Bolt the Bird and Other Advice | Commander Clash Podcast 90
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ส.ค. 2024
- Always pay the 1? Always plow the commander? We go over some common Commander advice and give our takes on them!
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"I have countered the Celestus so I don't have to deal with day and night" -Crim, an inspiration
Crim keeping his face under control every time one of them said “plow the commander” is hilarious.
My friend laughs every time I say “go up on Liliana”
“Magic is a game of resources and information, and denial of resources and information.”
My dad was on the pro tour in the 90’s and this was the first thing he told me. Still holds up to this day.
"Plow the commander." I mean, depends on the commander 😏
Toxrill
@@bennettwadekamper8238 I think the assignment was either misunderstood completely or understood completely, and I can't tell which
I mean some of these commanders need plowed 😅
@@bennettwadekamper8238 yup, that's a plowin'.
If they have a Mother of Runes, you have to, just to get the chance to say: "I plow your Mom"
I think swords to plowshares killed Richard's parents or something. Man really has a vendetta against spot removal.
He kinda plays like an asshole. "Either someone answers the issue or we lose. Good luck guys 😎" is such a horrific PoV to have
Guess you could say someone....
Plowed his parents?
@@Zombi3NinjaKing He lives in a permanent prisoners dilema, I think the only reason that the rest of the table don't just perma-kill him until he learns is because they have to produce content, so it is not like a "normal" group.
Yeah, his mentality of "If I let one player become a threat, the other two players will be obligated to deal with them." leads to just the worst games. Either the threat just spirals out of control and wins, OR the player that committed the fewest resources to stopping the threat catapults ahead to a win in 2-3 turns because they were able to act mostly unhindered.
the group would probably have stopped playing if it wasnt content. i mean tomer makes bad decks on purpose out of power sink with the rest of the table. richard would rather lose the game then make a inefficient play and seth/crim arent even trying to win they are just looking for a meme or short for the channel
Pro tip: Mulligan more! In edh you have a free one, use it. Going down to 6 cards, especially if you're on the draw, is really not that bad. If you want to start the game with a certain card/carttype in hand this makes your chance of drawing it so much greater.
Is there really any "on the draw" when everyone draws on their first turn?
I was in a game once where someone didn't pay for the rhystic study and I couldn't kill the rhystic study player so I killed the player who wasn't paying for it
I never pay for Rhystic Study. I only play commanders like Sram, Sythis, and Tuvasa. Almost every card I play causes me to draw a card in those decks. Thus, I am not falling behind versus the Rhystic Study player by not paying the one; this typically puts me in the good graces of the Rhysic Study player and causes the two other players without Rhystic Study to percieve the Rhystic Study player as the biggest threat. Essentially I force the Rhystic Study player to become an archenemy while I am quietly building up my board to be almost as strong as the Rhystic Study player's board. I have won pretty much every game I have played doing this. The two other players without Rhystic Study use answers to weaken the Rhystic Study player. Afterward, I have three opponents without answers to address my board. 10/10 though I like your response.
@@AlwaysGrowing0
Ive always gone after the guy not paying his taxes before the guy with the study. One of my early playgroups had a guy like you and he always fed the rhystic player. Instead of waisting my resources on a guy probably drawing answers, I used him on the jackwagon feeding him cards.
When Tomer says "the karn disco thing" i felt Crim die inside realizing that Tomer doesn't watch any of his videos lmao
Isn't tomer their editor?
1:20:12 I think I get Phil here. Sometimes I like to compliment the other players by showing them my hand or my next draw and being like "Yes taking me out was the right call because I had X Y and Z."
I think that's fine because you're increasing the value of their victory.
The thing that's scummy is if you chose not to interact and then mention it after. Like you could've Teferis Protectioned and won, but chose not to. That kind of stuff you keep to yourself forever.
"I'll plow your commander" 💀
If you cast Swords to Plowshares on Mother of Runes, technically you're plowing their mom.
@@MicahAlfordable That mom got protection, though, so it should be safe. 😉
@@MM-lv7iy not if I tapped her already...🤭
I'm ready to plow everyone's commander
Crim trying to stop richard, but giving up after 5 seconds was hilarious
I love crim’s “I bolt your board” lol
Anytime I swords someone's commander, I'm going to say "I'm gonna try to plow your commander" from now on.
Poor Phil, man gets trampled every podcast and barely gets a word in unless someone specifically asks him a question. I'm guessing the delay is pretty bad though.
yeah its really annoying and also just bad form from everyone else.
Tomer: "Bolt the Bird."
Phil: "Hear me out, bro........ Plow the Commander!"
Crim's face: 😮🤓 : "Let's hear him out
😂😂😂😂😂😂
After a few minutes into the conversation...
Richard: "HOW DO YOU PLOW THEM ALL?!?!?!?!?!!!!!@$#!$?"
Interesting: Germany uses "Hoodie weather" to describe temperature - finally, an international unit of temperature all can follow!
I assume in Germany that's just the typical day!
Idk if this is a hot take, but here we go:
Usually, and I do mean usually as almost every time, I will allow take-backs because magic is complex, commander further complexities things by pushing together cards from across decades that were never intended to be put together. But, if you ask me a question, I answer and explain the situation, and you still make a mistake by casting a spell after the fact/choosing to or not to block/allow my ability to resolve, no take backs. You had your opportunity to ask, you did, I explained and (almost always) my opponent nods and expresses some form of acknowledgment that they understood, and then you still mess up? At that point it’s a learning moment so you don’t make that same mistake in future games. I’m all for the casual, but eventually you need to be punished for misplays, as that is how you will learn
Thank you Richard for bringing up brainstorm. It is way more relevant than the rest of the crew seemed to believe. Commander players do not know how to properly brainstorm!
"Reading the card explains the card" is not about the oppponents cards, it's about your OWN cards and then it most definitely applies.
Phil you gotta like talk over americans sometimes. If both of you start at the same time the social convention is for one of you to stop to let the other speak, but it's decided after the first several words are said. Having two sentences overlap is fine and polite as long as you're not doing it the entire conversation. "Get a word in edgewise" refers to this, the edge of your sentence pierces into the conversation.
R: Do you bolt the bird?
C: Do you even play bolt?
R: .....
Whole episode hangs by a thread within the first 10 seconds 😂
"I'm here to play magic, not to make friends" is one of the funniest quote I have ever heard in our LGS. Because of the nature of EDH, we sometimes forget that we need to play the game and not take anything personally.
Rhystic Study, instead of paying the one, just throw your Nature's Claim against it and pay the one. Problem solved.
I love it how Phil is always the person that is talked about winning the game while I don't think I've seen an episode so far where he actually won a game. Usually he just gets focussed into the ground.
In response to the "writing a book about brainstorm" thing, there was a guy who wrote a 400 page book about how to properly use gush
Plow the Problem Commander. You don't need 8 points. You just need proper threat assessment.
9:16 if everyone thinks like Richard then no one removes the threat and edh just becomes "first person to assemble their combo wins." Spot removal exists for a reason. Use it or lose it.
I will never get over the fact that Richard is the only person in Commander Clash history to lose a game to a turn 1 sword/path and still argues against removal and sword/path in particular.
Richard is a product of his environment. He runs no removal and just good stuff in its place, so he has more 'good cards' than the rest of the crew. So while the rest of the table is being interactive with eachother, Richard wins with mono white birds.
Magic the gathering is meta dependent. If everyone started to play fast creature combos, Richard would play plow.
its like you intentionally dont listen to the actual argument he's making or you just dont see the nuance in it. he says he doesnt use his removal automatically and instead takes the 3v1 against the arch enemy. that means hes still holding his removal and can use it in an in case of emergency situation meaning he can use it in response to someone assembling their combo, he doesnt just pop it off willy nilly just because someone plays a powerful commander. its instant speed removal its not like it HAS to be played immediately. so if you save your spot removal and can instead get rid of the arch enemy by having your 3v1 take out the arch enemy you now still have your removal to help you deal with the other two players left at the table. and if not and you have to use it then you still used it and the threat was still dealt with but you dont make that decision until you have to, and sometimes the arch enemy still wins because they were already so far ahead but his reasoning is solid in the argument of do you always plow the commander. the answer is no. in a 4 player game if your object is to win it is irresponsible to ALWAYS use your spot removal against every threat. you should always hold it for as long as possible because that's going to win you the most games vs spending all your resources and being left with nothing the rest of the game against 3 other opponents. because now you dont have any removal for if your opponent does assemble their combo when you used it on someones commander that wasnt necessarily going to win them the game
Okay, but everyone doesn't.
Maybe the commander equivalent of "bolt the bird" is "snag the stone" (steal sol ring with thieving skydiver etc.)
Rhystic Study: damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you don't pay the one, you play on curve but they draw a card. If you do pay the one, they just repeatedly cast Force Spike you.
I actually agree with Seth on this one: pay it if you can, but don't let it stop you otherwise they'll get ahead by slowing you down.
Maybe that holds up in a 1v1 but in a 4 player game the card advantage of 3 players not paying the 1 is insane, and only being behind curve 1 mana is not such a disadvantage when it's 3v1.
I always have succesful negotiations. Either i blow up your entire board including lands, or you don't interact /swing at me for two turns. Damn i love Lord windgrace.
Went back to listen to some older episodes and this one was such a banger. I love how so much is contextual and there is so much psychology and game theory involved in this game.
I'm spreading "Plow the Commander" far and wide as commander lingo.
Wash away even meaner
💯
I had a stax Atraxa build that I played exactly one time. I taxed the table with rhystic study and winter orb until they were all tapped out, and then dropped a Stasis, and used Magosi the Waterveil to skip a turn. All three opponents skipped their untapped steps, passed turn. I opt not to pay Statis, and a couple treasures, a twiddle, and a nesting grounds activation later I had infinite turns to deliver the Atraxa beat down.
I felt terrible and tore that deck apart the next day.
The teamup discussion is interesting. I think both sides have arguments and often when watch commander clash teaming up gave Seth and Crim a chance against stronger decks. I feel like Phil’s decks just go off so hard that it is impossible for anyone to have a sensible team up with him
Phil needs to learn how to slow roll lol.
I need a playmat that says "I plow commanders"
“Just wrath and then the boardset is restate” Richard 2023
I'm surprised Crim didn't bring up the equivalent scenario where he Tithed Richard's commander after he Jeweled it out super early. Even if it's not exactly "Plowing the Commander," but Counterspell is removal.
I'm trying to see this from a casual perspective since I primarily play cEDH which is a different beast. I'm not sure if I understand the 1 for 1 argument. Crim constantly 1 for 1 the board with his counter magic and it works quite effectively even though there are 3 other players who typically aren't playing counter magic on this channel. I would definitely 1 for 1 a turn 1 or 2 birds or Sol Ring because most likely they kept their hand banking on resolving those cards. So maybe they kept a 2 lander b/c they had a bird or Sol Ring. This sets the player back since they're looking to top deck lands now.
I don't think this is a question of casual vs cEDH. I think the argument holds true for cEDH as well, but there is some nuance. I'll give you a simple example: you're player 1 in a cEDH game and player 2 casts ad nauseum. What's better for you: 1) it resolves and you lose, 2) you answer it with FoW 3) player 3 answers it with FoW. Clearly 3) is the best outcome because ad naus player lost their win con and player 3 just used their best counterspell to answer it. Purely mathematically speaking, you and player 4 are ahead because P2 and P3 are down resources while you did't have to do anything.
That's not to say don't play 1-for-1s, either in cEDH or casual (clearly using FoW to stop a game ending combo is preferable to losing), but there's to it than that. Regarding your specific point about Crim, and even cEDH, is that the big thing you're overlooking is that in both cEDH and casual, there are actually lots of "whole board" answers. So Crim plays 5-10 board wipes in every deck - even aggro. Board wipes are the furthest thing from 1-for-1s - they're insanely good resource value. Often you play 1 farewell and the rest of the board loses 5-20+ pieces. So he can mop up the stragglers on the board with his targetted removal because he makes up for that by wrathing the board a lot. Now I know you will say board wipes are not as common in cEDH because it's a much faster format, but let's be fair, control as we think of it in 60 card formats isn't that common in cEDH either. Very few decks in cEDH play the out and out "keep countering spells until your opponents are out of resources" control strategy that is common in 60 card formats, because they would run out of cards too quickly. You have 100 cards but your opponents have 300 cards. So the real way you play control in cEDH is you stax people out. Answer their threats before they even cast them. Stasis is basically 2 mana armageddon. Tabernacle is 0 mana blasphemous act. Collector Ouphe is 2 mana vandalblast.
on the play your out & play to win part. i dont know if anyone else does this, i still play till the end. people get mad sometimes when you just concede.
New Challenge: Keep situations out of reasoning for an episode lol
When Tomer was talking about team ups and how Crim and Seth usually team up against him and Crim says "Yeah but what deck are you always playing" Instantly I was like "Oh I know, a green deck"
Looking at your top cards after a game (that you lost) is literally the most un-serious thing that could ever create any sort of discourse 😂
19:23 I think this point is so interesting because rhystic is just a classic prisoners dilemma, as a solitary actor you are always better off not paying the 1. However, at a commander table you are not a solitary actor, you can talk and collude with your table mates, and if you can agree to pay the one you are all in a better position. So really the advice should be as Crim and Tomer suggested “if the table agrees, don’t give them cards for free”
As a solitary actor you are always better paying the one.
That's why rhystic is so bad in 1 v 1. People just treat it like a sphere of resistance and either play through it or boseiju it and move on.
@@midnalight6419 basically, you are always better off paying the one, unless you are the only player that doesnt pay the one, which wont happen lol
@@soleo2783 that is the thing I said
As a legacy burn player, I almost always bolt the face instead of the bird and its worked out really well.
Plowing the commander also gets better the more expensive it is
Richard is also the only member in Clash history to lose to a turn 1 plowing the commander.
Pay the one. Gang up on the person who didn't pay the one. Then loose to the person who cast Rhystic Study.
This is straight fax. I would absolutely attack the player who didn't pay the one over the player who actually played the rhystic study. Call me petty or whatever, I don't care, there are basically no cards you could play that make it ok to play into rhystic. Only acceptable ones are blowing up the rhystic study or if you can literally just win on the spot.
Richard's approach to "Path the Commander" isn't accepting the archenemy situation, it's hiding behind other players.
It works though
"Plow the Commander" ;)
Just because you're 3v1 doesn't mean you all in. You can still throw early attacks at them.
You need to keep resources up until its a threat specifically to you, if its a threat to everyone then you wait for it to be a bigger threat to someone else and force a response from them
With Always pay the 1 I always tell my opponents that if they don't pay the 1 I will expend every resource I have to go after them regardless of how many cards the study player draws. Usually that gets the table to just pay the 1. In CEDH that's a totally different thing since you are often trying to go for the win the turn you cast more than 3 spells.
With Rhystic Study I change what I do depending on the game and the decks in play. Most of the games in our playgroup are super casual, and most of us just ignore the Rhystic to let the deck do its thing. Someone will win, we all get to cast our cards, we all have fun. If the game is more high tier, a lot of us will actually pay for the study depending on the situation. Though, as an amusing anecdote, I have seen Rhystic players refuse the card draw when a smothering tithe is out. It is quite a delight to respond to their "You paying the one?" with "Well, will you be paying the two?"
15:00 Time for some Rhystic Study Theory since Crim brought it up:
His theory is: If everyone pays the 1, then that person took the turn off (were assuming they played it on turn 3, on curve) to play it and accrue value. This is a fine assessment however:
Paying the 1 is essentially timewalking yourself assuming everything that the other 3 players do is also on curve. You missed an entire land drop in theory because you had to waste the mana you played on something that isnt what youre playing from your hand/Command zone. The Rhystic Study player on turn 4 is able to play 4 mana spells since they dont pay their own tax on Rhystic. The other 3 if they want to pay the extra 1 mana and deny the Rhystic Card Draw have to cast 3 mana spells. It's as if they are a full turn behind the person who played Rhystic.
So whats the possible solution for this scenario?
1. Pay the tax, deny the draw, but be effectively timewalked.
2. Dont pay the tax, play on curve and let the rhystic player draw a billion cards but have little mana to do with them anyhow
3. You stop being dumb, everyone maindeck Victory Chimes since the mana rock is BUSTED in the first place and every single player other than the rhystic player can just float a mana into the turn players mana pool so they can play up to 3 spells tax free and make the Rhystic player the most sad lad on earth while you all laugh at him for drawing 0 cards off of it.
Thats right, I said it. Victory Chimes counters Rhystic Study. You're welcome.
Why on earth would the rhystic study player not be able to take advantage of all the cards they're getting. If you gave me 20 cards on turn 1 but I couldn't cast any of them I would be 1000% fine with that and would just take the perfect 7 cards out of that. That's not a downside at all.
@@Thunderkeg man just malded at a person who said the entirety of his original comment is THEORY. Take a chill pill.
@@ACertainGuy0 and your theory is wrong, and he's allowed to disagree without being told to chill. Maybe YOU should chill.
Not having enough mana to cast everything is not relevant if you get to sculpt your perfect hand from nobody paying. On the other hand, if they all do and it's 3v1, it doesn't really matter if the 3 time walk themselves, it's still 3v1, if they play right they're going to win or at least make the rhystic irrelevant. And you could argue at that point that the rhystic study player also timewalked themselves by taking turn 3 off to play rhystic, and the only benefit they gained is everyone else timewalked themselves by going down a mana. They wasted a card to stay even if everyone pays.
I do like your Victory Chimes suggestion, though.
Always be prepared for some massive plowing when the bros get together!
Rhystic Study affects decks very differently. It's not terrible if you just have a linear mana curve - T1 1 drop, T2 2 drop...T5 5 drop, etc. You just delay your curve by a turn. A very low to the ground deck where your spells max out around 3 or maybe 4 mana, Rhystic Study hurts *way* more. So that's another thing worth bearing in mind with whether or not to pay.
For me, looking at the next two or three cards is always done for one of three reasons.
1) To show off what my deck is supposed to do if it gets all it pieces together. We're all proud of our decks. We love to show them off. I love to see the hidden Weapons of Mass Destruction my opponents almost played, because...
2) If my game winning card was the very next draw, that emphasizes and heightens the win for my opponents. He had that clutch victory with perfect timing.
3) For the Funnies. "Oh man! If only you let me take 13 or 14 more turns, I would have finally Naturalized that Portal to Phyrexia and really started to turn this game around!"
You definitely pop a Sol Ring if the person who played it has Minsc and Boo in the command zone right? Everything in magic is context sensitive
For the most my group doesn't have a discussion about Rhystic Study. For the most part we just pay the 1 when we have the mana to afford it, which I think generally works out pretty well, they draw a couple cards over a few turns usually, and then it gets removed.
Casual commander is not pay to win for sure. You can have fun and have good games on a budget in a casual game. I would say competitive games are probably pay to win, though. As you get higher in power level you need more expensive stuff to eek out that extra power.
One card I like to run is Head Games. I use it to allow an opponent to get the perfect hand and make them the arch enemy. It basically is a player removal spell :D
You could tell me the dungeon/initiative does absolutely anything and I'll believe it. Oh you win the game if you venture 3 times? Sure. Also, 100% countering or blowing anything that requires more than 10 seconds to explain.
I always negotiate with terrorists, but almost never do I do so in good faith.
Story about playing to your outs: I was playing against a guy with dominaria Jhoira as their commander and they copied it somehow so they had to draw 2 cards with each artifact. They drew down till 1 card and only had Lab Man to win but it was the very last card so he couldn’t do it and he lost the next turn. It was beautiful. This was also before thoracle.
If your meta has combos and/or STAX, you run the spot removal. In my anecdotal experience, the majority of metas contain these archetypes. However, if for some reason you do not have any stax or combo players in your playgroup, you should not run the spot removal. Resident combo player Tomer should not run his spot removal because they do not play stax pieces to answer his combos, and the rest of the table should run the spot removal to stop Tomer from comboing off.
Don’t bolt the bird, they either get locked out of the game or they draw jeweled lotus and you’d wished you bolted their combo commander with three toughness.
I like those odds.
Rhystic study is something I only pay for if it won’t negatively affect my game. I’ll just deal with whatever my opponent draws and use my own draw engine to not fall behind.
This only works in 1v1. You will never outdraw the Rhystic Study if all 3 other players are letting the Rhystic Study player have a card for every spell. If you’re the only player who isn’t paying you might keep up with the Rhystic Study player, but the 2 players allowing themselves to get taxed are going to gang up on you.
What's the public opinion on taking out an early sol ring more incidentally?
I play a Saffi value town recursion list, and took out someone's T2 sol ring with a T3 knight of autumn. They were the only player with any ramp by that point, and it was a casual table with people i dont know. It seemed like a responsible thing to do. The player rage-scooped in response, and I was left feeling like I'd persecuted him unfairly.
I didn't really have better plays, and could recur the knight with saffi, so I benefit from having something to protect with her.
Was I unfair? Was this a reasonable play? Or a waste of my resources that was also mean?
It is always reasonable. Some people rage quit when they are set back. People are sometimes more sensitive when it comes to their mana sources.
When people have targets for something they should be expected to do it. If some one turns one raging goblin, are they supposed to not swing? Then why have a 1 cost haste creature in the deck? Why get upset that on turn 1 go from 40 hp to 39?
People need to be willing to take the loses with the win and if their deck has a weakness to adjust to the weakness/meta
Sounds like a miscommunication of expectations to me. You were prepared for a significantly more cutthroat and antagonistic playstyle than they were. Commander games are very long, and your turn 3 play quite easily could have been the thing that meant they simply do not get to play the game at all. Scooping because they value their time is perfectly reasonable. I don't think you did anything wrong, but it was definitely mean. On the tier list of dick moves in Magic, mana disruption is on top of the list, followed by discard effects. Anything that prevents one person specifically from playing the game is generally just mean.
I think both of you were making reasonable decisions, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
@dontmisunderstand6041 How does removing a mana _accelerant_ equal "preventing a player from playing the game"? I must ask... how long are you playing magic for? This seems like a very basic "I don't want to deal with interaction/removal" complaint. An early Sol Ring is not a core piece of a strategy... it is a jackpot in commander-roulette, catapulting one player _significantly_ ahead of any one other. It is a prime target for artifact removal, something a card like Knight of Autumn is explicitly _designated_ for.
Interaction is a core of MTG gameplay. It _is_ playing magic. I would argue that the other guy didn't _want_ to play magic, because one of the core aspects of the game seems to be not for them. One can argue about stax and about which cards are too strong, but playing _and removing_ ressources is very fundamentally what mtg is about. It's not solitaire, if you're going to game night expecting everybody else to just not interact at all while you do your thing, then I'd say that that is a _very_ limited way of playing magic.
In Commander, I’ve been increasing spot removal (creatures, artifacts, enchantments and lands) in all my decks. Disrupting my opponents game plans is almost always worth it. I’d bolt the bird… I keep my board wipes for later need.
About the teaming up part. I noticed, when you took out the more brutal cards out of my deck actually I am winning more, since I am not the biggest threat most of the time. (in casual mid till higher mid power) and I actually have more fun while doing that 🤔
I think it’s a little silly to say you should always or never pay for Rhystic Study. You have to evaluate the value of the spell you’re playing and how dangerous it is to give the Rhystic player more cards. If your options are, for example, to play a key 6 mana spell and let your opponent draw a card, or pass the turn and do nothing, I think you clearly don’t pay. If it’s turn 5 and your options are play a 3 mana spell and a mana rock or pay a 3 mana spell and pay for Rhystic, I think the argument falls in favor of paying. Any analysis of Rhystic has to be on a case by case basis imo.
The only time I get upset is if they have the mana open and just not pay for it when they have no other cards in hand or anything else to have a reason to hold it open. But honesty, there is a risk to reward decision that every player has to make. Is it better to play this one card that will help me and they draw a card or is it better to play less and they do not draw but then you have not played a card that may have helped you out.
Great idea for a topic, some magic anecdotal advice definitely needs the update / to be reframed for commander given its size
I think if you actually learn and understand the advice, you know when to use it. Updating it just allows people to follow it like a string of commands instead of internalizing it.
@@MakeVarahHappen hopefully if they follow it, they'll eventually internalize it. Magic is a complicated game and I don't expect everyone I play against to have thought about it as much as I do, but the better everyone is the more good games we have
As a future podcast topic I'd be really interested in hearing your guys' thoughts on one of what is seemingly my hottest takes... the companions are criminally underplayed as main deckable creatures - sure, not all of them - but definitely a handful really should be played more, even if the deck isn't being warped to fit their conditions. Lurrus is a $1 !!! card and imo should be an autoinclude in any WB aristocrat deck
That should be self-evident... if they weren't good enough on their own, there'd be no point in building your deck around them with their companion conditions. In order for them to be worth using as a companion, they necessarily must be worth using as part of a deck where they're not a companion.
Best removal is player removal? Door to nothingness confirmed best removal spell in the format
Imagine showing someone Questing Beast once and expecting them to know what it does
In regards to both early concessions and eliminating players early, I think it really depends on who you are playing with. If you are with friends (or just people you want to play with again) you shouldn’t do either unless that’s the playgroup’s agreed upon mentality. Nothing worse than having to sit and watch your buddies duke it out for an hour while you wait for the next game, or having to watch someone pout scoop and complain about having to wait.
In contrast, if you are with randos at an event, read the group in regards to taking people out (like maybe don’t kill the newbie with a precon on turn three, but feel free to smash stax guy). And you should never feel bad about conceding when you aren’t having fun with randos, or if the vibe feels off. Nothing more valuable than your time, so don’t let people you don’t care about waste it.
Also Tomer, you might need to do some laundry…looks like there are some chips on your shoulder :)
That's kind of the attitude a lot of people on MTGO have, mull to 5, scoop and lock up the game or at the least turn it into a 3 player game no one signed up for, join another game. It's rude and it doesn't make the community better.
Always plow the commander. Just played a game online where I casted Pantlaza and discovered into a Path and immediately hit the opponent's Reaper King. Person scooped because I wouldn't let them keep it on the board and blow up my stuff with free scarecrows using Urza's incubator.
Richard doesn't play politics by trying to make deals. He plays politics by being the supervisor and browbeating other people into using their removal so he doesn't have to.
one for one their value engine (usually their commander since a deck is built around their commander), it'll be more like a one for 5
I guess my principle would be: Always try to find a way to get to your outs, but be most sharp about the whole table having fun, you´ll find your way.
Play to your outs & Play to win:
I figured for myself, that usually recurring board wipes (Massacre Girl, for example) or play multiples of them in one game is no fun for anyone. It´s cool and important, that you can reset the board for one time, but spending your resources to reset the board another time, will be usually just annoying, because you´re not doing, what makes your deck cool, even if it gives you more chance for another out.
If you have a "stax" or "board wipe tribal" deck, communicate it beforehand and I´m sure most of the people will let you have an enjoyable game with it.
Commander games have become so fast that I actually would advocate for light stax (not locks) more often than not, and if the board is being wiped people are staying in the game which is a net good.
If they scoop you win so...
Do you kill the overpowered one drop creature? Yes, every time. I play against an esper sentinel and rhystic study player and I fracture, vanishing verse, or mortify one or both because it's the right thing to do.
21:45 LOL yes there is nuance to every situation. If it's turn 4 or 5 and I'm stuck on 2 lands, I'm casting my ramp spell into the rhystic studies. If the other people at the table think that's incorrect then I'm just scooping and they can play a weird 3 person game because at that point I'm basically not there anyways.
A lot of people would be glad to see you scoop in this situation because they wouldn’t want to play with someone like this.
@@light-chemistry I wouldn't want to play with someone who spent 5 turns doing nothing either LOL
People who complain about other people not paying the one should put cards like disenchant into their deck and just remove it if it is too much of a problem. Let others play the deck how they feel is best. It is not a game where one player has the right to tell others how to play.
@@SmashCentralOfficial if paying 1 mana for rhystic study a turn means you're doing nothing for 5 turns then you're building bad decks and got much bigger problems "LOL"
@Adam Henwood you misunderstood my example. If I'm stuck on 2 lands on turn 5 when the Rhystic comes down, I'm not paying the 1.
Tomer is so bitter about rhystic study lol
For checking draw after losing.
One moment that makes me sorta happy is when I have a choice between digging for answers or using my current resources to try and win or not die
Looking at the top helps my justify my decision if I chose not to dig lol
59:09 for me i will make "friends" at the table cause in a FFA (Free for fall) its just a matter of time til someone stabs another in the back and go for the win..
TLDR: make deals for your own goals..
51:25 My policy on this is that killing somebody early only benefits the person who is ahead when it happens. Unless you're the the person in the archenemy position, you should be trying to keep everyone else alive because you can work together and it maximises the chances of somebody finding an answer to the archenemy. If you're the archenemy, you want to start knocking out players as quickly as possible preferably the next strongest first. If somebody else is a clear archenemy, I'll even go further and stop doing damage to the other players until the archenemy is dealt with because it risks putting them in range of being knocked out. That's my strategy.
The last time I was the archenemy, I knocked out the next most threatening player the turn before the other two realised I was the threat and then they just didn't have the resources to stop me.
An example of when I was knocked out early happened when I had a decent value engine going but another player had the most threatening board so he saw me as the second strongest player and eliminated me. He went on to streamroll the game and afterwards another player told me that he could have saved me but he did nothing because it wasn't him being attacked but he realised they needed my resources to answer the archenemy's board and not saving me doomed the rest of them.
Cedh has Grand Abolisher, Ranger Captain, and Myrel that doesn't care about how many cards you drew
One thing I'm curious what the goldfish crew thinks, that no one discussed in relation to responding to a spell on the stack in turn order, was the situation of a player being last in turn and tapping a land. This is done so that there is another round of priority passing and is usually done by the player 4th in turn order to avoid having to use a card to respond.
I don't think tapping mana would pass priority because mana abilities don't use the stack?
Playing to your outs is knowing your deck and finding the answers that are in there.
There’s hope until there isn’t. If the answer is in there and you make every effort to find it and come up empty, you weren’t going to win anyway. That’s acceptable. Shoot every bullet in your revolver. If it comes up empty and you are still dead, then you went down with a fight. Sometimes you don’t have the answer for the problem. It’s something to think about. Was it a corner case, or is it a deck flaw you have. Is it worth fixing or do you play knowing what you can’t beat.
Commander is a game of give and take. Taking calculated risks and watching the roulette wheel decide your fate.
Playing to win is, to me, making the best decision you can with the information available. Is the door open to tutor for your win condition because everyone tapped out? Do it! Are you able to take out a threat that nobody else seems to be able to handle? Do it! Be the best player you can be and things will break your way as often as the Magic Gods allow.
An excerpt from a Brainstorm book might be
"In a singleton, multiplayer format, Brainstorm is best suited for decks that focus on topdeck manipulation"
I don't think I'd play it in a deck that didn't care about topdeck
Love to hear your takes on these
Fun trumps winning...immediately followed by take someone out at first opportunity and don't feel bad about that 😂👌
No denying that fresh card smell. Me too Phil.. Me too..
"Buy Singles" for the most part yes, but I'll buy a commander deck if its appropriately themed and I want to base a deck on it.
TBH on "Don't negotiate with terrorists" I'm curious as to what people think of a scenario that happened in a recent game I was in. Player 1 had a pretty large board set-up and I was playing a mono-blue deck, so my chances of outing the board at all were really minimal. They definitely had lethal on me no matter what they did, so they offered a deal that I wouldn't attack them and they wouldn't attack me. My choices at that point are 1) Die or 2) Accept and hope Player 2 answers the board, so I choose 2. Player 2 gets their turn and doesn't answer the board, but puts Player 1 at a low life total, low enough that I realize I have a lethal line against Player 1 and my chances against Player 2 were a lot better than against Player 1. Is it wrong then to break the deal? In the moment I decided against it because I got a little flak for considering it, but I'll be honest looking back I think I would have justified, because dagger point deals don't feel good to ever be on the receiving end on and I think people who make them shouldn't be surprised that they get punished instead. But maybe that's me thinking a bit too Spikey.
That’s one of the issues with making deals in commander. Sometimes, game state can change drastically at any point. I personally think you should always honor a deal, so if you broke your deal and player 1 was mad at you, I certainly wouldn’t think he ISNT justified. But at the same time, you gotta play to your outs. So just depends case to case. I wouldn’t blame you for breaking the deal and going for it
If you make a deal, you stick to that deal. That's the fundamental concept of making deals. Lying to get a free win you didn't earn isn't that far from stacking the deck or breaking major game rules. In this exact scenario, you lost the game, and you made an agreement that allowed you to get an extra turn in exchange for a specific condition. You do not get to accept the benefits of the deal without also accepting the drawbacks of that deal.
I'll be honest, you even considering breaking the deal would probably get you kicked out of any playgroup that has basic human decency. No reasonable person has any tolerance for that kind of childish bullshit.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 You see ultimately it was, you know, a game and we both moved past it because it wasn't a particularly fair deal in the first place, so there wasn't any hurt feelings.
You don't seem like you'd be fun to play against if you let things like that get you that angry.
@@lamiaprincess6371 There's absolutely no anger in anything I said. I apologize for allowing you to mistake my meaning, perhaps I should have worded things better.
Nothing about what you've said has any inklings of an unfair deal. I wasn't there, I don't know the full situation, but everything you've said so far has indicated it was a fair deal. It's on you to explain the situation and explain how it wasn't fair. Until then, it seems like you're in the wrong here, both in that game and in this conversation.
"The boardset is restate." 🧐🤣
I’m surprised “never take the tempting offer” wasn’t included.
Commander is P2W, but i think that needs to be ok and not such a "negative" adjective. In a vacuum, yes it's better to have dockside, meathook, etc. IMO, people in general don't like to say they play a P2w format, but that should be normalized. And if you stay within budget then sweet!
tomer: I make them have it
Also Tomer: im never gonna search my library when Crim has 3 mana open for Opposition Agent
Because he always has it :P
@@MTGGoldfishCommander wow, answering to a comment on a video, released more than two weeks ago. Kudos! Love you guys
The BEST crew on goldfish
richard seems to only think about removal in terms of a mono white spirited companion deck that doesnt consistently draw lots of cards. Lots of commanders/decks draw cards pretty easily and its really fine to get set back a card for removing something as long as it really was necessary. I don't think hes totally wrong but he has such a black and white opinion of it
Do not cut your can trips and deck selection cards just because they are "boring" your deck will suddenly stop working and you wont understand why. I guess is very similar to people cutting lands or removal for more "cool stuff" but consistency is the most powerful characteristic a deck can have.
I once won a game at 1 life with Veya the nightclad in play and instead of killing me the Veya player went big by kicking rite of replication and I wild ricochet to steal their win.
Consistency is powerful, but inherently unfun. If your deck plays the same every game you might as well just play solitaire. Especially in commander and other singleton formats which fundamentally rely on the concept of variance as a part of the mechanical design.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 That sort of depends on the type of deck you are playing and the ability of your opponents to interact. Cantrips and card selection is vital for being able to hit land drops and then later avoid flooding. In my ideal game of commander everyone has their moment where their deck does its thing and then some one stops them and someone else gets a turn at it. We build decks because we want them to function, we don't want to just flop half out games because we didn't ramp turn two and our 7 mana commander can't be cast before the game ends.
@@narvuntien For the most part, having the right number of mana sources in the deck prevents a statistically significant amount of mana screw. Unfortunately, the way math works means you can't simultaneously prevent mana screw and flooding, but if you already have mana, you could simply have card draw engines or even just put in fetch lands to filter more unnecessary lands out of the deck for little to no cost. Jam Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse in mono-color simply for the fact that you don't need EVERY land in your deck, but DO need a number of lands in the deck that gives access to early game mana reliably. Tempo is largely irrelevant in multiplayer, and only matters for aggro decks in a 1v1.
What's important to note is, filtering and draw engines shouldn't be there to make your deck play the same every game. Personally, I would never run a tutor in any deck, I think it fundamentally contradicts the spirit and mechanics of the game. Things like Cosmos Elixir, Twilight Prophet, Inspiring Commander, or any enchantress? Sure.
As an aside, I made a pretty hilarious grixis brawl deck in arena. Loads of draw spells with an instants/sorceries matter theme to the deck. A pseudo-storm deck with only like 3 burn spells in the deck, but it wins without casting any of them most of the time. It's an interesting deck in regard to this conversation because it can just draw 70 cards over the course of a game and still plays differently most of the time and is fairly interactive for a deck with almost no removal that doesn't want to engage in combat to win.
1:11:48 sniffing the cards…mmmmmmm. So good.
33:14 - Tomer: “Commander is for fun; there’s nothing on the line here; it’s not a tournament…” Precisely why I don’t pay the Rhystic tax. It’s not worth getting all flustered. It is just a game. I’m not going to fall behind over it. However, the person who’s putting extra lands into play… now I’m concerned.
I like to advocate that if someone doesn't pay the one, they use that mana to kill the Rhystic Study player first.
Can we add destroy the lands?
I like to assess my hand after I've lost to see what dead weight I had, or what kind of answer I lacked. Then seeing the next few draws improves that. A lot of the time it's getting throttled by a high power combo or commander and the best replacement for my niche card is a staple foodstuffs unfortunately.