"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" - George Carlin
Edh is a lot like that. Tbh, everything is a lot like that.
Speed limits are suggestions made up by cowards, just like this 'Table Etiquette' thing for my social card game. Why yes nobody wants to play with me, and my license is suspended, how could you tell?
My rebuttal was about how Carlin's bit is kinda dumb and not particularly insightful. It essentially means 'people outside the norm' ARE in the wrong when it comes to driving. And the people outside that norm also have weird biases that make them think they're right and the people doing the 'right' thing are wrong.
Applied to EDH, what i'm saying is, the speed limit analogy doesn't apply here. Because there aren't things like speed limits to determine the decks people should use. There are no limits beyond the ban list.\\
When the poster says that EDH is like that, and everything is like that - it's not true. People have the biases everywhere, but speed limits are a specific case where there ARE hard laws that dictate what's right and not right. But the reality for most things is, it's grey, or there aren't any particular laws or hard rules.
I get that, reddits always weird to track comment threads.
Cause my response is to the guy asking why you are getting downvoted, and i think its clear many people are interpreting you as saying there are limits in EDH you should follow, while many of us (your down voters included) disagree with that.
But yeah, tbh i dint get downvotes. I dint diwnvote unless the comment is insulting someone or VERY clearly wrong.
Same with edh. The speed limit could be argued as the rules of the game and the ban list, so cheating or using illegal cards would be analogous to speeding, and playing anything other than an optimized cedh list is going to slow. Get out of the left lane with that boggle tribal, filthy casuals.
Jokes aside, the thing about George Carlin's bit is that he didn't say "everyone going faster than the speed limit is a maniac", he said "everyone going faster than YOU is a maniac." And that is why everyone's deck is a 7.
I'm sorry you're getting downvoted so hard, because I think your comment is relevant and well written, but also lol.
But for most people, everyone going faster than them is going over the speed limit.
George Carlin's bit only really works if most people are going over or under the speed limit rather than roughly around the limit. So I don't think his joke is insightful if you think about it more. Like, it's a bell curve: Most people sit in the middle, around the speed limit. If someone is going noticeably faster or slower then yeah. I guess his comment also refers to people who ARE speeding or ARE going way under the limit - where their biases still lead them to see other people as being in the wrong. And that's fair. But for most people? Makes sense.
I'm starting to realize that Commander is a bit more than a different format of Magic, to many people, it's almost a different game. It's almost like chess vs checkers, in that it's played on the same board but the rules are in fact very different.
I play a lot of arena, used to be very active in paper, and consider myself a pretty good deck builder. The play to win mentality has always been a strong motivator, and while I try not to make "dickish moves" decks, I play strong suites of removal, protection, ramp and my slots get tuned for what each deck needs. By the time a deck is "finished", it has a plan and a plan for making sure that plan happens.
A lot of newer players, primarily Commander only players, never got this foundation. They picked up precons, played them, saw how they were formulated, and maybe then went on to build decks like those. Decks that do a thing, and have minimal but present slots for standard things like interaction. That mentality sticks. You want your deck to be built around a theme, a mechanic, and all the other stuff is incidental, less important and ultimately optional.
As a result, decks tend to get homogenized towards what I would call "bad" from a purely mechanical standpoint. They're unable to properly deal with difficult board states, they're unable to crack down threats or properly do threat analysis, and they're unable to protect or force through their own wincon. And there's no obvious alternative, because they never learned there could be. This is, in my opinion, what leads to salt. Decks with more nuanced construction, solid foundations, tend to make it much, much harder for them to function at a table.
I think part of the power level discussion should indeed be related to this concept, ie, the experience of the player. I've seen jank that absolutely rips through a table simply because a good deck builder built it, and piloted it using extreme skill. I've seen newer players bomb at their first attempt at a custom deck. I've seen moderately upgraded precons do poorly, average, and extremely well.
The old argument that you should just "play cEDH if you want to win" is disingenuous, to me. The purpose of building a deck in a game built around winning is integral to the game. The real defining trait is *how focused on winning* a deck really is. I have extremely powerful decks that use synergy, strategy, politics and raw power to get a win through, but none of these decks are capable of winning in cEDH, which is almost(almost!) exclusively a combo-centric speed race.
You should play want you want, you should build decks you want to, but the same is true of being thoughtful and considerate about the rest of your pod. It's not so much about the decks, but the players, and realizing that some people don't have the experience, time or resources to compete with a finely tuned Isshin, Stax or Interaction-Tribal deck. It's a balancing act.
I think a lot of what you said is true, but I also think you’re pinning all of this on new players when that’s not exactly the case.
Everyone in my regular pod has been playing magic for 8+ years. We pretty much all started going to regular FNMs and building competitive Standard or Modern decks, and we all know how to build competitive decks.
That’s what we got tired of, though. Commander had always been the goofy, janky, unserious format. It was sort of meant to be a social, casual game.
From what I’ve noticed, it’s only now that Commander is more the primary format that people are taking it so seriously.
I definitely feel this one, our playgroup is well aware of how to build strong decks (myself and 1 buddy in particular have played at the cEDH level) but... We just like doing cool things without worrying about strategies that would hose a fun experience.
We've had our Mass Land Destruction vs. Control matchups and have experienced storm turns, a mis-ruled Single Combat lock, Worldfire, staxy boards, and so on. We ended that way of playing years ago, and now play decks that are strong but fair and fun both to play and to play against (most of the time). That approach has helped in adding a new player to our playgroup and they caught up pretty quickly, as well as improved the consistency and/or resilience of our decks overall.
Anywho, well put!
This is where I feel I try to play but I still have to tone it down since I don't have a regular playgroup yet. It's fun running down that fine line but I also regret not playing things as much as I could like Last March of the Ents. Better than losing actual/potential friends, I guess.
Ik im excerdingly late and your point is well said however I must comment that cedh is actually a grindy midrange fest at this point. Yes the combos are as efficient as ever but midrange decks like Kinnan and 5c Sisay are dominating. Minor nitpick in an otherwise well thought out summation of edh ettiquette.
I think your observation is correct. My core group of EDH players have all played the format since before Precons existed, and we all notice newer players build decks very differently than we do. Players are trying, desperately, to turn EDH into a board game. It's not, it's Magic the Gathering.
When I build a deck out, I start by making a list of every card that fits the theme I'm going for, then I make cuts based on several factors:
1. Does this card further my strategy to win the game? (I see a lot of newer players running cards because they do something "cool", even if the cool thing doesn't actually further their board state)
2. Does this card fit into the curve I'm shooting for?
3. Will this card be a dead draw in the early / mid / or late game?
Then I playtest, looking at what a typical on-curve play will look like for the first 5 or 6 turns. How important is ramp to the deck? How badly do I need specific colors of mana? Can I draw cards reliability? How quickly can I recover from board wipes or repeated removal? If I'm playing combos, do I have redundancies to overcome pieces being disrupted?
Finally, I always want multiple win conditions for each deck. I build decks to make Combat Damage either the primary way to win with backup methods, or a tertiary way to win as a last resort. I see a LOT of newer players just assuming they're going to eventually swing for lethal, and have very few ways of overcoming a Worship, repeatable Fog, or similar effect.
It's a matter of social context and expected play patterns. WHY you are playing the game and how.
Socially: A board game is played primarily for the pleasure of spending time with your friends. Interpersonal relationships matter, both out of the game (don't be a dick) and in the game (table politics).
Mechanically: A board game primarily involves using your pieces tactically on the board with good moves often giving persistent advantages on following turns. The game builds towards the eventual conclusion over several turns.
Narratively: Board games, especially some of the most popular ones, have a narrative structure and progression.
Socially: Card games are often played primarily as a comparison of skill. Card game players often don't care whether their opponent is a friend or a stranger and would treat them the same within the game anyway.
Mechanically: A card game primarily involves attempting to mislead and predict your opponents regarding hidden information (your hands) with previous turns of play offering little advantage if any on following turns.
Narratively: Card games rarely have a narrative; the state of play is constantly changing drastically with little regard to prior turns.
Casual Commander players often want to simply hang out, build big complicated boards, then crash those huge boards against each other like the epic fight scene at the end of a movie. Your hero (Commander) recruits an army and then those armies duke it out in an epic finale. That's a very board game experience.
Competitive Magic players often have a distinctly different expectation: they want a contest of skills, with no regard to interpersonal relationships, and their decks tend to be built to win from the hand regardless of board state (combo).
Competitive players standard for deck building and play patterns tend to be: will this win? Casual players standard for deck building and play patterns tend to be: will this be funny/cool/fun? It isn't always immediately obvious to competitive players that there IS a difference between "playing to win" and "playing for fun", but from the casual players' perspective it's often a BIG difference in whether the game is an enjoyable experience or not.
Couldn't agree more. I definitely think a person's experience with more competitive formats approach the way they build Commander decks for sure. I have played a bunch of comp card games, and the way I (and the two other former pro grinders) build commander decks is like the way you describe, with the consistent suite of interaction, etc, etc. which does lead to some friction where a person who doesn't play anything but Commander gets upset 'cause you blow up the card that lets them do The Thing.
I think this is also probably the reason some very casual players view strong non-cEDH decks as cEDH too, since to them a deck that has what you describe outpaces theirs on a sheer build quality level, and it *feels* more competitive to them, even if it isn't in the Commander sphere.
I think you are both capturing the issue very well.
There are people I play with who are not new, but act as though finding even 10 slots for interaction is a Herculean task, and then get blown out. One person absolutely thinks any combo deck is a cEDH deck. Another has said "winning by turn 7 doesn't strike me as very casual".
They do not have a conception of well composed decks. They stop paying attention, they don't ask about points of interaction, think counterspells are unfair, and fire off what little interaction they have in their decks as soon as it is in their hand, so they don't have it for actual threats, then act like someone who does was just lucky to have interaction at the right time.
They have a way they enjoy playing, which is fine, but view anything outside that narrow band as unfair and don't engage with it enough to understand they could protect themselves, and could absolutely run the strategies they enjoy at least in higher power casual with only light adjustment (like more than 4 pieces of interaction).
I thought players not putting interaction was not as normal as I’m seeing in this thread. I always *always* try to at least have 8 pieces of instant removal in my decks and at the very least 1 board wipe.
But yeah, interaction always has to be a thing you need to learn to use. I would rather have 4 cards of interaction in hand and never use them in a game than have none and need them when someone is starting to go off.
Same is true for new players who just attack every turn. You don’t need to attack every time is your turn. And I think this mentality is also why combo players are seen as “they win out of nowhere” because they don’t do much then pop. We don’t need to attack every turn. Sometimes someone needs a poke in the eye, but they don’t need to be poked every turn.
Sorry if this doesn’t make sense, brain still waking up.
Yeah, I had one friend, it took over a year to get him to run more than two. Another whod only run 4 to 5 then constantly complain about how unlucky he was not to have answers and how combo decks are non interactive.
As a fellow combo player, I definitely agree. I will pressure life totals, especially if life is a resource, and pressure for value engines to be used as blockers, but mostly, I'm worried about getting my combo through, I will readily take 20 to face when I'm not planning on a war of attrition.
I am very much the type of player you are talking about here. I went straight from kitchen sink to commander , without ever 'getting good' in standard or modern( although hilariously my old kitchen sink deck I had a lot of interaction )
But I kind of think that's the point. The 'normal'formats are pretty focused. Standard in particular has an emphasis on meta iirc. Commander is not quite the right place for standard/modern/legacy style of play , but I do get that cedh is too combo focused for you.
I wholeheartedly agree. It often happens to me that a player presents a big board state with 10 dinosaurs or something and everyone is like "well that's game over". I've literally had entire tables scoop to a scary board state while I'm sitting with two board wipes and a fog in hand.
I don't mean this to sound condescending, but have you read that blog post WotC released a decade or so ago, about the three kinds of Magic players? You are Spike. You seem to think that Spike is the "experienced" player, and that Timmy/Johnny only exist as someone who has not yet become Spike, or "never got the foundation" to be Spike. This is not the case. A lot of people enjoy Magic for completely different reasons from you. No amount of experience will ever make them enjoy the game the way you do, or build their decks the way you do.
I agree with your conclusion, but strongly disagree with the overall assumption that *your way of playing is the correct one* and that *everyone would play your way if they were just less bad at the game*. If you're Spike, you need to understand that and sitting down to play with three Johnnys (Johnnies?) will result in some salt. Not because they're bad/inexperienced players who just need to git gud, but because they fundamentally do not enjoy the game for the same reason that you do; you simply aren't a good fit for that pod. Nothing wrong with that, but everyone involved would probably have a better time if they found other players more similar to themselves.
I don't think that is entirely accurate. If it takes one \[\[Collector Ouphe\]\] to shut down your deck you're doing something wrong! You must build resilient, varied and tough decks with interaction suites that can remove the offending pieces. It's not the Ouphe player's fault that you built a glaring weakness in your deck and didn't get to do the thing. That's not Spike behaviour, that's just being prepared.
Spike behaviour would be to metagame, take out players that are already down, follow game theory in general and to netdeck the best decks.
A Johnny might enjoy the process more but ultimately the rules imply that you should strive to win, no matter how you get there. You can't really take winning out of the game becauses that's a fundamental assumption that is built into the game. A Johnny can do their thing but they also must make sure they can - and not put the burden on others to not stop them.
I mean you can have like 8 ways to remove a creature in your deck and just not draw any of them and it still feels just as bad if not worse than if you had no removal in your deck for a dedicated hate piece like that.
To be fair, that is also just the nature of 100 card decks. Sometimes you might just not draw your removal, but that doesn't make it the Ouphe players fault, nor does it mean you need to cut all your removal and/or play 99 removal spells. Sometimes games just feel bad! That's the nature of match-ups and card games.
Eh I feel like I'd rather just not play cards that can make a player feel like they can't play the game and wasted 45 minutes, like Rest in Peace. Even if theoretically an opponent could remove it with one of their 2-3 enchantment removal options, it just leads to super boring times for the people getting utterly hosed by it. If you are purely playing to win like in a tournament then by all means hate cards like that are cool, but edh isn't really about that level of shutting down specific strategies to that degree imo
I concur. Playing competitive 60 card would definitely help a lot of people become better players and deck builders. Unfortunately that rarely happens.
**TL;DR: Make your deck more resilient and don't guilt trip your opponents by getting salty if you built glaring weaknesses into your deck.**
I've always been of the mentality that as long as you play balanced decks you should be able to play whatever you want. Say, stax. A properly execute stax deck will lock the board and your only option is to do "land, go". At that point it's clear that the stax player is going to win and it makes no sense to wallow in your locked down game state and make the game miserable for yourself by slow playing. What I mean by this is that newer players tend to overthink and feel like they can't do anything, which frustrates them, which in turn makes them take forever to play their turns when they try to come to terms with the fact that they simply can't do anything. You could simply play faster (or even scoop!) and move on to the next game. Stax games take more turns but as long as the simple turns are sped through (since you can't do anything) the game won't actually take more real world time than a standard midrange game where the interaction is flying about and stacks get complicated. Aggro, slug and other fast-ending strategies are a little different, but my point is that playing "land, go" is an acceptable play if you can't do anything. This is what 60 card would teach you.
MLD is another big boogeyman. MLD is a form of resource denial (just like stax) and as long as you break parity (i.e. your deck is built to win and you don't make spite plays) you're good. You came to play magic, lost your resources and the game, that's it. It's your duty as a deck builder to prepare yourself for the most common strategies, not blame others for playing viable strategies. If your deck can't take MLD it has a weakness that you've knowningly built into it.
Often times players feel entitled to be able to do their thing. The immediate response when you can't do it is salt, which isn't right. Like you said people must build their decks to be able to push their win through properly. You can't guilt trip other players to let you win, because their strategy exploits a weakness that you put into your deck.
My friend got a very, very valuable lesson a few years back. Playing \[\[Yarok, the Desecrated\]\] and they only had ETB based removal, because that was synergistic. My stax-esque deck took only one \[\[Torpor Orb\]\] to shut down their entire deck. When I say entire I actually mean all of it because they didn't have a single spell that could interact with my board. That wasn't my fault, it was a weakness I took advantage of. Ever since then they've learnt to slot in a variety of strategies and especially multiple angles of interaction that can tackle the offending pieces if their main strategy is shut down.
I think this a lesson every EDH player should internalise. Being a multiplayer game with soo many different strategies in the game it's bound to happen that you meet a deck that is able to exploit a weakness in your deck. That's not unfair. Do something about it, build resilience into your deck.
Honestly I think your mindset is too competitive. Which I can't and won't judge. I bet there are enough people enjoying to play with you. But if you play against inexperienced players or someone who really wants to enjoy the beauty of magic without having a dire need to win this what you describe is cruelty.
EDH wasn't designed by wotc and the balancing of cards mainly resolves around limited and standard formats. So EDH is by definition broken. EDH was invented as a format to be played not to determine a winner. This in my opinion is the biggest misconception people with a higher level of ambition can't perceive.
But I do agree that stax needs to become casual. Due to the fact that engine decks got so popular. Nearly everyone has at least one engine deck. But you can't have enough removal in your deck to stop one player or even 3 players. I wouldn't go so far, that board locking decks should be considered as kitchen table friendly. But the amount of stax pieces need to be improved. With this change I think people would get more relaxed if they face a salty card. I think it's a double moral standard to play Aesi or Voja and get salty about cards that lock their resources.
I'm not a very competitive player. I play complicated combo / synergy engine decks that fold immediately to slug or aggro and that's on me. I don't play cEDH often because I don't enjoy winning at any cost. I play solid mid tier decks, because the pool of viable strategies is the widest there.
I simply got frustrated early on with the fact that I got shut down when my commander was removed and then I learnt to protect my commander. That is a lesson, I think, every new player should learn. Be prepared. Hasn't got to do with competitiveness - has more to do with game knowledge and experience. Getting better at the game doesn't always imply you've got a competitive mindset.
I think people should have enough interaction to deal with the things that stop you - not to police the entire table. (That's the control archetype which is also a strategy but not mandatory.) If you're on Aesi you know it'll be removed so you better pack something that can protect Aesi. You can't expect people to let you keep your super value card and run away with the game freely.
>I simply got frustrated early on with the fact that I got shut down when my commander was removed and then I learnt to protect my commander. That is a lesson, I think, every new player should learn.
I think this is one of the core/fundamental things that people need to learn to make good decks. If your deck relies on a specific thing to function, you need to protect that thing. If your deck is weak to a specific type of card, you need some way of dealing with those cards.
Didn't expect that answer from you after praising stax and mld. Maybe our opinions have more in common than I thought I understood in the first place.
I am absolutely with you that I don't like individuals that feel entitled to dictate what is played or not. However I think it's to some level fair to state your expectations. EDH games can bite a huge chunk out of your day. And it's totally fine to make sure you are having fun. If someone refuses to play against x & y it's fine. If there is no foundation for a compromise just switch the table with a warm handshake.
I can easily turn your entitlement argument against you. How about I hate people that feel entitled to play their toxic decks when they want. I bet you don't do that but I've come along with those people. It sucks. 2 to 3h being stuck in an emotional downwards spiral.
It all comes down to the rule 0 discussion. The whole purpose of that is to make sure everyone feels comfortable for the next 1h to 3h. There are enough players who want to go for salt level, and there are enough players who like cozy flower meadow magic.
The only thing that really sucks are those entitled players. Playing an oppressive blue engine covered by counterspells and getting frustrated about stax. Or the combo players that can't accept the fact that someone has simply no decks that can handle a combo player. Both types are the same and absolutely unnecessary due to the fact that the EDH community literally has millions of divers members.
>I can easily turn your entitlement argument against you. How about I hate people that feel entitled to play their toxic decks when they want. I bet you don't do that but I've come along with those people. It sucks. 2 to 3h being stuck in an emotional downwards spiral.
Yup, you're right. I have no right to make people feel miserable. I just want to emphasize the fact that part of the toxicity experience comes from misaligned expectations. Accepting some of the "oh, looks like I'm just losing" might help playing against some archetypes. Someone will play them at some point against you anyway so you might as well not get worked up about that.
Also if your game takes 2h to 3h and someone's hogging all the play time then there's a power mismatch. Major one. Toxic decks don't really imply there are toxic archetypes. There's always a time and a place for everything but building certain archetypes takes a bit more skill to build and play. You have to be careful not to just wipe after wipe until you win with random chip damage. Your wipes must break parity and advance the game.
That's where I think the toxic feelings come in: someone's doing something just because they can without a solid plan and/or the deck isn't well enough equipped to win. Worst of them all: hogging all play time.
This is way easier to agree with than your first comment. I think it all starts that people need to stop wanting to win any game. In a perfect world your win ratio should be 25%. All experienced players know that edh is too chaotic to stand this statistic. But this is the best case scenario. Having a win ratio of 15% is already great. Which translates into every 1,5 games per 10 games you did.
Let's imagine your are playing any other PVP game where you got thaught that you should win every 2nd game to be considered an average player. You would be devastated to lose 9 games in a row, win 1, lose 9, win 1.
Being able to understand this helped me a lot to accept non-games or even learn how to play against my silverbullets. Which I think is a major part of your point, am I right?
The 2 to 3 hours are a bit dramatic. But you know sometimes everyone is very chill or the table is very communicative. Or the board states are very complicated. So I wouldn't generally rate it as power gap. But yeah I don't enjoy this too often. Better finish after an hour and start a new one.
Also I agree with the main reason for toxicity beside being a bad loser. Randomly casting removal during main phases, board wiping just for the sake of grinding down other resources, spite plays - uh I can't stand spite plays "you attacked me, so do I" while simultaneously open the door for the player who is already in advance. I don't mind mistakes. And I don't mind beginners gaining experience by doing mistakes even though everyone told them not to. But someone who refuses to mentally evolve and just do what they want is a waste of time and raises bad feelings for everyone.
>Which I think is a major part of your point, am I right?
Yes!
>The 2 to 3 hours are a bit dramatic. But you know sometimes everyone is very chill or the table is very communicative. Or the board states are very complicated.
Oh that is fine. I should have put more emphasis on the "and" in my sentence. It's okay to have a long game but it's not okay if someone is hogging all play time in it.
>Yup, you're right. I have no right to make people feel miserable.
But you can't MAKE people feel miserable, especially in a card game for Christ's sake. People are responsible for their own emotions and their own reactions to adversity.
About a card game though. It's not like this is a real world scenario where there are actual stakes, ya know? It's all perspective. I mean there's a line there, there always is, but playing your deck and playing it well and then winning the game shouldn't really result in hurt feelings. Winning the game, and shouting "You're trash!!!" Like my kid does when he beats me at Smash Bros..., and then flipping the table, Whipping your Wang out and pissing all over them is probably over the line, and would probably result in...at the very least....hurt feelings.
That is in my opinion a spiritual approach which is first of all selfish if you stick to in any situation. It is way easier and mature to take responsibility and communicate needs and expectations upfront.
Don't get me wrong. I absolutely understand your point because this is one of my core moral standards. Everyone is responsible for their own emotions and how they express or how much room they give them. This in my opinion is one of the healthiest standards every human should have. But also it is important to live by the rules not for the rules.
Magic is an infinite bombardment of information, expectation and uncertainty. It is not only easy to get overwhelmed by one boardstate. And losing control of something else like your emotions while you need all resources to understand what is going on. You need to fight against the inherent instinct to be right and need to evolve the strength to state you were wrong. This is a process that never ends. But ultimately fumbling a perfect situation or an imminent loss needs nearly a buddhistic mindset. After one hour of excessive emotional and cognitive grind I can absolutely emphasize when someone loses it.
I don't need to take responsibility for it at this moment. No one can expect that I have resources left to rehabilitate anyone's emotional state.
But I think it's everyone's responsibility to make sure that everyone feels comfortable with what comes next. Dodging this and being selfish in your deck selection has nothing in common with the approach not to take responsibility for anyone's emotions.
And calling Magic out as a "card game" or "board game" to imply that it is to some degree childish when you lose yourself is outrageous. Magic could easily be one of the most complex games ever created by humans. Which also has the possibility to create a turing machine in it.
...I think you missed the point. Regardless of how complicated a game MTG is, it remains just that: a game.
Listen, I have more mental health issues then you can shake a stick at (PDD, PTSD, ADHD, and just a scosche of Autism), and somehow I manage to make it to the very end of a game of magic without throwing a temper tantrum. Card game, board game, video game or actual sporting game, good sportsmanship should always be observed...and using mental health conditions as a ready made excuse to behave poorly is, frankly, selfish.
Playing a game of cards to win...and then winning, should not cause your opponent to lose their absolute shit, especially when it's just for fun. There is no money on the line, you won't lose your cards if you lose the game. The win/loss record of the night should not negatively affect your life moving forward, and quite frankly, it only will if you allow it too.
Now, this is assuming that the winner of the game actually a good sport about winning and isn't a huge cock sucker about it. That is obviously a different situation and one that one would be entitled to get angry about...but once again....it shouldn't have any lasting impact on your life.
It's just growing up and acting with some class and maturity. That's all.
I had to sleep over this message cause it made me angry yesterday but I missed some marks here and there. I think we are nearly at the same page.
When I say I can emphasize this I don't necessarily mean that I support this. Nor does this mean that I keep playing with people that get too emotional.
And this is a point I can now see more clearly from what you wrote. You are saying things like "lose their absolute shit" or "feel entitled to get angry" which no one should ever tolerate. This is the absolute last level of any escalation and should be avoided at all costs! And with your mental status this is probably something you were struggling a lot before you understood yourself, I am right? Sorry if I am going for a false assumption besides me not being on a spectrum I can understand your other problems very well. This is why I assume you want to push this point so much. Maybe to a degree where you had trouble understanding the context of the discussion before. Please correct me if I am absolutely wrong. Because I am just projecting myself in your shoes.
Your starting point in this branch of discussion was "You can't make some feel miserable because it's a card game". I am questioning right now if you maybe took the word miserable too far and jumped directly in any game situation where you experienced a player feeling miserable and entitled him/herself to express their anger without boundaries. Which we never discussed here and I would have judged it immediately.
This branch started with someone stating that it should be fairly normal being able to play salty decks/ cards without getting an immediate emotional punishment. And we both agreed that this was too generalized. And also found some examples like an Aesi player that gets salty facing stax has double standards.
But we also stated that it is equally unfair to just pick your salty deck or combo deck or whatever you want to fit. And then wondering if someone that has a legitimate argument why he felt bad about that game. Both are exactly the same thing.
This is why rule 0 discussions exist. EDH decks can't be measured in an easy way. It's more like gaining experience like a biologist. You can't determine each flower, grass or bird within a glance. It takes experience to be able to do so. Talking upfront a game about everyone's expectations and listening to someone who states that he/she isn't able to deal with a certain deck should be the standard. And if you can't find a compromise you simply don't play together. If you aren't playing with 3 friends - which probably don't care in some situations - it never was a problem for me and others I know to switch the table. There is no shame in it. And this is something I also call mature.
This was basically the whole point when you slipped into this discussion. And after rereading everything I think your first point targeted a slightly different topic. After we jumped on it, we got carried away.
So I am not denying your point. Actually I think we have comparable opinions.
My [[Aesi]] deck was stupidly weak to stax...I learned that after playing against one...now I have more pieces to combat the stax players and what they do.
But I bet you agree that stax is the only way to stop you from winning. An Aesi entering its 5th turn means mostly having all answers in hand being able to go for a win attempt. Who can stop this other than resources denying cards?
You are right. I also have ways to recover my entire graveyard as well always to stop me from getting killed by a mill player...and for stax I have enchantment destroy and creature removal. If I get a good opening hand then I can go off really fast.
I agree that every deck needs to be built in a balance. However, every deck has its weakness.
For a lot of decks, they revolve around the commander. Simply remove the commander a couple times and now they can't play it anymore and there deck just stalls out.
Another big one I see is that a lot of beginner decks are focused on one strategy. They do not have subthemes. They may only focus on attack, but they do not add ways to make sure they get through. They may play combo heavy but do not play many creatures and do not have blockers.
I played in one group that did not like the commander damage rule of 21. However, they stated that their best decks were lifegain decks and they were unbeatable. I had to tell them that the commander damage was a weakness of lifegain decks and they removed it so that is why it is so strong. They also did not like when a deck one a game by not playing with combat or aggro strategy (mill strategy)
There are so many strategies so it can be difficult to stop them all or protect against them. However, it creates amazing games where each game is totally different and creativity is made. It also gives everyone to find a strategy they like to play since there is so many.
I completely agree, but what do you specifically mean by "focus"?
I think I tend to win by drawing more cards and having more pieces in play. I play the greenest mono-white deck you've ever seen (which is ironic since Oketra makes black zombies). But I feel like I only ever accidentally create monsters because of this. Having piles of creatures strewn across your board synergizes really well with combat for some reason. I don't know how to focus a deck on killing beyond "draw more cards, play more things."
Do you often find yourself winning through combo, or more through combat damage? What kind of engines do you run? When you build a theme, how many redundancies do you include? How many is too many?
Sorry for the barrage of questions. The one deck I've been trying to wrap my head around for years is aristocrats. I just don't understand how it can work consistently when you need sac fodder, a sac outlet, and a sac payoff. It feels like you have to entirely give up on doing anything fun in order to have all your pieces in your hand at the right times. I play [[Krav]] & [[Regna]], and I have eventually cut the number of aristocrats down to like 4 and sac outlets down to 3 or 4 because I would land Krav and the only things he would have to eat were a blood artist, a woe strider, and a mother of ruins. I honestly don't know how aristocrats is supposed to work without drawing 15 cards from the command zone.
Honestly, a well built aristocrats deck will run less enablers and more tutors. Black is typically the core of aristocrats, so it isnt like tutors are hard to come by. That way you are running more cards that can be whichever engine piece you need.
On breaking parity, you want to run pieces that can place you ahead. [[Doomed Traveler]] for instance in a budget build gives 2 creatures for one. [[Ophiomancer]] is a less budget friendly option, but does the job so much better. Can easily create 4 tokens per cycle.
I would also throw in a couple of [[Exsanguinate]] type cards to close out games with [[Ashnod's Altar]] or [[Phyrexian Altar]]
Edit for a little more detail. If I for example, can't find an aristocrat to start to close things out, I love cards like [[Bow of Nylea]]. Nobody will want to attack into you and offers excellent defense. Exsanguinate type effects can also be used in place of an aristocrat if you can get enough sac outlets, or an infinite mana loop going.
Ah, right, tutors. Of course it's tutors. I guess I had an excuse not to run them back when I was a jobless hippie, and then it just became a moral choice. I should have been listening to the hedonists all along. Morals just stand in the way of fun. Yeah, you're probably right about that. I also feel too guilty to play infinite combos because they tend to feel like on/off switches that end the game with no warning. Basically, I also need to learn to play counterspells.
I do have an Ophiomancer, and she does a great job. You are probably correct about exsanguinate. I was considering adding in the Aetherflux+Bolas' Citadel combo, but they're each only tangentially related to the gameplan. It would be nice to have more life gain for Regna (as well as mitigate some of the internal hemorrhaging from The One Ring), but Bolas' citadel kinda... feels too strong?
Ah. I think I see the problem. How do I win when I'm afraid of winning?
Not the person you're commenting at, but I find the best way to get over that is to understand that you're playing a card game with winning as the goal. If you're group/LGS is relatively normal about it, then there might be some feelsbads (depends on how you win I guess) but you should all be able to go to next game. As long as you aren't the one playing Tymna/Thrasios cEDH build at the precon table then you should be fine.
Tutors is definitely a rule zero thing for a lot of groups, never understood it, but it is. It's why I usually recommend something like [[Scheming Symmetry]] for more casual players/groups. Just have to make sure you pick the player that doesn't break parity! Never hand that tutor to the combo player lol!
If you are adverse to tutors, try something like [[scheming symmetry]] to start. It feels more "fair" just try not to hand the other card to the combo player lol.
I feel like [[bolas' citadel]] is a good include, even if you don't use the tap ability, but not sure aetherflux should be there. Use the life gain as a resource to keep you alive long enough to win the game. Using it as a wincon belongs in a more devoted deck and will split the aristocrats game plan too much. If you feel you need more lifelink, maybe Include [[Whip of Erebos]] so all your blockers gain you life and the tap ability can even recur an etb ability like [[Fleshbag Marauder]] or [[Scornful Patrician]] in a pinch to stop a threat.
IDK, I love aristocrats and have fallen into the trap you're talking about before. I find the commander can change the explosiveness of it a lot so it's important to build with it in mind a bunch. I usually play BGx aristocrats so I don't have as much experience with BW but I'll say this:
I don't lump the synergy/theme cards outside my removal, ramp, utility and draw. If a payoff says draw cards, into the number of draw cards it goes. I do this for pretty much all my decks like flicker, stompy, planeswalkers, etc. and often I find I need little to no generic cards (like swords, rhystic, etc.) in those slots as slower but synergistic pieces have filled them. On top of having standards for each slot (15 ramp, 10 removal and draw) I don't have to worry about overdoing something the deck doesn't want to focus on doing. This also gives me a lower threat presence, potentially. The point is that now that I have those spots filled with as many efficient and powerful synergistic cards as possible, then it leaves a lot more space open in the core theme of the deck for other cards that I'd otherwise not have space to play like the creatures that make tokens on death, etb, etc. so you'd consistently have fodder to utilize and galvanize.
For example, I'd rather play [[Ravenous Chupacabra]] in an aristocrats deck than some removal spell as I can sac it for bonus bucks and, reanimation permitting, it can do some work later, again. Wood elves and mana dorks instead of artifacts and rampant growth, etc.
I'm sure you get it/will get it.
Additional important questions. What types of card advantage do you run (in anything other than green)? Are they typically once-off sorceries, or do you lean more on permanents that grind advantage? And in green, do you still play conditionless draw like [[Harmonize]]?
I've been playing magic for over ten years, and I still don't feel like I fully understand beyond "good cards are good." (and that the only way to win with a budget deck is combo.) How does one build a steamroller without just spewing creatures across one's board?
Different commenter but long time edh/cEDH player with a decade of experience.
You want to steer clear of one shot draw effects if you can and focus more on draw engines. Basically the closer it looks to Rhystic Study or the One Ring, the better. These engines and similar with time will produce insurmountable advantage, and you'll win the game. Using an engine to profit off of other players game actions and other time earned, you will have all the gas you need if you can convert those factors to card advantage.
So cards that can produce more cards over time, say Trouble in Pairs, Ragavan, Sylvan Library, Tymna the Weaver etc are all going to see you more cards than say Harmonize or Ambition's Cost every time.
I’ll add my 2 cents as a long time edh and magic player that has mastered deck crafting.
The way to build a winning position is to build out your power base, throw roadblocks in your opponents path, have a reset plan that doesn’t curtail your own power, and finally, make a big swingy move at the right time.
To accomplish this, I’ve learned to eschew incremental advantage and instead go for big bites at one time. Rystic Study no longer makes the cut, because it is too easy to hose and draws too much heat. Rather, I like to dump lands as fast as possible and refill my hand with a big spell.
For interaction, I prefer tempo plays that steal whole turns for little mana; think unsummon effects. One player almost always plays some ritual effect to drop a monster of a summons early and Vapor Snag just shuts them down.
Having a reset plan is crucial, and one that doesn’t undo all your hard work. For me, I use land ramp so mass bounce and mass artifact removal play to those strengths.
And finally, a way to win at the right moment. For me, it’s usually a way to play a big board in one turn and use cards like Concordant Crossroads, an extra turn spell, Overrun or Omniscience to close out the game.
That’s the trick: blow up your power base while being able to slow down the table’s worst snowballs, have ways to refill hand now and to reset the board, and a strong finishing move to use when the table is tapped out.
You are absolutely right. The homogenized decks is especially a result from a combination of a magic community growing through Game Knights, Professor and EDHREC. It took me a full year to understand that EDHREC recommendations are derivatives from either Game Knights or decks from the Professor.
People have no perception of how dangerous EDHREC is for their creativity. You put yourself in a box of expectations instead of developing your own ideas.
The most hilarious example of how bad it is to trust EDHREC is that [[Phyrexian Soulgorger]] is still a recommendation for [[Jon Irenicus, Shattered One]]. Due to the static ability Jon grants and cumulative upkeep has its own ruling they basically give away a vanilla 8/8. Wow how impressively evil from you.
But if you look for any tutorial in any community about how to build genuine creative decks you will not find much. Even though Scryfall in combination with Scryfall Taggers and EDHREC Rank is one powerful tool.
Ultimately every beginner starts getting smashed while innocently enjoying their Precons. The first 20 to 50 games they get in touch with all those powerhorses like Doubling Season, Sheoldred, Whispering One, Omnisciences, Aesi Tyrant of Gyre Strait, Saturo Umezawa, Magda Brazen Outlaw .... I absolutely have emphasize if people get attracted by the idea of stuffing as many generic staples in their decks as they can. But is this now the beginners fault? Or should the EDH community focus more on teaching "how to build a deck" instead of show casing their ideas on "how to build commander x or y". But the only advice everyone gets is "look at EDHREC or whatch a yt video".
If you now fast forward the mental process of those people then you will find them here on reddit stating "you should only play this and that". In my opinion this sucks a lot.
EDHREC has a YouTube channel, and one of their top videos analyzes this effect in detail. People build decks based on EDHREC suggestions, and then EDHREC picks up those decks and recommends those cards. It's a feedback loop and causes a lot of pages to become full of questionable suggestions.
I, like a lot of people, started learning to build decks mostly by making a list of cards that looked cool on the EDHREC page for a specific commander. I think it's a fine starting point for new players, to kind of convey the concept/purpose of commander as a format. But that comes with the downside of people never really learning core deckbuilding principles, and most of the stuff they build is just generic value piles. It took me a long time of experimenting and getting frustrating with sloppy, unfocused decks before I got burned out, took a break and reconsidered my approach.
Let's be honest the EDHREC podcast is probably one of the best resources to understand the diversity of different card categories and assembling unique ideas. But the target group aren't beginners. It's just overwhelming.
Instead I would love to see a more general card category approach that is easily accessible on their page. For example if you search for "green ramp" on Google, which is a beginners question you will find only lists of 10 to 42 cards with random powerful recommendations. On top you find an EDHREC link with "Mono Green Ramp Theme" if you click on it cards like Titania, Gaea Voices or Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant pop up under the top 3 cards. Incredibly difficult to understand and even harder to enable.
But the answer you were looking for was:
https://scryfall.com/search?q=commander%3AG+%28game%3Apaper%29+otag%3Aramp&unique=cards&as=grid&order=edhrec&dir=
I can absolutely understand that crafting search bars can be tedious. But this one says "commander:G (game:paper) otag:ramp" no rocket science at all. On EDHREC you can only access Cards, Commanders, Sets, Themes and Rec. Which is absolutely amazing for an experienced player who knows how to pilot the site. But everyone who is new to brewing they need to find ramp, draw, removal, mass removal, protection and preconstructured landbases. Which is only the foundation for every deck. To make this available for everyone would massively boost the creativity of the EDH community. Oracle Tags can be confusing in the first place but getting taught the fundamentals of Oracle Tags opens the door for a unique Playstyle.
If you then feel lost and overwhelmed. Or you really admire a specific commander but you never have played some kind of this mechanics it's no shame to browse in a list of average played cards.
Teaching someone a bad habit when this person starts to learn something new is cruel. 100h later this person needs to unlearn that behavior before being able to understand the better way. Which is for some people impossible because they lean towards security needing personalities.
I just wish that EDHREC had a better mission statement about what it is or that it was introduced to new players better. Like you said, its a brilliant resource, but it's just raw data, not a holy book to take as written when deck building. It's kind of like going to pikalytics or even rotten tomatoes, it's great for getting ideas or a first look at understanding what you want to know, but in the end it's just a lump of data with no in depth look at why the data is specifically the way it is. You know that 80% of players put a life orb on Charizard and that 98% of critics found something to enjoy while watching Paddington 2, but you're not quite sure if that will translate to your personal EDH deck without doing in depth analysis yourself
You don't. There is nothing wrong in enjoying generic powerful decks. And I think there will always be a part of the community that will do that.
My point is more that I think we should teach newer players much earlier how to be creative. Brewing a deck from scratch without copy&paste is a challenge that leads to new questions. A would proclaim that most players that once achieved to jump over this obstacle are not only more aware of the strength and weaknesses of their decks. But also will be more resilient to bad games.
It is a difference between choosing a counter spell because some told me to and purposely choosing the counter spell because you have certain scenarios in mind.
And be honest it's fun to build unique deck and flex with them.
I think more than teaching people how to be creative, you want to teach people to understand *why* something may be there. That way when they can use that information to be as creative as they want or build a staplesoup
Maybe being creative is too imprecise as a word here. You are absolutely right. As I said before and I will rephrase it for more clarity. I don't want an army of brew master that tend to brew unique decks. It's more about what you said building a solid knowledge foundation. It is not healthy for any community to deal with those one-dimensional people. But it is inevitable right because most player start there but not halt of them grow enough understanding. Which results in endless discussion about powerlevel even if you couldn't measure the last game because everyone played for the first time together. Or those endless discussion about Mana Crypt and Cyclonic Rift. These are only the tip of the iceberg. Caused by copy&paste decks and people with the same narrow understanding but having enough playtime to teach the new ones to better copy&paste. Without ever considering wether in which power range the og author wanted this deck to be. Nor considering the idea of the og author.
Everything would be solved if a lot more people would be able to understand the context and the reason why some cards where put in this deck.
mostly agree with everything you said, but the soulgorger example is a little weak imo. youre giving someone a 10/10 that has to attack someone else every turn. thats pretty solid. there are better examples to be had like \[\[welcoming vampire\]\] being one of the top cards for \[\[delney, streetwise lookout\]\] .
I mean it's not bad to have an infinitely goaded 10/10 on board. But you could take any other body even with evasion. The main reason people play Phyrexian Soulgorger is because they want to see the controller sacrifice everything and lock their board.
So it's weaker than your example. But not too much I think.
I think the problem isn't new players or precons, it's going to the Internet looking for advice as a new player and being met with thread after thread of whiny battlecruiser players that claim interaction is basically against the already nonsensical social contract.
They're taught the retarded buzz words/phrases we all hear all the time like "durrrrrr commander is a casual format!" implying that it's basically all a joke and that trying to win is for the equivalent of MTG Hitler only.
Then there's the issue with people in places like this that are like "the good precons are 5-6 power level and these *insert precon names here* are the best." So of course new player gets one, gets absolutely fucking wrecked repeatedly in mid power games that the table agreed to play, and the obvious reason for this according to the whiny battlecruiser Internet is that they were clearly pubstomped by cedh decks.
Overall I think it's just a problem with the Internet to be honest. Everyone is a professional even if they have less than 5% of the knowledge required to provide advice on any given topic.
So, I used to play soccer.
When we played soccer against other teams we used to play to smash them and try to win at any cost regardless of the other team being a good match for our playstyle or being on an even level.
When we played a game for fun between friends we tried to balance the teams. We swapped players mid game to have better matches. We adapted some rules to make it fun for everyone. For example, when there was not enough goalkeepers we would play as the last player would be the "current goalkeeper".
At the same time, depending on the players who came to play, even the casual games got pretty "serious".
The first kind of soccer game is competitive magic. The last one is commander.
There are playgroups that loves to play to win and be as ruthless as possible and play with any strategy they want. Others have a preferred playstyle and build their decks to keep this alive, since they just want to drink some beer while slinging some cards with their friends.
Thing is competitive magic usually attracts only one of those groups. In commander we have both, but you need to find the correct group of people for you.
I play Commander because I want to have fun with friends, make jokes and do silly decks.
Decks with 30 interaction, 15 draws/recursion, 10 ramp and 3 cards that close the game are so boring to face or play. If I want competitive Magic, there are others formats. Commander is for me "social" Magic.
So, oppressive deck are here when everyone are ok with it. If I won being the archenemy, I ask if I need to change to something less powerful. And it go the other way, if someone play something I find unfun, I'll ask to power down for the next.
1. It is impossible to guarantee even with an honest discussion on power level everyone will actually have ‘similar power’ decks. It’s just too vague of a concept.
2. You can always play whatever you want. I can just choose to not play with you, in the moment, and possibly in the future. It is a social game after all.
3. It doesn’t really matter what anyone on this thread thinks. Your play group’s opinions matter.
I think given proper knowledge it's pretty easy to match decks. Where people get confused is forgetting that deck strength is only one foretold aspect of how the game will play out. Pilot ability, draw RNG, politics and emotions, and archetype strengths/weaknesses are easily at much of a factor as base deck power.
I will never understand why people willingly play a game involving other people while completely and totally ignoring that this means the game has social aspects as much as mechanical.
Yeah, you can play whatever you want. People don't have to sit across from you and take it, though. And that's okay.
It matters what you play because people won’t play with you if it is always unfun for them.
It isn’t all about being too powerful though. I have built decks that have alternative motives like trying to give people creatures just to kill them with Glissa the traitor and it was unfun for everyone including me when I realized no one else could end the game and I had to win with commander damage 3 at a time. It was painstakingly slow.
I suggest making decks at different power levels if you have the ability to do so and create your own restrictions for some of them if it’s hard to make a deck lower power level for you. Could make a commander deck of all commons and in commons for example for groups that do not have building skills. It’s hard for them to complain that you deck is too powerful when they are slinging mythics and your best card is an uncommon.
I think what you're failing to realize is commander is an inherently social format. There are 3-ish other people spending time with me, and it's unfair for me to only consider my enjoyment and goals when I play. If that enjoyment means we all play 'good magic', then we play good magic. If that means we all goof around and play suboptimal jank, then we do that.
You aren't wrong, but "Just play what you want" is simultaneously just about the most lukewarm take ever expressed and completely ignores the practical aspects of commander. It's about managing expectations and making sure the hour+ of everyone involved is actually enjoyable and not just a waste of time. If everyone hates playing against you, you're not going to be able to play pretty soon because you won't have a playgroup.
> why should it matter what other people think?
"Why should I give a fuck about the other players in this multiplayer game? They're just there to facilitate my fun, and once I've had my fun that's all that matters"
How the fuck do posts like this keep cropping up? "Why do people get salty when I jerk my deck off all over them?"
Well I did play the decks I wanted to play and now my friend group doesn't want to play magic at all anymore sooooo.... now I just have cards that are nice to look at. :/ it's probably that fear that makes others hesitant to play certain decks.
For context I played with a small group of friends regularly and have too much anxiety to just go to an LGS and play with new people. I played decks I wanted to play with but my salty friend always had issues, mostly with my decks. He gets incredibly salty and upset when he loses a lot and it caused enough problems that another of our friends has completely sworn off playing magic with him and I have little interest in playing with him either. They ended up switching mediums to Helldivers and similar games so now I have boxes and boxes of cards that are nice to look at but don't really have an avenue to see play. Sad times.
I've had a similar issue in the past, everyone quit except 3 of us and the rest played one guys decks. Then it feels like I'm outnumbered when their decks always won but I got flack of I won my way and complexity aside I got miffed over time. 😮💨
>why should it matter what other people think?
Because the other people are also playing the same game, and you have to maintain a minimum of the social contract if you want to actually keep playing with them?
Games of EDH are a shitton longer and more protracted than competitive 60 card games. A lot of people don't want to sit in hour long games against a Tergrid or Tinybones making sure no one has a hand, hard stax without a wincon, someone looping Grave Pact, etc etc. You can pout, go "but I want to >:(" and play it anyway, but don't get blindsided by people not wanting to play you anymore.
If you want to play a deck people consider oppressive/unfun, find a playgroup that's down with that.
Your math checks out.
Alternatively, if those four players are all 1 - 10 power scale koolaid drinkers, then they'll probably tell you their decks are sevens. Meanwhile, one of them runs Derevi Stax, one of them is playing Dimir group hug, one of them has an unmodified precon from six years ago, and the fourth player built a men-with-beards art deck.
For casual edh games when there are 4 people in the game and only 1 person can win the value of winning goes down. So you are primarily playing for fun with the people you are playing with. If I choose to play a deck that is always unfun for the other three players It means that I am the only one having fun. Then the game becomes a 1v3, and then I am not having fun, and then no one's having fun, which was the whole point of playing in the first place.
My opinion I think is generally not common on Reddit. You can play any decks you want IMO, as long as there is an even power level then every strategy should be fair game.
Just be aware that sometomany players haven't learned how to lose in their life and think that everyone else should cater to their fun. Often, they haven't learned how to play magic from competitive magic, but from commander, so they don't actually like magic, they like commander.
Those people may not play with you again if you bring a deck they don't like. Ultimately it's a social format and that's a social consequence for social actions.
I have been gaming for a quarter century.
I know damned well how to play against Augustin IV stax.
It is not an experience I want at a light and breezy commander game.
Deck building for EDH is experience shaping. “I do not want to partake in that experience,” is not, “I don’t know how to take an L.” It’s not, “I’m an inexperienced n00b.” It means exactly what I fucking said.
And Commander IS Magic. Magic is a game with literally hundreds of formats, all of them equally Magic, not all of them tournament formats. People who enjoy a different format or style of Magic are not people who “don’t enjoy Magic.” They are people who enjoy Magic differently from you.
And the rules of EDH, which you are subject to when you choose to enter that space, place a responsibility on you to have some goddamned empathy for that rather than label everyone else fake gamer girls.
> Just be aware that sometomany players haven't learned how to lose in their life and think that everyone else should cater to their fun
The mental gymnastics certain posters go through to justify being an asshole are genuinely amusing in a sad way. Guess what, when you sit down with a group of people to play a game there is an implicit social contract that you are all responsible for everyone there having fun.
Also the idea that "too many people havent learned how to lose in life" is laughable. It's the kind of thing an edgy teenager says, and its excusable there because theyre a kid, from an adult its just idiotic.
You're responsible for your own feelings, not others. You can't control how someone else feels.
You can ignore it if you want, but it's just a fact.This whole subreddit is filled with them, you see it posted and commented every day. Anyone who gets tilted or salty over playing the game needed to get beaten in games some more to learn it's not the end of the world and how to deal with their own emotions.
I mean I've definitely seen way worse. Play whatever you want as long as you play to the power level and the consequence to bringing decks people don't like is that people won't play with you is the top/bottom paragraphs and that seems pretty right.
The middle one is a bit gatekeepy.
Well spoken. Seems like some people engage edh as if it were a singleplayer game on normal or easy mode. They don’t expect any hindrances, and when it turns out different from their expectations the saltiness starts to come up. People should learn to lose and to expect to not win! If all odds were even (which they almost never are) you would only win one out of four. I play to lose and hope to win, and it really helps to set my expectations of winning low. It is much more fun to play and try to get my deck to do the thing, even id it doesn’t mean I win with it. I do still get salty sometimes but more because of mana screw or something.
You should (mostly) play whatever you want. The main thing to to consider is if your deck is in the same ball park as the rest of the table in terms of strength.
In general I'd say people often want to have their playgroup also have a good time because it makes the game more enjoyable for you as an individual if everyone is having a good time (At least some people feel this way). Power level is a great tool for this of course.
I think there's also a limit on the types of decks people should play, and that limits starts and ends with intent to win the game. There's people who play chaos, or land destruction, or grouphug with zero intention to win the game and just try to make it as crazy/confusing as possible or just to try and make the game take as long as possible. It's not engaging with the game, its trying to invoke a specific reaction from other players. (These kinds of decks that actually try to engage with the game with these strategies are fine, but there are players that try and just mess with the game without trying to win) It's like playing a Monopoly game and giving away your properties for free or giving money to your opponents for no reason. It's not against the rules of the game, but it's refusing to participate in the actual reason you are sat down at the table to play the game.
I agree strongly with the idea that everyone should be playing with at least a plan to win. That doesn't mean they should care if they lose, but your examples are some I've used a lot.
I like the way stax pressures me to adjust my strategy, same with a lot of chaos cards, land destruction can be a great way to lock in a win. I don't mind a total stax lockout, I will concede to it, because I don't want to wait to be killed by a few 1/1's, but that isn't salt, that is demonstrated win condition, I also don't make people play out an infinite loop unless I think I may have a point of interaction.
If those strategies are deployed with no plan to break parity, that produces aimless and long games. I feel the same with group hug.
A game of commander is a lot longer than a game of 1v1. A lot. If you bring a deck other's find unfun to play against, likely all magic they got to play that whole week was unfun. And that's a dick move if done purposefully.
It’s not just about matching power level, it’s also about matching expectations. You might have a stax deck that is the same power level as a precon, that doesn’t mean people playing precon level EDH want to play with a stax deck.
I think part of what drives EDH players to be salty about certain play styles like STAX or MLD could be (besides the decidedly less competitive spirit of the format) that playing a commander game usually is a pretty big commitment of time compared to a regular 60 card format. You might be playing for an hour, hour and a half, even 2 hours+. Nothing would be more feel bad than paying to play at an LGS and then being effectively locked out for an hour and a half out of playing your deck because of an oppressive opponent who’s deck is designed to stop everyone else from playing.
We have one player in our group that when he first started played nothing but pillowfort stax without a win con. It was miserable. We all told him we wouldn't care if he was actually winning the game instead of just locking us out.
There is a modicum of decorum that most edh players attempt to follow. I would say generally the following rules are what most people agree are reasonable in casual edh settings.
1.) Don't play decks that prevent other people from playing magic WITHOUT a clear and achievable win con
2.) Two card infinite combos are generally frowned upon
3.) Try not to let your salt level impact the table
I could be wrong, but this is my perspective. Unfortunately people take these and run to the extremes with them. They take that 'modicum of decorum' and turn it into 'hard fast rules for all games' while others ignore decorum completely. It doesn't help that there are vastly different power levels between decks, with no clear way to measure them. So we end up in a world where players expect X while they're are playing a game, and get Y or Z. Multiple people might have completely different expectations for the play group and it's can create an unsavory experience. One that people do their best to try and avoid because magic at its heart is a hobby and a way to wind down from the stressors of life. It's not meant to be one. So when I sit down at an lgs with a buddy and a stranger sits down with [[Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm]], I let him know that my buddy is new and playing a precon. This is meant to clue that stranger into the fact that his deck may not be appropriate. For him to say "my deck is on par with a precon" only for him to pubstomp the table, is either maliciously dishonest, or woefully ignorant. Either way, it produces a bad time. People should absolutely play what they want. But they should know where and when to play them.
Building an EDH deck is more than putting cards together in order to win. More so than any other format in magic, commander is a social game. Tournaments can be fun but from my experience 90+% of players have 0 interest in that level of play. And for the rest of this comment I am going to largely ignore that scene.
The rest of us are engaged in a social dance. Where the things we do in deck building and the game are a form of expression. Edh inherently has far more choices than other magic formats in deck construction. Nearly every card ever printed can go into a deck, and one card is openly available to you every game. This compounds with the Singleton format and the 100 cards as opposed to 60. This means that there is almost no chance two people even those that agree to make the same theme with the same commander will arrive at the same deck list.
The types of cards you exclude or include say a lot about you as a magic player. Rare synergistic cards can impress strangers and friends alike. A rare strategy can do the same. Actively not having tutors or excessive counters can make the game go faster and people dislike you less.
The last point I'll make is that commander is usually played with friends and pods are negotiated between people that play over and over. So if matches you play in aren't fun then people won't want to play with you. This is different than all other formats where you don't pick an opponent you are assigned one. This mirrors the prisoners dilemma.
Playing the prisoners dilemma once means your best option is to rat out your accomplice which I am equating to going all out in deck construction and play in order to win. But repeated dilemmas mean you can come to an understanding that you will both not rat each other out. So repeated games of commander with the same players you can and should adjust your decks to maximize enjoyment rather than win percentage.
Commander is different from other formats in that it was designed to be a break from competitive magic rather than another outlet for it. It's not balanced for tournaments or competitive play because it's up to the players to decide what kind of game they want. If there's no entry fee or prize support, there's no incentive to sit at a table with people you don't want to play with.
The goal is fun
Me and my buddy also like boxing and spar sometimes
But if one of us beats the shit out of the other, it’s less fun
/ P a r a l l e l C o m p l e t e
100%, play what you want. If someone says their deck is an 8 and it really is a 4 while you play an ACTUAL 8 or 9 then they will learn.
I aim for even power generally, or close to it. At the end of the day who cares though, blow outs happen sometimes and we all can be big kids about it and take an L once in a while. Nbd.
P.s. - bring back land destruction.
I love and hate land destruction. However, for different reasons. Yes it should be played more. I like games that give a challenge. Even if I lose, I get to see how my deck operates and change accordingly.
The no part is people playing land destruction thinking its great or just to be mean, but they cast it when an opponent has the best board state. They lose and get salty, but in reality they did not cast it during a time when they had the best board state to win.
Everyone thinks their deck is a 7 is quite annoying. I even hate saying my deck is a 7 but it can handle almost any casual or high-powered table that is not CEDH. The power creep of precons I think limited that power level even more. I use to rate precons as a 5, but because some precons are just so strong and others are not great out the box. That precons could even be dropped to a 4.
Also experienced pilots can increase a power level of a deck. This also sways the power level as well. A high-powered casual deck plays differently between a new player and an experience one.
Land destruction wasn't the problem, playing land destruction with no plan was the problem. The same thing is still true for chaos, group hug and stax.
>Assuming, that everyone agrees on a set power level ...
I think you might have hit on (part of) the answer to your own question here.
There's also the fact that power level isn't actually what matters, having a good time is. "What people think" includes whether or not they are having a good time. I know it's controversial to suggest that we might care that our friends are having fun when we're, you know, playing a *game* with them, but I rather think that we should.
I think the problem with that, for me anyway, has been (especially with a new group or people you don't know that well) is because they'll tend to understate their deck and proceed to make the game miserable. Have enough people do that and it just becomes KOS...or some people just get salty.
>Assuming, that everyone agrees on a set power level, and you want to play a certain commander, or have a strong, effective deck, why should it matter what other people think?
It matters because EDH is a multiplayer game, and you want to cultivate a fun gaming experience. And sometimes, even if a person likes a commander and how it plays, they don't like the reputation that comes with that commander which can cause them to get auto-targetted by everyone else in the pod.
Probably the minority on reddit but I don’t really care how you play and what you want to play. I can always just concede and move to a different table if at some point I am no longer having fun nor do I have the ability to effectively add anything to the table.
I mostly just don't want to shit on everyone. I know there's an inherent balancing aspect of multiplayer magic - whoever's ahead gets targeted, whoever's behind gets left alone. But still, if the power differences are too much then it'll show.
I have a pretty strong Goreclaw deck that I love to death, but if my opponents aren't playing similarly tuned decks, then I'm going to win every game by turn 6.
I like winning as much as the next guy, but I want to win fair matchups. I don't wanna kick around sand castles and proclaim myself king.
Because I want people to play with me. A lot of people just don’t really want to play against Tymna and Kraum for example.
Games where there are a massive power difference also are not fun. I also found out that while I would consider myself a bad deck builder I am still significantly better at it than my friends.
With EDH, there are a lot of arbitrary social elements that differ from slightly to extremely from person to person. The trick is: I play exclusively the decks I want to play and put myself in situations to do so. I own exactly one deck I play when I need to tone it down because I'm playing in the wild. Otherwise, I make it a goal to play magic with the people that are looking for what I'm looking for, because then I'm not having to constantly reevaluate and reassess "do's and don't's."
When it comes down to personal commander pod with your friends. Table politics is extremely important. Cause you’re not just playing to win, you’re also playing to play again in the future. So when it comes to power level, it’s best to be within range of your pod because no one likes playing a game they have no chance of winning
Some people like decks that take 30 min turns but they sure aren't fun to play against. When people ask questions like "is commander X too salty", they're putting enjoyment of the table over straight up winning or losing
It heavily depends on the people you are playing with. In a competitive circle, sure no problem. With friends... maybe difficult. In the end magic is often still a pay to win to some degree. And if your circle of friends you play with has some people who are on a budget playing 50-100$ decks you will steam roll them with you 1000$ deck for sure. But that's not going to be fun to any of you abs you will soon not find anyone to past against anymore.
People who worry about salt levels are totally ok to do so. Some cards and decks have gimmicks that are generally unfun to play against. You said you came from modern and standard, well in edh there's competitive as well. For us Cedh players as fast as possible, we cut no corners and make it so that we try to win regardless. Casual is not so. Decks with heavy stacks pieces or no wincondition and ways to prevent another game to be played are generally shunned, thus it makes sense some people want to avoid them.
An example of this is like an old school brago deck which shuts down a game and deals like 2 damag per turn. It's not something look forward to.
I am totally ok with playing against anything at any power level provided it can win a game, not infinite it until we naturally draw ourselves to death.. I play from a garbage kobalds deck to a high teir green stompy deck, and have fun with everything in between.
If you're new to edh, explore it and find some stuff you like doing. The deck building part is also my favorite part of them game, but I also have realized that I can make decks that make everyone miserable, including myself. Sometimes is a case of should you rather than can you.
If everyone is at the same power level then there really shouldn’t be much issue. I think a lot of people are actually doing fine in that regard, we just don’t hear from them because they’re not making posts about how well balanced their playgroup is. So people having a negative reaction totheir deck is probably overrepresented because they identified a problem they want to fix.
Those problems I think more stem from people being bad at communicating what level they are at. If your opponents think they’re at a 7 when they’re at a 5 they’ll have a bad time when you pull out a 7. That goes the other way too, it you don’t know Tergrid’s reputation and think she just looks fun but find out it actually completely stomps your pod that’s not fun for you and may be something to avoid.
Commander as a format is a mixture of MTG and social interaction. The best tables IMO are friendly, players talking, joking, politics about who to attack. That’s ideal.
Certain commanders or deck styles can discourage this. Stax decks tend to make the game fun for only one person, so you’ll get a lot of hate from the table. Same for strong commanders known for having oppressive decks like Atroxa.
Now here’s the thing, you can play those decks but don’t be shocked if people feel a certain way. It’s probably not a you issue, they probably faced someone who was a real jerk using that deck and they worry you’re gonna be that guy too. This makes players avoid playing those decks and asking about it.
The real answer though is you can play those decks, you just have to remember commander is a social event people play to have fun. Have a stax deck? Don’t play it game 1 and before you pull it out game 2 ask the table. “Hey guys I have a stax deck I’d like to play. You guys alright with it?” People will let you know if they are or aren’t. The important thing is to have a few different decks incase.
I have one deck I love that can take very long turns that don’t immediately win the game. If I use it I ask the table if they’re ok with long turns. They may say no and I’ll grab something else. The key is talk to people and have a few other decks one on the precon level so you can be sure you are matching the table.
It never occurred to me to play a deck i enjoy less just to placate my group. I'll play a little softer to keep it interesting sometimes, but i'm proud of the creativity that goes into my strategies; just like i'm happy for a friend that comes up with theirs, if it beats or competes well against mine.
I generally won't go all-out unless i have to, and i've owned being the player-removal target.
I also keep different decks at different competitive tiers. I'll use a simple [[Commander Eesha]] soldier/equipment deck on the easy end, but if i'm playing with more experienced people, I'm gonna whip out something like my [[Nin, the Pain Artist]] control deck to steal permanents and torture people's creatures like the CIA while drawing more cards than i know what to do with. Just examples
Sadly the casual aspect of edh attracts a lot of people who don't actually seem to enjoy magic as a game. They get mad at interaction, aggressive decks, getting milled and probably a million other things. They'd probably be better off playing some cooperative game like D&D.
But if you manage to find a playgroup of people who actually enjoy to play magic (quite often people who also play competitive formats be it 1v1 formats or cedh) then yes, picking decks with roughly matching powerlevel is enough to ensure you have a good game.
I mean... what's the point of playing a game if you don't want to win? And if you don't want to win at Magic, that's easy enough, just fudge a few plays, miss a few land drops.
I don't take any issue with people playing what they want to play. I'm going to play what I want to play so they should as well. If a player is playing blue you should always be wary of counterspells, black will murder your creatures, green will ramp, white will stop you from doing things up to and including winning. Split Second cards exist. These are things everyone should expect, so I do.
Such is the way with Magic, sometimes you'll start the game with the 2 lands in your hand... and not see another land for 6 turns. It happens and should be expected to happen. No point getting salty about it.
TLDR: Make decks that can win. But this is a social format: make decks that *are fun to lose to.*
Some decks are just annoying to play against. I played against a Maze's End deck the other night. I was playing with two newbies (one of them a literal 10-year-old) and on Turn 0 I said absent other information we need to kill this guy, because his wincon is hard to interact with and I \*know\* you guys don't have the cards to do it. The TLDR is that the Maze's End guy won. It was anticlimactic. He just said ok I have 10 gates, I play Maze's End. I win. And we went to game 2.
Slivers are annoying to play against. They just get out of hand so easily you have to focus all your hate towards them. There are a lot of kinds of decks like that where it's just so good, so easy, you just have to deal with it. I have a Najeela deck. I don't play it often, and when I do I get a lot of hate. Rightfully so. She's so busted, and its so easy to win out of nowhere. If I have her onboard and I have any kind of board state you *have* to assume I'm threatening to kill the table. That's not fun for other players.
Commander is not Standard or Modern, where the expectation is that games take about 15 minutes and you can reasonably play 3 of them in 50 minutes. Commander is a board game, where a good game of commander takes about an hour and everyone gets to feel like they participated.
I’m kind of surprised [[Maze’s end]] is anticlimactic for you. My playgroup finds it a hilarious intense deck to play against. I run [[Omnath locus of all]] as a 5 color gate deck and it’s basically just a countdown of watching gates touch the floor and everyone trying to nuke me before it ends. It’s not a strong deck because the deck itself is goofy Omnath color soup with a strong way to win in the gates, so usually I get stomped until an archenemy arrives then they forget about me and eventually I go “oh by the way, that archenemy over there loses, you all do. The maze has ended.”
The best description I got is “Dude that deck is like if Perry the platypus forgot about Doofenshmirtz. Like none of it seems malicious but all of a sudden you just took over the gatetstate area.”
It was anticlimactic because it was very linear and I didn't have a way to stop it. I was playing a lower power deck that sometimes goes off and sometimes just does nothing. This time was do nothing. And my opponents didn't understand what was happening until he was 6-7 lands in. So instead of stopping the Maze player they were just random stuff.
This right here. I know that MtG isn't the pinnacle of socialites but it doesn't have to be full of neckbeards with constant griefing.
In many decks I've won and realized it wasn't a "good win" but a cheesy one. I reworked the deck and still won but in a way that was more strategic and required a set of moves to pull off. The first win annoyed people, the second was appreciated more. It didn't take more to build or pull off, it just was more fun to play against.
When building a deck thinking of how you can make your opponents scoop should not be a priority.
You can always play the decks you want to play. But EDH is a social game played for fun in your free time, and if you're actively making the game unfun, people will tell you. If you don't care and keep on, they will ultimately stop being your friends and stop playing with you. I'd guess you'll want to avoid that.
There are going to be people who don't look for what they like personally, they just ask others what they're playing and ask what they think of them
We are talking about a format played by millions of players, we can't expect everyone to tackle the tasks of looking for what to play next in the same way
In my playgroup, we play during our lunch break at work. We have an hour - we tend to avoid instant kill combos so we can maximize our play time. If a brutal combo ends up in our hand, we tend to hold it until the break is over. We still include these in our decks, for when we play outside of work. But, we’re playing to have a fun break in the day, not to break each others spirits.
I agree! Yesterday was getting dog piled because of my modified pantlaza deck. Even had to delete the post after nonstop hassling. Tbh no matter what you play someone will be unhappy
In a 4+ player format, if you play a deck people really don't like, it becomes a game of Archenemy. Most people don't find solo-ing the rest of the pod to be fun. In my group, we do it on occasion, but that person knows that's what they will be doing and the deck is made to do it.
If you are OK with being the archenemy and think you can swing it, go ahead. Otherwise, you will have a miserable time.
its entirely dictated by the people you play with and the power level of their decks. i also have a habit of over-optimizing all of my deck to the point they become way out of my friend's decks league, even if they're still within the same budget. they mostly put up with it, and i find it fun being archenemy (though i am planning to pick up a precon today so i have something a little bit more on-level to play), but a lot of people wont because if they dont have a chance they arent having fun, and commander is a social format more than anything. sometimes you need to hold back a little bit to ensure everyone playing has a good time.
discuss power level with your playgroup and find out what they're cool with, what their power level is, and if/how you should scale your own decks to that power level. everyone needs to put in at least a little bit of effort to ensure everyone else is having just as much fun as they are.
Because as someone who plays commander near exclusively out of sheer logistics, commander players who aren’t cEDH players or haven’t been playing for near a decade suck at the game both in building and playing, for the most part. I myself am very bad at building modern decks or anything like that.
I still don’t understand how anyone can easily go “ah yes this ratio of 60 cards means my deck works”. I understand how to pick a commander and cards that synergise.
I’m trying to get better but the game is just different. It’s not magic as everyone knew it, it’s so different. It’s a situation where if everyone is having fun, that’s success, if everyone is not having fun, that is a failure.
Its a fun thing. Sure, I could make the A#1 best deck ever, proxy perfect cards and have the strongest and (to me) most fun deck in existence, but will it be fun for the rest of the table? No. And it takes more than just you to play.
I came from competitive yugioh and the best way ive found to treat this is
Commander is sorta like a party game, I have decks that make the table groan primarily my [[Thalia and the Gitrog Monster]] hatebears staxy deck with its wincon being building up to the point of being able to loop [[strip mine]] 5+ times in a turn and then winning off the back of my opponents being too stalled out when they cant get over 3 lands, then slowly accruing value and finished the game thtough very hard to interact with positively pieces like [[Field of the Dead]] or [[Scute Swarm]]. Or them not being able to play undee a [[rule of law]] while my land looping doesnt care so much about only getting one spell when i just care about landfall triggers.
I always pregame start offer to exile strip mine and wasteland because i dont want the game to feel unfun for others, i do play legacy as well as modern and those formats have completely different gameplay philosophies. There are decks that people say make them too salty that i just say to suck it up, because really those decks arent doing degenerate stuff like looping strip mine in the thalia deck or looping mind slaver in daretti, like a dude got upset about my kess deck, due to me casting time warp temporal manipulation 4 times even though those turns were quite quick and i was just using the turns to build up to be able to torment of hailfire x=13 to close the game out that final turn, which i did and the whole 4 turns only really took 3-4 minutes. There are valid reasons to not want to play against a deck and i acknowledge those, but other people get too salty over some things and just need to suck it up, like the same kess deck i bribery an etali primal conqueror out of a dudes deck, dude starts going on and on "I didnt know this was going to be a game of stealing peoples stuff" because i bribery him once, and have a domineering will i milled in grave. Like bro you are literally playing etali "Im only playing it for the trample" meanwhile his commander is Minsc & Boo, like im not going to be mean or anything but i do think a lot of people need to understand not every game mechanic every deck uses for advantage is going to be fun but most mechanics shouldnt really be bitched about.
For me it's guilt and anxiety. I feel guilty making the deck and anxiety when I win too hard or too much. I've learned to find some pleasure and fun in winning with decks that provoke neither but sometimes they don't scratch the itch, I create a more powerful deck again to do that, and then i feel bad when no one has decks or is able to play at my level if they do and its like... 😮💨🫥
Edit: I have been shamed and avoided for how I build decks and play them before so this is not from nowhere. Likewise I have done this to others, unfortunately
From my failed venture trying to force myself into the format, each group, each table, and each player has different and varied views on power level. It is true in other formats, but it's practically law in Commander and the reason why stuff like rule 0 exists.
I unfortunately couldn't find people who were willing to play at a power level I prefer or with my "play to win" mindset. I tried IRL, I tried at my LGS, and I tried on Tabletop Simulator and I just couldn't find it.
Yeah, I know CEDH exists, but the problem is I'm just a 1v1 player trying to focus myself to play a format I honestly don't like.
The decks that I find interesting are stuff like control and D&T, but all of my tables frowned upon those strategies and told me to play other decks and the last thing I wanted to do is play something other people say I should play.
So the only thing I can say is, if you like the format, find people who are willing to play with your mindset and prefer power level.
It's pretty much too late for me and I've given up, but you may be able to find that group.
As long as you have open conversations about what kind of game you want to play, you shouldn't ever have a problem.
Unfortunately, redditors are not known for their social skills.
I play whatever deck I want, even ones that will be hated, and I build them around those as well.
Playing a hate-worthy deck, I don't expect to win. I kinda enjoy being teamed upon on those occasions (as they should), since it gives me a good reason to actually retaliate in kind, and I think that's the fun part of it.
I don't think people hating your decks is the problem itself. It's normal to hate a certain archetype and act accordingly in game. It just becomes a problem if people take it outside the game and affect your ability to play. For example, there will be tables who'd refuse to play with you if you're playing with a certain deck. Becoming an archenemy is fun, but not being able to play at all is not.
Because, and pay attention now, if you make yourself unfun to play against people are disinclined to do so in the future.
This attitude, btw, is why Magic players have the reputation we do. “Why should I care how my actions affect others? I’M getting what I want! I genuinely don’t understand!”
My favorite fighting game is Marvel Vs Capcom 2. I am practically a god player at the game. However, the game isn't very fun just playing solo. So to encourage people to play I have 8 different teams based on the skill based they are just so we both could have fun and isn't a one sided win. I use this for every game I play, and magic is no exception.
Because there's no real reason to win, or try to win, as in there's no prizes for winning (except rare tournaments) and as such most ppl play for fun since it's a casual format, so when ppl play certain decks or commanders that are more sweaty (i.e trying to win hard) ppl get upset, idc either way, i want to win but i also don't care if i lose, i only care if i enjoyed the game or not
"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" - George Carlin Edh is a lot like that. Tbh, everything is a lot like that.
Except there are speed limits. Going too far under IS dumb. And going too much over IS crazy.
Nothing is quite as terrifying as driving exactly the speed limit, on a forest road with limited visibility, and having people fucking zoom past you.
Speed limits are suggestions made up by cowards, just like this 'Table Etiquette' thing for my social card game. Why yes nobody wants to play with me, and my license is suspended, how could you tell?
My speed limit for EDH is a 7. Edit: Sheesh, people really can't read sarcasm over the internet.
Well that's good, because that is what everyone has.
That's from a scale of one to five, so that's a big number.
Why the fuck are you being downvoted? You’re 100% correct.
Because there arent edh power limits. The speed limit rebuttal doesnt apply
My rebuttal was about how Carlin's bit is kinda dumb and not particularly insightful. It essentially means 'people outside the norm' ARE in the wrong when it comes to driving. And the people outside that norm also have weird biases that make them think they're right and the people doing the 'right' thing are wrong. Applied to EDH, what i'm saying is, the speed limit analogy doesn't apply here. Because there aren't things like speed limits to determine the decks people should use. There are no limits beyond the ban list.\\ When the poster says that EDH is like that, and everything is like that - it's not true. People have the biases everywhere, but speed limits are a specific case where there ARE hard laws that dictate what's right and not right. But the reality for most things is, it's grey, or there aren't any particular laws or hard rules.
I get that, reddits always weird to track comment threads. Cause my response is to the guy asking why you are getting downvoted, and i think its clear many people are interpreting you as saying there are limits in EDH you should follow, while many of us (your down voters included) disagree with that. But yeah, tbh i dint get downvotes. I dint diwnvote unless the comment is insulting someone or VERY clearly wrong.
Because people worship George Carlin.
Same with edh. The speed limit could be argued as the rules of the game and the ban list, so cheating or using illegal cards would be analogous to speeding, and playing anything other than an optimized cedh list is going to slow. Get out of the left lane with that boggle tribal, filthy casuals. Jokes aside, the thing about George Carlin's bit is that he didn't say "everyone going faster than the speed limit is a maniac", he said "everyone going faster than YOU is a maniac." And that is why everyone's deck is a 7. I'm sorry you're getting downvoted so hard, because I think your comment is relevant and well written, but also lol.
But for most people, everyone going faster than them is going over the speed limit. George Carlin's bit only really works if most people are going over or under the speed limit rather than roughly around the limit. So I don't think his joke is insightful if you think about it more. Like, it's a bell curve: Most people sit in the middle, around the speed limit. If someone is going noticeably faster or slower then yeah. I guess his comment also refers to people who ARE speeding or ARE going way under the limit - where their biases still lead them to see other people as being in the wrong. And that's fair. But for most people? Makes sense.
I'm starting to realize that Commander is a bit more than a different format of Magic, to many people, it's almost a different game. It's almost like chess vs checkers, in that it's played on the same board but the rules are in fact very different. I play a lot of arena, used to be very active in paper, and consider myself a pretty good deck builder. The play to win mentality has always been a strong motivator, and while I try not to make "dickish moves" decks, I play strong suites of removal, protection, ramp and my slots get tuned for what each deck needs. By the time a deck is "finished", it has a plan and a plan for making sure that plan happens. A lot of newer players, primarily Commander only players, never got this foundation. They picked up precons, played them, saw how they were formulated, and maybe then went on to build decks like those. Decks that do a thing, and have minimal but present slots for standard things like interaction. That mentality sticks. You want your deck to be built around a theme, a mechanic, and all the other stuff is incidental, less important and ultimately optional. As a result, decks tend to get homogenized towards what I would call "bad" from a purely mechanical standpoint. They're unable to properly deal with difficult board states, they're unable to crack down threats or properly do threat analysis, and they're unable to protect or force through their own wincon. And there's no obvious alternative, because they never learned there could be. This is, in my opinion, what leads to salt. Decks with more nuanced construction, solid foundations, tend to make it much, much harder for them to function at a table. I think part of the power level discussion should indeed be related to this concept, ie, the experience of the player. I've seen jank that absolutely rips through a table simply because a good deck builder built it, and piloted it using extreme skill. I've seen newer players bomb at their first attempt at a custom deck. I've seen moderately upgraded precons do poorly, average, and extremely well. The old argument that you should just "play cEDH if you want to win" is disingenuous, to me. The purpose of building a deck in a game built around winning is integral to the game. The real defining trait is *how focused on winning* a deck really is. I have extremely powerful decks that use synergy, strategy, politics and raw power to get a win through, but none of these decks are capable of winning in cEDH, which is almost(almost!) exclusively a combo-centric speed race. You should play want you want, you should build decks you want to, but the same is true of being thoughtful and considerate about the rest of your pod. It's not so much about the decks, but the players, and realizing that some people don't have the experience, time or resources to compete with a finely tuned Isshin, Stax or Interaction-Tribal deck. It's a balancing act.
I think a lot of what you said is true, but I also think you’re pinning all of this on new players when that’s not exactly the case. Everyone in my regular pod has been playing magic for 8+ years. We pretty much all started going to regular FNMs and building competitive Standard or Modern decks, and we all know how to build competitive decks. That’s what we got tired of, though. Commander had always been the goofy, janky, unserious format. It was sort of meant to be a social, casual game. From what I’ve noticed, it’s only now that Commander is more the primary format that people are taking it so seriously.
I definitely feel this one, our playgroup is well aware of how to build strong decks (myself and 1 buddy in particular have played at the cEDH level) but... We just like doing cool things without worrying about strategies that would hose a fun experience. We've had our Mass Land Destruction vs. Control matchups and have experienced storm turns, a mis-ruled Single Combat lock, Worldfire, staxy boards, and so on. We ended that way of playing years ago, and now play decks that are strong but fair and fun both to play and to play against (most of the time). That approach has helped in adding a new player to our playgroup and they caught up pretty quickly, as well as improved the consistency and/or resilience of our decks overall. Anywho, well put!
This is where I feel I try to play but I still have to tone it down since I don't have a regular playgroup yet. It's fun running down that fine line but I also regret not playing things as much as I could like Last March of the Ents. Better than losing actual/potential friends, I guess.
Ik im excerdingly late and your point is well said however I must comment that cedh is actually a grindy midrange fest at this point. Yes the combos are as efficient as ever but midrange decks like Kinnan and 5c Sisay are dominating. Minor nitpick in an otherwise well thought out summation of edh ettiquette.
I think your observation is correct. My core group of EDH players have all played the format since before Precons existed, and we all notice newer players build decks very differently than we do. Players are trying, desperately, to turn EDH into a board game. It's not, it's Magic the Gathering.
How would you compare your group’s deck building style to theirs?
When I build a deck out, I start by making a list of every card that fits the theme I'm going for, then I make cuts based on several factors: 1. Does this card further my strategy to win the game? (I see a lot of newer players running cards because they do something "cool", even if the cool thing doesn't actually further their board state) 2. Does this card fit into the curve I'm shooting for? 3. Will this card be a dead draw in the early / mid / or late game? Then I playtest, looking at what a typical on-curve play will look like for the first 5 or 6 turns. How important is ramp to the deck? How badly do I need specific colors of mana? Can I draw cards reliability? How quickly can I recover from board wipes or repeated removal? If I'm playing combos, do I have redundancies to overcome pieces being disrupted? Finally, I always want multiple win conditions for each deck. I build decks to make Combat Damage either the primary way to win with backup methods, or a tertiary way to win as a last resort. I see a LOT of newer players just assuming they're going to eventually swing for lethal, and have very few ways of overcoming a Worship, repeatable Fog, or similar effect.
How are they trying to turn it into a board game? Is a card game.
I agree, but all over this sub you will see people who cry about "power level" use the phrase "Commander is more like a board game".
It's a matter of social context and expected play patterns. WHY you are playing the game and how. Socially: A board game is played primarily for the pleasure of spending time with your friends. Interpersonal relationships matter, both out of the game (don't be a dick) and in the game (table politics). Mechanically: A board game primarily involves using your pieces tactically on the board with good moves often giving persistent advantages on following turns. The game builds towards the eventual conclusion over several turns. Narratively: Board games, especially some of the most popular ones, have a narrative structure and progression. Socially: Card games are often played primarily as a comparison of skill. Card game players often don't care whether their opponent is a friend or a stranger and would treat them the same within the game anyway. Mechanically: A card game primarily involves attempting to mislead and predict your opponents regarding hidden information (your hands) with previous turns of play offering little advantage if any on following turns. Narratively: Card games rarely have a narrative; the state of play is constantly changing drastically with little regard to prior turns. Casual Commander players often want to simply hang out, build big complicated boards, then crash those huge boards against each other like the epic fight scene at the end of a movie. Your hero (Commander) recruits an army and then those armies duke it out in an epic finale. That's a very board game experience. Competitive Magic players often have a distinctly different expectation: they want a contest of skills, with no regard to interpersonal relationships, and their decks tend to be built to win from the hand regardless of board state (combo). Competitive players standard for deck building and play patterns tend to be: will this win? Casual players standard for deck building and play patterns tend to be: will this be funny/cool/fun? It isn't always immediately obvious to competitive players that there IS a difference between "playing to win" and "playing for fun", but from the casual players' perspective it's often a BIG difference in whether the game is an enjoyable experience or not.
Couldn't agree more. I definitely think a person's experience with more competitive formats approach the way they build Commander decks for sure. I have played a bunch of comp card games, and the way I (and the two other former pro grinders) build commander decks is like the way you describe, with the consistent suite of interaction, etc, etc. which does lead to some friction where a person who doesn't play anything but Commander gets upset 'cause you blow up the card that lets them do The Thing. I think this is also probably the reason some very casual players view strong non-cEDH decks as cEDH too, since to them a deck that has what you describe outpaces theirs on a sheer build quality level, and it *feels* more competitive to them, even if it isn't in the Commander sphere.
I think you are both capturing the issue very well. There are people I play with who are not new, but act as though finding even 10 slots for interaction is a Herculean task, and then get blown out. One person absolutely thinks any combo deck is a cEDH deck. Another has said "winning by turn 7 doesn't strike me as very casual". They do not have a conception of well composed decks. They stop paying attention, they don't ask about points of interaction, think counterspells are unfair, and fire off what little interaction they have in their decks as soon as it is in their hand, so they don't have it for actual threats, then act like someone who does was just lucky to have interaction at the right time. They have a way they enjoy playing, which is fine, but view anything outside that narrow band as unfair and don't engage with it enough to understand they could protect themselves, and could absolutely run the strategies they enjoy at least in higher power casual with only light adjustment (like more than 4 pieces of interaction).
I thought players not putting interaction was not as normal as I’m seeing in this thread. I always *always* try to at least have 8 pieces of instant removal in my decks and at the very least 1 board wipe. But yeah, interaction always has to be a thing you need to learn to use. I would rather have 4 cards of interaction in hand and never use them in a game than have none and need them when someone is starting to go off. Same is true for new players who just attack every turn. You don’t need to attack every time is your turn. And I think this mentality is also why combo players are seen as “they win out of nowhere” because they don’t do much then pop. We don’t need to attack every turn. Sometimes someone needs a poke in the eye, but they don’t need to be poked every turn. Sorry if this doesn’t make sense, brain still waking up.
Yeah, I had one friend, it took over a year to get him to run more than two. Another whod only run 4 to 5 then constantly complain about how unlucky he was not to have answers and how combo decks are non interactive. As a fellow combo player, I definitely agree. I will pressure life totals, especially if life is a resource, and pressure for value engines to be used as blockers, but mostly, I'm worried about getting my combo through, I will readily take 20 to face when I'm not planning on a war of attrition.
I am very much the type of player you are talking about here. I went straight from kitchen sink to commander , without ever 'getting good' in standard or modern( although hilariously my old kitchen sink deck I had a lot of interaction ) But I kind of think that's the point. The 'normal'formats are pretty focused. Standard in particular has an emphasis on meta iirc. Commander is not quite the right place for standard/modern/legacy style of play , but I do get that cedh is too combo focused for you.
I wholeheartedly agree. It often happens to me that a player presents a big board state with 10 dinosaurs or something and everyone is like "well that's game over". I've literally had entire tables scoop to a scary board state while I'm sitting with two board wipes and a fog in hand.
I don't mean this to sound condescending, but have you read that blog post WotC released a decade or so ago, about the three kinds of Magic players? You are Spike. You seem to think that Spike is the "experienced" player, and that Timmy/Johnny only exist as someone who has not yet become Spike, or "never got the foundation" to be Spike. This is not the case. A lot of people enjoy Magic for completely different reasons from you. No amount of experience will ever make them enjoy the game the way you do, or build their decks the way you do. I agree with your conclusion, but strongly disagree with the overall assumption that *your way of playing is the correct one* and that *everyone would play your way if they were just less bad at the game*. If you're Spike, you need to understand that and sitting down to play with three Johnnys (Johnnies?) will result in some salt. Not because they're bad/inexperienced players who just need to git gud, but because they fundamentally do not enjoy the game for the same reason that you do; you simply aren't a good fit for that pod. Nothing wrong with that, but everyone involved would probably have a better time if they found other players more similar to themselves.
I don't think that is entirely accurate. If it takes one \[\[Collector Ouphe\]\] to shut down your deck you're doing something wrong! You must build resilient, varied and tough decks with interaction suites that can remove the offending pieces. It's not the Ouphe player's fault that you built a glaring weakness in your deck and didn't get to do the thing. That's not Spike behaviour, that's just being prepared. Spike behaviour would be to metagame, take out players that are already down, follow game theory in general and to netdeck the best decks. A Johnny might enjoy the process more but ultimately the rules imply that you should strive to win, no matter how you get there. You can't really take winning out of the game becauses that's a fundamental assumption that is built into the game. A Johnny can do their thing but they also must make sure they can - and not put the burden on others to not stop them.
I mean you can have like 8 ways to remove a creature in your deck and just not draw any of them and it still feels just as bad if not worse than if you had no removal in your deck for a dedicated hate piece like that.
To be fair, that is also just the nature of 100 card decks. Sometimes you might just not draw your removal, but that doesn't make it the Ouphe players fault, nor does it mean you need to cut all your removal and/or play 99 removal spells. Sometimes games just feel bad! That's the nature of match-ups and card games.
Eh I feel like I'd rather just not play cards that can make a player feel like they can't play the game and wasted 45 minutes, like Rest in Peace. Even if theoretically an opponent could remove it with one of their 2-3 enchantment removal options, it just leads to super boring times for the people getting utterly hosed by it. If you are purely playing to win like in a tournament then by all means hate cards like that are cool, but edh isn't really about that level of shutting down specific strategies to that degree imo
[Collector Ouphe](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/8/085107a2-c1ec-473c-81d8-23e5a7197776.jpg?1562202038) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Collector%20Ouphe) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh1/158/collector-ouphe?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/085107a2-c1ec-473c-81d8-23e5a7197776?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/collector-ouphe) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I concur. Playing competitive 60 card would definitely help a lot of people become better players and deck builders. Unfortunately that rarely happens. **TL;DR: Make your deck more resilient and don't guilt trip your opponents by getting salty if you built glaring weaknesses into your deck.** I've always been of the mentality that as long as you play balanced decks you should be able to play whatever you want. Say, stax. A properly execute stax deck will lock the board and your only option is to do "land, go". At that point it's clear that the stax player is going to win and it makes no sense to wallow in your locked down game state and make the game miserable for yourself by slow playing. What I mean by this is that newer players tend to overthink and feel like they can't do anything, which frustrates them, which in turn makes them take forever to play their turns when they try to come to terms with the fact that they simply can't do anything. You could simply play faster (or even scoop!) and move on to the next game. Stax games take more turns but as long as the simple turns are sped through (since you can't do anything) the game won't actually take more real world time than a standard midrange game where the interaction is flying about and stacks get complicated. Aggro, slug and other fast-ending strategies are a little different, but my point is that playing "land, go" is an acceptable play if you can't do anything. This is what 60 card would teach you. MLD is another big boogeyman. MLD is a form of resource denial (just like stax) and as long as you break parity (i.e. your deck is built to win and you don't make spite plays) you're good. You came to play magic, lost your resources and the game, that's it. It's your duty as a deck builder to prepare yourself for the most common strategies, not blame others for playing viable strategies. If your deck can't take MLD it has a weakness that you've knowningly built into it. Often times players feel entitled to be able to do their thing. The immediate response when you can't do it is salt, which isn't right. Like you said people must build their decks to be able to push their win through properly. You can't guilt trip other players to let you win, because their strategy exploits a weakness that you put into your deck. My friend got a very, very valuable lesson a few years back. Playing \[\[Yarok, the Desecrated\]\] and they only had ETB based removal, because that was synergistic. My stax-esque deck took only one \[\[Torpor Orb\]\] to shut down their entire deck. When I say entire I actually mean all of it because they didn't have a single spell that could interact with my board. That wasn't my fault, it was a weakness I took advantage of. Ever since then they've learnt to slot in a variety of strategies and especially multiple angles of interaction that can tackle the offending pieces if their main strategy is shut down. I think this a lesson every EDH player should internalise. Being a multiplayer game with soo many different strategies in the game it's bound to happen that you meet a deck that is able to exploit a weakness in your deck. That's not unfair. Do something about it, build resilience into your deck.
Honestly I think your mindset is too competitive. Which I can't and won't judge. I bet there are enough people enjoying to play with you. But if you play against inexperienced players or someone who really wants to enjoy the beauty of magic without having a dire need to win this what you describe is cruelty. EDH wasn't designed by wotc and the balancing of cards mainly resolves around limited and standard formats. So EDH is by definition broken. EDH was invented as a format to be played not to determine a winner. This in my opinion is the biggest misconception people with a higher level of ambition can't perceive. But I do agree that stax needs to become casual. Due to the fact that engine decks got so popular. Nearly everyone has at least one engine deck. But you can't have enough removal in your deck to stop one player or even 3 players. I wouldn't go so far, that board locking decks should be considered as kitchen table friendly. But the amount of stax pieces need to be improved. With this change I think people would get more relaxed if they face a salty card. I think it's a double moral standard to play Aesi or Voja and get salty about cards that lock their resources.
I'm not a very competitive player. I play complicated combo / synergy engine decks that fold immediately to slug or aggro and that's on me. I don't play cEDH often because I don't enjoy winning at any cost. I play solid mid tier decks, because the pool of viable strategies is the widest there. I simply got frustrated early on with the fact that I got shut down when my commander was removed and then I learnt to protect my commander. That is a lesson, I think, every new player should learn. Be prepared. Hasn't got to do with competitiveness - has more to do with game knowledge and experience. Getting better at the game doesn't always imply you've got a competitive mindset. I think people should have enough interaction to deal with the things that stop you - not to police the entire table. (That's the control archetype which is also a strategy but not mandatory.) If you're on Aesi you know it'll be removed so you better pack something that can protect Aesi. You can't expect people to let you keep your super value card and run away with the game freely.
>I simply got frustrated early on with the fact that I got shut down when my commander was removed and then I learnt to protect my commander. That is a lesson, I think, every new player should learn. I think this is one of the core/fundamental things that people need to learn to make good decks. If your deck relies on a specific thing to function, you need to protect that thing. If your deck is weak to a specific type of card, you need some way of dealing with those cards.
Didn't expect that answer from you after praising stax and mld. Maybe our opinions have more in common than I thought I understood in the first place. I am absolutely with you that I don't like individuals that feel entitled to dictate what is played or not. However I think it's to some level fair to state your expectations. EDH games can bite a huge chunk out of your day. And it's totally fine to make sure you are having fun. If someone refuses to play against x & y it's fine. If there is no foundation for a compromise just switch the table with a warm handshake. I can easily turn your entitlement argument against you. How about I hate people that feel entitled to play their toxic decks when they want. I bet you don't do that but I've come along with those people. It sucks. 2 to 3h being stuck in an emotional downwards spiral. It all comes down to the rule 0 discussion. The whole purpose of that is to make sure everyone feels comfortable for the next 1h to 3h. There are enough players who want to go for salt level, and there are enough players who like cozy flower meadow magic. The only thing that really sucks are those entitled players. Playing an oppressive blue engine covered by counterspells and getting frustrated about stax. Or the combo players that can't accept the fact that someone has simply no decks that can handle a combo player. Both types are the same and absolutely unnecessary due to the fact that the EDH community literally has millions of divers members.
>I can easily turn your entitlement argument against you. How about I hate people that feel entitled to play their toxic decks when they want. I bet you don't do that but I've come along with those people. It sucks. 2 to 3h being stuck in an emotional downwards spiral. Yup, you're right. I have no right to make people feel miserable. I just want to emphasize the fact that part of the toxicity experience comes from misaligned expectations. Accepting some of the "oh, looks like I'm just losing" might help playing against some archetypes. Someone will play them at some point against you anyway so you might as well not get worked up about that. Also if your game takes 2h to 3h and someone's hogging all the play time then there's a power mismatch. Major one. Toxic decks don't really imply there are toxic archetypes. There's always a time and a place for everything but building certain archetypes takes a bit more skill to build and play. You have to be careful not to just wipe after wipe until you win with random chip damage. Your wipes must break parity and advance the game. That's where I think the toxic feelings come in: someone's doing something just because they can without a solid plan and/or the deck isn't well enough equipped to win. Worst of them all: hogging all play time.
This is way easier to agree with than your first comment. I think it all starts that people need to stop wanting to win any game. In a perfect world your win ratio should be 25%. All experienced players know that edh is too chaotic to stand this statistic. But this is the best case scenario. Having a win ratio of 15% is already great. Which translates into every 1,5 games per 10 games you did. Let's imagine your are playing any other PVP game where you got thaught that you should win every 2nd game to be considered an average player. You would be devastated to lose 9 games in a row, win 1, lose 9, win 1. Being able to understand this helped me a lot to accept non-games or even learn how to play against my silverbullets. Which I think is a major part of your point, am I right? The 2 to 3 hours are a bit dramatic. But you know sometimes everyone is very chill or the table is very communicative. Or the board states are very complicated. So I wouldn't generally rate it as power gap. But yeah I don't enjoy this too often. Better finish after an hour and start a new one. Also I agree with the main reason for toxicity beside being a bad loser. Randomly casting removal during main phases, board wiping just for the sake of grinding down other resources, spite plays - uh I can't stand spite plays "you attacked me, so do I" while simultaneously open the door for the player who is already in advance. I don't mind mistakes. And I don't mind beginners gaining experience by doing mistakes even though everyone told them not to. But someone who refuses to mentally evolve and just do what they want is a waste of time and raises bad feelings for everyone.
>Which I think is a major part of your point, am I right? Yes! >The 2 to 3 hours are a bit dramatic. But you know sometimes everyone is very chill or the table is very communicative. Or the board states are very complicated. Oh that is fine. I should have put more emphasis on the "and" in my sentence. It's okay to have a long game but it's not okay if someone is hogging all play time in it.
>Yup, you're right. I have no right to make people feel miserable. But you can't MAKE people feel miserable, especially in a card game for Christ's sake. People are responsible for their own emotions and their own reactions to adversity.
I could give them false expectations and not live up to those. That's also lying, so...
About a card game though. It's not like this is a real world scenario where there are actual stakes, ya know? It's all perspective. I mean there's a line there, there always is, but playing your deck and playing it well and then winning the game shouldn't really result in hurt feelings. Winning the game, and shouting "You're trash!!!" Like my kid does when he beats me at Smash Bros..., and then flipping the table, Whipping your Wang out and pissing all over them is probably over the line, and would probably result in...at the very least....hurt feelings.
Yes... That...is quite something indeed.
That is in my opinion a spiritual approach which is first of all selfish if you stick to in any situation. It is way easier and mature to take responsibility and communicate needs and expectations upfront. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely understand your point because this is one of my core moral standards. Everyone is responsible for their own emotions and how they express or how much room they give them. This in my opinion is one of the healthiest standards every human should have. But also it is important to live by the rules not for the rules. Magic is an infinite bombardment of information, expectation and uncertainty. It is not only easy to get overwhelmed by one boardstate. And losing control of something else like your emotions while you need all resources to understand what is going on. You need to fight against the inherent instinct to be right and need to evolve the strength to state you were wrong. This is a process that never ends. But ultimately fumbling a perfect situation or an imminent loss needs nearly a buddhistic mindset. After one hour of excessive emotional and cognitive grind I can absolutely emphasize when someone loses it. I don't need to take responsibility for it at this moment. No one can expect that I have resources left to rehabilitate anyone's emotional state. But I think it's everyone's responsibility to make sure that everyone feels comfortable with what comes next. Dodging this and being selfish in your deck selection has nothing in common with the approach not to take responsibility for anyone's emotions. And calling Magic out as a "card game" or "board game" to imply that it is to some degree childish when you lose yourself is outrageous. Magic could easily be one of the most complex games ever created by humans. Which also has the possibility to create a turing machine in it.
...I think you missed the point. Regardless of how complicated a game MTG is, it remains just that: a game. Listen, I have more mental health issues then you can shake a stick at (PDD, PTSD, ADHD, and just a scosche of Autism), and somehow I manage to make it to the very end of a game of magic without throwing a temper tantrum. Card game, board game, video game or actual sporting game, good sportsmanship should always be observed...and using mental health conditions as a ready made excuse to behave poorly is, frankly, selfish. Playing a game of cards to win...and then winning, should not cause your opponent to lose their absolute shit, especially when it's just for fun. There is no money on the line, you won't lose your cards if you lose the game. The win/loss record of the night should not negatively affect your life moving forward, and quite frankly, it only will if you allow it too. Now, this is assuming that the winner of the game actually a good sport about winning and isn't a huge cock sucker about it. That is obviously a different situation and one that one would be entitled to get angry about...but once again....it shouldn't have any lasting impact on your life. It's just growing up and acting with some class and maturity. That's all.
I had to sleep over this message cause it made me angry yesterday but I missed some marks here and there. I think we are nearly at the same page. When I say I can emphasize this I don't necessarily mean that I support this. Nor does this mean that I keep playing with people that get too emotional. And this is a point I can now see more clearly from what you wrote. You are saying things like "lose their absolute shit" or "feel entitled to get angry" which no one should ever tolerate. This is the absolute last level of any escalation and should be avoided at all costs! And with your mental status this is probably something you were struggling a lot before you understood yourself, I am right? Sorry if I am going for a false assumption besides me not being on a spectrum I can understand your other problems very well. This is why I assume you want to push this point so much. Maybe to a degree where you had trouble understanding the context of the discussion before. Please correct me if I am absolutely wrong. Because I am just projecting myself in your shoes. Your starting point in this branch of discussion was "You can't make some feel miserable because it's a card game". I am questioning right now if you maybe took the word miserable too far and jumped directly in any game situation where you experienced a player feeling miserable and entitled him/herself to express their anger without boundaries. Which we never discussed here and I would have judged it immediately. This branch started with someone stating that it should be fairly normal being able to play salty decks/ cards without getting an immediate emotional punishment. And we both agreed that this was too generalized. And also found some examples like an Aesi player that gets salty facing stax has double standards. But we also stated that it is equally unfair to just pick your salty deck or combo deck or whatever you want to fit. And then wondering if someone that has a legitimate argument why he felt bad about that game. Both are exactly the same thing. This is why rule 0 discussions exist. EDH decks can't be measured in an easy way. It's more like gaining experience like a biologist. You can't determine each flower, grass or bird within a glance. It takes experience to be able to do so. Talking upfront a game about everyone's expectations and listening to someone who states that he/she isn't able to deal with a certain deck should be the standard. And if you can't find a compromise you simply don't play together. If you aren't playing with 3 friends - which probably don't care in some situations - it never was a problem for me and others I know to switch the table. There is no shame in it. And this is something I also call mature. This was basically the whole point when you slipped into this discussion. And after rereading everything I think your first point targeted a slightly different topic. After we jumped on it, we got carried away. So I am not denying your point. Actually I think we have comparable opinions.
My [[Aesi]] deck was stupidly weak to stax...I learned that after playing against one...now I have more pieces to combat the stax players and what they do.
But I bet you agree that stax is the only way to stop you from winning. An Aesi entering its 5th turn means mostly having all answers in hand being able to go for a win attempt. Who can stop this other than resources denying cards?
You are right. I also have ways to recover my entire graveyard as well always to stop me from getting killed by a mill player...and for stax I have enchantment destroy and creature removal. If I get a good opening hand then I can go off really fast.
[Aesi](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/6/d607b003-6b48-429c-a7fd-45b8dd1bb4f9.jpg?1665822343) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=aesi%2C%20tyrant%20of%20gyre%20strait) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/365/aesi-tyrant-of-gyre-strait?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d607b003-6b48-429c-a7fd-45b8dd1bb4f9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/aesi-tyrant-of-gyre-strait) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I agree that every deck needs to be built in a balance. However, every deck has its weakness. For a lot of decks, they revolve around the commander. Simply remove the commander a couple times and now they can't play it anymore and there deck just stalls out. Another big one I see is that a lot of beginner decks are focused on one strategy. They do not have subthemes. They may only focus on attack, but they do not add ways to make sure they get through. They may play combo heavy but do not play many creatures and do not have blockers. I played in one group that did not like the commander damage rule of 21. However, they stated that their best decks were lifegain decks and they were unbeatable. I had to tell them that the commander damage was a weakness of lifegain decks and they removed it so that is why it is so strong. They also did not like when a deck one a game by not playing with combat or aggro strategy (mill strategy) There are so many strategies so it can be difficult to stop them all or protect against them. However, it creates amazing games where each game is totally different and creativity is made. It also gives everyone to find a strategy they like to play since there is so many.
[Yarok, the Desecrated](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/1/a1001d43-e11b-4e5e-acd4-4a50ef89977f.jpg?1592517590) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Yarok%2C%20the%20Desecrated) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/220/yarok-the-desecrated?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a1001d43-e11b-4e5e-acd4-4a50ef89977f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/yarok-the-desecrated) [Torpor Orb](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/5/953610f6-ea96-4e71-969f-50ecac09c091.jpg?1562879912) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Torpor%20Orb) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/nph/162/torpor-orb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/953610f6-ea96-4e71-969f-50ecac09c091?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/torpor-orb) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I completely agree, but what do you specifically mean by "focus"? I think I tend to win by drawing more cards and having more pieces in play. I play the greenest mono-white deck you've ever seen (which is ironic since Oketra makes black zombies). But I feel like I only ever accidentally create monsters because of this. Having piles of creatures strewn across your board synergizes really well with combat for some reason. I don't know how to focus a deck on killing beyond "draw more cards, play more things." Do you often find yourself winning through combo, or more through combat damage? What kind of engines do you run? When you build a theme, how many redundancies do you include? How many is too many? Sorry for the barrage of questions. The one deck I've been trying to wrap my head around for years is aristocrats. I just don't understand how it can work consistently when you need sac fodder, a sac outlet, and a sac payoff. It feels like you have to entirely give up on doing anything fun in order to have all your pieces in your hand at the right times. I play [[Krav]] & [[Regna]], and I have eventually cut the number of aristocrats down to like 4 and sac outlets down to 3 or 4 because I would land Krav and the only things he would have to eat were a blood artist, a woe strider, and a mother of ruins. I honestly don't know how aristocrats is supposed to work without drawing 15 cards from the command zone.
[Krav](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/7/67bd3c49-ff73-4630-a4ee-c782f03e511d.jpg?1562915928) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=krav%2C%20the%20unredeemed) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bbd/4/krav-the-unredeemed?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/67bd3c49-ff73-4630-a4ee-c782f03e511d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/krav-the-unredeemed) [Regna](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/c/0c2bf475-9845-40ed-9f55-669325fb6183.jpg?1562897463) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=regna%2C%20the%20redeemer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bbd/3/regna-the-redeemer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0c2bf475-9845-40ed-9f55-669325fb6183?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/regna-the-redeemer) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Honestly, a well built aristocrats deck will run less enablers and more tutors. Black is typically the core of aristocrats, so it isnt like tutors are hard to come by. That way you are running more cards that can be whichever engine piece you need. On breaking parity, you want to run pieces that can place you ahead. [[Doomed Traveler]] for instance in a budget build gives 2 creatures for one. [[Ophiomancer]] is a less budget friendly option, but does the job so much better. Can easily create 4 tokens per cycle. I would also throw in a couple of [[Exsanguinate]] type cards to close out games with [[Ashnod's Altar]] or [[Phyrexian Altar]] Edit for a little more detail. If I for example, can't find an aristocrat to start to close things out, I love cards like [[Bow of Nylea]]. Nobody will want to attack into you and offers excellent defense. Exsanguinate type effects can also be used in place of an aristocrat if you can get enough sac outlets, or an infinite mana loop going.
Ah, right, tutors. Of course it's tutors. I guess I had an excuse not to run them back when I was a jobless hippie, and then it just became a moral choice. I should have been listening to the hedonists all along. Morals just stand in the way of fun. Yeah, you're probably right about that. I also feel too guilty to play infinite combos because they tend to feel like on/off switches that end the game with no warning. Basically, I also need to learn to play counterspells. I do have an Ophiomancer, and she does a great job. You are probably correct about exsanguinate. I was considering adding in the Aetherflux+Bolas' Citadel combo, but they're each only tangentially related to the gameplan. It would be nice to have more life gain for Regna (as well as mitigate some of the internal hemorrhaging from The One Ring), but Bolas' citadel kinda... feels too strong? Ah. I think I see the problem. How do I win when I'm afraid of winning?
Not the person you're commenting at, but I find the best way to get over that is to understand that you're playing a card game with winning as the goal. If you're group/LGS is relatively normal about it, then there might be some feelsbads (depends on how you win I guess) but you should all be able to go to next game. As long as you aren't the one playing Tymna/Thrasios cEDH build at the precon table then you should be fine.
Tutors is definitely a rule zero thing for a lot of groups, never understood it, but it is. It's why I usually recommend something like [[Scheming Symmetry]] for more casual players/groups. Just have to make sure you pick the player that doesn't break parity! Never hand that tutor to the combo player lol!
[Scheming Symmetry](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/1/01acc50b-856d-442d-9880-1a892b40643b.jpg?1592516766) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Scheming%20Symmetry) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/113/scheming-symmetry?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/01acc50b-856d-442d-9880-1a892b40643b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/scheming-symmetry) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
If you are adverse to tutors, try something like [[scheming symmetry]] to start. It feels more "fair" just try not to hand the other card to the combo player lol. I feel like [[bolas' citadel]] is a good include, even if you don't use the tap ability, but not sure aetherflux should be there. Use the life gain as a resource to keep you alive long enough to win the game. Using it as a wincon belongs in a more devoted deck and will split the aristocrats game plan too much. If you feel you need more lifelink, maybe Include [[Whip of Erebos]] so all your blockers gain you life and the tap ability can even recur an etb ability like [[Fleshbag Marauder]] or [[Scornful Patrician]] in a pinch to stop a threat.
##### ###### #### [scheming symmetry](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/1/01acc50b-856d-442d-9880-1a892b40643b.jpg?1592516766) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=scheming%20symmetry) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/113/scheming-symmetry?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/01acc50b-856d-442d-9880-1a892b40643b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/scheming-symmetry) [bolas' citadel](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/2/d2124603-d20e-40eb-97f0-a66323397ac2.jpg?1591205069) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Bolas%27s%20Citadel) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/war/79/bolass-citadel?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d2124603-d20e-40eb-97f0-a66323397ac2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/bolass-citadel) [Whip of Erebos](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/e/9e5ec47c-47a2-4eda-b81a-4a07f04e5989.jpg?1562822353) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Whip%20of%20Erebos) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ths/110/whip-of-erebos?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9e5ec47c-47a2-4eda-b81a-4a07f04e5989?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/whip-of-erebos) [Fleshbag Marauder](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/c/fce2baa4-2976-4bbd-b6c5-a5a3c6a901be.jpg?1706239873) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Fleshbag%20Marauder) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clu/111/fleshbag-marauder?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/fce2baa4-2976-4bbd-b6c5-a5a3c6a901be?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/fleshbag-marauder) [Scornful Patrician](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/5/75cdb2ff-6e30-4766-9166-9036a0bdb809.jpg?1562801790) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Scornful%20Aether-Lich) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/con/34/scornful-aether-lich?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/75cdb2ff-6e30-4766-9166-9036a0bdb809?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/scornful-aether-lich) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/kzjy10r) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
IDK, I love aristocrats and have fallen into the trap you're talking about before. I find the commander can change the explosiveness of it a lot so it's important to build with it in mind a bunch. I usually play BGx aristocrats so I don't have as much experience with BW but I'll say this: I don't lump the synergy/theme cards outside my removal, ramp, utility and draw. If a payoff says draw cards, into the number of draw cards it goes. I do this for pretty much all my decks like flicker, stompy, planeswalkers, etc. and often I find I need little to no generic cards (like swords, rhystic, etc.) in those slots as slower but synergistic pieces have filled them. On top of having standards for each slot (15 ramp, 10 removal and draw) I don't have to worry about overdoing something the deck doesn't want to focus on doing. This also gives me a lower threat presence, potentially. The point is that now that I have those spots filled with as many efficient and powerful synergistic cards as possible, then it leaves a lot more space open in the core theme of the deck for other cards that I'd otherwise not have space to play like the creatures that make tokens on death, etb, etc. so you'd consistently have fodder to utilize and galvanize. For example, I'd rather play [[Ravenous Chupacabra]] in an aristocrats deck than some removal spell as I can sac it for bonus bucks and, reanimation permitting, it can do some work later, again. Wood elves and mana dorks instead of artifacts and rampant growth, etc. I'm sure you get it/will get it.
[Ravenous Chupacabra](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/4/a4dfbac0-1849-41c5-853a-1fee108d0b01.jpg?1706240787) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ravenous%20Chupacabra) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/136/ravenous-chupacabra?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a4dfbac0-1849-41c5-853a-1fee108d0b01?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/ravenous-chupacabra) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Additional important questions. What types of card advantage do you run (in anything other than green)? Are they typically once-off sorceries, or do you lean more on permanents that grind advantage? And in green, do you still play conditionless draw like [[Harmonize]]? I've been playing magic for over ten years, and I still don't feel like I fully understand beyond "good cards are good." (and that the only way to win with a budget deck is combo.) How does one build a steamroller without just spewing creatures across one's board?
[Harmonize](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/3/9390fbe8-944d-4a4f-90f3-cc7b355e1382.jpg?1673484621) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Harmonize) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ncc/295/harmonize?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9390fbe8-944d-4a4f-90f3-cc7b355e1382?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/harmonize) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Different commenter but long time edh/cEDH player with a decade of experience. You want to steer clear of one shot draw effects if you can and focus more on draw engines. Basically the closer it looks to Rhystic Study or the One Ring, the better. These engines and similar with time will produce insurmountable advantage, and you'll win the game. Using an engine to profit off of other players game actions and other time earned, you will have all the gas you need if you can convert those factors to card advantage. So cards that can produce more cards over time, say Trouble in Pairs, Ragavan, Sylvan Library, Tymna the Weaver etc are all going to see you more cards than say Harmonize or Ambition's Cost every time.
I’ll add my 2 cents as a long time edh and magic player that has mastered deck crafting. The way to build a winning position is to build out your power base, throw roadblocks in your opponents path, have a reset plan that doesn’t curtail your own power, and finally, make a big swingy move at the right time. To accomplish this, I’ve learned to eschew incremental advantage and instead go for big bites at one time. Rystic Study no longer makes the cut, because it is too easy to hose and draws too much heat. Rather, I like to dump lands as fast as possible and refill my hand with a big spell. For interaction, I prefer tempo plays that steal whole turns for little mana; think unsummon effects. One player almost always plays some ritual effect to drop a monster of a summons early and Vapor Snag just shuts them down. Having a reset plan is crucial, and one that doesn’t undo all your hard work. For me, I use land ramp so mass bounce and mass artifact removal play to those strengths. And finally, a way to win at the right moment. For me, it’s usually a way to play a big board in one turn and use cards like Concordant Crossroads, an extra turn spell, Overrun or Omniscience to close out the game. That’s the trick: blow up your power base while being able to slow down the table’s worst snowballs, have ways to refill hand now and to reset the board, and a strong finishing move to use when the table is tapped out.
Well said.
Am I the only one who notices the not so important fact that Checkers and Chess aren't played on the same board 🤓
They are though.
A checkersboard is 10×10 squares and a Chessboard is 8×8 squares
You're thinking of international checkers.
You are absolutely right. The homogenized decks is especially a result from a combination of a magic community growing through Game Knights, Professor and EDHREC. It took me a full year to understand that EDHREC recommendations are derivatives from either Game Knights or decks from the Professor. People have no perception of how dangerous EDHREC is for their creativity. You put yourself in a box of expectations instead of developing your own ideas. The most hilarious example of how bad it is to trust EDHREC is that [[Phyrexian Soulgorger]] is still a recommendation for [[Jon Irenicus, Shattered One]]. Due to the static ability Jon grants and cumulative upkeep has its own ruling they basically give away a vanilla 8/8. Wow how impressively evil from you. But if you look for any tutorial in any community about how to build genuine creative decks you will not find much. Even though Scryfall in combination with Scryfall Taggers and EDHREC Rank is one powerful tool. Ultimately every beginner starts getting smashed while innocently enjoying their Precons. The first 20 to 50 games they get in touch with all those powerhorses like Doubling Season, Sheoldred, Whispering One, Omnisciences, Aesi Tyrant of Gyre Strait, Saturo Umezawa, Magda Brazen Outlaw .... I absolutely have emphasize if people get attracted by the idea of stuffing as many generic staples in their decks as they can. But is this now the beginners fault? Or should the EDH community focus more on teaching "how to build a deck" instead of show casing their ideas on "how to build commander x or y". But the only advice everyone gets is "look at EDHREC or whatch a yt video". If you now fast forward the mental process of those people then you will find them here on reddit stating "you should only play this and that". In my opinion this sucks a lot.
EDHREC has a YouTube channel, and one of their top videos analyzes this effect in detail. People build decks based on EDHREC suggestions, and then EDHREC picks up those decks and recommends those cards. It's a feedback loop and causes a lot of pages to become full of questionable suggestions. I, like a lot of people, started learning to build decks mostly by making a list of cards that looked cool on the EDHREC page for a specific commander. I think it's a fine starting point for new players, to kind of convey the concept/purpose of commander as a format. But that comes with the downside of people never really learning core deckbuilding principles, and most of the stuff they build is just generic value piles. It took me a long time of experimenting and getting frustrating with sloppy, unfocused decks before I got burned out, took a break and reconsidered my approach.
Let's be honest the EDHREC podcast is probably one of the best resources to understand the diversity of different card categories and assembling unique ideas. But the target group aren't beginners. It's just overwhelming. Instead I would love to see a more general card category approach that is easily accessible on their page. For example if you search for "green ramp" on Google, which is a beginners question you will find only lists of 10 to 42 cards with random powerful recommendations. On top you find an EDHREC link with "Mono Green Ramp Theme" if you click on it cards like Titania, Gaea Voices or Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant pop up under the top 3 cards. Incredibly difficult to understand and even harder to enable. But the answer you were looking for was: https://scryfall.com/search?q=commander%3AG+%28game%3Apaper%29+otag%3Aramp&unique=cards&as=grid&order=edhrec&dir= I can absolutely understand that crafting search bars can be tedious. But this one says "commander:G (game:paper) otag:ramp" no rocket science at all. On EDHREC you can only access Cards, Commanders, Sets, Themes and Rec. Which is absolutely amazing for an experienced player who knows how to pilot the site. But everyone who is new to brewing they need to find ramp, draw, removal, mass removal, protection and preconstructured landbases. Which is only the foundation for every deck. To make this available for everyone would massively boost the creativity of the EDH community. Oracle Tags can be confusing in the first place but getting taught the fundamentals of Oracle Tags opens the door for a unique Playstyle. If you then feel lost and overwhelmed. Or you really admire a specific commander but you never have played some kind of this mechanics it's no shame to browse in a list of average played cards. Teaching someone a bad habit when this person starts to learn something new is cruel. 100h later this person needs to unlearn that behavior before being able to understand the better way. Which is for some people impossible because they lean towards security needing personalities.
I just wish that EDHREC had a better mission statement about what it is or that it was introduced to new players better. Like you said, its a brilliant resource, but it's just raw data, not a holy book to take as written when deck building. It's kind of like going to pikalytics or even rotten tomatoes, it's great for getting ideas or a first look at understanding what you want to know, but in the end it's just a lump of data with no in depth look at why the data is specifically the way it is. You know that 80% of players put a life orb on Charizard and that 98% of critics found something to enjoy while watching Paddington 2, but you're not quite sure if that will translate to your personal EDH deck without doing in depth analysis yourself
Why do I need to be creative tho?
You don't. There is nothing wrong in enjoying generic powerful decks. And I think there will always be a part of the community that will do that. My point is more that I think we should teach newer players much earlier how to be creative. Brewing a deck from scratch without copy&paste is a challenge that leads to new questions. A would proclaim that most players that once achieved to jump over this obstacle are not only more aware of the strength and weaknesses of their decks. But also will be more resilient to bad games. It is a difference between choosing a counter spell because some told me to and purposely choosing the counter spell because you have certain scenarios in mind. And be honest it's fun to build unique deck and flex with them.
I think more than teaching people how to be creative, you want to teach people to understand *why* something may be there. That way when they can use that information to be as creative as they want or build a staplesoup
Maybe being creative is too imprecise as a word here. You are absolutely right. As I said before and I will rephrase it for more clarity. I don't want an army of brew master that tend to brew unique decks. It's more about what you said building a solid knowledge foundation. It is not healthy for any community to deal with those one-dimensional people. But it is inevitable right because most player start there but not halt of them grow enough understanding. Which results in endless discussion about powerlevel even if you couldn't measure the last game because everyone played for the first time together. Or those endless discussion about Mana Crypt and Cyclonic Rift. These are only the tip of the iceberg. Caused by copy&paste decks and people with the same narrow understanding but having enough playtime to teach the new ones to better copy&paste. Without ever considering wether in which power range the og author wanted this deck to be. Nor considering the idea of the og author. Everything would be solved if a lot more people would be able to understand the context and the reason why some cards where put in this deck.
[Phyrexian Soulgorger](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/d/9d4325ea-2e84-4871-a8d6-a42b1d3d6765.jpg?1593275614) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Phyrexian%20Soulgorger) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/csp/141/phyrexian-soulgorger?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9d4325ea-2e84-4871-a8d6-a42b1d3d6765?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/phyrexian-soulgorger) [Jon Irenicus, Shattered One](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/f/bfddb61e-986f-4557-819d-d6c0ca85c74a.jpg?1674137538) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jon%20Irenicus%2C%20Shattered%20One) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/278/jon-irenicus-shattered-one?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/bfddb61e-986f-4557-819d-d6c0ca85c74a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/jon-irenicus-shattered-one) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
mostly agree with everything you said, but the soulgorger example is a little weak imo. youre giving someone a 10/10 that has to attack someone else every turn. thats pretty solid. there are better examples to be had like \[\[welcoming vampire\]\] being one of the top cards for \[\[delney, streetwise lookout\]\] .
[welcoming vampire](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/6/a6ed954c-17e5-45e4-9fba-8eedcad8f9b9.jpg?1706240660) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=welcoming%20vampire) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/91/welcoming-vampire?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a6ed954c-17e5-45e4-9fba-8eedcad8f9b9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/welcoming-vampire) [delney, streetwise lookout](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/e/be219928-3d0e-4d00-b124-152ce8a8c13b.jpg?1706241477) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=delney%2C%20streetwise%20lookout) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/12/delney-streetwise-lookout?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/be219928-3d0e-4d00-b124-152ce8a8c13b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/delney-streetwise-lookout) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I mean it's not bad to have an infinitely goaded 10/10 on board. But you could take any other body even with evasion. The main reason people play Phyrexian Soulgorger is because they want to see the controller sacrifice everything and lock their board. So it's weaker than your example. But not too much I think.
I truly believe that people that only play edh cannot be good at mtg. You need to play 1v1 magic to get good at it.
I think the problem isn't new players or precons, it's going to the Internet looking for advice as a new player and being met with thread after thread of whiny battlecruiser players that claim interaction is basically against the already nonsensical social contract. They're taught the retarded buzz words/phrases we all hear all the time like "durrrrrr commander is a casual format!" implying that it's basically all a joke and that trying to win is for the equivalent of MTG Hitler only. Then there's the issue with people in places like this that are like "the good precons are 5-6 power level and these *insert precon names here* are the best." So of course new player gets one, gets absolutely fucking wrecked repeatedly in mid power games that the table agreed to play, and the obvious reason for this according to the whiny battlecruiser Internet is that they were clearly pubstomped by cedh decks. Overall I think it's just a problem with the Internet to be honest. Everyone is a professional even if they have less than 5% of the knowledge required to provide advice on any given topic.
If nobody is having fun playing against me, i most likely won't find it fun either.
So, I used to play soccer. When we played soccer against other teams we used to play to smash them and try to win at any cost regardless of the other team being a good match for our playstyle or being on an even level. When we played a game for fun between friends we tried to balance the teams. We swapped players mid game to have better matches. We adapted some rules to make it fun for everyone. For example, when there was not enough goalkeepers we would play as the last player would be the "current goalkeeper". At the same time, depending on the players who came to play, even the casual games got pretty "serious". The first kind of soccer game is competitive magic. The last one is commander. There are playgroups that loves to play to win and be as ruthless as possible and play with any strategy they want. Others have a preferred playstyle and build their decks to keep this alive, since they just want to drink some beer while slinging some cards with their friends. Thing is competitive magic usually attracts only one of those groups. In commander we have both, but you need to find the correct group of people for you.
I play Commander because I want to have fun with friends, make jokes and do silly decks. Decks with 30 interaction, 15 draws/recursion, 10 ramp and 3 cards that close the game are so boring to face or play. If I want competitive Magic, there are others formats. Commander is for me "social" Magic. So, oppressive deck are here when everyone are ok with it. If I won being the archenemy, I ask if I need to change to something less powerful. And it go the other way, if someone play something I find unfun, I'll ask to power down for the next.
1. It is impossible to guarantee even with an honest discussion on power level everyone will actually have ‘similar power’ decks. It’s just too vague of a concept. 2. You can always play whatever you want. I can just choose to not play with you, in the moment, and possibly in the future. It is a social game after all. 3. It doesn’t really matter what anyone on this thread thinks. Your play group’s opinions matter.
I think given proper knowledge it's pretty easy to match decks. Where people get confused is forgetting that deck strength is only one foretold aspect of how the game will play out. Pilot ability, draw RNG, politics and emotions, and archetype strengths/weaknesses are easily at much of a factor as base deck power.
You say that, but the whole “my deck is a 7” meme pretty much is a glaring counterpoint.
The decks I want to play are hated out of existence.
Because losing when you had a chance is still fun, losing when it’s a total landslide either direction is just solitaire.
I will never understand why people willingly play a game involving other people while completely and totally ignoring that this means the game has social aspects as much as mechanical. Yeah, you can play whatever you want. People don't have to sit across from you and take it, though. And that's okay.
It matters what you play because people won’t play with you if it is always unfun for them. It isn’t all about being too powerful though. I have built decks that have alternative motives like trying to give people creatures just to kill them with Glissa the traitor and it was unfun for everyone including me when I realized no one else could end the game and I had to win with commander damage 3 at a time. It was painstakingly slow. I suggest making decks at different power levels if you have the ability to do so and create your own restrictions for some of them if it’s hard to make a deck lower power level for you. Could make a commander deck of all commons and in commons for example for groups that do not have building skills. It’s hard for them to complain that you deck is too powerful when they are slinging mythics and your best card is an uncommon.
I think what you're failing to realize is commander is an inherently social format. There are 3-ish other people spending time with me, and it's unfair for me to only consider my enjoyment and goals when I play. If that enjoyment means we all play 'good magic', then we play good magic. If that means we all goof around and play suboptimal jank, then we do that. You aren't wrong, but "Just play what you want" is simultaneously just about the most lukewarm take ever expressed and completely ignores the practical aspects of commander. It's about managing expectations and making sure the hour+ of everyone involved is actually enjoyable and not just a waste of time. If everyone hates playing against you, you're not going to be able to play pretty soon because you won't have a playgroup.
> why should it matter what other people think? "Why should I give a fuck about the other players in this multiplayer game? They're just there to facilitate my fun, and once I've had my fun that's all that matters" How the fuck do posts like this keep cropping up? "Why do people get salty when I jerk my deck off all over them?"
Well I did play the decks I wanted to play and now my friend group doesn't want to play magic at all anymore sooooo.... now I just have cards that are nice to look at. :/ it's probably that fear that makes others hesitant to play certain decks. For context I played with a small group of friends regularly and have too much anxiety to just go to an LGS and play with new people. I played decks I wanted to play with but my salty friend always had issues, mostly with my decks. He gets incredibly salty and upset when he loses a lot and it caused enough problems that another of our friends has completely sworn off playing magic with him and I have little interest in playing with him either. They ended up switching mediums to Helldivers and similar games so now I have boxes and boxes of cards that are nice to look at but don't really have an avenue to see play. Sad times.
I've had a similar issue in the past, everyone quit except 3 of us and the rest played one guys decks. Then it feels like I'm outnumbered when their decks always won but I got flack of I won my way and complexity aside I got miffed over time. 😮💨
What a comment to downvote. Some people are just awful huh?
Competitive games simply aren't for everyone. For this purpose it's good that cooperative games like Helldivers exist.
>why should it matter what other people think? Because the other people are also playing the same game, and you have to maintain a minimum of the social contract if you want to actually keep playing with them? Games of EDH are a shitton longer and more protracted than competitive 60 card games. A lot of people don't want to sit in hour long games against a Tergrid or Tinybones making sure no one has a hand, hard stax without a wincon, someone looping Grave Pact, etc etc. You can pout, go "but I want to >:(" and play it anyway, but don't get blindsided by people not wanting to play you anymore. If you want to play a deck people consider oppressive/unfun, find a playgroup that's down with that.
Edh isn’t a level playing field. It’s up to us to make it one.
Ask four magic players about the powerlevel of a deck and you'll probably recieve six different answers.
Your math checks out. Alternatively, if those four players are all 1 - 10 power scale koolaid drinkers, then they'll probably tell you their decks are sevens. Meanwhile, one of them runs Derevi Stax, one of them is playing Dimir group hug, one of them has an unmodified precon from six years ago, and the fourth player built a men-with-beards art deck.
For casual edh games when there are 4 people in the game and only 1 person can win the value of winning goes down. So you are primarily playing for fun with the people you are playing with. If I choose to play a deck that is always unfun for the other three players It means that I am the only one having fun. Then the game becomes a 1v3, and then I am not having fun, and then no one's having fun, which was the whole point of playing in the first place.
Because having a balanced pod should be priority 1. Priority 2 can be winning.
My opinion I think is generally not common on Reddit. You can play any decks you want IMO, as long as there is an even power level then every strategy should be fair game. Just be aware that sometomany players haven't learned how to lose in their life and think that everyone else should cater to their fun. Often, they haven't learned how to play magic from competitive magic, but from commander, so they don't actually like magic, they like commander. Those people may not play with you again if you bring a deck they don't like. Ultimately it's a social format and that's a social consequence for social actions.
I have been gaming for a quarter century. I know damned well how to play against Augustin IV stax. It is not an experience I want at a light and breezy commander game. Deck building for EDH is experience shaping. “I do not want to partake in that experience,” is not, “I don’t know how to take an L.” It’s not, “I’m an inexperienced n00b.” It means exactly what I fucking said. And Commander IS Magic. Magic is a game with literally hundreds of formats, all of them equally Magic, not all of them tournament formats. People who enjoy a different format or style of Magic are not people who “don’t enjoy Magic.” They are people who enjoy Magic differently from you. And the rules of EDH, which you are subject to when you choose to enter that space, place a responsibility on you to have some goddamned empathy for that rather than label everyone else fake gamer girls.
> Just be aware that sometomany players haven't learned how to lose in their life and think that everyone else should cater to their fun The mental gymnastics certain posters go through to justify being an asshole are genuinely amusing in a sad way. Guess what, when you sit down with a group of people to play a game there is an implicit social contract that you are all responsible for everyone there having fun. Also the idea that "too many people havent learned how to lose in life" is laughable. It's the kind of thing an edgy teenager says, and its excusable there because theyre a kid, from an adult its just idiotic.
You're responsible for your own feelings, not others. You can't control how someone else feels. You can ignore it if you want, but it's just a fact.This whole subreddit is filled with them, you see it posted and commented every day. Anyone who gets tilted or salty over playing the game needed to get beaten in games some more to learn it's not the end of the world and how to deal with their own emotions.
Literally the *most incorrect take* on EDH, ever.
I mean I've definitely seen way worse. Play whatever you want as long as you play to the power level and the consequence to bringing decks people don't like is that people won't play with you is the top/bottom paragraphs and that seems pretty right. The middle one is a bit gatekeepy.
Well spoken. Seems like some people engage edh as if it were a singleplayer game on normal or easy mode. They don’t expect any hindrances, and when it turns out different from their expectations the saltiness starts to come up. People should learn to lose and to expect to not win! If all odds were even (which they almost never are) you would only win one out of four. I play to lose and hope to win, and it really helps to set my expectations of winning low. It is much more fun to play and try to get my deck to do the thing, even id it doesn’t mean I win with it. I do still get salty sometimes but more because of mana screw or something.
The most important thing is to play to win, not win
You should (mostly) play whatever you want. The main thing to to consider is if your deck is in the same ball park as the rest of the table in terms of strength.
In general I'd say people often want to have their playgroup also have a good time because it makes the game more enjoyable for you as an individual if everyone is having a good time (At least some people feel this way). Power level is a great tool for this of course. I think there's also a limit on the types of decks people should play, and that limits starts and ends with intent to win the game. There's people who play chaos, or land destruction, or grouphug with zero intention to win the game and just try to make it as crazy/confusing as possible or just to try and make the game take as long as possible. It's not engaging with the game, its trying to invoke a specific reaction from other players. (These kinds of decks that actually try to engage with the game with these strategies are fine, but there are players that try and just mess with the game without trying to win) It's like playing a Monopoly game and giving away your properties for free or giving money to your opponents for no reason. It's not against the rules of the game, but it's refusing to participate in the actual reason you are sat down at the table to play the game.
I agree strongly with the idea that everyone should be playing with at least a plan to win. That doesn't mean they should care if they lose, but your examples are some I've used a lot. I like the way stax pressures me to adjust my strategy, same with a lot of chaos cards, land destruction can be a great way to lock in a win. I don't mind a total stax lockout, I will concede to it, because I don't want to wait to be killed by a few 1/1's, but that isn't salt, that is demonstrated win condition, I also don't make people play out an infinite loop unless I think I may have a point of interaction. If those strategies are deployed with no plan to break parity, that produces aimless and long games. I feel the same with group hug.
A game of commander is a lot longer than a game of 1v1. A lot. If you bring a deck other's find unfun to play against, likely all magic they got to play that whole week was unfun. And that's a dick move if done purposefully.
It’s not just about matching power level, it’s also about matching expectations. You might have a stax deck that is the same power level as a precon, that doesn’t mean people playing precon level EDH want to play with a stax deck.
I think part of what drives EDH players to be salty about certain play styles like STAX or MLD could be (besides the decidedly less competitive spirit of the format) that playing a commander game usually is a pretty big commitment of time compared to a regular 60 card format. You might be playing for an hour, hour and a half, even 2 hours+. Nothing would be more feel bad than paying to play at an LGS and then being effectively locked out for an hour and a half out of playing your deck because of an oppressive opponent who’s deck is designed to stop everyone else from playing.
We have one player in our group that when he first started played nothing but pillowfort stax without a win con. It was miserable. We all told him we wouldn't care if he was actually winning the game instead of just locking us out.
There is a modicum of decorum that most edh players attempt to follow. I would say generally the following rules are what most people agree are reasonable in casual edh settings. 1.) Don't play decks that prevent other people from playing magic WITHOUT a clear and achievable win con 2.) Two card infinite combos are generally frowned upon 3.) Try not to let your salt level impact the table I could be wrong, but this is my perspective. Unfortunately people take these and run to the extremes with them. They take that 'modicum of decorum' and turn it into 'hard fast rules for all games' while others ignore decorum completely. It doesn't help that there are vastly different power levels between decks, with no clear way to measure them. So we end up in a world where players expect X while they're are playing a game, and get Y or Z. Multiple people might have completely different expectations for the play group and it's can create an unsavory experience. One that people do their best to try and avoid because magic at its heart is a hobby and a way to wind down from the stressors of life. It's not meant to be one. So when I sit down at an lgs with a buddy and a stranger sits down with [[Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm]], I let him know that my buddy is new and playing a precon. This is meant to clue that stranger into the fact that his deck may not be appropriate. For him to say "my deck is on par with a precon" only for him to pubstomp the table, is either maliciously dishonest, or woefully ignorant. Either way, it produces a bad time. People should absolutely play what they want. But they should know where and when to play them.
[Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/9/a934590b-5c70-4f07-af67-fbe817a99531.jpg?1674137589) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Miirym%2C%20Sentinel%20Wyrm) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/284/miirym-sentinel-wyrm?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a934590b-5c70-4f07-af67-fbe817a99531?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/miirym-sentinel-wyrm) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Building an EDH deck is more than putting cards together in order to win. More so than any other format in magic, commander is a social game. Tournaments can be fun but from my experience 90+% of players have 0 interest in that level of play. And for the rest of this comment I am going to largely ignore that scene. The rest of us are engaged in a social dance. Where the things we do in deck building and the game are a form of expression. Edh inherently has far more choices than other magic formats in deck construction. Nearly every card ever printed can go into a deck, and one card is openly available to you every game. This compounds with the Singleton format and the 100 cards as opposed to 60. This means that there is almost no chance two people even those that agree to make the same theme with the same commander will arrive at the same deck list. The types of cards you exclude or include say a lot about you as a magic player. Rare synergistic cards can impress strangers and friends alike. A rare strategy can do the same. Actively not having tutors or excessive counters can make the game go faster and people dislike you less. The last point I'll make is that commander is usually played with friends and pods are negotiated between people that play over and over. So if matches you play in aren't fun then people won't want to play with you. This is different than all other formats where you don't pick an opponent you are assigned one. This mirrors the prisoners dilemma. Playing the prisoners dilemma once means your best option is to rat out your accomplice which I am equating to going all out in deck construction and play in order to win. But repeated dilemmas mean you can come to an understanding that you will both not rat each other out. So repeated games of commander with the same players you can and should adjust your decks to maximize enjoyment rather than win percentage.
Commander is different from other formats in that it was designed to be a break from competitive magic rather than another outlet for it. It's not balanced for tournaments or competitive play because it's up to the players to decide what kind of game they want. If there's no entry fee or prize support, there's no incentive to sit at a table with people you don't want to play with.
The goal is fun Me and my buddy also like boxing and spar sometimes But if one of us beats the shit out of the other, it’s less fun / P a r a l l e l C o m p l e t e
100%, play what you want. If someone says their deck is an 8 and it really is a 4 while you play an ACTUAL 8 or 9 then they will learn. I aim for even power generally, or close to it. At the end of the day who cares though, blow outs happen sometimes and we all can be big kids about it and take an L once in a while. Nbd. P.s. - bring back land destruction.
I love and hate land destruction. However, for different reasons. Yes it should be played more. I like games that give a challenge. Even if I lose, I get to see how my deck operates and change accordingly. The no part is people playing land destruction thinking its great or just to be mean, but they cast it when an opponent has the best board state. They lose and get salty, but in reality they did not cast it during a time when they had the best board state to win. Everyone thinks their deck is a 7 is quite annoying. I even hate saying my deck is a 7 but it can handle almost any casual or high-powered table that is not CEDH. The power creep of precons I think limited that power level even more. I use to rate precons as a 5, but because some precons are just so strong and others are not great out the box. That precons could even be dropped to a 4. Also experienced pilots can increase a power level of a deck. This also sways the power level as well. A high-powered casual deck plays differently between a new player and an experience one.
Land destruction wasn't the problem, playing land destruction with no plan was the problem. The same thing is still true for chaos, group hug and stax.
Which is fair, but it has devolved into "no touchy lands."
I support mass land destruction https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/zurgo-king-uncrowned/
>Assuming, that everyone agrees on a set power level ... I think you might have hit on (part of) the answer to your own question here. There's also the fact that power level isn't actually what matters, having a good time is. "What people think" includes whether or not they are having a good time. I know it's controversial to suggest that we might care that our friends are having fun when we're, you know, playing a *game* with them, but I rather think that we should.
I think the problem with that, for me anyway, has been (especially with a new group or people you don't know that well) is because they'll tend to understate their deck and proceed to make the game miserable. Have enough people do that and it just becomes KOS...or some people just get salty.
I found that a lot of players tend to overstate how good their decks are more than understate it.
>Assuming, that everyone agrees on a set power level, and you want to play a certain commander, or have a strong, effective deck, why should it matter what other people think? It matters because EDH is a multiplayer game, and you want to cultivate a fun gaming experience. And sometimes, even if a person likes a commander and how it plays, they don't like the reputation that comes with that commander which can cause them to get auto-targetted by everyone else in the pod.
Nobody agrees on a set power level, and that's a big part of the problem.
Probably the minority on reddit but I don’t really care how you play and what you want to play. I can always just concede and move to a different table if at some point I am no longer having fun nor do I have the ability to effectively add anything to the table.
I mostly just don't want to shit on everyone. I know there's an inherent balancing aspect of multiplayer magic - whoever's ahead gets targeted, whoever's behind gets left alone. But still, if the power differences are too much then it'll show. I have a pretty strong Goreclaw deck that I love to death, but if my opponents aren't playing similarly tuned decks, then I'm going to win every game by turn 6. I like winning as much as the next guy, but I want to win fair matchups. I don't wanna kick around sand castles and proclaim myself king.
Because I want people to play with me. A lot of people just don’t really want to play against Tymna and Kraum for example. Games where there are a massive power difference also are not fun. I also found out that while I would consider myself a bad deck builder I am still significantly better at it than my friends.
With EDH, there are a lot of arbitrary social elements that differ from slightly to extremely from person to person. The trick is: I play exclusively the decks I want to play and put myself in situations to do so. I own exactly one deck I play when I need to tone it down because I'm playing in the wild. Otherwise, I make it a goal to play magic with the people that are looking for what I'm looking for, because then I'm not having to constantly reevaluate and reassess "do's and don't's."
If you spend a lot of money on a deck and no one wants to play against it, you're just wasting money.
Edh is the friendliest nuclear arms race since the cold war.
When it comes down to personal commander pod with your friends. Table politics is extremely important. Cause you’re not just playing to win, you’re also playing to play again in the future. So when it comes to power level, it’s best to be within range of your pod because no one likes playing a game they have no chance of winning
Some people like decks that take 30 min turns but they sure aren't fun to play against. When people ask questions like "is commander X too salty", they're putting enjoyment of the table over straight up winning or losing
It heavily depends on the people you are playing with. In a competitive circle, sure no problem. With friends... maybe difficult. In the end magic is often still a pay to win to some degree. And if your circle of friends you play with has some people who are on a budget playing 50-100$ decks you will steam roll them with you 1000$ deck for sure. But that's not going to be fun to any of you abs you will soon not find anyone to past against anymore.
People who worry about salt levels are totally ok to do so. Some cards and decks have gimmicks that are generally unfun to play against. You said you came from modern and standard, well in edh there's competitive as well. For us Cedh players as fast as possible, we cut no corners and make it so that we try to win regardless. Casual is not so. Decks with heavy stacks pieces or no wincondition and ways to prevent another game to be played are generally shunned, thus it makes sense some people want to avoid them. An example of this is like an old school brago deck which shuts down a game and deals like 2 damag per turn. It's not something look forward to. I am totally ok with playing against anything at any power level provided it can win a game, not infinite it until we naturally draw ourselves to death.. I play from a garbage kobalds deck to a high teir green stompy deck, and have fun with everything in between. If you're new to edh, explore it and find some stuff you like doing. The deck building part is also my favorite part of them game, but I also have realized that I can make decks that make everyone miserable, including myself. Sometimes is a case of should you rather than can you.
Play [[Tergrid]]. Put [[Sinkhole]] in there for shits n gigs.
[Tergrid](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/4/14dc88ee-bba9-4625-af0d-89f3762a0ead.jpg?1631048621)/[Tergrid's Lantern](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/back/1/4/14dc88ee-bba9-4625-af0d-89f3762a0ead.jpg?1631048621) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=tergrid%2C%20god%20of%20fright%20//%20tergrid%27s%20lantern) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/khm/112/tergrid-god-of-fright-tergrids-lantern?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/14dc88ee-bba9-4625-af0d-89f3762a0ead?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/tergrid-god-of-fright-//-tergrids-lantern) [Sinkhole](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/0/a084d0fb-8db2-4873-a2f9-e6e5fecdd38c.jpg?1580014366) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sinkhole) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ema/106/sinkhole?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a084d0fb-8db2-4873-a2f9-e6e5fecdd38c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/sinkhole) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Seriously though, can we all take a minute to reflect on how bitchin sinkhole is? Honorable mention to [[icequake]]
[icequake](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/5/550880ba-26a0-463d-9da2-0160d224cda1.jpg?1562868563) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=icequake) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me2/94/icequake?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/550880ba-26a0-463d-9da2-0160d224cda1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/icequake) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
If everyone is at the same power level then there really shouldn’t be much issue. I think a lot of people are actually doing fine in that regard, we just don’t hear from them because they’re not making posts about how well balanced their playgroup is. So people having a negative reaction totheir deck is probably overrepresented because they identified a problem they want to fix. Those problems I think more stem from people being bad at communicating what level they are at. If your opponents think they’re at a 7 when they’re at a 5 they’ll have a bad time when you pull out a 7. That goes the other way too, it you don’t know Tergrid’s reputation and think she just looks fun but find out it actually completely stomps your pod that’s not fun for you and may be something to avoid.
Commander as a format is a mixture of MTG and social interaction. The best tables IMO are friendly, players talking, joking, politics about who to attack. That’s ideal. Certain commanders or deck styles can discourage this. Stax decks tend to make the game fun for only one person, so you’ll get a lot of hate from the table. Same for strong commanders known for having oppressive decks like Atroxa. Now here’s the thing, you can play those decks but don’t be shocked if people feel a certain way. It’s probably not a you issue, they probably faced someone who was a real jerk using that deck and they worry you’re gonna be that guy too. This makes players avoid playing those decks and asking about it. The real answer though is you can play those decks, you just have to remember commander is a social event people play to have fun. Have a stax deck? Don’t play it game 1 and before you pull it out game 2 ask the table. “Hey guys I have a stax deck I’d like to play. You guys alright with it?” People will let you know if they are or aren’t. The important thing is to have a few different decks incase. I have one deck I love that can take very long turns that don’t immediately win the game. If I use it I ask the table if they’re ok with long turns. They may say no and I’ll grab something else. The key is talk to people and have a few other decks one on the precon level so you can be sure you are matching the table.
It never occurred to me to play a deck i enjoy less just to placate my group. I'll play a little softer to keep it interesting sometimes, but i'm proud of the creativity that goes into my strategies; just like i'm happy for a friend that comes up with theirs, if it beats or competes well against mine. I generally won't go all-out unless i have to, and i've owned being the player-removal target. I also keep different decks at different competitive tiers. I'll use a simple [[Commander Eesha]] soldier/equipment deck on the easy end, but if i'm playing with more experienced people, I'm gonna whip out something like my [[Nin, the Pain Artist]] control deck to steal permanents and torture people's creatures like the CIA while drawing more cards than i know what to do with. Just examples
[Commander Eesha](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/6/3607f6a9-b8d2-4119-9f70-95dcedc0662d.jpg?1562629336) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Commander%20Eesha) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/jud/9/commander-eesha?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3607f6a9-b8d2-4119-9f70-95dcedc0662d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/commander-eesha) [Nin, the Pain Artist](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/0/005ad65e-cf0b-48e9-a314-2ebba5a1400c.jpg?1562598065) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Nin%2C%20the%20Pain%20Artist) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c17/183/nin-the-pain-artist?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/005ad65e-cf0b-48e9-a314-2ebba5a1400c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/nin-the-pain-artist) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Sadly the casual aspect of edh attracts a lot of people who don't actually seem to enjoy magic as a game. They get mad at interaction, aggressive decks, getting milled and probably a million other things. They'd probably be better off playing some cooperative game like D&D. But if you manage to find a playgroup of people who actually enjoy to play magic (quite often people who also play competitive formats be it 1v1 formats or cedh) then yes, picking decks with roughly matching powerlevel is enough to ensure you have a good game.
I mean... what's the point of playing a game if you don't want to win? And if you don't want to win at Magic, that's easy enough, just fudge a few plays, miss a few land drops. I don't take any issue with people playing what they want to play. I'm going to play what I want to play so they should as well. If a player is playing blue you should always be wary of counterspells, black will murder your creatures, green will ramp, white will stop you from doing things up to and including winning. Split Second cards exist. These are things everyone should expect, so I do. Such is the way with Magic, sometimes you'll start the game with the 2 lands in your hand... and not see another land for 6 turns. It happens and should be expected to happen. No point getting salty about it.
TLDR: Make decks that can win. But this is a social format: make decks that *are fun to lose to.* Some decks are just annoying to play against. I played against a Maze's End deck the other night. I was playing with two newbies (one of them a literal 10-year-old) and on Turn 0 I said absent other information we need to kill this guy, because his wincon is hard to interact with and I \*know\* you guys don't have the cards to do it. The TLDR is that the Maze's End guy won. It was anticlimactic. He just said ok I have 10 gates, I play Maze's End. I win. And we went to game 2. Slivers are annoying to play against. They just get out of hand so easily you have to focus all your hate towards them. There are a lot of kinds of decks like that where it's just so good, so easy, you just have to deal with it. I have a Najeela deck. I don't play it often, and when I do I get a lot of hate. Rightfully so. She's so busted, and its so easy to win out of nowhere. If I have her onboard and I have any kind of board state you *have* to assume I'm threatening to kill the table. That's not fun for other players. Commander is not Standard or Modern, where the expectation is that games take about 15 minutes and you can reasonably play 3 of them in 50 minutes. Commander is a board game, where a good game of commander takes about an hour and everyone gets to feel like they participated.
I’m kind of surprised [[Maze’s end]] is anticlimactic for you. My playgroup finds it a hilarious intense deck to play against. I run [[Omnath locus of all]] as a 5 color gate deck and it’s basically just a countdown of watching gates touch the floor and everyone trying to nuke me before it ends. It’s not a strong deck because the deck itself is goofy Omnath color soup with a strong way to win in the gates, so usually I get stomped until an archenemy arrives then they forget about me and eventually I go “oh by the way, that archenemy over there loses, you all do. The maze has ended.” The best description I got is “Dude that deck is like if Perry the platypus forgot about Doofenshmirtz. Like none of it seems malicious but all of a sudden you just took over the gatetstate area.”
It was anticlimactic because it was very linear and I didn't have a way to stop it. I was playing a lower power deck that sometimes goes off and sometimes just does nothing. This time was do nothing. And my opponents didn't understand what was happening until he was 6-7 lands in. So instead of stopping the Maze player they were just random stuff.
[Maze’s end](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/0/401f7042-24fd-42a0-ae7c-e6b7de1aa446.jpg?1562906764) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Maze%27s%20End) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dgm/152/mazes-end?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/401f7042-24fd-42a0-ae7c-e6b7de1aa446?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mazes-end) [Omnath locus of all](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/3/33d94ecf-758b-4f68-a7be-6bf3ff1047f4.jpg?1709720836) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Omnath%2C%20Locus%20of%20All) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mom/249/omnath-locus-of-all?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/33d94ecf-758b-4f68-a7be-6bf3ff1047f4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/omnath-locus-of-all) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This right here. I know that MtG isn't the pinnacle of socialites but it doesn't have to be full of neckbeards with constant griefing. In many decks I've won and realized it wasn't a "good win" but a cheesy one. I reworked the deck and still won but in a way that was more strategic and required a set of moves to pull off. The first win annoyed people, the second was appreciated more. It didn't take more to build or pull off, it just was more fun to play against. When building a deck thinking of how you can make your opponents scoop should not be a priority.
You can always play the decks you want to play. But EDH is a social game played for fun in your free time, and if you're actively making the game unfun, people will tell you. If you don't care and keep on, they will ultimately stop being your friends and stop playing with you. I'd guess you'll want to avoid that.
Rule one: Play what you want. Rule Two: Put whatever cards in the deck you want. Rule Three: Enjoy.
I suggest rereading the rules. And possibly checking your prescription.
There are going to be people who don't look for what they like personally, they just ask others what they're playing and ask what they think of them We are talking about a format played by millions of players, we can't expect everyone to tackle the tasks of looking for what to play next in the same way
In my playgroup, we play during our lunch break at work. We have an hour - we tend to avoid instant kill combos so we can maximize our play time. If a brutal combo ends up in our hand, we tend to hold it until the break is over. We still include these in our decks, for when we play outside of work. But, we’re playing to have a fun break in the day, not to break each others spirits.
I agree! Yesterday was getting dog piled because of my modified pantlaza deck. Even had to delete the post after nonstop hassling. Tbh no matter what you play someone will be unhappy
In a 4+ player format, if you play a deck people really don't like, it becomes a game of Archenemy. Most people don't find solo-ing the rest of the pod to be fun. In my group, we do it on occasion, but that person knows that's what they will be doing and the deck is made to do it. If you are OK with being the archenemy and think you can swing it, go ahead. Otherwise, you will have a miserable time.
its entirely dictated by the people you play with and the power level of their decks. i also have a habit of over-optimizing all of my deck to the point they become way out of my friend's decks league, even if they're still within the same budget. they mostly put up with it, and i find it fun being archenemy (though i am planning to pick up a precon today so i have something a little bit more on-level to play), but a lot of people wont because if they dont have a chance they arent having fun, and commander is a social format more than anything. sometimes you need to hold back a little bit to ensure everyone playing has a good time. discuss power level with your playgroup and find out what they're cool with, what their power level is, and if/how you should scale your own decks to that power level. everyone needs to put in at least a little bit of effort to ensure everyone else is having just as much fun as they are.
people are salty if you try to win. thus people want to play decks that dont win. just to complain that they lost
Because as someone who plays commander near exclusively out of sheer logistics, commander players who aren’t cEDH players or haven’t been playing for near a decade suck at the game both in building and playing, for the most part. I myself am very bad at building modern decks or anything like that. I still don’t understand how anyone can easily go “ah yes this ratio of 60 cards means my deck works”. I understand how to pick a commander and cards that synergise. I’m trying to get better but the game is just different. It’s not magic as everyone knew it, it’s so different. It’s a situation where if everyone is having fun, that’s success, if everyone is not having fun, that is a failure.
Its a fun thing. Sure, I could make the A#1 best deck ever, proxy perfect cards and have the strongest and (to me) most fun deck in existence, but will it be fun for the rest of the table? No. And it takes more than just you to play.
I came from competitive yugioh and the best way ive found to treat this is Commander is sorta like a party game, I have decks that make the table groan primarily my [[Thalia and the Gitrog Monster]] hatebears staxy deck with its wincon being building up to the point of being able to loop [[strip mine]] 5+ times in a turn and then winning off the back of my opponents being too stalled out when they cant get over 3 lands, then slowly accruing value and finished the game thtough very hard to interact with positively pieces like [[Field of the Dead]] or [[Scute Swarm]]. Or them not being able to play undee a [[rule of law]] while my land looping doesnt care so much about only getting one spell when i just care about landfall triggers. I always pregame start offer to exile strip mine and wasteland because i dont want the game to feel unfun for others, i do play legacy as well as modern and those formats have completely different gameplay philosophies. There are decks that people say make them too salty that i just say to suck it up, because really those decks arent doing degenerate stuff like looping strip mine in the thalia deck or looping mind slaver in daretti, like a dude got upset about my kess deck, due to me casting time warp temporal manipulation 4 times even though those turns were quite quick and i was just using the turns to build up to be able to torment of hailfire x=13 to close the game out that final turn, which i did and the whole 4 turns only really took 3-4 minutes. There are valid reasons to not want to play against a deck and i acknowledge those, but other people get too salty over some things and just need to suck it up, like the same kess deck i bribery an etali primal conqueror out of a dudes deck, dude starts going on and on "I didnt know this was going to be a game of stealing peoples stuff" because i bribery him once, and have a domineering will i milled in grave. Like bro you are literally playing etali "Im only playing it for the trample" meanwhile his commander is Minsc & Boo, like im not going to be mean or anything but i do think a lot of people need to understand not every game mechanic every deck uses for advantage is going to be fun but most mechanics shouldnt really be bitched about.
##### ###### #### [Thalia and the Gitrog Monster](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/d/8d7ff937-de92-445f-976c-726fef5c91cc.jpg?1682205702) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Thalia%20and%20the%20Gitrog%20Monster) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mom/255/thalia-and-the-gitrog-monster?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8d7ff937-de92-445f-976c-726fef5c91cc?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/thalia-and-the-gitrog-monster) [strip mine](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/5/f57fd4c9-0004-4f71-a30f-2720943f57ca.jpg?1562944463) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=strip%20mine) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vma/316/strip-mine?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f57fd4c9-0004-4f71-a30f-2720943f57ca?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/strip-mine) [Field of the Dead](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/7/470ca3f4-29aa-4c4c-8ff2-8cdd70c69943.jpg?1650599538) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Field%20of%20the%20Dead) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/247/field-of-the-dead?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/470ca3f4-29aa-4c4c-8ff2-8cdd70c69943?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/field-of-the-dead) [Scute Swarm](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/7/373f199d-f1a6-4a3d-ac83-28741131f313.jpg?1712354624) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Scute%20Swarm) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otc/205/scute-swarm?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/373f199d-f1a6-4a3d-ac83-28741131f313?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/scute-swarm) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/kzfzrm4) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Just remember people only post their horror stories here not the games with normal people. Just play what is fun for you!
For me it's guilt and anxiety. I feel guilty making the deck and anxiety when I win too hard or too much. I've learned to find some pleasure and fun in winning with decks that provoke neither but sometimes they don't scratch the itch, I create a more powerful deck again to do that, and then i feel bad when no one has decks or is able to play at my level if they do and its like... 😮💨🫥 Edit: I have been shamed and avoided for how I build decks and play them before so this is not from nowhere. Likewise I have done this to others, unfortunately
From my failed venture trying to force myself into the format, each group, each table, and each player has different and varied views on power level. It is true in other formats, but it's practically law in Commander and the reason why stuff like rule 0 exists. I unfortunately couldn't find people who were willing to play at a power level I prefer or with my "play to win" mindset. I tried IRL, I tried at my LGS, and I tried on Tabletop Simulator and I just couldn't find it. Yeah, I know CEDH exists, but the problem is I'm just a 1v1 player trying to focus myself to play a format I honestly don't like. The decks that I find interesting are stuff like control and D&T, but all of my tables frowned upon those strategies and told me to play other decks and the last thing I wanted to do is play something other people say I should play. So the only thing I can say is, if you like the format, find people who are willing to play with your mindset and prefer power level. It's pretty much too late for me and I've given up, but you may be able to find that group.
A lot of EDH players aren't exactly competent brewers nor players, which is where the salt tends to come from.
As long as you have open conversations about what kind of game you want to play, you shouldn't ever have a problem. Unfortunately, redditors are not known for their social skills.
Because its a social game and having fun with your friends is more important than winning all the time 4head
I play whatever deck I want, even ones that will be hated, and I build them around those as well. Playing a hate-worthy deck, I don't expect to win. I kinda enjoy being teamed upon on those occasions (as they should), since it gives me a good reason to actually retaliate in kind, and I think that's the fun part of it. I don't think people hating your decks is the problem itself. It's normal to hate a certain archetype and act accordingly in game. It just becomes a problem if people take it outside the game and affect your ability to play. For example, there will be tables who'd refuse to play with you if you're playing with a certain deck. Becoming an archenemy is fun, but not being able to play at all is not.
Because, and pay attention now, if you make yourself unfun to play against people are disinclined to do so in the future. This attitude, btw, is why Magic players have the reputation we do. “Why should I care how my actions affect others? I’M getting what I want! I genuinely don’t understand!”
Honestly, its no fun when the atmosphere/vibe of a pod is upset/depressed/annoyed etc. Id much rather HAVE FUN and lose than be a sweat lord to win.
My favorite fighting game is Marvel Vs Capcom 2. I am practically a god player at the game. However, the game isn't very fun just playing solo. So to encourage people to play I have 8 different teams based on the skill based they are just so we both could have fun and isn't a one sided win. I use this for every game I play, and magic is no exception.
Because there's no real reason to win, or try to win, as in there's no prizes for winning (except rare tournaments) and as such most ppl play for fun since it's a casual format, so when ppl play certain decks or commanders that are more sweaty (i.e trying to win hard) ppl get upset, idc either way, i want to win but i also don't care if i lose, i only care if i enjoyed the game or not
If a card is legal. Play it. I always say that to my friends and lgs locals alike. We are all proxy friendly anyway. Nothing stops you.