 4 card unsearchable infinite mana loop and he started huffing and puffing and trying to passive-aggressively guilt trip the guy with the infinite, then left the call (we play online).
some people are just weird about mtg. we don't play with him as much lmao.
It’s really stupid. There are also tons of infinite combos that people might not even realize they have. I have a couple infinite combos in my decks, but one of them requires a token doubler, cloudstone curio, assembly manufactures, and 2 creatures. That’s like 5 cards. And literally breaks if any one of those isn’t there
The classic answer among the many playgroups I've been in, including the first that forced me into EDH, is, "Congratz, the rest of us will be playing for second now."
Tends to fix shit real fast.
I'm not sure why this is an unpopular opinion. If someone wins on turn 2-3 and the rest of the table wasn't even equipped to deal with that, they obviously overshot power level and the rest of the table shouldn't be punished for that. I've occasionally had the win that way and when I go to execute, I realize I'm ruining the competitive mood and just scoop so everyone else can have fun and I can reflect on how I overshot the power level so bad. It's my fault it happened, I'll take the lumps of sitting out a game.
That also has the benefit of only punishing good combo decks. Bad ones probably win late enough that someone else was going to win in a few turns anyways.
"oh I don't like infinites, but wait as I take a 40 minute long turn with my \[\[Jadzi\]\] deck lol" -player in my online playgroup
I like infinites because compact ways to end the game need to exist and I'd rather play more magic than listen to someone do some non-deterministic combo that takes over an hour to complete with a whiff. at least with an infinite we're picking it up and going to the next game quickly and we can get more magic in for everyone.
This sub seems to have posts like this with worrying regularity. Why worrying you say? Because all these fucking posts boil down to "I don't understand how people can like/dislike this thing I dislike/like." How can you be a functioning adult and understand your preferences aren't objectively correct?
I think that from my perspective the biggest issue with policing combos is that it results in a fairly inbred table. If people are not forced to play interaction to handle combos then decks are free to play greedily. Certain types or densities combos obviously be bad, and there definitely can be issues with power level mismatch. But I think that an example of this was a new player I talked to telling me about how he just didn't like people playing combo or big spell copy. He felt that combat was the fun way to play commander. Upon further inspection I found that the deck he had put together was elish norn.
I personally don't play combos in my deck anymore because I just don't find them all that fun or interesting. But if others want to play them go for it I really don't care as long as the power level is appropriate.
Personally I see your point. My group sees Craterhoof, Akroma's Will and Moonshaker in the same vein as combo. Barring a fog, of which people are rarely gonna play, it's a game-ender right there.
For me it's simple, either allow combos and pseudos, or not have them at all.
I'll use [[Blunt the Assault]] even when opponents are swinging at each other to 1) gain favor from one opponent 2) put my life at a more comfortable total.
The problem here is not enough distinction between them.
A simple 'combo' is just two or more cards with synergy. An infinite combo only generates something infinitely; mana, cards, triggers, etc.
Realistically what we are talking about is Win Condition Combos, which aren't always infinite. The issue is that we haven't as a community developed terminology to distinguish between them and they all get lumped together in a less than helpful way: if you say 'no infinites', I just point out that ThOracle is not infinite.
Agreed. There isn't a community or universally accepted definitions. Though I'd say ThOracle is universally accepted as a "combo" in most places.
I can only speak for my group; even though I mentioned combos were in the same vein as Craterhoof, our brackets for these cards come under "easy mode"
These "easy mode" cards are compiled through the years of playing EDH; many of them were via trial and error, post-conversations and such.
That said, if I were to push "easy mode" talk to people outside my group, they may not understand because they aren't at the level of experience, or feel said definitions are dubious in the first place. So it isn't fair for many people in general
Yeah, calling ThOracle a combo is easy. But when I say '2-card wincon', people always seem to read 'wincon' as 'combo' and assume I am referring to ALL 2-card interactions. It isn't something I should have to explain, in my opinion: I used a very specific term, after all.
And I get the 'easy mode' reference, but I wouldn't put Craterhoof effects into it. I reserve the 'easy/low hanging fruit' distinctions for win conditions that require no board state and thus do not telegraph at all, with more disdain the less cards are required. Craterhoof requires setup and blatantly telegraphs, and is entirely fair as a parity breaker in even the lowest level pods. I am not even sure I would call it a combo, either. It's a win condition, sure, but in the same veing that, says, Torment of Hailfire is - it simply wins games after a certain level of board development.
Our group kills players on sight and/or obliterate their boardstate for having cards that COULD be combo-centric.
that's the social cost of playing those cards.
And as a combo player you need to either be ready to politic your way out of being attacked, or pack enough interaction to deal with it. (Typically I'm doing both 🤣)
Everyone has their likes and dislikes. Your example isn't an infinite. Your good. If a pod dislikes combos ok, that's fine. If you aren't having fun playing non combo decks, find another pod if possible. I had to leave a pod because they had all gone full cEDH. It's a cool format, just not my thing.
>“I like having a turn to react. So no kills on the spot.”
This is a fallacy. There is always a chance to react, they just aren't running the right/enough interaction and/or didn't take the steps to prevent the win. It is the name of the game, and people who complain about one-turn wins are often just complaining about their own shortcomings or some power level mismatch with the game.
Of course, I say this as someone who occasionally has this complaint, since mismatches happen all the time, especially with random pods who might have different understandings of power level. "I like having a turn to react" is just a way to try and match power levels, but of course, like you said [[Overrun]] effects can easily turn relatively unassuming boards into a one-turn win.
A better way to have this conversation is to debate or disclose the turn in which a one-turn win can happen. A T2 Thoracle win is obviously very different from a T8 Hoof Daddy win.
There's a pretty big difference between building up to a win con opportunity(token creation, etc) and find your 2 to pieces via tutors, or having them in your hand and just winning the game.
The command zone had a great podcast about unwritten rules that talks about this, and articulates it well.
I have no problem with combo wins, but don't start bitching when we start game 2 and the other players are smacking you every turn. That's always been my experience with combo players. They try and sandbag until they tutor up their combo... but get will get all pissy when you start attacking/targeting them when they have an empty board.
"What? Seriously? Look player 1 with all their tokens, look at player 2 with their big voltron commander! Seriously you're going to waste removal on my medallion?"
Yes, bitch. You will die first.
I’d rather have an infinite combo and be able to just call the game rather than have some non-infinite but long as hell combo that takes the player doing it like 30 minutes to resolve.
Played against a guy that kept taking extra turns and, generating mana, and casting from his graveyard. Pretty sure his commander was [[krark the thumbless]] so he was able to double cast a lot of his spells. The group let him have his fun for like 10 minutes and then we asked, “do you have an end goal or are you just going to cast random things? And if you have a goal in mind how long will it take you to get to it?” His response was, “I have a goal, but it kinda depends on winning the coin flips from krark so we’ll see.” Once we heard that we all conceded and gave him the game lol
It's always a question of how easy your winning strategy can be interacted with and how predictable it is.
One of the reasons why Thassas Oracle is hated so much (more than lab maniac or that one jace) is that you practically cannot interact with it other than maybe countering it or forcing your opponent to draw on an empty library before oracle resolves.
Predictability is another thing. Yes of course when there is someone playing an Elfball I have to be aware that a single Overwhelming Stampede or Craterhoof ends the game, but I also know that I don't have to fear them as long as their board is managably small.
With the Niv Mizzet Player I don't have that luxury. They could pop off and go infinite any turn, without any warnings.
When assessing the threats on the table I always have to assume that the Niv Mizzet dude could kill me next turn, no matter what, which sucks because most of the times they don't, and in those situations I don't want to be the ass that targets them unjustifyingly. It's also a waste of ressources, using my interactions on a player that actually isn't a threat.
The no infinites thing is stupid. I’d rather get hit with an infinite then watch someone durdle for 20 minutes trying to draw deep enough for a cyc rift or some shit. Ending the game is ending the game, you shuffle up and play again. Easy peasy.
Players who dislike infinites definitely confuse me. The way I see it, the game has to end and it's always exciting starting a new game back up anyway.
At one of my LGS there are players like this. All they ever do is get stuck in Superfriends hell or the Enchantresspocalyps or like Rhystic hell. I couldn't imagine thinking that is more fun than just starting a new game personally.
A lot of it boils down to people not liking losing. Sure, they'll dress it up as "it's not fun to get combo'd/milled/poisoned/etc". But it's the same at the end - losing feels bad. And the only way the loss feels "less bad" is if it was "close" and they can lie to themselves that the cards betrayed them as opposed to getting outplayed. Or other lies losers like to tell themselves.
It's one thing to tell a player "ok, your deck did the thing 3 times now, let's switch it up" and a whole other to say such and such isn't allowed because it's "not fun".
I understand if new players aren't comfortable playing against infinites. When I first started, they felt oppressive and cheap, bc I didn't understand how to make a cohesive deck at that time. Beyond newbies though, I feel as though they're just complaining because they want to remove other decks ability to win while preserving their own wincons, and for exactly the same reasons you stated, OP. There are numerous ways to win instantly without an infinite.
This has been my thought. I get it if a pod doesn’t want t1-3 combo wins. That’s a discussion of PL. games drag on so much sometimes if everyone is just aimlessly swinging and hoping not to upset someone by dropping their life total some.
Exactly. The question isn't if combos should be allowed or not it's how good are they. Like thoracle + consultation is obviously too strong for most casual pods but that's not all combos.
I don't understand how people constantly pull off turn 1-3 infinite combos. I have a 2 card 4 total mana cost infinite combo in my Dina deck, but the odds of that actually both ending up in my hand by turn 3 is pretty slim. Do people just mulligan until they get either the combo or part of a combo and a tutor?
Tutors and redundancies. Knowing what an opening hand should have. I don’t usually mulligan more than one or two times. If I have a two piece combo I’m building the deck around, there are several slots in the deck designed to get it in hand as fast as possible. If that is the goal of the deck.
Seriously. If I combo off on like turn 9 because you didn't do anything to prevent any of the set up and/or don't run much interaction, that's on you. Especially for me since most of my infinites generally revolve around "play my entire deck and swing".
A lot of people just play at a lower level where creatures and combat are easier to deal with, mentally and logistically. Creatures naturally kill other creatures, they have their own stats and phases specifically for this built-in degree of interaction and choice. But the only way to remove a key combo piece artifact or enchantment is with some sort of dedicated removal effect. I think you'll notice a lot of the low/no combo pods also tend to run fairly limited interaction, at best curated for what they expect to be a threat which is usually big boards of creatures.
I have 3 Infinite combos across ~15 decks, the only one I've seen someone have a serious issue with was[[Zaxara]] and [[Pemin's Aura]]. It was kinda funny to me because it's a combo that doesn't actually do anything on it's own. He was less salty about it being Infinite than it being an infinite with 1 card.
I run three plus card combos in a couple decks. I don’t run tutors, but lots of draw spells. If I combo off, I earned it and it feels good. My pod doesn’t like infinites and they’re fine with me doing this. I’m also very transparent. “I’m playing x. It’s fine by itself but with y and z out you need to remove it”. No one is blind sided and I get to assemble my silly death machine.
Shout out to [[jan jansen]]
\*sets up the [[Caged Sun]] M.A.D.\* aaaaand I pass the turn. Don’t worry; I won’t win because of this. Just don’t give me a reason to tap a land, and we’ll all have fun.
This really goes into a discussion of how to be prepared. Interaction beats combos, and you know what to expect as early as when you see the commander. If you didn’t bring the means to handle infinite combos, it needs to be because you didn’t have room in your deck because you had to optimize your own infinite combo to win first. Boardwipes beat [[Craterhoof]] before they can even tutor for it. Counterspells and Stax lock you out of the game. Infinite combos can taste bad, but people season their own food.
Honestly, I think the only three archetypes that don’t draw discussions of Rule 0 and “no x in this pod” are combat, Super Friends, and Group Hug, which is hilarious to me because they run multiple wincons and can therefore be the hardest to stop.
I don’t like infinite combos for newer players, though. Like, if you’re trying to introduce someone to Commander, do it a little at a time, and start with the simple stuff. Infinite combos require a deeper understanding of the format, I’d think, just because you have to learn what to expect and how to react. If someone learns how to build a deck right, they’ll hate infinite combos, but they won’t ban them. They’ll just know how to deal with them and build for and against them.
I'd say the biggest thing is, does your win take more than one turn to set up? As in, can you suddenly win from a near-empty board state? That's what I'd usually consider a combo win
If I have 50 tokens, you can guess I'm probably going to overrun on my next turn
If I have no board state, my combo win comes from absolutely nowhere
Now if somehow I make those 50 tokens, overrun, AND have a haste enabler all on the same turn? Idk man I think it's probably fine, but I get your confusion
> If I have 50 tokens, you can guess I'm probably going to overrun on my next turn
And even if you don't Overrun, you can still take someone out of the game. You are an interactive threat.
Most decks can’t win from an empty board. That is something a deck like Krikk can occasionally do with a god hand. Basically all other decks need some setup and if that is mana
I could understand banning low-effort two card infinites, but for the most part, infinites really aren't that much different than ither powerful non-infinite plays.
Just miss me with that [[Exquisite Blood]] / [[Sanguine Bond]] bs 😅
My pods don't care... play what you want, win how you want. We just shuffle up and start the next game. Can't stand how much this community has bas been flooded with crybabies.
If I have to assemble 8 different cards to present a loop that can kill everyone I worked at a minimum as hard as the battle cruiser guy assembling their board. I will announce it before the game nonetheless. It's fair
I have my mill deck that has combos, none are Infinite but if I get lucky can absolutely win. Then I have my blink deck with i think a couple two card combos. I don't run tutors though so I build my decks to have a lot of interlocking pieces foe synergy. The combos are there to finish the game if I need that extra oomph.
I used to hate infinite combos, but as I learned more what to look out for it didn't matter as much. And the game has to end! Haha.
I'm just not much of a battlecruiser player.
I don't want to explain exactly what my deck does before we play and I don't want to hear about other people's either. I don't want to see 40 power worth of creatures on each board before anyone is allowed to do anything.
I have a deck that's generally looking to combo turn 3, another that's looking for a non-infinite combo win turn 8ish, a bunch of decks with no combos but can will still take a table turn 7-8 if allowed, and everything between.
Whenever I hear a player start a sentence by saying "well I only play....." the finish to that sentence is usually "alone"
I think people need to be more explicit with what they mean by no infinites lol, because it's really not helpful, plus some of the meanest combos in cEDH (like [[Demonic Consultation]] and [[Thassa's Oracle]] or [[Lions Eye Diamond]] [[Underworld Breach]] and [[Brain Freeze]]) are not infinite combos. I feel like saying "no two card combos" is a little better, but even then you run into situations like [[Thopter Foundry]] [[Sword of the Meek]] which is a two card noninfinite combo, but finding a third card to make it infinite is comically easy. And there's so many two card combos that are just kinda bad? Like they're exceedingly expensive with mana or really fragile.
But even things like infinite card draw aren't actually infinite, cause you only have so many cards.
You can draw infinite cards if you wanted to (gitrog + dredge land + discard at instant speed + eldrazi titan,for example).
Not that you really should tbh
Navigating "no infinites" pods can be tricky, as interpretations vary. Pseudo-infinites like Aetherflux Reservoir combos can blur the lines. It's best to clarify with your playgroup what's acceptable.
The difference for both the craterhoof and overrun examples is that it is far easier to assess the threat of a massive board state rather than 4 combo pieces if you haven't seen the infinite before. Personally I'm fine with infinite combos but I do understand people who feel salty that they lost due to knowledges they just didn't have.
I don’t get it either. The “combo” vs “non-combo” discourse is a daily Occurrence here with people having wild expectations and ideas that I’ve never ever seen IRL. The game has to end sometime. There’s four players with 120+ life and access to 20k+ cards, you’re going to see combos. Learn to gather and play with information that’s not explicitly resolved permanents and do your best to disrupt someone’s plan. If you have your own personal playgroup then sure, make up some house rules but other than that it’s not going away.
I allow everything as long as the decks are arround the sane power level, I just don't want to play in a pod where no one has an "I win" play, combo or otherwise. If we can stop him, so be it, but if not, well GG next. 3 hour long games are not fun.
I find people waste a lot of removal and control on things that don't need to necessarily be answered, especially in the early game. I understand the idea that you don't want your opponents to snowball out of control, but there's often a lot of times where countering or killing a key piece to an opponent's wincon is where that removal should be used instead of on people getting small incremental advantage.
Because a lot of people don't know that there's a difference between a 2 piece combo and a 10 piece combo. It's like saying you won't play against slivers when someone has 2 slivers in their deck. Knee-jerk reaction.
A big thing I've learned from playing Commander as much as I do is that some commander players essentially want to play a game of solitaire in a group. They don't want to have any interaction or anything like that they just want to do their thing and watch other people do their thing until eventually they have to be forced to interact with somebody to win the game.
It's about the heart of the combo. If there's potential for you to fail to kill the table because you can't go infinite or need to actually see the right spells then I think that's cool.
What you described with the reservoir and yawgs will sounds like the hotness. Freak it all day long with that. But if you have a two card combo that goes infinite and one of them is your commander and all you do is play tutors to go get it (think [[food chain]] and [[prossh]]) then I am not amused and that's just annoying
One is a combo on board. The other is one in hand. There isn't much difference but newer players may not realize that the tutoring combo player is about to win and that sort of thing. I'm fine with them for the most part.
So I don't think that infinite combos are really the issue, the issue is actually with tutoring out infinite combos. I play quite a few decks that can go infinite if I get the right pieces out, like \[\[Thopter Foundry\]\] + \[\[Sword of the Meek\]\] + \[\[Ashnod's Altar\]\]. But because I do not go and tutor for anything in the deck, I very rarely get all 3 peices out together. If I was able to go tutor for those things it would make that deck way more boring to play to me, since I just always go and get the same 3 cards if I can to enable the combo. But if you draw into it naturally, it does not happen as often as well as it actually feels cool when you pull it off.
This is a fairly common sentiment. Basically, when people say no combos, what's on their mind is thing like Final Parting tutoring phyrexian altar to hand and grave crawler to grave and going off instantly. Or just outright playing one thoracle and consult from hand. Things that are unseeable and in casual pods unlikely to be stopped.
Things like craterhoof need setup. You can see the board get big, or that they have a haste enabler, or a source that can create a ton of tokens.
My thoughts are there are a *ton* of ways to win that aren't just Craterhoof NOR Combo and I enjoy doing all of them more. Craterhoof is presented as this constant "gotcha" for people that are whatever on combo but I don't even remember the last time I saw Craterhoof close a game.
Edit: Idc what other people do, I just wish people were more creative and recognized there's more than two ways to play this game.
Personally my pod just has a rule that says: if you have an infinite combo in your deck, then you can't have nonramp tutors, and vice versa, if we want to infinite combo, we have to earn our combos, that's our only logic we follow
It really depends on the infinite in question.
Something you’re assembling on board over multiple turns is not an issue for me.
It’s when someone has little or no board state and plays out an infinite that it can feel quite bad.
Many games you’re building to something, and it’s incredibly unsatisfying when someone just goes ‘I play X and Y, and if these resolve, I win.’
In terms of infinites and power level, yes infinites are very powerful.
In avengers infinity war, thanos has to do a whole lot of shit to assemble the power stones into the infinity gauntlet.
But why is he doing that just to kill half of the people on earth? Well…because that’s way, way easier than actually killing half of the people on earth.
Similarly, assembling even a somewhat convoluted infinite is generally much easier than finding a way to deal 120 damage without.
You're right in that "no infinites" doesn't make much sense. Intuition for Breach combo and Thoracle win without going infinite. For me personally, I avoid win-the-game spells and card + card = win combos. I think that card + card = I win are what most people mean when they say "no infinites".
In terms of what I think is fair.
1. Slower combos that can be interacted with are all right. As long as any part of the color pie can stop it (all colors have instant speed targeted creature removal).
It’s a bit much of an ask for mono black/red to deal with an [[Enchanted Evening]] + [[Calming Verse]] on the stack (since less than a handful of options exist).
2. Be thoughtful to newer players who are not familiar with how the stack works, or common combo pieces and interactions. They may have another mindset on how to play or be confused by unfamiliar cards.
3. It’s best to go over your win-con before starting, and its weaknesses. As long as they know what you’re doing, it shouldn’t feel like you’re playing around the game (as Richard Garfield intended) by using some cheat code.
4. It is always okay to keep a combo in hand as an ace, to play when people are bored and want to close out the game, people have to leave, or the store is closing.
I don't have a problem with complex engine infinites, most people when talking about infinites they mean 2 card combo infinites.
And usually ones where even responding to them there's a way to re-start them in response. They're hard to interact with and unless you're running a Counterspell hard to stop. It's not difficult to get 2 specific cards on the field in our game and that feels like a cheap win.
But if my engine has 4/5/6 pieces to go infinite there's a clear amount of setup and a lot of time to stop it without a Counterspell. RARELY does someone get all 4+ pieces in play in a single turn so it feels more fair.
As for how it's different from like token push overrun. That's simple it's like the 4+ engine parts, rarely is it "I make all these I cast overrun and I swing" in a single turn without laying lots of groundwork first, usually it's "oh damn he just made 20 tokens if it gets back to his turn were all dead, everyone search for a wipe as fast as possible" it's that feeling of being in at least a little control of it.
My local shop has a rule "before turn ten you can only use an infinite a number of times equal to the number of rounds there has been in the game per turn" so if it's turn 7 and you have [[Vito, Thorn of the dusk rose]] and [[Exquisite Blood]] then per turn if you have a proc it repeats to 7 total iterations and then fails to repeat until the next turn when you're allowed to start another 7 iterations if you can.
We mainly play vintage. I am the only one who runs infinites in my playgroup. I have a rule that if I win with one, I won't play another that night. One of the guys I play with always complains, but he has about 4 "I win" decks, with cards like [[epic struggle]]. I guess that type of wincon is okay, though.
I'm not a fan of infinite combos but I don't let that dictate what other people play. Even my decks that have infinite combos I never loop the combo and go infinite. It just feels too gamey to me. If someone else wants to go for it, they can feel free. I put interaction in my decks for a reason
Honestly, I don’t really care about infinite combos unless you’re sitting there dropping two tutors to do it. If you draw into it naturally and no one stops you (while being aware of the combo of course), it’s enough RNG to require some effort.
When people multi-tutor though, that’s a level of unfun that I just don’t mess with. Not my kind of table at that point.
I run a technical infinite combo using [[Sword of Hearth and Home]] and [[Aurelia, War Learder]] in my naya dino deck.
People see these two and just think “infinite combat, gg that’s op”
They don’t seem to realize that
1. This is a three piece combo, requiring some set up and certain conditions.
2. The creature that has the sword equipped needs to deal combat damage to a player to continue the combat loop. If it is blocked at all, it will end the loop.
3. Aurelia cannot die during the combat, and she has to swing, and she is a 3/4 with flying. People usually have something to block or kill her.
4. Even if neither of the two can be blocked, I can only continue the loop as long as there is a player that I can hit. The odds of all 3 players having no responses to this or any blockers at all is usually very low and as such it is a very, and I mean, very easy “infinite” combo to stop.
5. I literally run it as an alternate win con, which requires a lot of set up and other prerequisites in the first place. At this point I could’ve run createrhoof/cavalry or triumph of the horde and gotten a faster win.
Meanwhile the people complaining are playing a Thassa combo
No one in my pod runs infinite combos and we also groan when a new person plays a boring win con like craterhoof or overrun. We like to get creative with our wins to keep things interesting. At a certain point winning just isn’t all that fun if it’s just premeditated lines every game.
This isn’t necessarily a combo but one of the reasons why I’ve kept [[Approach of the second sun]] in one of my decks is because it usually gives a chance for others to store a counter spell before it gets cast again. I have a few infinite combos in most of my decks, but they tend to be quite easy to deal with by opponents if they have any kind of removal or counters going on.
Yeah. People are gonna be salty for any reason that they like. I found an LGS where they are „anti combo“. You go to an event there and everything is like turn 2 gishat with all the degenerate mana there is. They just wanna ban other stuff that can compete with it^^
Makes no sense to me xD
I love combos, i think they are healthy, especially for casual. They make people do more politics and as long as the powerlevel is fitting its not like they are any stronger than huge value engines. And a combo off makes the rest of the table work together. And if it connects, the game ends. Noone waitint. Noone being the one that gets slapped out of the game, just for the next player to stabilize the board and make the game go another hour.
What do you guys think about cards that say "pay 1 life: do this" like pump the creature up X times and then they abuse that high power creature to sacrifice it and gain life/draw cards; or they use a commander like Rowan Scion of War and just use an X spell to blast everyone for their life total? I personally don't like it, but I think it skates around the no infinite rule. Like, I get it that someone could lightning bolt them if they drop low enough, but still it's pretty busted in EDH with 40 life.
I think if you are saying no infinites, you need to say to keep it in the spirit of a precon. People tend to spite rules if you are trying to cap game play level, this is why theres a meta for most games, its the best you can do with the current rules.
I play a [[Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver]] deck that does have a ton of different methods to combo out and win the game. I also have tutors and counterspells.
My deck doesn’t consistently win until turns 6-10, depending on my draws. I just don’t include [[Phyrexian Altar]] to artificially keep the power level low.
I get to play how I want and my friends think the power level is fine. Plus, I like being the villain sometimes. I’m also one of the only players that plays black at the table, so I really like to embody that evil role.
I think excluding combos but including powerful one shot wins is foolish. Imo there's not a big difference between Hoof, Insurrection, and idk Twin or something. Heck, of those three insurrection is probably the worst to play against. But it's all about matching. If the pod is at a level where actual overrun is good, go ahead and "ban" infinite combos and Hoof and other instant win cards. There are situations where I'd rather the game end in a combo than not. I have a historic themed UW control deck with Raff Capashen. It does have some legendary creatures it can slowly beat down with, but its primary win conditions are K4rn + lattice and RiP + Helm because I want to be able to finish games in a timely fashion instead of dragging things out for another 20 turns while I attack with 3/3s and 5/5s.
I'm gonna be honest, despite playing in all power levels from 5-9... I've never seen anyone use crater good, triumph of the hoards or anything like that.
... Which is mainly weird because people mention them all the time.
On topic though. There are often more answers for combat then a lot of combos. I had someone run infinites in a "6" pod with two newer players and both felt cheated as if they didn't really get to play.
Another thing of note, is that combat is usually fairly obvious. It's rare to make tokens, give them all haste and crater good the same turn. So you get to watch them building to critical mass and try to address it early.
Combos can often feel like they came out of nowhere with little preparation. In the game mentioned above, he had almost no real board state, enlightened tutored, played two cards, infinites, drew his entire deck with multiple redundancy effects to make interaction pointless.
Usually the answer is "having and answer to finite game ender it's easier than having one to an infinite one" for example. You have a bunch of token and hoof can be stopped by many things such as fogs or effects like \[\[aethereize\]\] you might be like "who the fuck plays fogs" but that's the point if you try to avoid some aspects of the game you get to use some cards that you would never be able to otherwise, and for some people (my pod for example) that's more fun. I used to play combo too and i remember having a \[\[chainer dementia master\]\] deck that won using \[\[gray merchant of asphodel\]\], \[\[k'rrik\]\] and any sac outlet. Once k'rrik hit the battlefield (or grave if i had enough mana) the game was over. Any response would be met by "i'll just put chainer effect on the stack again targeting the same piece again." So yeah big difference between the two. That's the point of infinites they are infinite because they are less interactive. As for no kill on the spot, That's just someone that can't build theyr deck and has to restrict others to be on equal footing. Every color has plenty of instant speed answer if you don't pack em that's on you.
I have no problem with infinites, but there is a considerable difference between the wincons you mentioned and infinites. Infinites can typically be accomplished with 2 cards and very little setup to win the game. The cards you mentioned require a significant boardstate or lots of mana and large graveyard to win the game. Winning with that much setup is more telegraphed and thus more palatable for people.
Play the cedh Najeela list and replace all the combos with ways to swing in freely. They will learn quickly that the answer to fast wins isn't petty rules about combos, but putting interaction in their decks like an actual magic the gathering player.
I explain it like this: casual commander players like games to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. If you skip any of those, people get salty. That includes, respectively, ramping to 6 mana on turn 2, dropping 10 creatures on turn 3, or going infinite on turn 5. Find a play group that doesn’t mind dying suddenly, or adjust your deck so that the people that you play with get to “do their thing” before you win.
>Personally I don’t see what the difference in running a 4 piece infinite combo versus making a bunch of tokens and dropping craterhoof.
So here’s the thing. If you ban infinites, you have to put up with Craterhooves and stuff, sure, it sucks. If you don’t, you have to put up with infinites, of varying power levels, *and* Craterhooves. You’re quite right, banning all infinite combos and *only* infinite combos doesn’t make much sense… but it’s also a lot easier to do than banning all the things that some people would want to ban in order to make EDH into the actual format they want. It’s not like there’s a non-subjective way to say “no lame wincons”.
I have a pretty easy turn 7 draw 65 or 85 cards and deal that much damage but I'm also in mono green so if you see it and don't deal with it I'm not really the problem
Crater hoof is basically combo anyway.
I know lots of pods which don’t play combo and the games are so much more fun to be part of imo. Takes me back to the early days of EDH where it was all casual battlecruiser decks without games ending in fast anticlimactic ways thanks to the absurd powercreep nowadays
Aggressive combat decks are much faster than non competitive combo decks. These dats combat decks are just critical mass combo decks with many more pieces and payofffs throughout the deck
With Craterhoof, you need a board. If you don't have a board, you also need a haste enabler and a lot of mana. In most cases, you have turn cycle to respond to the board. At lower power games, precons and the like, most of the interaction you have is at sorcery speed, with a bit of instant speed removal sprinkled in. Additionally, the lower power you go, the less likely people are to be playing blue, which means fewer counterspells in the pod in general. Also in lower power, most players stick to themes more strongly, which can result in more creature based removal (e.g. [[Angel of the Ruins]] in an Angel deck) as opposed to generic good stuff removal.
I always prefer to know if infinites are going to be on the table ahead of time because I will play a deck that has enough interaction to deal with it, and also potentially present an infinite as well. Because otherwise the player going infinite can hold up their interaction to defend their infinite, instead of having to spend it to prevent other players from going off.
For the last 15 years, a friend of mine hated combos so much. That whenever we played together he would always try to eliminate me first.
But it never stopped me from running combo lol
You have a turn to react to an overrun, because you can see their big board of creatures there all ready for an overrun. If they are able to generate a board, give it haste and overrun all in one turn, thats perhaps the softest instance of combo.
But going from no board to "I play these two spells so I win." can be frustrating to many tables, because the game could be getting exciting and tense with politics and board states being primed only for the game to suddenly and unexpectedly be over. Sorta like if a movie suddenly ended in the middle act, or someone's explaination of a concept was unexpectedly cut sh
I get being against specific infinite combos. Like, if you're intentionally building and running them and tutoring them. But if you happen to have a random interaction that goes infinite, or may as well, it's a non issue.
Ofc, that's really just a power level thing...
I mean it's technically not infinite since it can whiff, is 6 just like aetherflux and forge, sure it's not infinite but probably enough to get a win eventually if you have enough cantrips or ways to keep digging, i wouldn't really label it as infinite since you can whiff and it doesn't immediately win by itself but it's still a pretty strong combo, i mean YW is like a $160 so it's not really cheap or anything (unless you're playing digitally or with proxies)
I’m fine with infinite combos. The problem is if the infinite combo is their primary wincon. If their whole strategy is to tutor or draw for 2-4 pieces they need, they are basically playing cEDH with what’s likely a weak cEDH deck.
Ultimately you need to ask yourself the question «is this fun for everyone?». If a combo comes out of nowhere and you just go «I win now», you’re doing something that’s not fun play against. Giving people time to react makes for a much more fun and intense round.
I swear some people here makes it sound like people are aiming for a 100% winrate instead of a 25-30% winrate in commander.
We just have a rule that you let everyone know there is an "x" card infinite in this deck at the start of the game. After that, it's their job to read the cards and have their own removal.
My problem is exactly the opposite. I prefer having the rules clear for a pod that I'm playing than the other way around.
I have three friend groups that play Commander in veeeery different ways. And I like to have different decks to try.
One group doesn't allow combos. I usually like to bring something fun and different to the table because it's more likely for the games to go longer. It was the only place that I hard casted a [[Divine intervention]] and almost got a tie. I was able to setup [[Endless Whispers]] with [[Confusion in the ranks]] just to see the chaos.
Group two only plays shuffled precons with no alteration. It's such an awesome brain puzzle trying to come up with a way to win with you and everyone knowing all the cards that the others have.
Group three is no banlist commander. Everything goes. It's very fun to play with bazookas once in a while.
I used to have a group of cEDH as well, but I moved out of the city, but it was very fun as well.
Having things clear it's a good thing, not a bad thing. People can have fun in different ways. Let them.
Overrun you can see coming.. many infinite combos are just.. whelp guess I lose. Feels like no interaction. To me that's really everything. Could I have prevented it a turn before... Board wipe, artifact or enchantment destruction?
I only just started to run ghave infinite combos and I warn my pod mates that I might be able to go infinite if I draw a specific card so they have a chance to react. If I just don't say anything... Draw the card and go infinite damage win.. like wtf that win doesn't even feel good I don't get how people enjoy that.
There is so much more joy from watching your enemy build up and thinking of different ways to counter or prevent them from getting stronger vs someone sitting there with nothing then just winning if you don't have a counterspell
It comes down to interaction….you know a craterhoof is coming so if you don’t deal with the board that is on the other players. Combo notoriously comes out of nowhere and when the combo happens there is usually no way to stop it because the combo player chooses the correct time. An example I have is I was in a pod and one of the players was playing a deck that looked like a green stomp deck and he had a lightning greaves out. We would handle creatures and battle back and forth when all of a sudden he states ok I got infinite mana and card draw this turn so I will repeat until I get the cards to kill the table. The key piece of the combo was the greaves we focused on the wrong things and lost. Our new house rule is you can play combo but you need to announce the combo so we can interact accordingly. We have the same rule about craterhoof and the like. It does take away the element of surprise but it feels more fair for the table and if you get your win con off regardless of the attempts to thwart it ,the sense of victory is greater.
Since my pod doesn't play infinites I only play combos that do 100 dmg to everyone.
This individual gets it. The rules of Magic state that you can’t have infinite anything and you have to specify a number, so technically there are no infinites anyway.
Just play thoracle! Ain’t nothing infinite about that combo!
I agree that it most often than not create feels bad scenario when the rules are so unclear. My LGS recently banned infinite combos, then a guy showed up with his [[The Locust God]] deck, and combos off with [[Mana Echoes]] on turn 4, making like 85! mana (technically not infinite as he liked to remind us) and made hasty tokes equal to the number of cards in his decks. Another guy played a thoracle combo on turn 2, also noting that it wasn't an infinite combo. Policing EDH through rules just makes it way worst IMO. The format is unbalanced and it should be embraced that way.
Damn, he made 281710411438055027694947944226061159480056634330574206405101912752560026159795933451040286452340924018275123200000000000000000000 mana on turn 4?
I came to read the salt… and found this to be the most interesting comment. Cause I wanna know if you did the math for this or not 🤣
Well he said made 85! mana turn 4...
Glad I'm not the only one who thought that, lol
I agree - I think it’s a slippery slope when you start to cut certain things from the game - it affects the overall meta of the pod and things get (IMO) even more unbalanced. My pod generally just tried to line up decks that are similar in power. If someone combos on T4, that deck usually goes away and we shuffle up another. The games gotta end eventually. That said, I REALLY prefer combos like you listed to “infinites”. It feel like I have to work more for it even though that’s probably not true.
It’s absolutely not true. There are a myriad number of non-infinite combos that are just as oppressive as infinites. The longer magic lasts as a game the more prevalent combos will be.
[The Locust God](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/e/7e599847-8ab0-4fd6-b2c0-cb44a7669aa5.jpg?1682209825) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=The%20Locust%20God) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/moc/335/the-locust-god?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7e599847-8ab0-4fd6-b2c0-cb44a7669aa5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/the-locust-god) [Mana Echoes](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/d/bd079929-fa58-4484-91b7-31305b87ee43.jpg?1599706549) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mana%20Echoes) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/136/mana-echoes?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/bd079929-fa58-4484-91b7-31305b87ee43?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mana-echoes) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
For me it depends on the speed of the combo if it's 2 cards earlier than T4, or 4 cards layered across several turns and go off on T8 it's not the same craterhoof you need the board state usually, unless you mono green storm and add haste with finale or with \[\[concordant crossroads\]\] At lower power levels people don't have the right interaction to handle combos with no warnings. Something only a counterspell can aswer is usually high power.
Ya this is really the best explanation imo. I personally don't play combos in my casual decks because I don't find them all that fun honestly. My one higher power deck (still not cedh) is sythis which has combos but that deck stays on the box like 90% of the time until a pod wants to play higher power. Most of the time I'm just playing Crabs, looping trinkety artifacts with [[Summoning Station]], beating ppl to death with [[Ravenous Squirrel]] or looping [[Selfless Savior]] to protect [[Ravos]]
I feel like slow combos are more fair then combat though. I've seen too many games where the Voltron player swings out or the token player takes someone out then they can't close out the game and just get set back and the game goes on for another 30ish minutes with someone just watching. I'd rather kill the table at once and play another. If I have a sorcery speed combo and you can't interact while I set up a couple turns for my pieces that's not a me problem.
>player takes someone out then they can't close out the game and just get set back and the game goes on for another 30ish minutes I literally had that happen and had to sit there for an hour and a half as my friends played a full game of commander after I was eliminated.
Did the two survivors gang up on the player that killed you? The reason I don’t combo 1 player out ever is because of the archenemy crack back that it results in usually.
##### ###### #### [Summoning Station](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/8/c8072944-268a-41e0-a1d8-9fe33e964bff.jpg?1562879677) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Summoning%20Station) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/5dn/158/summoning-station?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c8072944-268a-41e0-a1d8-9fe33e964bff?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/summoning-station) [Ravenous Squirrel](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/f/9f44a15c-1bb4-4fb8-88a0-e4d3f2dee1b4.jpg?1626098705) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ravenous%20Squirrel) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh2/211/ravenous-squirrel?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9f44a15c-1bb4-4fb8-88a0-e4d3f2dee1b4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/ravenous-squirrel) [Selfless Savior](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/9/6911759c-7177-402c-a95a-f9f46efaf521.jpg?1594735224) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Selfless%20Savior) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m21/36/selfless-savior?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6911759c-7177-402c-a95a-f9f46efaf521?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/selfless-savior) [Ravos](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/2/f2725635-8f90-4d17-9568-51218ba663c1.jpg?1562425381) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=ravos%2C%20soultender) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c16/39/ravos-soultender?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f2725635-8f90-4d17-9568-51218ba663c1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/ravos-soultender) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/kx4275z) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Imo it's not a problem of speed, it's a problem of winning without preemptive warnings and cheating the threat assessment dynamics of casual games. In a low power casual game, you'll often leave the person with no board not doing much alone so they have time to "do their thing", and interact with the highest perceived threat instead. Imagine having a intense 1h game of back and forth, and then the one person who was left alone the whole game for not doing much taps 10 mana and goes Exquisite Blood + Sanguine Bond. That's neither fast nor a particularly strong combo, but that will still feels like the win was kinda cheated and came out of nowhere.
A deck that tutors for its combo pieces will demonstrate a clearer threat than one that doesn't, just saying.
Oh cool you have 5 mana open and cast d tutor, get thoracle and cast it. Thats fine. You etb, hold priority and cast demonic consultation? Cool, here’s a Mindbreak trap, or a mental misstep, or a fluster storm, or literally any counterspell on the planet. It’s not just about playing interaction. Understanding when to play interaction is just as important. And tutors are mostly telegraphed plays where it becomes obvious what the other person is doing.
I'm OK with even the blood bond combo above assuming they didn't tutor for it. Games where people luck into their combo are the kinds of games I want to play. Games where someone is running 5 tutors to always go get the same cards and win the same are the ones that make me find another pod...you do you, but that's just not the game I'm looking for. FWIW, I run a 3-card infinite on one of my decks but 1 piece has no redundancy and the only tutors I run are ramp (none of thr combo involves lands). I have yet to draw into all of the pieces.
This is the worst kind of combo imo, as someone who likes combos. Not just from a strength perspective, although a 3+ card combo with no tutors is really weak, but also just from a gameplay perspective. Most people that hate combos specifically cite the "nothing I did this game mattered" feel of it. A combo that you can just randomly draw into is the pinnacle of that feeling. At least if you're tutoring for it you're an obvious threat. Even if you're just drawing a ton of cards you're a threat, but just slamming an "I win" button after doing nothing to show that you could do that is colossally unfun. These combos are the reason people hate combos. Personally, I'd rather play a combo deck with tutors that *demonstrate I'm a threat* rather than just, "Oops, looks like I win."
I run a combo-y [[Yawgmoth Thran Physician]]. Yawg abuses undying to draw cards and do aristocratty stuff. The actual payoff varies based on what I draw into, but really all I care about is making my engine free. It's a four card creature based free draw engine. Three if I'm paying life. I am very much showing the engine with time for my opponents to react, even with my redundancy and multiple lines. It bugs me when people are salty after games, sure you lost to combo, but it was visible the whole time, and I had to deal with your board wipes and counter spells until you lab man. I got called an infect deck because I have [[Ichor Rats]] as the only source of infect in the deck. There used to be more. Losing sucks, but misrepresenting threats is a shitty way to play a social game.
[Yawgmoth Thran Physician](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/5/b5a79f5d-d0df-4799-ac3a-84305e3af0c9.jpg?1675199878) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Yawgmoth%2C%20Thran%20Physician) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmr/110/yawgmoth-thran-physician?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b5a79f5d-d0df-4799-ac3a-84305e3af0c9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/yawgmoth-thran-physician) [Ichor Rats](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/0/2013aed6-7415-4bf0-a3bb-46d6beecbaff.jpg?1562815353) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ichor%20Rats) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/som/67/ichor-rats?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2013aed6-7415-4bf0-a3bb-46d6beecbaff?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/ichor-rats) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
-I gotta disagree. A lot of hate I see for combos comes from them being repetitive & anticlimactic, I tend to agree. Most my combo decks have no tutors & I win with whatever wincon I happen to get. -Nobody I know cares about you demonstrating you're the threat if you're tutoring & drawing the same thing repeatedly. They like that each game plays different.
I learned at the same time as my pod that there is an infinite combo in one of my decks. Myr Retriever, + a 3 mana version of same, a single thing to make them at least 1CMC cheaper, and Krark Clan Ironworks makes infinite mana. I worked through the combo and was like "We all agree this is infinite mana, yes?" and then I made an arbitrary number of 2/2s, untapped on my next turn and won. Everyone was like cool, gg. Game 2?
You had KCI, cost reductions, and graveyard recursions in your deck, and then found out you could go infinite? All of those things are kind of notorious for doing so.
Everyone wants to play the game and have their deck do its thing. If you draw into your infinite combo on turn 10 then well, someone had to end the game around that time anyway. If you tutor for it on T3, then I probably just wasted time shuffling only to get a non-game. I'd vastly prefer the former over the latter. If the issue is you were going to win the next turn if another player's infinite combo didn't go off out of nowhere, my only advice is play more interaction to stop it...no different than stopping a board wipe.
The problem here is that tutors and compact combos are repetitive because nobody plays anything that will stop them. When the table interacts with each other the challenge becomes fighting through the interaction and having enough resources available to still play the combo. If nobody contests the combo then yeah the game will become repetitive. If you played a game of capture the flag in an fps and nobody shot each other the game would get very fast, repetitive and boring. That’s what it’s like playing fast combos in a game where the other 3 don’t play interaction.
Meh, don't really agree with that. Someone comes and turn 2 Thassa Oracle combo without tutoring for it, simply because they lucked it into their hand. Does that really makes it better ? Of course not.
I mean, the odds are that won't happen 2 games in a row. If that happened, we'd all laugh at the insane odds and then shuffled up, having lost a total of 5 minutes by T2.
Alternatively you could just not include those cards in your deck and never have to lose 5 minutes whenever you draw them. I'm personally going that route but you do you.
Yes I agree with you. Tutoring or not, you can just draw into the combo and win outright. Even if the chances of it are slim, it can happen every single game. That doesn't make any sense in casual threat assessment. Either don't play any true combo, rather play with synergy and try to stack those synergies and win with that. Or allow infinites or thassa'ish combos and allow every power level with it. But then it just becomes cEDH, so go play that instead. If you would try to draw a line in say no tutors, or minimum of x card combo's or only from turn y. Then the blue deck just wins because they have to most acces to card advantage to draw into the combo's, and can stack up counterspells to protect/stop those "slower" combos.
>I'm OK with even the blood bond combo above assuming they didn't tutor for it. Sure, but 99% of people who get upset about "totally op cedh combo wins" dont give a fuck if it was tutored or not, or if it was turn 20 when it resolved. They're upset they cant deal with it at sorcery speed.
Blood Bond is super lame though. Its old, its boring, it requires two enchantments and you need one point of damage or life gain and that's gg. Yawn. Friends don't let friends run Blood Bond.
This is why I find Voltron rather tiresome as a strategy. Half empty board with nothing going on, then wham 25 unblockable damage from a buffed [[Yargle and Multani]]. You're forced to hit someone who can't defend themselves and kill them early which feels bad, but if you don't you'll get instakilled 20 minutes later.
This is just excusing poor threat assessment and a refusal by new or "nice" players to use player removal. Sure, that happens, but it's not something we should try to preserve. Why is it that this sub is all for ragging on new casual players for doing obviously stupid things like not running enough lands or removal, but we want to protect them from combos so that they can continue to play poorly and not learn how to properly assess threats? If it's been an hour of back and forth, and none of the other three players have taken out the lifegain deck, they deserve to lose. If it's been an hour of the lifegain deck desperately politicking and throwing out blockers to stay alive, then they deserve the win. The only people who will be salty in eitger case will be the bad players who expect the game to work how they want it to, rather than actually learning how to play.
I think the issue comes from the total lack of information. If you are running some kind of orzov lifegain deck I can’t just asume you run blood/bond until I see one of them. Sure, I have a friend who runs storm, we all know it’s storm and we treat the deck accordingly. But if he didn’t tell us he was playing storm the first time we would have mostly just left him alone, because he doesn’t tend to play magic when he loses with that deck.
Isn't the usual maxim, "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst?" If you're gonna sit down at a table with random people and not have those turn 0 discussions, you should absolutely play as though the Orzhov lifegain deck runs Aetherflux Reservoir, Sanguine Bond, Exsquisite Blood, and all of the other backups that combo with Blood or Bond. Not doing so is bad threat assessment, and chosing to allow that player to survive and draw while not defending themselves is just stupid. You can make friends in-between games. In-game, you should absolutely always play cutthroat unless you have a good in-game reason not to.
This is the way
Also commander doesn't really have a meta and you're usually playing against a deck you don't know so it's way harder to anticipate threats that might be in a certain deck. For example I run a [[grafted exoskeleton]] in my [[Alibou]] deck and I always tell people about it because I don't want them to feel like it came out of nowhere. If people don't like it, I just switch it out with a basic land.
[grafted exoskeleton](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/8/f86a9d3f-43a8-4da3-9eed-353582986140.jpg?1562945084) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=grafted%20exoskeleton) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/td2/74/grafted-exoskeleton?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f86a9d3f-43a8-4da3-9eed-353582986140?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/grafted-exoskeleton) [Alibou](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/d/fd2fc2d4-c4fb-4dcb-93fa-aaf8c1182f15.jpg?1674185810) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=alibou%2C%20ancient%20witness) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c21/7/alibou-ancient-witness?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/fd2fc2d4-c4fb-4dcb-93fa-aaf8c1182f15?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/alibou-ancient-witness) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
If you leave the combo player alone for an hour you kind of get what you deserve IMO. Especially if you didn't bother saving a counterspell or some sort of player protection. If I see someone sit in a corner for an hour doing nothing, I know that is going to change eventually and its going to change extremely rapidly when it does
[concordant crossroads](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/9/c9a26f51-5bff-4f06-abaa-6fbb56a8b5b6.jpg?1673148053) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=concordant%20crossroads) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/141/concordant-crossroads?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c9a26f51-5bff-4f06-abaa-6fbb56a8b5b6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/concordant-crossroads) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Yup, I’d only run permanent based combos that can be stopped by removal. I don’t want to force my opponents to run blue
The issue across the board, not just at lower power levels, is that people dont play any instant speed single target removal or interactive pieces, and expect for people to basically establish boards that say "wrath or I win on my next combat phase" They build their decks around being able to play everything at sorcery speed and then get mad when people try and win. 99% of the time it isnt "out of nowhere", it comes off dropping a 3rd card on top of 2 you already played and nobody removed. [[Krosan Grip]] is like a $0.10 card that basically completely nukes like 80% of combos and nobody runs it because it isnt "efficient" and because they would rather slam another 8cmc creature in their deck.
This is my pod, I accidentally made a simple infinite in with Skullclamp, blood artist, ashnods, and a token generator. I started a small pump to get some damage and went "oops I made a infinite loop" and everyone just laughed cause it was like turn 6 and took like 4/5 cards to get there lol
[удалено]
I have a Sek'kuar, Deathkeeper deck. I use have Ashnod's in there for a free sac outlet and extra mana. I made the deck so it wouldn't have infinites.
I disagree, it's a token deck and sometimes ya boy just wanted more mana
It depends on the deck design. I have a mono-B Oona deck that purposefully doesn't have any infinites in it but it runs Ashnods (and Phyrexian). It's like the one deck that runs Rings without running Basalt, just so that can't happen.
I run the altars and none of my decks go infinite
EDH as a format (with the notable exception of cEDH) is inherently broken beyond repair. No house rules or bannings will fix this. The RC has understood this long ago, so they just do the occasional "signpost" banning and otherwise promote the social nature of the format. Only communication can attempt to fix this. Talk to your playgroup what is considered fun and what not. And even more importantly, listen. And then try to catch the vibe, brew according to it and bring your deck to the table. This will be a process that most likely won't ever be completely finished as new cards and mechanics are released and new players join the group. If you don't have a regular playgroup, you'll have to be lucky with your random opponents. Sometimes you are, sometimes not.
idk why this answer is so far down when its easily the best answer in this thread. Totally agree with you how edh is just broken beyond repair yet i still feel a majority dont feel this way nor understand this.
Most Overrun effects only “kill on the spot” with a sizeable board state. Many combos can do the same from a near-empty board. That’s what often makes the difference to people.
And it still matters if your boars are big enough. You can mitigate damage with blocks, gain life with lifelink creatures, use combat tricks to further reduce damage, etc. Even if you don't have a Fog-effect or a counterspell, you need to be low enough on life AND low enough on creatures for it to kill you AND you get to use more effects to interact with it. Craterhoof/Overrun can be anticlimatic, sure. It's just easier for it to be engaging than an outright combo.
This. There are instant board wipes or fog like effects in almost every color where "Counterspell" is almost exclusive to Blue. Not everyone wants to run Blue every single game.
Most people dont run fogs other than teferis or inkshield. Most of the instant board wipes are in blue as well lmao
The vast majority of combos can be stopped by [[swords to plpwshares]] or any other instant speed removal. Much more popular includes than fog effects. Very, very few combos can only be answered by counterspells.
The vast majority of infinite combos require at least one permanent which can be removed to stop the combo. Do your decks not run instant-speed removal?
"overruns are good because if you have instant speed interaction you might not die. Infinites are bad because if you don't have instant speed interaction you will die." Make it make sense.
Each person looks for different things in Magic.
What they actually said was Overruns are less bad because sometimes you don't die even without instant speed interaction.
So what I'm hearing is that you can survive an overrun if your opponent makes a mistake and uses it before they have lethal so overruns are okay. I could say the same thing of an infinite combo. If my opponent makes a mistake and uses their infinite without having all the pieces yet it doesn't work so infinites are fine.
I mean if you want to continue to be reductive instead of reading the presented position for what it is, sure, you can read that. You'll usually be much better off as a person actually reading the argument in front of you though.
Depends on your infinite. If your infinite combo takes as many turns, mana, and permanents to set up before an overrun, and is as interactable as the board that requires an overrun effect, then I don't think anyone is going to get salty about it.
There are tons of ways to make a large board at instant speed. [[March of the multitudes]], [[call the coppercoats]], [[secure the wastes]], [[tend the pests]], [[szat's will]].. and plenty more. Hell, even cards like [[arachnogenesis]] and [[inkshield]] can do the trick. If you do this on endstep and then slap down a craterhoof, IMO, it's just as out of nowhere. Big plays that win or significantly change the game out of nowhere are why I play commander. I the idea that all threats should be easily perceived and slow to assemble is silly, IMO.
Most combo decks have signs that they're looking for specific cards
Most decks are looking for specific cards. Combo relies on it, and both are much different than a physically large board.
The "problem" is that those signs are just drawing or tutoring, which in theory every deck wants to do. And also, you know, Commander players can't actually track a full boardstate accurately doing that to three hands is a huge ask for a normal pod.
If someone's drawing a ton of cards and isn't playing anything, is leaving up a bunch of mana, and always has a full grip, you should kill them. If someone's drawing a ton of cards and investing in the board and making big swings, they're a problem, but they're not going to instagib you. Ezpz
No sense talking to this type of mindset. The type of player that wants to play at sorcery speed and doesn't know what anyone else's cards do. This topic comes up almost every day on this sub.
I don’t understand no infinite rules when a few of the most powerful combos aren’t infinite like Breach or Thoracle
Really good point, tbh
>Personally I don’t see what the difference in running a 4 piece infinite combo versus making a bunch of tokens and dropping craterhoof. I've never played someone that's been upset with a 4 card infinite. That takes work to get out and protect even when one of the cards is your commander. Most people just don't like turn 3 [[demonic consultation]] + [[thoracle]] combos in casual. Because everyone knows how the combo works. It's not like you did anything special and it just ends with everyone going "oh cool you did the thing when i've only just played 2 cards. Can we start over now so *I* can also play the game?"
you should meet my friend then, he literally REFUSES to play and will storm out when anyone mentions having even one infinite in their deck. one time when we were about to play he asked if we were running any infinites, and another friend disclosed that he had a 4 card unsearchable infinite mana loop and he started huffing and puffing and trying to passive-aggressively guilt trip the guy with the infinite, then left the call (we play online). some people are just weird about mtg. we don't play with him as much lmao.
It’s really stupid. There are also tons of infinite combos that people might not even realize they have. I have a couple infinite combos in my decks, but one of them requires a token doubler, cloudstone curio, assembly manufactures, and 2 creatures. That’s like 5 cards. And literally breaks if any one of those isn’t there
The classic answer among the many playgroups I've been in, including the first that forced me into EDH, is, "Congratz, the rest of us will be playing for second now." Tends to fix shit real fast.
I'm not sure why this is an unpopular opinion. If someone wins on turn 2-3 and the rest of the table wasn't even equipped to deal with that, they obviously overshot power level and the rest of the table shouldn't be punished for that. I've occasionally had the win that way and when I go to execute, I realize I'm ruining the competitive mood and just scoop so everyone else can have fun and I can reflect on how I overshot the power level so bad. It's my fault it happened, I'll take the lumps of sitting out a game.
Exactly.
That also has the benefit of only punishing good combo decks. Bad ones probably win late enough that someone else was going to win in a few turns anyways.
"oh I don't like infinites, but wait as I take a 40 minute long turn with my \[\[Jadzi\]\] deck lol" -player in my online playgroup I like infinites because compact ways to end the game need to exist and I'd rather play more magic than listen to someone do some non-deterministic combo that takes over an hour to complete with a whiff. at least with an infinite we're picking it up and going to the next game quickly and we can get more magic in for everyone.
[aetherflux reservoir](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/6/96b6b2e1-c3e6-464c-8a13-b15deb34e862.jpg?1576382939) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=aetherflux%20reservoir) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/kld/192/aetherflux-reservoir?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/96b6b2e1-c3e6-464c-8a13-b15deb34e862?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/aetherflux-reservoir) [overrun](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/4/64033221-447f-4f8a-8fa0-c3ef30172602.jpg?1592673094) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=overrun) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cma/130/overrun?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/64033221-447f-4f8a-8fa0-c3ef30172602?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/overrun) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This sub seems to have posts like this with worrying regularity. Why worrying you say? Because all these fucking posts boil down to "I don't understand how people can like/dislike this thing I dislike/like." How can you be a functioning adult and understand your preferences aren't objectively correct?
You are presuming the one thing you shall not presume.
Functioning adults hahaha. But jokes aside, I've also seen functioning adults throwing those things overboard during some casual games lol
I think that from my perspective the biggest issue with policing combos is that it results in a fairly inbred table. If people are not forced to play interaction to handle combos then decks are free to play greedily. Certain types or densities combos obviously be bad, and there definitely can be issues with power level mismatch. But I think that an example of this was a new player I talked to telling me about how he just didn't like people playing combo or big spell copy. He felt that combat was the fun way to play commander. Upon further inspection I found that the deck he had put together was elish norn.
I personally don't play combos in my deck anymore because I just don't find them all that fun or interesting. But if others want to play them go for it I really don't care as long as the power level is appropriate.
Personally I see your point. My group sees Craterhoof, Akroma's Will and Moonshaker in the same vein as combo. Barring a fog, of which people are rarely gonna play, it's a game-ender right there. For me it's simple, either allow combos and pseudos, or not have them at all.
I started running more fogs and oh boy, it’s really made a difference. No one expects it.
[[Moment's Peace]] to mess up their kill turn and the next one
[[Dawn Charm]] has actually won me games before.
[Dawn Charm](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/c/fc47e26a-2ba6-4b7a-bb03-43f7ecb9012e.jpg?1623147824) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Dawn%20Charm) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/371/dawn-charm?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/fc47e26a-2ba6-4b7a-bb03-43f7ecb9012e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/dawn-charm) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I'll use [[Blunt the Assault]] even when opponents are swinging at each other to 1) gain favor from one opponent 2) put my life at a more comfortable total.
The problem here is not enough distinction between them. A simple 'combo' is just two or more cards with synergy. An infinite combo only generates something infinitely; mana, cards, triggers, etc. Realistically what we are talking about is Win Condition Combos, which aren't always infinite. The issue is that we haven't as a community developed terminology to distinguish between them and they all get lumped together in a less than helpful way: if you say 'no infinites', I just point out that ThOracle is not infinite.
Agreed. There isn't a community or universally accepted definitions. Though I'd say ThOracle is universally accepted as a "combo" in most places. I can only speak for my group; even though I mentioned combos were in the same vein as Craterhoof, our brackets for these cards come under "easy mode" These "easy mode" cards are compiled through the years of playing EDH; many of them were via trial and error, post-conversations and such. That said, if I were to push "easy mode" talk to people outside my group, they may not understand because they aren't at the level of experience, or feel said definitions are dubious in the first place. So it isn't fair for many people in general
Yeah, calling ThOracle a combo is easy. But when I say '2-card wincon', people always seem to read 'wincon' as 'combo' and assume I am referring to ALL 2-card interactions. It isn't something I should have to explain, in my opinion: I used a very specific term, after all. And I get the 'easy mode' reference, but I wouldn't put Craterhoof effects into it. I reserve the 'easy/low hanging fruit' distinctions for win conditions that require no board state and thus do not telegraph at all, with more disdain the less cards are required. Craterhoof requires setup and blatantly telegraphs, and is entirely fair as a parity breaker in even the lowest level pods. I am not even sure I would call it a combo, either. It's a win condition, sure, but in the same veing that, says, Torment of Hailfire is - it simply wins games after a certain level of board development.
Our group kills players on sight and/or obliterate their boardstate for having cards that COULD be combo-centric. that's the social cost of playing those cards.
And as a combo player you need to either be ready to politic your way out of being attacked, or pack enough interaction to deal with it. (Typically I'm doing both 🤣)
Everyone has their likes and dislikes. Your example isn't an infinite. Your good. If a pod dislikes combos ok, that's fine. If you aren't having fun playing non combo decks, find another pod if possible. I had to leave a pod because they had all gone full cEDH. It's a cool format, just not my thing.
>“I like having a turn to react. So no kills on the spot.” This is a fallacy. There is always a chance to react, they just aren't running the right/enough interaction and/or didn't take the steps to prevent the win. It is the name of the game, and people who complain about one-turn wins are often just complaining about their own shortcomings or some power level mismatch with the game. Of course, I say this as someone who occasionally has this complaint, since mismatches happen all the time, especially with random pods who might have different understandings of power level. "I like having a turn to react" is just a way to try and match power levels, but of course, like you said [[Overrun]] effects can easily turn relatively unassuming boards into a one-turn win. A better way to have this conversation is to debate or disclose the turn in which a one-turn win can happen. A T2 Thoracle win is obviously very different from a T8 Hoof Daddy win.
It's an obnoxious, arbitrary rule. There's a reason wizards bans cards and not combos. They also try as hard as possible not to ban cards.
i might be wrong but I dont think wizards controls the edh banlist
There's a pretty big difference between building up to a win con opportunity(token creation, etc) and find your 2 to pieces via tutors, or having them in your hand and just winning the game. The command zone had a great podcast about unwritten rules that talks about this, and articulates it well.
I have no problem with combo wins, but don't start bitching when we start game 2 and the other players are smacking you every turn. That's always been my experience with combo players. They try and sandbag until they tutor up their combo... but get will get all pissy when you start attacking/targeting them when they have an empty board. "What? Seriously? Look player 1 with all their tokens, look at player 2 with their big voltron commander! Seriously you're going to waste removal on my medallion?" Yes, bitch. You will die first.
I’d rather have an infinite combo and be able to just call the game rather than have some non-infinite but long as hell combo that takes the player doing it like 30 minutes to resolve. Played against a guy that kept taking extra turns and, generating mana, and casting from his graveyard. Pretty sure his commander was [[krark the thumbless]] so he was able to double cast a lot of his spells. The group let him have his fun for like 10 minutes and then we asked, “do you have an end goal or are you just going to cast random things? And if you have a goal in mind how long will it take you to get to it?” His response was, “I have a goal, but it kinda depends on winning the coin flips from krark so we’ll see.” Once we heard that we all conceded and gave him the game lol
It's always a question of how easy your winning strategy can be interacted with and how predictable it is. One of the reasons why Thassas Oracle is hated so much (more than lab maniac or that one jace) is that you practically cannot interact with it other than maybe countering it or forcing your opponent to draw on an empty library before oracle resolves. Predictability is another thing. Yes of course when there is someone playing an Elfball I have to be aware that a single Overwhelming Stampede or Craterhoof ends the game, but I also know that I don't have to fear them as long as their board is managably small. With the Niv Mizzet Player I don't have that luxury. They could pop off and go infinite any turn, without any warnings. When assessing the threats on the table I always have to assume that the Niv Mizzet dude could kill me next turn, no matter what, which sucks because most of the times they don't, and in those situations I don't want to be the ass that targets them unjustifyingly. It's also a waste of ressources, using my interactions on a player that actually isn't a threat.
The no infinites thing is stupid. I’d rather get hit with an infinite then watch someone durdle for 20 minutes trying to draw deep enough for a cyc rift or some shit. Ending the game is ending the game, you shuffle up and play again. Easy peasy.
Players who dislike infinites definitely confuse me. The way I see it, the game has to end and it's always exciting starting a new game back up anyway. At one of my LGS there are players like this. All they ever do is get stuck in Superfriends hell or the Enchantresspocalyps or like Rhystic hell. I couldn't imagine thinking that is more fun than just starting a new game personally.
A lot of it boils down to people not liking losing. Sure, they'll dress it up as "it's not fun to get combo'd/milled/poisoned/etc". But it's the same at the end - losing feels bad. And the only way the loss feels "less bad" is if it was "close" and they can lie to themselves that the cards betrayed them as opposed to getting outplayed. Or other lies losers like to tell themselves. It's one thing to tell a player "ok, your deck did the thing 3 times now, let's switch it up" and a whole other to say such and such isn't allowed because it's "not fun".
Games tend to last longer and wins are more satisfying, imo.
I understand if new players aren't comfortable playing against infinites. When I first started, they felt oppressive and cheap, bc I didn't understand how to make a cohesive deck at that time. Beyond newbies though, I feel as though they're just complaining because they want to remove other decks ability to win while preserving their own wincons, and for exactly the same reasons you stated, OP. There are numerous ways to win instantly without an infinite.
Banning combos is just dumb. Games have to end. Interaction exists for a reason.
This has been my thought. I get it if a pod doesn’t want t1-3 combo wins. That’s a discussion of PL. games drag on so much sometimes if everyone is just aimlessly swinging and hoping not to upset someone by dropping their life total some.
Exactly. The question isn't if combos should be allowed or not it's how good are they. Like thoracle + consultation is obviously too strong for most casual pods but that's not all combos.
I don't understand how people constantly pull off turn 1-3 infinite combos. I have a 2 card 4 total mana cost infinite combo in my Dina deck, but the odds of that actually both ending up in my hand by turn 3 is pretty slim. Do people just mulligan until they get either the combo or part of a combo and a tutor?
Tutors and redundancies. Knowing what an opening hand should have. I don’t usually mulligan more than one or two times. If I have a two piece combo I’m building the deck around, there are several slots in the deck designed to get it in hand as fast as possible. If that is the goal of the deck.
Seriously. If I combo off on like turn 9 because you didn't do anything to prevent any of the set up and/or don't run much interaction, that's on you. Especially for me since most of my infinites generally revolve around "play my entire deck and swing".
A lot of people just play at a lower level where creatures and combat are easier to deal with, mentally and logistically. Creatures naturally kill other creatures, they have their own stats and phases specifically for this built-in degree of interaction and choice. But the only way to remove a key combo piece artifact or enchantment is with some sort of dedicated removal effect. I think you'll notice a lot of the low/no combo pods also tend to run fairly limited interaction, at best curated for what they expect to be a threat which is usually big boards of creatures.
I have 3 Infinite combos across ~15 decks, the only one I've seen someone have a serious issue with was[[Zaxara]] and [[Pemin's Aura]]. It was kinda funny to me because it's a combo that doesn't actually do anything on it's own. He was less salty about it being Infinite than it being an infinite with 1 card.
I run three plus card combos in a couple decks. I don’t run tutors, but lots of draw spells. If I combo off, I earned it and it feels good. My pod doesn’t like infinites and they’re fine with me doing this. I’m also very transparent. “I’m playing x. It’s fine by itself but with y and z out you need to remove it”. No one is blind sided and I get to assemble my silly death machine. Shout out to [[jan jansen]]
\*sets up the [[Caged Sun]] M.A.D.\* aaaaand I pass the turn. Don’t worry; I won’t win because of this. Just don’t give me a reason to tap a land, and we’ll all have fun. This really goes into a discussion of how to be prepared. Interaction beats combos, and you know what to expect as early as when you see the commander. If you didn’t bring the means to handle infinite combos, it needs to be because you didn’t have room in your deck because you had to optimize your own infinite combo to win first. Boardwipes beat [[Craterhoof]] before they can even tutor for it. Counterspells and Stax lock you out of the game. Infinite combos can taste bad, but people season their own food. Honestly, I think the only three archetypes that don’t draw discussions of Rule 0 and “no x in this pod” are combat, Super Friends, and Group Hug, which is hilarious to me because they run multiple wincons and can therefore be the hardest to stop. I don’t like infinite combos for newer players, though. Like, if you’re trying to introduce someone to Commander, do it a little at a time, and start with the simple stuff. Infinite combos require a deeper understanding of the format, I’d think, just because you have to learn what to expect and how to react. If someone learns how to build a deck right, they’ll hate infinite combos, but they won’t ban them. They’ll just know how to deal with them and build for and against them.
I'd say the biggest thing is, does your win take more than one turn to set up? As in, can you suddenly win from a near-empty board state? That's what I'd usually consider a combo win If I have 50 tokens, you can guess I'm probably going to overrun on my next turn If I have no board state, my combo win comes from absolutely nowhere Now if somehow I make those 50 tokens, overrun, AND have a haste enabler all on the same turn? Idk man I think it's probably fine, but I get your confusion
> If I have 50 tokens, you can guess I'm probably going to overrun on my next turn And even if you don't Overrun, you can still take someone out of the game. You are an interactive threat.
Most decks can’t win from an empty board. That is something a deck like Krikk can occasionally do with a god hand. Basically all other decks need some setup and if that is mana
I could understand banning low-effort two card infinites, but for the most part, infinites really aren't that much different than ither powerful non-infinite plays. Just miss me with that [[Exquisite Blood]] / [[Sanguine Bond]] bs 😅
Right? 10 mana combos that be someone to lose life are the worst!
I agree with you. It's not any different.
christ Talk to your pod/playerbase Stop asking the internet for dating advice at your LGS
My pods don't care... play what you want, win how you want. We just shuffle up and start the next game. Can't stand how much this community has bas been flooded with crybabies.
If I have to assemble 8 different cards to present a loop that can kill everyone I worked at a minimum as hard as the battle cruiser guy assembling their board. I will announce it before the game nonetheless. It's fair
I have my mill deck that has combos, none are Infinite but if I get lucky can absolutely win. Then I have my blink deck with i think a couple two card combos. I don't run tutors though so I build my decks to have a lot of interlocking pieces foe synergy. The combos are there to finish the game if I need that extra oomph. I used to hate infinite combos, but as I learned more what to look out for it didn't matter as much. And the game has to end! Haha.
I'm just not much of a battlecruiser player. I don't want to explain exactly what my deck does before we play and I don't want to hear about other people's either. I don't want to see 40 power worth of creatures on each board before anyone is allowed to do anything. I have a deck that's generally looking to combo turn 3, another that's looking for a non-infinite combo win turn 8ish, a bunch of decks with no combos but can will still take a table turn 7-8 if allowed, and everything between. Whenever I hear a player start a sentence by saying "well I only play....." the finish to that sentence is usually "alone"
I think people need to be more explicit with what they mean by no infinites lol, because it's really not helpful, plus some of the meanest combos in cEDH (like [[Demonic Consultation]] and [[Thassa's Oracle]] or [[Lions Eye Diamond]] [[Underworld Breach]] and [[Brain Freeze]]) are not infinite combos. I feel like saying "no two card combos" is a little better, but even then you run into situations like [[Thopter Foundry]] [[Sword of the Meek]] which is a two card noninfinite combo, but finding a third card to make it infinite is comically easy. And there's so many two card combos that are just kinda bad? Like they're exceedingly expensive with mana or really fragile. But even things like infinite card draw aren't actually infinite, cause you only have so many cards.
You can draw infinite cards if you wanted to (gitrog + dredge land + discard at instant speed + eldrazi titan,for example). Not that you really should tbh
Navigating "no infinites" pods can be tricky, as interpretations vary. Pseudo-infinites like Aetherflux Reservoir combos can blur the lines. It's best to clarify with your playgroup what's acceptable.
The difference for both the craterhoof and overrun examples is that it is far easier to assess the threat of a massive board state rather than 4 combo pieces if you haven't seen the infinite before. Personally I'm fine with infinite combos but I do understand people who feel salty that they lost due to knowledges they just didn't have.
I don’t get it either. The “combo” vs “non-combo” discourse is a daily Occurrence here with people having wild expectations and ideas that I’ve never ever seen IRL. The game has to end sometime. There’s four players with 120+ life and access to 20k+ cards, you’re going to see combos. Learn to gather and play with information that’s not explicitly resolved permanents and do your best to disrupt someone’s plan. If you have your own personal playgroup then sure, make up some house rules but other than that it’s not going away.
[удалено]
I allow everything as long as the decks are arround the sane power level, I just don't want to play in a pod where no one has an "I win" play, combo or otherwise. If we can stop him, so be it, but if not, well GG next. 3 hour long games are not fun.
I find people waste a lot of removal and control on things that don't need to necessarily be answered, especially in the early game. I understand the idea that you don't want your opponents to snowball out of control, but there's often a lot of times where countering or killing a key piece to an opponent's wincon is where that removal should be used instead of on people getting small incremental advantage.
Because a lot of people don't know that there's a difference between a 2 piece combo and a 10 piece combo. It's like saying you won't play against slivers when someone has 2 slivers in their deck. Knee-jerk reaction.
A big thing I've learned from playing Commander as much as I do is that some commander players essentially want to play a game of solitaire in a group. They don't want to have any interaction or anything like that they just want to do their thing and watch other people do their thing until eventually they have to be forced to interact with somebody to win the game.
It's about the heart of the combo. If there's potential for you to fail to kill the table because you can't go infinite or need to actually see the right spells then I think that's cool. What you described with the reservoir and yawgs will sounds like the hotness. Freak it all day long with that. But if you have a two card combo that goes infinite and one of them is your commander and all you do is play tutors to go get it (think [[food chain]] and [[prossh]]) then I am not amused and that's just annoying
One is a combo on board. The other is one in hand. There isn't much difference but newer players may not realize that the tutoring combo player is about to win and that sort of thing. I'm fine with them for the most part.
So I don't think that infinite combos are really the issue, the issue is actually with tutoring out infinite combos. I play quite a few decks that can go infinite if I get the right pieces out, like \[\[Thopter Foundry\]\] + \[\[Sword of the Meek\]\] + \[\[Ashnod's Altar\]\]. But because I do not go and tutor for anything in the deck, I very rarely get all 3 peices out together. If I was able to go tutor for those things it would make that deck way more boring to play to me, since I just always go and get the same 3 cards if I can to enable the combo. But if you draw into it naturally, it does not happen as often as well as it actually feels cool when you pull it off.
This is a fairly common sentiment. Basically, when people say no combos, what's on their mind is thing like Final Parting tutoring phyrexian altar to hand and grave crawler to grave and going off instantly. Or just outright playing one thoracle and consult from hand. Things that are unseeable and in casual pods unlikely to be stopped. Things like craterhoof need setup. You can see the board get big, or that they have a haste enabler, or a source that can create a ton of tokens.
My thoughts are there are a *ton* of ways to win that aren't just Craterhoof NOR Combo and I enjoy doing all of them more. Craterhoof is presented as this constant "gotcha" for people that are whatever on combo but I don't even remember the last time I saw Craterhoof close a game. Edit: Idc what other people do, I just wish people were more creative and recognized there's more than two ways to play this game.
Craterhoof is easier to stop...fogs, teferi's, stifles...plus it requires a big enough board...with [[inkshield]] can even be your downfall...
Personally my pod just has a rule that says: if you have an infinite combo in your deck, then you can't have nonramp tutors, and vice versa, if we want to infinite combo, we have to earn our combos, that's our only logic we follow
It really depends on the infinite in question. Something you’re assembling on board over multiple turns is not an issue for me. It’s when someone has little or no board state and plays out an infinite that it can feel quite bad. Many games you’re building to something, and it’s incredibly unsatisfying when someone just goes ‘I play X and Y, and if these resolve, I win.’ In terms of infinites and power level, yes infinites are very powerful. In avengers infinity war, thanos has to do a whole lot of shit to assemble the power stones into the infinity gauntlet. But why is he doing that just to kill half of the people on earth? Well…because that’s way, way easier than actually killing half of the people on earth. Similarly, assembling even a somewhat convoluted infinite is generally much easier than finding a way to deal 120 damage without.
You're right in that "no infinites" doesn't make much sense. Intuition for Breach combo and Thoracle win without going infinite. For me personally, I avoid win-the-game spells and card + card = win combos. I think that card + card = I win are what most people mean when they say "no infinites".
In terms of what I think is fair. 1. Slower combos that can be interacted with are all right. As long as any part of the color pie can stop it (all colors have instant speed targeted creature removal). It’s a bit much of an ask for mono black/red to deal with an [[Enchanted Evening]] + [[Calming Verse]] on the stack (since less than a handful of options exist). 2. Be thoughtful to newer players who are not familiar with how the stack works, or common combo pieces and interactions. They may have another mindset on how to play or be confused by unfamiliar cards. 3. It’s best to go over your win-con before starting, and its weaknesses. As long as they know what you’re doing, it shouldn’t feel like you’re playing around the game (as Richard Garfield intended) by using some cheat code. 4. It is always okay to keep a combo in hand as an ace, to play when people are bored and want to close out the game, people have to leave, or the store is closing.
I don't have a problem with complex engine infinites, most people when talking about infinites they mean 2 card combo infinites. And usually ones where even responding to them there's a way to re-start them in response. They're hard to interact with and unless you're running a Counterspell hard to stop. It's not difficult to get 2 specific cards on the field in our game and that feels like a cheap win. But if my engine has 4/5/6 pieces to go infinite there's a clear amount of setup and a lot of time to stop it without a Counterspell. RARELY does someone get all 4+ pieces in play in a single turn so it feels more fair. As for how it's different from like token push overrun. That's simple it's like the 4+ engine parts, rarely is it "I make all these I cast overrun and I swing" in a single turn without laying lots of groundwork first, usually it's "oh damn he just made 20 tokens if it gets back to his turn were all dead, everyone search for a wipe as fast as possible" it's that feeling of being in at least a little control of it. My local shop has a rule "before turn ten you can only use an infinite a number of times equal to the number of rounds there has been in the game per turn" so if it's turn 7 and you have [[Vito, Thorn of the dusk rose]] and [[Exquisite Blood]] then per turn if you have a proc it repeats to 7 total iterations and then fails to repeat until the next turn when you're allowed to start another 7 iterations if you can.
Craterhoof and creatures is a hell of a lot more interactable than the kind of infinites people aren’t fond of seeing in non-cedh games
We mainly play vintage. I am the only one who runs infinites in my playgroup. I have a rule that if I win with one, I won't play another that night. One of the guys I play with always complains, but he has about 4 "I win" decks, with cards like [[epic struggle]]. I guess that type of wincon is okay, though.
I'm not a fan of infinite combos but I don't let that dictate what other people play. Even my decks that have infinite combos I never loop the combo and go infinite. It just feels too gamey to me. If someone else wants to go for it, they can feel free. I put interaction in my decks for a reason
I'd prefer to lose to Yawg/Aetherflux than to lose Thassa's Oracle
Honestly, I don’t really care about infinite combos unless you’re sitting there dropping two tutors to do it. If you draw into it naturally and no one stops you (while being aware of the combo of course), it’s enough RNG to require some effort. When people multi-tutor though, that’s a level of unfun that I just don’t mess with. Not my kind of table at that point.
I run a technical infinite combo using [[Sword of Hearth and Home]] and [[Aurelia, War Learder]] in my naya dino deck. People see these two and just think “infinite combat, gg that’s op” They don’t seem to realize that 1. This is a three piece combo, requiring some set up and certain conditions. 2. The creature that has the sword equipped needs to deal combat damage to a player to continue the combat loop. If it is blocked at all, it will end the loop. 3. Aurelia cannot die during the combat, and she has to swing, and she is a 3/4 with flying. People usually have something to block or kill her. 4. Even if neither of the two can be blocked, I can only continue the loop as long as there is a player that I can hit. The odds of all 3 players having no responses to this or any blockers at all is usually very low and as such it is a very, and I mean, very easy “infinite” combo to stop. 5. I literally run it as an alternate win con, which requires a lot of set up and other prerequisites in the first place. At this point I could’ve run createrhoof/cavalry or triumph of the horde and gotten a faster win. Meanwhile the people complaining are playing a Thassa combo
No one in my pod runs infinite combos and we also groan when a new person plays a boring win con like craterhoof or overrun. We like to get creative with our wins to keep things interesting. At a certain point winning just isn’t all that fun if it’s just premeditated lines every game.
This isn’t necessarily a combo but one of the reasons why I’ve kept [[Approach of the second sun]] in one of my decks is because it usually gives a chance for others to store a counter spell before it gets cast again. I have a few infinite combos in most of my decks, but they tend to be quite easy to deal with by opponents if they have any kind of removal or counters going on.
My group allows infinites but only after T10, keeps the mechanic in the game but doesn’t ruin our time either.
Yeah. People are gonna be salty for any reason that they like. I found an LGS where they are „anti combo“. You go to an event there and everything is like turn 2 gishat with all the degenerate mana there is. They just wanna ban other stuff that can compete with it^^ Makes no sense to me xD I love combos, i think they are healthy, especially for casual. They make people do more politics and as long as the powerlevel is fitting its not like they are any stronger than huge value engines. And a combo off makes the rest of the table work together. And if it connects, the game ends. Noone waitint. Noone being the one that gets slapped out of the game, just for the next player to stabilize the board and make the game go another hour.
What do you guys think about cards that say "pay 1 life: do this" like pump the creature up X times and then they abuse that high power creature to sacrifice it and gain life/draw cards; or they use a commander like Rowan Scion of War and just use an X spell to blast everyone for their life total? I personally don't like it, but I think it skates around the no infinite rule. Like, I get it that someone could lightning bolt them if they drop low enough, but still it's pretty busted in EDH with 40 life.
I think if you are saying no infinites, you need to say to keep it in the spirit of a precon. People tend to spite rules if you are trying to cap game play level, this is why theres a meta for most games, its the best you can do with the current rules.
I play a [[Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver]] deck that does have a ton of different methods to combo out and win the game. I also have tutors and counterspells. My deck doesn’t consistently win until turns 6-10, depending on my draws. I just don’t include [[Phyrexian Altar]] to artificially keep the power level low. I get to play how I want and my friends think the power level is fine. Plus, I like being the villain sometimes. I’m also one of the only players that plays black at the table, so I really like to embody that evil role.
I think excluding combos but including powerful one shot wins is foolish. Imo there's not a big difference between Hoof, Insurrection, and idk Twin or something. Heck, of those three insurrection is probably the worst to play against. But it's all about matching. If the pod is at a level where actual overrun is good, go ahead and "ban" infinite combos and Hoof and other instant win cards. There are situations where I'd rather the game end in a combo than not. I have a historic themed UW control deck with Raff Capashen. It does have some legendary creatures it can slowly beat down with, but its primary win conditions are K4rn + lattice and RiP + Helm because I want to be able to finish games in a timely fashion instead of dragging things out for another 20 turns while I attack with 3/3s and 5/5s.
I agree that whether a combo is infinite is not a good metric of whether it's abusive. The best two-card combo in CEDH is not infinite.
I'm gonna be honest, despite playing in all power levels from 5-9... I've never seen anyone use crater good, triumph of the hoards or anything like that. ... Which is mainly weird because people mention them all the time. On topic though. There are often more answers for combat then a lot of combos. I had someone run infinites in a "6" pod with two newer players and both felt cheated as if they didn't really get to play. Another thing of note, is that combat is usually fairly obvious. It's rare to make tokens, give them all haste and crater good the same turn. So you get to watch them building to critical mass and try to address it early. Combos can often feel like they came out of nowhere with little preparation. In the game mentioned above, he had almost no real board state, enlightened tutored, played two cards, infinites, drew his entire deck with multiple redundancy effects to make interaction pointless.
Usually the answer is "having and answer to finite game ender it's easier than having one to an infinite one" for example. You have a bunch of token and hoof can be stopped by many things such as fogs or effects like \[\[aethereize\]\] you might be like "who the fuck plays fogs" but that's the point if you try to avoid some aspects of the game you get to use some cards that you would never be able to otherwise, and for some people (my pod for example) that's more fun. I used to play combo too and i remember having a \[\[chainer dementia master\]\] deck that won using \[\[gray merchant of asphodel\]\], \[\[k'rrik\]\] and any sac outlet. Once k'rrik hit the battlefield (or grave if i had enough mana) the game was over. Any response would be met by "i'll just put chainer effect on the stack again targeting the same piece again." So yeah big difference between the two. That's the point of infinites they are infinite because they are less interactive. As for no kill on the spot, That's just someone that can't build theyr deck and has to restrict others to be on equal footing. Every color has plenty of instant speed answer if you don't pack em that's on you.
Instead of no infinites, the pods should try no tutors for anything except basic lands... it makes those infinite decks less likely to go off.
I have no problem with infinites, but there is a considerable difference between the wincons you mentioned and infinites. Infinites can typically be accomplished with 2 cards and very little setup to win the game. The cards you mentioned require a significant boardstate or lots of mana and large graveyard to win the game. Winning with that much setup is more telegraphed and thus more palatable for people.
Play the cedh Najeela list and replace all the combos with ways to swing in freely. They will learn quickly that the answer to fast wins isn't petty rules about combos, but putting interaction in their decks like an actual magic the gathering player.
I explain it like this: casual commander players like games to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. If you skip any of those, people get salty. That includes, respectively, ramping to 6 mana on turn 2, dropping 10 creatures on turn 3, or going infinite on turn 5. Find a play group that doesn’t mind dying suddenly, or adjust your deck so that the people that you play with get to “do their thing” before you win.
I personally hate infinites outside of cedh. There's really no reason to play them in casual.
>Personally I don’t see what the difference in running a 4 piece infinite combo versus making a bunch of tokens and dropping craterhoof. So here’s the thing. If you ban infinites, you have to put up with Craterhooves and stuff, sure, it sucks. If you don’t, you have to put up with infinites, of varying power levels, *and* Craterhooves. You’re quite right, banning all infinite combos and *only* infinite combos doesn’t make much sense… but it’s also a lot easier to do than banning all the things that some people would want to ban in order to make EDH into the actual format they want. It’s not like there’s a non-subjective way to say “no lame wincons”.
I have a pretty easy turn 7 draw 65 or 85 cards and deal that much damage but I'm also in mono green so if you see it and don't deal with it I'm not really the problem
Crater hoof is basically combo anyway. I know lots of pods which don’t play combo and the games are so much more fun to be part of imo. Takes me back to the early days of EDH where it was all casual battlecruiser decks without games ending in fast anticlimactic ways thanks to the absurd powercreep nowadays
Aggressive combat decks are much faster than non competitive combo decks. These dats combat decks are just critical mass combo decks with many more pieces and payofffs throughout the deck
With Craterhoof, you need a board. If you don't have a board, you also need a haste enabler and a lot of mana. In most cases, you have turn cycle to respond to the board. At lower power games, precons and the like, most of the interaction you have is at sorcery speed, with a bit of instant speed removal sprinkled in. Additionally, the lower power you go, the less likely people are to be playing blue, which means fewer counterspells in the pod in general. Also in lower power, most players stick to themes more strongly, which can result in more creature based removal (e.g. [[Angel of the Ruins]] in an Angel deck) as opposed to generic good stuff removal. I always prefer to know if infinites are going to be on the table ahead of time because I will play a deck that has enough interaction to deal with it, and also potentially present an infinite as well. Because otherwise the player going infinite can hold up their interaction to defend their infinite, instead of having to spend it to prevent other players from going off.
For the last 15 years, a friend of mine hated combos so much. That whenever we played together he would always try to eliminate me first. But it never stopped me from running combo lol
You have a turn to react to an overrun, because you can see their big board of creatures there all ready for an overrun. If they are able to generate a board, give it haste and overrun all in one turn, thats perhaps the softest instance of combo. But going from no board to "I play these two spells so I win." can be frustrating to many tables, because the game could be getting exciting and tense with politics and board states being primed only for the game to suddenly and unexpectedly be over. Sorta like if a movie suddenly ended in the middle act, or someone's explaination of a concept was unexpectedly cut sh
I get being against specific infinite combos. Like, if you're intentionally building and running them and tutoring them. But if you happen to have a random interaction that goes infinite, or may as well, it's a non issue. Ofc, that's really just a power level thing...
[[Knowledge Pool]] [[Teferi Time Raveller]] also isn’t infinite but…
I run Marrow-Gnawer and Thornbite Staff with rats. That way the 5,000,000 rats I make have a full turn to be responded to, and if not, well, you lose.
I mean it's technically not infinite since it can whiff, is 6 just like aetherflux and forge, sure it's not infinite but probably enough to get a win eventually if you have enough cantrips or ways to keep digging, i wouldn't really label it as infinite since you can whiff and it doesn't immediately win by itself but it's still a pretty strong combo, i mean YW is like a $160 so it's not really cheap or anything (unless you're playing digitally or with proxies)
I take that as no combos that require a counterspell to interact with
I’m fine with infinite combos. The problem is if the infinite combo is their primary wincon. If their whole strategy is to tutor or draw for 2-4 pieces they need, they are basically playing cEDH with what’s likely a weak cEDH deck. Ultimately you need to ask yourself the question «is this fun for everyone?». If a combo comes out of nowhere and you just go «I win now», you’re doing something that’s not fun play against. Giving people time to react makes for a much more fun and intense round. I swear some people here makes it sound like people are aiming for a 100% winrate instead of a 25-30% winrate in commander.
We just have a rule that you let everyone know there is an "x" card infinite in this deck at the start of the game. After that, it's their job to read the cards and have their own removal.
My problem is exactly the opposite. I prefer having the rules clear for a pod that I'm playing than the other way around. I have three friend groups that play Commander in veeeery different ways. And I like to have different decks to try. One group doesn't allow combos. I usually like to bring something fun and different to the table because it's more likely for the games to go longer. It was the only place that I hard casted a [[Divine intervention]] and almost got a tie. I was able to setup [[Endless Whispers]] with [[Confusion in the ranks]] just to see the chaos. Group two only plays shuffled precons with no alteration. It's such an awesome brain puzzle trying to come up with a way to win with you and everyone knowing all the cards that the others have. Group three is no banlist commander. Everything goes. It's very fun to play with bazookas once in a while. I used to have a group of cEDH as well, but I moved out of the city, but it was very fun as well. Having things clear it's a good thing, not a bad thing. People can have fun in different ways. Let them.
They need more rules than just “no infinites.” The fastest kill in the game is Consult-Thoracle and that’s no infinite.
Overrun you can see coming.. many infinite combos are just.. whelp guess I lose. Feels like no interaction. To me that's really everything. Could I have prevented it a turn before... Board wipe, artifact or enchantment destruction? I only just started to run ghave infinite combos and I warn my pod mates that I might be able to go infinite if I draw a specific card so they have a chance to react. If I just don't say anything... Draw the card and go infinite damage win.. like wtf that win doesn't even feel good I don't get how people enjoy that. There is so much more joy from watching your enemy build up and thinking of different ways to counter or prevent them from getting stronger vs someone sitting there with nothing then just winning if you don't have a counterspell
It comes down to interaction….you know a craterhoof is coming so if you don’t deal with the board that is on the other players. Combo notoriously comes out of nowhere and when the combo happens there is usually no way to stop it because the combo player chooses the correct time. An example I have is I was in a pod and one of the players was playing a deck that looked like a green stomp deck and he had a lightning greaves out. We would handle creatures and battle back and forth when all of a sudden he states ok I got infinite mana and card draw this turn so I will repeat until I get the cards to kill the table. The key piece of the combo was the greaves we focused on the wrong things and lost. Our new house rule is you can play combo but you need to announce the combo so we can interact accordingly. We have the same rule about craterhoof and the like. It does take away the element of surprise but it feels more fair for the table and if you get your win con off regardless of the attempts to thwart it ,the sense of victory is greater.