Love the content guys. Joey by far gives some of the most balanced, interesting conversations about MTG in general. Too many of the other channels are prone to hyperbole just for the sake of it and I've gone off watching them.
The best thing you experienced players out there can do, is not to hinder and limit yourself but to lift others up, as Joey and Dana hinted on at the end. I'm a budget casual player, consume tons of mtg content but don't get to play as much as I'd like to. Whenever I get to play with my playgroup, our best and most experienced player often points out the most crucial and match-shaping play from the last game or we discuss the threat assessment of a certain moment or turn. This helps me out a ton - even if I was able to pinpoint the exact same thing. Just by his way of expressing himself and sharing his perspective he usually brings me a step forward. This sort of recap after every game is probably a good idea no matter the experience-difference among the present players, but especially if you feel like you've been the most experienced one there: Please just share your perspective. It does so much, no matter how obvious you think it is you're talking about. Special extra points if you can do that without giving a vibe of educating others and simply recapping and talking about that game as a group. Great podcast as always, thanks for the good stuff
This was a wonderful dialogue! Makes me really want to track my own games at my LGS! Thanks so much for this “Avenue” of content! Also, no matter how much you push the envelope; it’s still stationary ✉️
I was winning too much against my friends, but I noticed that I was brewing in a very different wat from them: I was favoring value engines, while they liked big, flashy, spells. I was always under the radar, and I think that greatly pushes my winning percentage.
I feel you, some of my friends really disregard some of the best cards in my decks because they don't see the value it brings. Example: no one cares about embalmers tools in my Sidisi deck until I make 30 zombies at end step. Another annoying thing for me is people running too little interaction and only running big flashy cool stuff. All fine, but don't complain that my super janky deck is way too strong if you just let everything happen all the time.
I've noticed something similar with my Kros, defense contractor deck and it getting a lot of wins. But I have a theory as to why... Kros only preforms well when there's at least 2 creature decks at the table that I can start giving counters to. The deck in isolation doesn't do very much outside of give +1 counters and goad people. I also threw in the initiative and the monarchy to further incentives people attacking each other (and not me as I barely have any creatures). The only legit win conditions outside of reigns of power are an avenger of zendikar and craterhoof (for now) for the inevitable 1v1. The big thing is, no one tends to get political at the table, keeping to themselves. Dealing with Kros isn't all that helpful either as the +1 counters have been distributed and the power at the table has increased dramatically. So then it becomes a catch 22. If they try and get rid of me, they leave themselves more vulnerable to attack by bigger than they should be creatures. And if they deal with the other players, I continue to give counters. And in games where people don't like getting goaded, they snipe Kros off the board shutting down the goad game plan yet it still manages to gets the win. Granted, the most recent game I played with Kros, I put a milled tooth and nail back on top of my opponents deck using noxious revival to force some plays or to get really big goadable creatures in play, yet he died as he was at 1 life after he entwined the tooth and nail. I managed to win that game despite being precariously at 9 life. So my theory is, it isn't just the decks you play, or the playgroup you hang around, but the style of the players, or what your playgroup does or does not do. I honestly don't know what the solution is to a gimmick deck that honestly should have no business winning as often as it does.
@@AGuy-s5v Something similar happens to my Kambal deck. Is a cruel control orzhov deck with enchantments that punish playing spells and wins with Bolas's Citadel and some drain life spells. It's a deck that says "pls attack me cause my creatures are bullshit and only play deffensively and if you don't kill me now you are gonna regreted". I played 7/8 games with it this year and I won all of them, 6 of the 8 by doing almost nothing but gain life and draining. As you said, is about the styles and the way they analyze threats
I think experience and skill also play a role. Even a player with a weaker deck can win games against stronger decks if they make the right plays throughout the game.
I would also expect content creators to have a higher win rate: you play more games, see more decks, see more unique rules interactions etc. I haven't tracked, but reckon I'm ballpark 30 games on the year as a casual player. "It's not the plane it's the pilot." Love your content, love your insight, keep up the great work. Hopefully, one day I'll get a game in with y'all! ❤️
Thank you all for a great episode! Here are some of my thoughts: I think the way your opponents react when you win is way more important than how often you win. E. G. my Yennett Deck had a pretty high winrate but everyone loved it - but yuriko dooming everyone out of "nowhere" wasn't, even tho the winrate was lower. So I adapted yuriko but left Yennet and it worked out fine.
20:00 data about the opponent is really interesting, you actually gave an interesting perspective. I thought about it the other way: maybe tracking their skill level/experience roughly on a 1-5 or so scale would be interesting. I (or another more experienced player) have won plenty of games that I feel I shouldnt have, because my opponents didn't see the line to win. It's weird being extremely scared and then see someone make suboptimal plays when they clearly could have won. If it's on board I will very happily talk the newer player through it and teach them something about their deck. Sometimes however, you talk about what their options were, they are like, yeah also had in hand, and then you're like man you could have won so hard that time!
I started to track my games a while ago, and a thing that I keep track of is the reason I win. It helped me realise for example that my Cazur and Ukkima ninjutsu deck won nearly exclusively by finding and playing yuriko, even though I built this deck wanting a ninjutsu deck that was not a yuriko deck. It pushed me remove my ways to go find yuriko, and to add other wincons and synergies, and now, without changing my win rate by much, I have way more fun playing the deck.
Whenever you get the chance, Dana’s Malcom and Ich-Tekik deck isn’t listed on the decks you play list and I was interested to look at it. I’m hoping to start tracking my games once I get the chance to start playing again, so this was interesting to see the analysis for the games within the first half of the year
Hey guys thanks for the awesome content and great inspiration! Would it maybe be possible to get a template of joey's datasheet, to flatten the road a little bit, for any of us attempting a similar endeavour? Would be much appreciated :)
This is all very helpful to try and assess my decks! I've won two games all year, one with an old precon I never played before or after and the other was a huge fluke, so I'll try to keep all this in mind
I'm so glad you guys also mentioned "the intangibles". It's difficult to know if a person might be winning more games because of something having to do with their personality and not their skill level or deck's power level. Like, are my opponents trying to make me feel welcome in this LGS and therefore aren't being as hard on me as they should? Is my friendliness making them guilty to attack me? (Or on the other hand - is there something about my disposition that makes people want to attack me more?) I think these factors are super interesting!
Started tracking my games last year, about 11 months ago. 2022 - 63-68 (48%) 2023 - 73-79 (48%) I have 70 decks now, and after one of them hit 10 games within like 4 months I decided to cut them off at that mark, till the others catch up. I think having an equal number of games, even though a small sample size, helps to get a better more fair level for comparison. So far, 9 decks have hit this 'retirement for a couple years' mark. It also helps greatly when a deck is hated to clearly state 'this is game 10 for Jin-Gitaxias, it's his last game.' Then, winning or not, there's a sense of relief by the others that they didn't actually see it as much as it might have felt like while it was here, and they won't see it again for a very long time. I've found since I started doing this that it's made me care more about winning. When a deck that I just built goes 3-7 and another is 7-3 I look at the first one as an underperformer and I'm disappointed that I didn't get to pop off with it like I built it to do. With that in mind, I do have several decks that I don't really hold in nearly as high of regard, so when those steal a win I think "I'd rather have saved that win for a 'good' deck." For the question you asked specifically about IF a deck is winning too much, what to do - I'd say rotating your decks is the best solution to 1. hide that fact and 2. it doesn't bother people even if it is true and they know it. If you play your undefeated Titania deck 5 times in a row one night that will wear people, their tolerance and morale down and might ruin the entire evening. If you played it once every 10 games (I think you said in another video that you have 17ish decks) then it won't be an issue.
Dana you inspired me to build a Juri, Master of the Revue deck for myself and wow has it been fun. Being able to launch a tactical nuke at my opponents has won me several games with her already!
I like games where I can be unassuming and get tiny pieces out or I can play my powerful engine pieces while there is a bigger problem already on someone else's board that will give me a tiny advantage and winning out of nowhere
The issue I find with decks like that is if you have a pod that you constantly play with…they eventually catch on to your decks game plan and won’t ever let you set it up. But it’s always nice to pull something off that a random pod of players don’t catch onto
@ericsanchz oh my group knows for sure. And I like the challenge and dynamics that come with each of us in the pod trying to keep each other in check and not king make.
Only speaking for myself here but if I'd lose games for months in a row and the playgroup would suddenly "go easy" on me by choosing below group average decks so that mine kind of gets nudged up by that, any win would feel hollow and I'd be demotivated to even playing for a while i guess. Sure, it's probably meant to make everyone have their moment and what not but it would also inform me above all else that me or my deck are the issue and everyone is seeing it hence feeling the need to collectively take pity on me.
Agreed, but in my case, it's people offering to let me play their decks. It comes off like, "Let's throw the poor commoner a bone" and that my deck building ability and experience is not enough to hang, even though I've been playing longer than some of them have been alive; I just don't have the deep pockets that let people just throw thousands at a whim to netdeck Ur-Dragon. I've only played with someone else's deck once (big surprise: I won), but it was only because I was working on something similar and it gave me ideas on how to finish it. I don't think a lot of people don't get how frustrating it is to get talked down to like that, even if they think they're doing some great service of "allowing you to play at their level (read: budget threshold)".
I'm using Dana's Jaheira deck as reference for my Rule 0 Emrakul and Chatterfang deck. Love hearing all of y'all's thoughts around how it's been performing!
32:50 I can confirm this. I also play "janky" cards and win with them. My friends tell me that I shouldn't do that because what happens if people catch on and just team on you; however, they fail to realize, similar to what you said, Dana, when someone plays that Rhystic Study, everyone else has no choice but to do something about it, otherwise they cascade out of control. Whereas our play style is such a gradual process, that it almost has to be ignored. Long story short, if you play a card that one person tells everyone is going to win over the course of 5 turns, if someone else plays a card that will win within 1 or 2 turn cycles, it must be dealt with, lest they throw the game.
9:00 also, what do you replace the tutors with? If you put in other good cards (which I assume you do) those cards will also have their impact on the game of course
The decks I play that win “too much” I usually just take apart. Like I made a Winota deck, it was undefeated in my pod. I lowered it down to a $50 budget deck, it was undefeated. That was certainly just a “Winota is very powerful” thing, but it does spark joy for me to win every game.
Dana made a great point in regards to Yurlok play patterns. Numbers can easily be skewed based on a players abilities and knowledge. I found EDH tough at first because the cards were so foreign to me, but playing standard I could often form a game plan based on what land an opponent played turn 1 or simply knowing this guy plays deck X. Knowledge is so big, and often playing obscure cards is a great advantage to winning. Great video by the way.
I'd be interested to see which decks have the highest winrate when considering a confidence interval. Realistically you need quite a few data points to draw meaningful conclusions so having a 40% winrate with 10-20 games isn't necessarily indicative of an above average winrate
CHALLENGE THE STATS: in Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos decks 0.000% of decks something like 10 out of nearly 2500 decks are using Cryptic Trilobite which is criminally underplayed. You can remove the +1/+1 counters for 2 colorless to pay for activated abilities which happens to be the exact cost of incubation tokens and then Brimaz can proliferate those counters for even more free activations
One of my favorite jokes I use at my lgs, "your stuff never gets removed if you play bad cards." You can justify removing a monument to perfection, but a journeyman's kite? What player is gonna use removal on Karn living legacy? Lim-duls hex is manageable right? Using those types of cards feels like it helps a lot.
I think Dana is talking about the Tall Chicken effect, when you build a deck that gets ahead early but is still ultimately doing similar things to everyone else, even if it looks more scary than the other chickens, and it gets targeted early and loses. Decks that play known entity cards have the advantage of using 'the best cardboard', but suffer from losing lots of the surprise/nuance of jank cards. Lots of subpar options have more versatility or other upsides that make the cards an unpleasant surprise, it's like how in cEDH many decks would prefer it if Cyclonic Rift bounced their non-lands too (artifacts in particular obv), because they could replay mana rocks and go off, but in more casual games Cyclonic Rift would be another bad bounce wipe if it bounced everything. As far as not really knowing why certain decks 'play well', part of this is what happens when people coincidentally/accidentally build a deck that's stronger than they know how to, it's not really that hard to do if you do a lot of brewing, this is in part how you learn by brewing. We're also not exactly conscious of all of our play heuristics, especially if we haven't been playing for years, the same is true of the ones for building decks. My biggest take away from building 'harder to build Commanders' is that the Commander is just one card, and that decks built around making the 99 strong/consistent tend to be very, very hard to play against if your deck has 'issues'. As strong as decks built around strong Commanders are, it's very easy to remove your Commander a couple times and ruin your synergy, or steal your Commander even, if your Commander is really unimpressive who cares if they die? Even cEDH decks make a point of not being too Commander centric. 99 driven decks are harder to predict and harder to disrupt, but they're tricky to build since you can't count on having a real card in the Command Zone. I think people are generally much worse at rating/evaluating cards than they think, playing with more jank in decks really teaches you how important it is that your deck 'fills roles', almost all good decks need to do certain things, and decks that don't do things like removal/interaction tend to lose a lot, same with decks that have very few creatures and no solution to being attacked. If a bad card technically fills a role, is it really a bad card? Joey, if you won with a jank deck vs a bunch of objectively non-jank decks, you wouldn't be elated? I think if it's random people I would be more careful about anything that can be interpreted negatively, because people who don't know you often assume wrong things about you, you can tease people who know you more than you can tease randoms. Also, read the room a bit maybe? if everyone is visibly salty, be polite and probably move along, but if people clearly had fun playing against your jank deck, even if they lost with 'better' decks it might be a different reception to some tasteful gloating.
Wonder if your also tracking which colors you win with the most? It why I had to start making decks without blue to help me become a more well rounded player. Probably have to do start leaving out green after this year so not looking forward to black white and red only decks...
There's also a dude at my LGS who runs a lot of black tutors but heavily restricts what he's getting. He mostly demonic tutors for basics or for an answer if really necessary. He's a great dude, played some awesome games where he was like yeah could get my combo piece and win now in a boring way but I don't like that, so here's my meme card that we're gonna have some fun with
Need to clone that dude. By all means, full send if you are in a tournament of some sorts. Playing with randoms at an LGS? What do you have to prove? Seems like a good dude.
“What really matters at the end of the day is how your opponents feel about it.” Couldn’t agree more, I have a few decks recently I was worried would be too strong but my opponents have loved them despite that so they’ve become my new favorites. And Joey, I said to myself “Joey should try to steal the segue right around here” literally right as you did it 😂
Having downpowered most of my decks and trying to play my weaker decks into lower powered pods i've realised as a relatively spikey player who politics moderately well i still also have above a 25% win rate on all my decks. I see the differences in willingness to reduce life totals, amount of interaction and target priority making a huge difference in wins.
As someone who logs their games, something that I wish that I kept track of, and plan on implementing for future logs, is how my decks win. I find it boring to have my decks win the exact same way every time, because part of why I love EDH is the variability. If I win the same way that means my deck’s game plan is on rails, which means little to no variation. So if I track how my decks win (i.e. sanguine bond combo, commander damage, ect.) I can make changes to my decks. To keep them fresh and from going stale (in my eyes).
One issue for me is I used to be a battle cruiser player and I kind of got tired of waiting to do things. So I've been trending the curves in my deck down as much as possible so I almost always have turn 1, turn 2, turn 3 plays. But a lot of people I play just simply don't have those plays, so when I start my decks engine on like turn 5, they might still be casting ramp or setting up some sort of advantage engine and I just run away with the game. Rocco Street Chef has been one of if not my favorite commander ever printed in the few weeks it's been legal but it gets going on turn 2 or turn 3 and I can have massive boards that rebuild themselves even through board wipes and I pretty much always feel ahead in my groups. The hard part is cutting synergy pieces that go off. Like, do I really need the 1 mana Ozolith? Should I play Scurry Oak? There are other counter payoffs that don't go easily infinite or scale ridiculously hard, but I like these cards. I think they are fun so I don't want to cut them.
Former experiment kraj +1/+1 counter player, turned Shalai and Hallar, turned rocco +1/+1 turned rocco exile matters I somewhat agree. Though my pod isn't really sitting duck early game, our average cmc powercrept in lower territories. Even In our scope, It's insane how fast rocco turns on the value engine, literally goes brr very fast
How do you track your games? Is there an app? I use BG stats right now, but that's a board game app. I would love an app where you can log plays with specific decks and so on. Thanks in advance for your answer😊
What makes a deck win is a really interesting thing to look into. I built a Gyruda, Doom of Depths deck toward the beginning of the year. I packed it full of clones to copy gyruda and get his ETB multiple times. Although I find the deck really fun to play, I have played it 5 times with my pod and all 5 games ended with me winning because the entire table conceded. I have played it against a variety of power levels too, and every game turns out the same with me cloning or reanimating the best creatures and outvaluing my opponents to oblivion. And I can't stress enough, the deck has never K.O.'d anyone. It has only won mass concession which feels kinda bad
On the sacrifice lands: I play [[High Market]] and [[Phyrexia’s Core]] in my Prosper deck, just in case I need to get one or two more [[Marionette Master]] triggers to finish off an opponent. The cards aren’t strong, but the opportunity cost is low.
There seem to be a trend on Many EDH podcasts nowadays about "toning down" power levels, ie. removing tutors, sol ring, Dockside E., Cyclonic Rift, etc. It's all across youtube. I suspect a correlation with what is printed. Games have become too fast? Decks are too linear? What's your thoughts?
I've recently had my first experience of intentionally powering down my deck because of a power disparity at my regular tables. I've got a small group of friends who we play MtG sometimes, and I also go to the LGS to play with randos. I've found that decks that seem appropriate with randos (where I think I have a ~33% win rate (I haven't been tracking like Joey or Dana have)) are not appropriate with my friend group (closer to 80%). My winningest deck is an Akiri Fearless Voyager deck, and I recently took out Stonehewer Giant because I found it to be just too good at rolling over my home table where it is able to generate an absurd amount of value, while at my LGS it's too slow and comes down too late. As a result, The card was never what I wanted: it either worked and made the game a stomp (while also slowing the game down because of all the searching and shuffling, adding insult to injury), or it just wouldn't get played. I've cut it in favor of Danitha, Benalia's Hope, which I think will be better in both environments since it doesn't generate infinite value that overwhelms low power tables, but does something right away to keep up with high power tables. I was also in a similar situation as Dana with Tutors. I've had at least one opponent get frustrated at me for running tutors in my equipment deck. I mostly shrug this off because I'm an equipment deck that needs equipment to function; I'm not tutoring for instant game winning combo pieces, I'm tutoring for meat-and-potatoes value equipment like Sword of the Animist and Mask of Memory. The only exception is, again, Stonehewer Giant, who bypasses all costs, therefore Argentum Armor was the right choice %90 of the time. The false choice wasn't "fun" and was another reason to cut it.
I power down juuust a bit. But i can always just not make the best play in game if i feel no one else is ready for the nutz yet. If i power down too much, i cant just get better mid game, but i can always pull punches.
I have a Kotori vehicle deck that for some reason I still don't get just works incredbly well. It always goes like if I play with new players they don't take it serious because it's vehicles and a precon commander and after the first round I ususally become a priority target. I even tried to downgrade it but that didn't change very much. I personally stopped using it against players / decks I don't know or against players / decks I know are on the lower end because it just has the tendency to run away with games and that's not much fun for anyone.
I have really powerfull decks for my play group . What i do is to intentionnaly not play optimal. Not interacting as soon as i can , or not making myself the threat by turn 4-5 . Every body had fun this way
A lot of my games end up me and one other player in particular battling it out. The other two try to find a way to sneak in an opportune kill to go for the win. It's pretty fun, from my perspective anyways. We played 5 games last time we met up and I won 3 of the 5. I played 4 decks.
I think you skirted the most important issue briefly - offering your opponents a chance to interact and counterplay. Decks that telegraph their plan and have to build a non-haste board to swing through and win 'fairly' tend to just have a lower win % than decks that can combo off on a single turn and win with very little window to respond.
I had built Ich Malcolm before edhrec had enough decks for a page. It took months for my play group to realize how good Prosper was because he just made my golems into giant threats.
My most winning deck is my weakest one... My playgroup just knows that I am scary often and I get stopped a lot. But my purraj deck? I rarely get targeted when I pilot it, so I have better chances
We play 3 games a night at FNM, I would like to win 1 a night so 33% is my target. I would describe my decks as the upper half of the store, as I have just been playing long than most of the people, some people are still running precons.
Considering you guys play EDH constantly you probably run such high winrates in part because you're simply better EDH players than most others you play against
This is for Joey: Have you registered the result of the pregame conversation? Perhaps The Mimeoplasm is played in weaker pods? Perhaps you should simply revaluate your perseption of the stregth of the deck? Try playing it against stronger pods and see if the doesn’t even the playing field.
Challenge the stats pick for you. Arcane Proxy is currently in 0% of Yuriko decks according to EDHREC. Being able to double dip on a Brainstorm or Preordain or even a Vampiric or Mystical Tutor in that deck for as little as 3 mana is super strong. It can also flip for 7 life loss with Yuriko herself which can be game ending. Big spells thay can be cast for cheap is Yuriko's entire gameplan. I've won games by vamp tutoring this to the top just to tutor another big thing the following turn.
My play group and I have started tracking our games and a surprising amount of games have been won by the person going first our sample size is much smaller then yours but we have found that to be very interesting
i really don't think you can draw conclusions from how well your decks are playing given your sample sizes. Assume 95% confidence test, and using a binary distribution with the probability of success being 0.25, the probability of winning 31 games out of 100 is 0.930651111. meaning, that we do not reject the null hypothesis (that you have a greater than chance odds of winning a game). there are a few caveats for the individual deck statistics as I would imagine past success do impact future ones (not independent trails) and that the probability of a deck winning each game is not 0.25. Hypothetically if I played a mill deck into 3 reainimator decks, i doubt the mill player has 0.25 probability of winning
I think y’all downplayed experience and skill a little to much. Someone playing 300 games a year is going to have a much larger advantage vs someone who only plays maybe once a month. I do agree with a lot of your points but getting in so much practice is a huge advantage. Playing a dozen decks 20 times vs someone playing 1 deck only a dozen times is really big.
I've been thinking about this, and there's a time you folks just need to admit that you may just be a BETTER PLAYER or BETTER DECKBUILDER than the other players in the pod. And that's okay.
To expound on this a bit, I have a 40-ish deck "EDH Battlechest" where I built a bunch of decks of varying strengths and playstyles that are intended to play well with each other. Many of my friends don't collect MtG anymore, but on game days (weekends when we meet to play different board games and card games) I can bring decks from my Battlechest for us to play against one another. I always let them pick their decks first, and I pick a deck that would play in an interesting way against their selections but not be too powerful. And I find I still tend to win just a bit over 1 in 3 games, all based on the fact that I have the most experience playing Magic.
@@Duskraven377A key factor could be that you actually built the decks and know how they are to be played, what cards are in them as well as their weaknesses. The other players presumably just browsed through the deck for a minute and won’t remember half of what is even in their borrowed deck. Knowledge is power.
@Joey Let the jank deck winner bask in his glory! Whatever. He's probably just a bit overwhelmed that it was even possible. It has nothing to do with you guys so much as it does him being overcome with joy.
There's a difference between someone being joyful and someone being smug! Always 100% happy to celebrate a jank win, just not really down with someone who hypes up their accomplishments by belittling someone else
@EDHRECast Ahh. If he was belittling someone, that makes sense. Sometimes, I laugh at inappropriate times, though, and could barely contain it. Really, I wouldn't be surprised if he secretly admires you guys all together and wanted to feel like a big shot by comparison. He probably doesn't get to experience this often, after all. What do I know, though. I wasn't there.
If someone wins with jank I am all for shit talking :D It is just banter and if anyone has to sit and play on a table that is "overpoliced" to the point you can't make jokes and banter...meh
"Oh hi market" gosh darn it Joey can you stop being so lovable please
man I would be gay instantly if I met Joey in the right situation
He's so frickin adorable.
Love the content guys. Joey by far gives some of the most balanced, interesting conversations about MTG in general. Too many of the other channels are prone to hyperbole just for the sake of it and I've gone off watching them.
The best thing you experienced players out there can do, is not to hinder and limit yourself but to lift others up, as Joey and Dana hinted on at the end.
I'm a budget casual player, consume tons of mtg content but don't get to play as much as I'd like to.
Whenever I get to play with my playgroup, our best and most experienced player often points out the most crucial and match-shaping play from the last game or we discuss the threat assessment of a certain moment or turn.
This helps me out a ton - even if I was able to pinpoint the exact same thing. Just by his way of expressing himself and sharing his perspective he usually brings me a step forward.
This sort of recap after every game is probably a good idea no matter the experience-difference among the present players, but especially if you feel like you've been the most experienced one there: Please just share your perspective. It does so much, no matter how obvious you think it is you're talking about.
Special extra points if you can do that without giving a vibe of educating others and simply recapping and talking about that game as a group.
Great podcast as always, thanks for the good stuff
Under-rated comment
This was a wonderful dialogue! Makes me really want to track my own games at my LGS! Thanks so much for this “Avenue” of content!
Also, no matter how much you push the envelope; it’s still stationary ✉️
I was winning too much against my friends, but I noticed that I was brewing in a very different wat from them: I was favoring value engines, while they liked big, flashy, spells. I was always under the radar, and I think that greatly pushes my winning percentage.
I feel you, some of my friends really disregard some of the best cards in my decks because they don't see the value it brings. Example: no one cares about embalmers tools in my Sidisi deck until I make 30 zombies at end step. Another annoying thing for me is people running too little interaction and only running big flashy cool stuff. All fine, but don't complain that my super janky deck is way too strong if you just let everything happen all the time.
I've noticed something similar with my Kros, defense contractor deck and it getting a lot of wins.
But I have a theory as to why...
Kros only preforms well when there's at least 2 creature decks at the table that I can start giving counters to.
The deck in isolation doesn't do very much outside of give +1 counters and goad people.
I also threw in the initiative and the monarchy to further incentives people attacking each other (and not me as I barely have any creatures).
The only legit win conditions outside of reigns of power are an avenger of zendikar and craterhoof (for now) for the inevitable 1v1.
The big thing is, no one tends to get political at the table, keeping to themselves.
Dealing with Kros isn't all that helpful either as the +1 counters have been distributed and the power at the table has increased dramatically.
So then it becomes a catch 22. If they try and get rid of me, they leave themselves more vulnerable to attack by bigger than they should be creatures.
And if they deal with the other players, I continue to give counters.
And in games where people don't like getting goaded, they snipe Kros off the board shutting down the goad game plan yet it still manages to gets the win.
Granted, the most recent game I played with Kros, I put a milled tooth and nail back on top of my opponents deck using noxious revival to force some plays or to get really big goadable creatures in play, yet he died as he was at 1 life after he entwined the tooth and nail.
I managed to win that game despite being precariously at 9 life.
So my theory is, it isn't just the decks you play, or the playgroup you hang around, but the style of the players, or what your playgroup does or does not do.
I honestly don't know what the solution is to a gimmick deck that honestly should have no business winning as often as it does.
@@AGuy-s5v Something similar happens to my Kambal deck. Is a cruel control orzhov deck with enchantments that punish playing spells and wins with Bolas's Citadel and some drain life spells. It's a deck that says "pls attack me cause my creatures are bullshit and only play deffensively and if you don't kill me now you are gonna regreted". I played 7/8 games with it this year and I won all of them, 6 of the 8 by doing almost nothing but gain life and draining. As you said, is about the styles and the way they analyze threats
I think experience and skill also play a role. Even a player with a weaker deck can win games against stronger decks if they make the right plays throughout the game.
I would also expect content creators to have a higher win rate: you play more games, see more decks, see more unique rules interactions etc.
I haven't tracked, but reckon I'm ballpark 30 games on the year as a casual player.
"It's not the plane it's the pilot."
Love your content, love your insight, keep up the great work.
Hopefully, one day I'll get a game in with y'all! ❤️
Thank you all for a great episode! Here are some of my thoughts:
I think the way your opponents react when you win is way more important than how often you win. E. G. my Yennett Deck had a pretty high winrate but everyone loved it - but yuriko dooming everyone out of "nowhere" wasn't, even tho the winrate was lower. So I adapted yuriko but left Yennet and it worked out fine.
Totally! It also depends how often the table allies against someone that is ahead. In my regular group you quickly play 1vs3 if you have a good start.
20:00 data about the opponent is really interesting, you actually gave an interesting perspective. I thought about it the other way: maybe tracking their skill level/experience roughly on a 1-5 or so scale would be interesting. I (or another more experienced player) have won plenty of games that I feel I shouldnt have, because my opponents didn't see the line to win. It's weird being extremely scared and then see someone make suboptimal plays when they clearly could have won. If it's on board I will very happily talk the newer player through it and teach them something about their deck. Sometimes however, you talk about what their options were, they are like, yeah also had in hand, and then you're like man you could have won so hard that time!
I started to track my games a while ago, and a thing that I keep track of is the reason I win.
It helped me realise for example that my Cazur and Ukkima ninjutsu deck won nearly exclusively by finding and playing yuriko, even though I built this deck wanting a ninjutsu deck that was not a yuriko deck. It pushed me remove my ways to go find yuriko, and to add other wincons and synergies, and now, without changing my win rate by much, I have way more fun playing the deck.
I like Keldon Necropolis for Nikya of the old ways so you can cast Primal Surge
Clever!
6 mana is a lot for two damage
But it's a pretty good deal for winning the game.
i dont understand how this works, could you explain?
Whenever you get the chance, Dana’s Malcom and Ich-Tekik deck isn’t listed on the decks you play list and I was interested to look at it. I’m hoping to start tracking my games once I get the chance to start playing again, so this was interesting to see the analysis for the games within the first half of the year
Hey guys thanks for the awesome content and great inspiration!
Would it maybe be possible to get a template of joey's datasheet, to flatten the road a little bit, for any of us attempting a similar endeavour? Would be much appreciated :)
This is all very helpful to try and assess my decks! I've won two games all year, one with an old precon I never played before or after and the other was a huge fluke, so I'll try to keep all this in mind
I'm so glad you guys also mentioned "the intangibles". It's difficult to know if a person might be winning more games because of something having to do with their personality and not their skill level or deck's power level. Like, are my opponents trying to make me feel welcome in this LGS and therefore aren't being as hard on me as they should? Is my friendliness making them guilty to attack me? (Or on the other hand - is there something about my disposition that makes people want to attack me more?) I think these factors are super interesting!
Started tracking my games last year, about 11 months ago.
2022 - 63-68 (48%)
2023 - 73-79 (48%)
I have 70 decks now, and after one of them hit 10 games within like 4 months I decided to cut them off at that mark, till the others catch up. I think having an equal number of games, even though a small sample size, helps to get a better more fair level for comparison. So far, 9 decks have hit this 'retirement for a couple years' mark. It also helps greatly when a deck is hated to clearly state 'this is game 10 for Jin-Gitaxias, it's his last game.' Then, winning or not, there's a sense of relief by the others that they didn't actually see it as much as it might have felt like while it was here, and they won't see it again for a very long time.
I've found since I started doing this that it's made me care more about winning. When a deck that I just built goes 3-7 and another is 7-3 I look at the first one as an underperformer and I'm disappointed that I didn't get to pop off with it like I built it to do. With that in mind, I do have several decks that I don't really hold in nearly as high of regard, so when those steal a win I think "I'd rather have saved that win for a 'good' deck."
For the question you asked specifically about IF a deck is winning too much, what to do - I'd say rotating your decks is the best solution to 1. hide that fact and 2. it doesn't bother people even if it is true and they know it. If you play your undefeated Titania deck 5 times in a row one night that will wear people, their tolerance and morale down and might ruin the entire evening. If you played it once every 10 games (I think you said in another video that you have 17ish decks) then it won't be an issue.
Dana you inspired me to build a Juri, Master of the Revue deck for myself and wow has it been fun. Being able to launch a tactical nuke at my opponents has won me several games with her already!
I like games where I can be unassuming and get tiny pieces out or I can play my powerful engine pieces while there is a bigger problem already on someone else's board that will give me a tiny advantage and winning out of nowhere
The issue I find with decks like that is if you have a pod that you constantly play with…they eventually catch on to your decks game plan and won’t ever let you set it up. But it’s always nice to pull something off that a random pod of players don’t catch onto
@@ericsanchz Mine is still figuring out how my first deck works.......
@ericsanchz oh my group knows for sure. And I like the challenge and dynamics that come with each of us in the pod trying to keep each other in check and not king make.
Only speaking for myself here but if I'd lose games for months in a row and the playgroup would suddenly "go easy" on me by choosing below group average decks so that mine kind of gets nudged up by that, any win would feel hollow and I'd be demotivated to even playing for a while i guess. Sure, it's probably meant to make everyone have their moment and what not but it would also inform me above all else that me or my deck are the issue and everyone is seeing it hence feeling the need to collectively take pity on me.
Agreed, but in my case, it's people offering to let me play their decks. It comes off like, "Let's throw the poor commoner a bone" and that my deck building ability and experience is not enough to hang, even though I've been playing longer than some of them have been alive; I just don't have the deep pockets that let people just throw thousands at a whim to netdeck Ur-Dragon. I've only played with someone else's deck once (big surprise: I won), but it was only because I was working on something similar and it gave me ideas on how to finish it. I don't think a lot of people don't get how frustrating it is to get talked down to like that, even if they think they're doing some great service of "allowing you to play at their level (read: budget threshold)".
I'm using Dana's Jaheira deck as reference for my Rule 0 Emrakul and Chatterfang deck. Love hearing all of y'all's thoughts around how it's been performing!
32:50 I can confirm this. I also play "janky" cards and win with them. My friends tell me that I shouldn't do that because what happens if people catch on and just team on you; however, they fail to realize, similar to what you said, Dana, when someone plays that Rhystic Study, everyone else has no choice but to do something about it, otherwise they cascade out of control. Whereas our play style is such a gradual process, that it almost has to be ignored.
Long story short, if you play a card that one person tells everyone is going to win over the course of 5 turns, if someone else plays a card that will win within 1 or 2 turn cycles, it must be dealt with, lest they throw the game.
9:00 also, what do you replace the tutors with? If you put in other good cards (which I assume you do) those cards will also have their impact on the game of course
Which art is that on Syr Konrad, The Grim @30:47 ? I've never seen that and its not on Scryfall.
The decks I play that win “too much” I usually just take apart. Like I made a Winota deck, it was undefeated in my pod. I lowered it down to a $50 budget deck, it was undefeated. That was certainly just a “Winota is very powerful” thing, but it does spark joy for me to win every game.
I'd love to track my stats, but first I'd have to actually play commander more than 5-10 times a year.
Dana made a great point in regards to Yurlok play patterns. Numbers can easily be skewed based on a players abilities and knowledge. I found EDH tough at first because the cards were so foreign to me, but playing standard I could often form a game plan based on what land an opponent played turn 1 or simply knowing this guy plays deck X. Knowledge is so big, and often playing obscure cards is a great advantage to winning. Great video by the way.
Bruh I am never not saying “Oh Hi Market” ever again, that’s too good
I'd be interested to see which decks have the highest winrate when considering a confidence interval. Realistically you need quite a few data points to draw meaningful conclusions so having a 40% winrate with 10-20 games isn't necessarily indicative of an above average winrate
CHALLENGE THE STATS: in Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos decks 0.000% of decks something like 10 out of nearly 2500 decks are using Cryptic Trilobite which is criminally underplayed. You can remove the +1/+1 counters for 2 colorless to pay for activated abilities which happens to be the exact cost of incubation tokens and then Brimaz can proliferate those counters for even more free activations
I loved this episode, it helped me realize that I don't necessarily need to "depower" my decks
Where can i find the malcolm and ich tekik partners deck? It's not in the description, and i think it sounds dope
Dana even suggesting that he could run only basics I think shows a degree of personal growth.
One of my favorite jokes I use at my lgs, "your stuff never gets removed if you play bad cards." You can justify removing a monument to perfection, but a journeyman's kite? What player is gonna use removal on Karn living legacy? Lim-duls hex is manageable right? Using those types of cards feels like it helps a lot.
I think Dana is talking about the Tall Chicken effect, when you build a deck that gets ahead early but is still ultimately doing similar things to everyone else, even if it looks more scary than the other chickens, and it gets targeted early and loses. Decks that play known entity cards have the advantage of using 'the best cardboard', but suffer from losing lots of the surprise/nuance of jank cards. Lots of subpar options have more versatility or other upsides that make the cards an unpleasant surprise, it's like how in cEDH many decks would prefer it if Cyclonic Rift bounced their non-lands too (artifacts in particular obv), because they could replay mana rocks and go off, but in more casual games Cyclonic Rift would be another bad bounce wipe if it bounced everything.
As far as not really knowing why certain decks 'play well', part of this is what happens when people coincidentally/accidentally build a deck that's stronger than they know how to, it's not really that hard to do if you do a lot of brewing, this is in part how you learn by brewing. We're also not exactly conscious of all of our play heuristics, especially if we haven't been playing for years, the same is true of the ones for building decks. My biggest take away from building 'harder to build Commanders' is that the Commander is just one card, and that decks built around making the 99 strong/consistent tend to be very, very hard to play against if your deck has 'issues'. As strong as decks built around strong Commanders are, it's very easy to remove your Commander a couple times and ruin your synergy, or steal your Commander even, if your Commander is really unimpressive who cares if they die? Even cEDH decks make a point of not being too Commander centric. 99 driven decks are harder to predict and harder to disrupt, but they're tricky to build since you can't count on having a real card in the Command Zone. I think people are generally much worse at rating/evaluating cards than they think, playing with more jank in decks really teaches you how important it is that your deck 'fills roles', almost all good decks need to do certain things, and decks that don't do things like removal/interaction tend to lose a lot, same with decks that have very few creatures and no solution to being attacked. If a bad card technically fills a role, is it really a bad card?
Joey, if you won with a jank deck vs a bunch of objectively non-jank decks, you wouldn't be elated? I think if it's random people I would be more careful about anything that can be interpreted negatively, because people who don't know you often assume wrong things about you, you can tease people who know you more than you can tease randoms. Also, read the room a bit maybe? if everyone is visibly salty, be polite and probably move along, but if people clearly had fun playing against your jank deck, even if they lost with 'better' decks it might be a different reception to some tasteful gloating.
Wonder if your also tracking which colors you win with the most? It why I had to start making decks without blue to help me become a more well rounded player. Probably have to do start leaving out green after this year so not looking forward to black white and red only decks...
There's also a dude at my LGS who runs a lot of black tutors but heavily restricts what he's getting. He mostly demonic tutors for basics or for an answer if really necessary. He's a great dude, played some awesome games where he was like yeah could get my combo piece and win now in a boring way but I don't like that, so here's my meme card that we're gonna have some fun with
Need to clone that dude.
By all means, full send if you are in a tournament of some sorts. Playing with randoms at an LGS? What do you have to prove? Seems like a good dude.
“What really matters at the end of the day is how your opponents feel about it.” Couldn’t agree more, I have a few decks recently I was worried would be too strong but my opponents have loved them despite that so they’ve become my new favorites.
And Joey, I said to myself “Joey should try to steal the segue right around here” literally right as you did it 😂
Having downpowered most of my decks and trying to play my weaker decks into lower powered pods i've realised as a relatively spikey player who politics moderately well i still also have above a 25% win rate on all my decks.
I see the differences in willingness to reduce life totals, amount of interaction and target priority making a huge difference in wins.
As someone who logs their games, something that I wish that I kept track of, and plan on implementing for future logs, is how my decks win.
I find it boring to have my decks win the exact same way every time, because part of why I love EDH is the variability. If I win the same way that means my deck’s game plan is on rails, which means little to no variation. So if I track how my decks win (i.e. sanguine bond combo, commander damage, ect.) I can make changes to my decks. To keep them fresh and from going stale (in my eyes).
I love Contraband Livestock even in my decidedly NOT budget Giada Deck. It's instant speed it, exiles, and it's cheap mana wise!
One issue for me is I used to be a battle cruiser player and I kind of got tired of waiting to do things. So I've been trending the curves in my deck down as much as possible so I almost always have turn 1, turn 2, turn 3 plays. But a lot of people I play just simply don't have those plays, so when I start my decks engine on like turn 5, they might still be casting ramp or setting up some sort of advantage engine and I just run away with the game. Rocco Street Chef has been one of if not my favorite commander ever printed in the few weeks it's been legal but it gets going on turn 2 or turn 3 and I can have massive boards that rebuild themselves even through board wipes and I pretty much always feel ahead in my groups. The hard part is cutting synergy pieces that go off. Like, do I really need the 1 mana Ozolith? Should I play Scurry Oak? There are other counter payoffs that don't go easily infinite or scale ridiculously hard, but I like these cards. I think they are fun so I don't want to cut them.
Former experiment kraj +1/+1 counter player, turned Shalai and Hallar, turned rocco +1/+1 turned rocco exile matters I somewhat agree. Though my pod isn't really sitting duck early game, our average cmc powercrept in lower territories. Even In our scope, It's insane how fast rocco turns on the value engine, literally goes brr very fast
But I don't run infinites, also no ozolith. I think there's enough stuff you could put in instead
@@mofomiko I wasn't running any Scurry Oak infinites until LotR. Rosie Cotton is just such a strong card. I could just cut Scurry Oak I guess
@@alchadylan4592 that's a good idea, I might swap oaks for Rosie. I already run a buttload of different tokens, the less the better
Do you happen to have a deck list?:)
How do you track your games? Is there an app? I use BG stats right now, but that's a board game app. I would love an app where you can log plays with specific decks and so on. Thanks in advance for your answer😊
There was an article I read a while back that said that people don't run enough basics in their decks.
What makes a deck win is a really interesting thing to look into. I built a Gyruda, Doom of Depths deck toward the beginning of the year. I packed it full of clones to copy gyruda and get his ETB multiple times. Although I find the deck really fun to play, I have played it 5 times with my pod and all 5 games ended with me winning because the entire table conceded. I have played it against a variety of power levels too, and every game turns out the same with me cloning or reanimating the best creatures and outvaluing my opponents to oblivion. And I can't stress enough, the deck has never K.O.'d anyone. It has only won mass concession which feels kinda bad
On the sacrifice lands: I play [[High Market]] and [[Phyrexia’s Core]] in my Prosper deck, just in case I need to get one or two more [[Marionette Master]] triggers to finish off an opponent.
The cards aren’t strong, but the opportunity cost is low.
There seem to be a trend on Many EDH podcasts nowadays about "toning down" power levels, ie. removing tutors, sol ring, Dockside E., Cyclonic Rift, etc. It's all across youtube. I suspect a correlation with what is printed. Games have become too fast? Decks are too linear? What's your thoughts?
how does the ick tekik malcom deck work
Contraband livestock is actually a good casual card. Rolling the dice adds some more fun into the game for me.
I got Zaffai precon and was never able to make it works ahah is ir considered that strong?
I'm so proud of you, Joey! Get that segue! 🎉
I've recently had my first experience of intentionally powering down my deck because of a power disparity at my regular tables. I've got a small group of friends who we play MtG sometimes, and I also go to the LGS to play with randos. I've found that decks that seem appropriate with randos (where I think I have a ~33% win rate (I haven't been tracking like Joey or Dana have)) are not appropriate with my friend group (closer to 80%). My winningest deck is an Akiri Fearless Voyager deck, and I recently took out Stonehewer Giant because I found it to be just too good at rolling over my home table where it is able to generate an absurd amount of value, while at my LGS it's too slow and comes down too late. As a result, The card was never what I wanted: it either worked and made the game a stomp (while also slowing the game down because of all the searching and shuffling, adding insult to injury), or it just wouldn't get played. I've cut it in favor of Danitha, Benalia's Hope, which I think will be better in both environments since it doesn't generate infinite value that overwhelms low power tables, but does something right away to keep up with high power tables.
I was also in a similar situation as Dana with Tutors. I've had at least one opponent get frustrated at me for running tutors in my equipment deck. I mostly shrug this off because I'm an equipment deck that needs equipment to function; I'm not tutoring for instant game winning combo pieces, I'm tutoring for meat-and-potatoes value equipment like Sword of the Animist and Mask of Memory. The only exception is, again, Stonehewer Giant, who bypasses all costs, therefore Argentum Armor was the right choice %90 of the time. The false choice wasn't "fun" and was another reason to cut it.
Joey, would EDHREC patrions get access to spread sheet or template that help them track their games...?!?
I really like this idea actually
I power down juuust a bit. But i can always just not make the best play in game if i feel no one else is ready for the nutz yet. If i power down too much, i cant just get better mid game, but i can always pull punches.
I have a Kotori vehicle deck that for some reason I still don't get just works incredbly well. It always goes like if I play with new players they don't take it serious because it's vehicles and a precon commander and after the first round I ususally become a priority target. I even tried to downgrade it but that didn't change very much. I personally stopped using it against players / decks I don't know or against players / decks I know are on the lower end because it just has the tendency to run away with games and that's not much fun for anyone.
Shocking that a whole extra card each game is an advantage
I have really powerfull decks for my play group . What i do is to intentionnaly not play optimal. Not interacting as soon as i can , or not making myself the threat by turn 4-5 . Every body had fun this way
A lot of my games end up me and one other player in particular battling it out. The other two try to find a way to sneak in an opportune kill to go for the win. It's pretty fun, from my perspective anyways. We played 5 games last time we met up and I won 3 of the 5. I played 4 decks.
Proud to be an owner of one of the keldon necropolis decks
I think you skirted the most important issue briefly - offering your opponents a chance to interact and counterplay. Decks that telegraph their plan and have to build a non-haste board to swing through and win 'fairly' tend to just have a lower win % than decks that can combo off on a single turn and win with very little window to respond.
It's almost like the thing I've been saying for a while: cost, tutors and fast mana don't matter. Win conditions do.
Joey did it again, the steal, goodness gracious!
Personally I remove strong cards in favor of flavor.
could you guys make a series where you explain your decks? :)
I had built Ich Malcolm before edhrec had enough decks for a page. It took months for my play group to realize how good Prosper was because he just made my golems into giant threats.
The audacity of Dana with the graveyard hate
Yeah, I recently bought a Faldorn precon and spent about $20 to upgrade it and it SLAPS.
My most winning deck is my weakest one...
My playgroup just knows that I am scary often and I get stopped a lot. But my purraj deck? I rarely get targeted when I pilot it, so I have better chances
"oh high mark--et" lmfao
honestly the more variables you're tracking the better.
I also track wins, but I don't play a ton. I actually haven't won a single game with Titania!
We play 3 games a night at FNM, I would like to win 1 a night so 33% is my target. I would describe my decks as the upper half of the store, as I have just been playing long than most of the people, some people are still running precons.
The last bit about if someone is not winning I want to pull out a deck that goes easier on them, speaking from experience, is a feels bad.
the "dana how dare you" instead of "dana how are you doing" sent me
I’m leaving for commandfest Orlando soon!!
Why didn’t you invite the Teferi guy again since Matt was not here? He was such a good guest!
Considering you guys play EDH constantly you probably run such high winrates in part because you're simply better EDH players than most others you play against
Savage Sword to the rescue!
Do you find that decks win more when you have more experience with a deck?
This is for Joey: Have you registered the result of the pregame conversation? Perhaps The Mimeoplasm is played in weaker pods? Perhaps you should simply revaluate your perseption of the stregth of the deck? Try playing it against stronger pods and see if the doesn’t even the playing field.
Challenge the stats pick for you.
Arcane Proxy is currently in 0% of Yuriko decks according to EDHREC.
Being able to double dip on a Brainstorm or Preordain or even a Vampiric or Mystical Tutor in that deck for as little as 3 mana is super strong. It can also flip for 7 life loss with Yuriko herself which can be game ending.
Big spells thay can be cast for cheap is Yuriko's entire gameplan. I've won games by vamp tutoring this to the top just to tutor another big thing the following turn.
Suffering from success
Only 100 games huh? I wish I had friends... I have 0 in the past 2 years.
Yeah, I tracked games for about 6 months. It was ruining the game for me tbh.
My play group and I have started tracking our games and a surprising amount of games have been won by the person going first our sample size is much smaller then yours but we have found that to be very interesting
WHOSE DID IT IS IT.
I NEED ANSWERS.
I vote yes, because I am not playing those decks
Greta episode, but Joey's misuse of "punching above your weight (class)" kept making me go aaaarrrgh :)
What you meant is probably "punching down".
Kevin is the Bird of Paradise in "Up!"
How did y'all miss that opportunity
;(
You know, Dana always talks about how he doesn't run basics, and I would like to see a list or episode directly diving in to what he runs instead
Their decklists are in the description
'Fear not the deck with 100% win rate, fear the deck thats played 100 games.' - Bruce Lee
Wait, it is grave pride month?
25% win is the base minimum for me. If its below that i'll take judge it bad and take it apart. Im shooting for 25 or above.
i really don't think you can draw conclusions from how well your decks are playing given your sample sizes. Assume 95% confidence test, and using a binary distribution with the probability of success being 0.25, the probability of winning 31 games out of 100 is 0.930651111. meaning, that we do not reject the null hypothesis (that you have a greater than chance odds of winning a game). there are a few caveats for the individual deck statistics as I would imagine past success do impact future ones (not independent trails) and that the probability of a deck winning each game is not 0.25. Hypothetically if I played a mill deck into 3 reainimator decks, i doubt the mill player has 0.25 probability of winning
I think y’all downplayed experience and skill a little to much. Someone playing 300 games a year is going to have a much larger advantage vs someone who only plays maybe once a month. I do agree with a lot of your points but getting in so much practice is a huge advantage. Playing a dozen decks 20 times vs someone playing 1 deck only a dozen times is really big.
I've been thinking about this, and there's a time you folks just need to admit that you may just be a BETTER PLAYER or BETTER DECKBUILDER than the other players in the pod. And that's okay.
To expound on this a bit, I have a 40-ish deck "EDH Battlechest" where I built a bunch of decks of varying strengths and playstyles that are intended to play well with each other. Many of my friends don't collect MtG anymore, but on game days (weekends when we meet to play different board games and card games) I can bring decks from my Battlechest for us to play against one another. I always let them pick their decks first, and I pick a deck that would play in an interesting way against their selections but not be too powerful. And I find I still tend to win just a bit over 1 in 3 games, all based on the fact that I have the most experience playing Magic.
What I've found is as simple as: this deck runs more card draw and more removal/interaction
@@Duskraven377A key factor could be that you actually built the decks and know how they are to be played, what cards are in them as well as their weaknesses. The other players presumably just browsed through the deck for a minute and won’t remember half of what is even in their borrowed deck. Knowledge is power.
If you think your deck is winning too much, make it stronger.
Anyone track game joy
@Joey Let the jank deck winner bask in his glory! Whatever. He's probably just a bit overwhelmed that it was even possible. It has nothing to do with you guys so much as it does him being overcome with joy.
There's a difference between someone being joyful and someone being smug! Always 100% happy to celebrate a jank win, just not really down with someone who hypes up their accomplishments by belittling someone else
@EDHRECast Ahh. If he was belittling someone, that makes sense. Sometimes, I laugh at inappropriate times, though, and could barely contain it. Really, I wouldn't be surprised if he secretly admires you guys all together and wanted to feel like a big shot by comparison. He probably doesn't get to experience this often, after all. What do I know, though. I wasn't there.
If someone wins with jank I am all for shit talking :D
It is just banter and if anyone has to sit and play on a table that is "overpoliced" to the point you can't make jokes and banter...meh