On the point of land destruction, my experience is that people generally don't mind targeted land removal - arguably one of the reasons that beast within has been a staple for so long is that it targets anything, lands included. The issue is mass land destruction, or blowing up lands as a thing your deck just does all the time. It takes interesting games and grinds them to a crawl. That said, you guys are correct about the concept of giving something "social hexproof" being problematic. But any time I've ever strip mined a cabal coffers or ancient tomb the table is cheering, except for that one guy, but fuck that guy
Correct. Targeted land removal is there for the dangerous lands. Chaos Warp that Glacial Chasm/Cabal Coffers/etc. People don't mind removal of threatening lands.
Some of the coolest plays I've seen have come as a response to playing a land sweeper. Wrath effects need to be used responsibly, but to consider the entire idea off the table is unhealthy. And, even if the game is set back to start, at least individual turns go by quickly. Instead of the decks I've dismantled because they took twenty to thirty minute turns and didn't have the curtesy to actually end the game. It's the reason one of my decks is built to use Obliterate and Worldfire as an attempt to end the game instead of being an extra turn deck. I don't know if taking a bunch of extra turns would end any particular game, but the entire table would have to find out together. And the people I encounter complaining about mass land destruction play dedicated stax or throw a fit when an otherwise poor deck happens to get a perfect draw. I know what conclusions I've drawn from this.
@@wesleywyndam-pryce5305 My point wasn't that stax was bad, it was to point out a hypocrisy I find all too common. Pretty much all criticism leveled at MLD can also be leveled at hard enough stax pieces, but people will gleefully demonize the former while playing the later. And what I said about other builds was a statement about decks I don't personally enjoy playing myself, not a statement that something shouldn't exist in the game. All of which could be easily sussed out with some basic reading comprehension. Perhaps you could try it before throwing accusations around. You can, in fact, take some time to think before hitting the reply button.
To everyone who falls too deep into the idea of "hurting themselves" with 1-for-1 removal, please remember this: Losing because you packed insufficient spot removal gives you much more card disadvantage than going down the removal spell.
This. In a multiplayer format, 1-for-1 removal/interaction needs to be played to either protect yourself or to stop someone from winning or you are disadvantaging yourself. Let them hurt each other as long as you don't need the other(s) alive. Protecting another player can get you unspoken favor from them which can make the difference in a game (and in future games when you have developed that reputation). Note: Protecting yourself be preemptively kneecapping an opponent so they can't develop fast enough to be relevant.
So as someone who has enjoyed listening to these two, and as someone that enjoys a commander game now and then - it’s interesting to me how much they analyze why they believe commander does work. Here are my disorganized thoughts: 1. Commander is a three-body problem. 1v1 is difficult enough to ‘plan’ around, but 4 players choosing from hundreds of thousands of cards is going to be a shit show. It’s simply not risk or catan that has 3 options. This is near-infinite options. And I think that’s what people like about it - there’s a mystery box of promise that you’ll see something interesting, stupid, funny or clever, and you’ll be inspired to go home and play with an idea you saw. 2. Besides this episode they talk a lot about how some of the options “feel bad” or how threat assessment comes into play. The social element here can’t be understated. You must first make sure everyone is on the same page. Everyone has to be cool with how petty or how friendly the decks are. The other part of this is yes- playing a card may put a big target on your back - so you’ve got to work the table and sway your opponents minds. I’d argue that most of commander IS that social experience. A weaker deck can come out ahead because two titans at the table decide to battle it out to sweep the weaker, but leave themselves too vulnerable after. 3. My buddies that play commander are from vastly different levels of experience, and I feel like commander evens the field. I like the feeling that we all have a reasonable chance of winning, but that there’s so much table talk and rules lawyering and fun argument that it makes my friends who don’t play as much better players too. Anyways. Thanks for coming to my TedX talk. I will not validate parking.
I think there's another element that's really important for commander - winning isn't everybody's main goal when playing Magic. There are lots of cards that have really cool effects and there are tons of really cool synergies that require tons of setup or fold under the slightest pressure. Those cards are unplayable in any mildly competitive environment, but they can be exciting and inspirational, and some people might just want to play with those cards. When I first started playing commander over a decade ago, the format almost felt like it was explicitly designed to give those crazy cards a place to live. Being multiplayer takes pressure off each individual player, giving them more room to put together overly complex combos. Being singleton decreases consistency, making it less likely to see incidental counters to your cards. As such, commander allows you to play cards and strategies that aren't viable anywhere else. Doing whatever thing your deck is designed to do can be a ton of fun, even if you end up losing. And that perspective lends itself to the "no removal" playstyle because of the variance from the 100-card singleton format. Why would I fill my deck with removal when I could instead include more cards that help me do the thing I'm here to do? I think part of the current problem with commander (and part of the reason there are so many videos and discussions about topics like this) is that Wizards has changed how commander feels by designing specifically for it. I think it USED to feel like a home for crazy cards, but the ever-growing array of cards designed for commander has pushed more of those crazy cards out and attracted more competitively-minded players. That creates conflicts - if a competitive player is at a table with someone who just wants to play with some weird cards, somebody's not going to have fun, and everybody's going to blame someone else for missing the point.
Your 1. point is very true and it resonates strongly with me. I am generally a competitive player and I have a background of competing in other tcgs/formats and while I love the idea of commander I always end up a little disappointed every time I play. The inability to properly strategize makes it feel like I'm just a passenger and not an active player. But I'm sure that's also a big reason for it's popularity within the casual community - you show up, cast spells, whacky things happen. It scratches a completely different itch.
Something else is in a 1v1, you don't remove the you can fairly safely assume that suckers turning sideways and straight for your face. In commander, it starts out as a 1/3rd chance is coming at you but 2/3s chance it's going somewhere else which can be influenced by the ever present politics and it's basically like you had the on your side. Why would you spend your cards to remove something that can help you?
There's two types of players and one is far more common than the other. You're either a "smoll bean syndrome" player or you see "being the threat" as a compliment. Everyone always underestimates their board state and overestimates their opponents. Seriously though, if you're playing one of those "top rated commanders on EDHREC" don't be shocked when people come at you. I'm already paying my respects to the poor soldiers who are getting that upcoming eldrazi deck for an exorbitant amount of cash just to be the threat the entire game and complain about being the threat the entire game.
this incentive structure is what i feel is most disappointing about every battle royale game. fighting is almost always the wrong choice because you spend your resources AND risk dying, losing instantly. but, fighting is the fun part of the game, so players feel like having fun is the wrong way to play. and it also means when you play to win, another player/team forcing a fight on you (because fighting is fun) feels almost like griefing. they're doing something that hurts both you and them, and only benefits the potential third team who isn't involved. and that just breeds resentment and frustration among your community...
This is broadly true about the core concept of a battle royale game, but these games solve this problem in a couple different ways. First, killing other players is rewarded with something that makes you stronger; better weapons, more health, etc. And second, a time limit is enforced by a steadily closing play area. The combination of these two factors means that all players will inevitably be required to fight, and that players who fight more throughout the game will be better equipped than players who don't. "Never fight anyone" isn't a viable strategy in most battle royale games. Interestingly, MTG has started using similar strategies to fix these problems in Commander. Mechanics like Monarch, Initiative, and Goad reward/require combat and help push the game along.
@@Dupernerd This is part of why I like Goad so much. Aggression that pushes the game state along, but that specifically forces your OPPONENTS to fight each other, so that the person doing the Goading isn't in nearly as much danger, and they're able to try and make their opponents perform 1-for-1s against each other (ideally with stuff like the Impetus auras, so the target is goaded until it dies). Without needing to tap your potential blockers, you're still able to send *something* aggressive towards your opponents and apply pressure. And since you aren't the one choosing the attack target, you're (partially) able to avoid the pushback that comes from picking someone to victimize.
Yup pretty much, Commander's core problem was it was always trying to force a square peg into a round hole as far as game design and intention... Y'all just gotta accept this was never what MTG was suppose to do or how it should function.
Adding to this, it’s a terrible format for a new player to engage with. Too many cards to understand and games take forever. So much time spent waiting, not learning. I remember getting the 7th edition starter kit that taught you how to play. You received two 30 card decks, two player guides with a demo game, a CD with more learning materials. Most of the creatures had no rules text. The most complex card was maybe slight of hand. Now they give new players 100 card decks. Then they play 3 more people at the same time with 100 different cards in there decks, all before they remember how to untap, upkeep, draw. Ya’ll call this casual?
@@Lufaine01 he’s not saying it is, he’s saying that throwing new players into the deep end with all of the complex mechanics when the game already has so much to learn before all that does not make for a good learning experience
@@darty788I left magic a decade ago and when I came back had this exact experience. I like trying to play well, but with literally dozens of cards and Mechanics i had never seen used every game, threat evaluation became impossible, and so did feeling anything towards the game. Out again, wish I could grock what keeps bringing folks back to commander.
Only if you value winning more than enjoying a new format. Removing a big threat feels great butnonly feels bad if the next person to take their turn has an insane combo sitting in their hand/field which implies you're probably playing cEDH, not commander.
13:35 I think that commander play is mostly driven by a goal that tends to stay a little subconscious, and that goal is the need for social interaction. People can try to win if they want, and that is a fine goal too, not to mention winning in certain ways can be part of a social interaction, but I think the vocal majority mostly doesn't know what they want and mostly wants an effective social outlet. I hate the curse of FFA games that commander has where winning the game is often political, but I played it anyway (without commanders and other aberrations because the format didn't exist yet) because my friends wanted to play it, and it was a good time.
I really wish WotC had put more time into trying to develop some kind of 3v1 game like Archenemy, or just a PvM co-op game where three people fight against a boss deck, because the expression and flavor of Commander deck building is so fun and engaging and expressive, but playing a competitive game incentivizes playing in a way that doesn't align with the original design goals of that kind of format.
I'm actually going to challenge this, while yes you are technically down a card when using removal, YOU get to make the decision. Your principle only works for game ending threats, when a) someone must answer the threat or lose or b) when it threatens the whole table. If you are playing an artifact deck and someone plays meltdown, not only will no one counter it, but everyone else actively wants it to resolve. In that case, you get punished for not having a counterspell. You need to play removal because sometimes you will get singled out and you need to protect yourself, and if other people have removal they will not spend it to save you.
Counterspell is protection though, not removal. If you know you’re sent to the shadow realm by one Vandalblast, you’re not going to counter something unless it literally loses you the game if you don’t. Also meltdown/vandalblast etc are one sided board wipes, they are way more efficient than spot removal which is being discussed here. Finally, you can also run Arcane Denial or Mana Drain which keep your value in line with the rest of the table when you use them. It’s not the same as running swords and path in every deck, they are over rated.
Idk why people have this mentality of deckbuilding or playing in hopes that someone will save you. Very flawed. Nor does it make any sense that "you go down a card" when you cast/play X -- of course you do, that's the game. You play cards. Everyone checking super technicality on this but really it's just what we have to do to keep playing/staying ahead
I tend to include 10 pieces of single (or multi-targeted) pieces of removal and 2-5 board wipes in my decks and I try to include Beast Within and Generous Gift style cards in any deck that could support them because of their versatility in being able to hit any permanent, lands included. I've been on the receiving end of many Strip Mine loops and other single targeted removal for my Cabal Coffers and the like, so I am all for targeted land destruction. One of my favorite experiences of land destruction was when I was stuck on 3 lands into the late game while one of my friends, who had been ramping the whole game, decided to target all 3 of my lands with their Terastodon, blowing up my only lands as a joke, despite their being other viable threatening targets in the game. Sometimes removal will help win you the game by removing a big blocker or a key piece of an opponent's preventing you from winning. Sometimes removal will save you from outright losing, hopefully keeping you around to eventually win. Other times, you can kick your friend when they're down or blow up a friend's favorite card that had little to no bearing on them winning or not and they just wanted to play their pet card. My point is, just play removal of all kinds and play more of it. Commander games are more interesting when there's interaction instead of everyone playing solitaire.
Im 9 minutes into the video and you also havent mentioned one of the core issues of edh. threats have become stronger but removal has more or less stayed the same. the only thing that has gotten better in a vacuum and because threats have become stronger: boardwipes. because of the 1vs3 uphill battle Im much more incentivized to deal with all players at the same time. but this is only true if all decks are equal. if my win conditions or threats match my opponent then we can trade threats. but if my win condition is weaker then even if I use removal wether its inefficient single target removal or boardwipes im still gonna be behind.
I presume that's mostly because Threats started out so much weaker than removal. Swords to Plowshares was printed way before any of the more modern targets you'd see it used on. So Threats had a lot of catching up to do. Though there are still some really strong answers being printed. Say Farewell and the Black board wipe similar to it that was spoiled in MH3. Or the evoke elementals in MH2 Hell just in recent standard sets we have the spree removal spells like 3 steps ahead and Final Showdown Cards like bitter triumph, Get Lost, Pile on Stroke of midnight anoint with affliction in poison decks Sunfall All of which are commander playable Hell pest control is probably a meta call in edh but is seeing play in Legacy
I just wish all fast mana was banned. Including Sol Ring. Dockside and Smothering Tithe need to go too. Idc that I own many copies of each, the format would be better with them gone. Also, unban Golos.
We probably need much more "For each opponent, destroy target X", at rates competitive with the usual single target removal. Removal is important and it being a third as effective in Commander affects it in a way that probably isn´t great.
During my time working on my lgs I helped a lot of players on their commander decks and the usual frase I would use is "how much interaction you play? Retorical question, double it." The problem in more casual commander is not noticing that the best way to win is stopping you friends of winning.
@@vittoriosavian9964 Yeah like, I don't mean that in a bad way at all. The political and social play patterns of Munchkin are super interesting, and Commander layers a bunch of extra rules on top of that. Like implementing a MOBA inside a RTS game.
Haha, perfect, came here to mention how much this reminds me of Munchkin. I quit Magic 20 years ago, never played any multiplayer Commander, only recently undusted my cards and now I'm trying to catch up a bit, mostly with youtube videos. But we used to play some Munchkin during those 20 years, and, let's be honest, most of those games ended pretty stupid, like, everyone throwing all their stuff against the one player trying to win, way more than actually needed, and then, with no more disruption in hand, next player in line would just win easily. Since we didn't play that regularly and with the same people, most of them wouldn't really "learn" anything from it and nothing would change... I guess another problem was that some people played to WIN, while others just wanted to have a nice evening with friends, without thinking too much, or making anyone "angry". Also, the fact that in Munchkin, you can help someone and negotiate a reward was kinda abused by the couples, who would sometimes help each other for no reward, just to be nice to each other... disgusting... imagine playing a multiplayer game and NOT hitting your significant other the hardest 😆 Well, I guess now I know with whom I might try to play commander and who to avoid for even mildly competitive games.
speaking of people having this grudges, i have a friend who works in our lgs who when i told her that i want to play commander with her because i want to see what she would build in commander, she told me that she wants to play with us to beat someone that comes to the shop who gets to her nerves. people can have grudges against people they haven't even played a game with before. and if you ask me if board games gives us the opportunity to punch someone in the face without having to be violent, that is a great new application i couldn't have thought of. :p also something that many don't do in commander because we try to be kind is that even when we could take someone out of the equation with one removal we don't do because we want to be kind and let them play the game. which is good practice as a human being having a social interaction and a terrible strategy to have around the table.
04:09 "Games, uh, simulate real-life..." Harry S. Truman played board-wipes... two of them. Just not globally as some scientists originally feared might occur. If he were alive today, he might lean more towards playing Cyclonic Rift rather than Farewell.
My suggestion to anyone getting into commander that balances both pragmatism and fun is if you don't want to compromise too many slots, it's ok to go with mediocre removal with high synergy with your deck. I made a cycling deck where almost every card had cycling. I didn't worry about card draw, removal, ramp, counterspells, etc because I found versions of those with cycling. They were not as optimized but they also didn't cost tempo when I wanted to go on the offense and pop off.
The more you bend rules to be "fun" and "social", the less fun and social it is. I've seen people arguing bitterly about these _non-written rules_ instead of actually playing and having fun. At our LSG we have this year more fights than we have had in the last DECADE. Yes, fist fight about "fun" and non-existing rules
Honestly I think the core issue that’s wrong with Commander is that the inclusive aspect is antithetical to what the core game is, and that issue is exemplified by the culture of players who see the format as a “board game version of Magic” If each player didn’t have their own respective life totals, then it would be understandable why the community acts the way they do about Commander. But at the end of the day, the game has to end, and there has to be three losers no matter what. It truly is a shame that new players are introduced to MTG through Commander, without having any understanding of the inherent etiquette of creature battler card games. Instead, they learn that Magic is a safe-space-simulator, because of the modern culture surrounding Commander. It’s pretty much just “good vibes bro” which itself is fine, but WOTC’s decade-long push to prioritize Commander over Constructed is that now Constructed players either have to cater to handicapped pods/playstyles, or exclusively play CEDH.
so playing magic shouldn't be a safe space? are players supposed to envision playing magic as a means to deal harm to their opponents? On the flip side CEDH is just as cutthroat if not more so than regular 60-card so I don't really understand your hate towards it. There are creature-based CEDH strategies just like there are spellslinger-combo-based 60-card strategies. You seem to be implying that Magic must be played with creature-first strategies but what makes it an enduring game is that it doesn't have to be that way.
@@Starkipraggy it should be a safe space in the sense that i treat the other person woth respect, not that i dont play certain unbanned cards because you dont want to see them. Its a different thing.
I never knew that commander was supposed to be a game where there shouldn't be removal and an acual attempt to win. I was never taught this and never taught that to others, I just enjoy playing regardless of whether or not I'm losing or winning, I'm playing the game to win, the decks I use are designed to win. Whenever I'm teaching someone how to play I'm teaching them how to win using whatever you can, removal, ramp, boardwipes, counterspells, land destruction if you really want. I always pictured commander as a subformat in mtg where everyone is locked in a war, and in a war you don't want to go easy on your enemies, and I don't want people going easy on me.
Something on removal spells too is I think too many removal (when used) is used on 1 for 1 or complete removal. there are mini sweepers like dismantling wave which I’ve pushed friends to run more. It’s a 1-3 ratio and puts you more in line with 1v1 removal. Something also is unlike a board wipe like farewell you don’t reset the game essentially and rather gain a mana /temp advantage.
This! I listed a bunch of creatures such as Massacre Wurm and Sheoldred // The True Scriptures in Excel, then scored them based on how well they interacted with multiple opponents. It’s been great for having a 3-for-1 as the floor.
those are control spells. you wanna throw together esper control in commander its 3 for 1s all day. for every other non control deck you only need low costed instant speed interaction to remove immediate game ending threats ONLY IF they end the game for you. otherwise just let people pop off.
I would say land destruction stigma is primarily against mass land destruction or repeatable loops, people dont really flinch at things like a ghost quarter, or removing a problematic land.
I've generally only had pretty bad experiences with Commander because of the fundamental way in which you need to be playing with a group of people who agree to play in a specific way before the game for it to work, and it's interesting to me sometimes to see how different a lot of people's time with it is. I think that even if your goal is not to win the game, what I want to get out of the game is an interesting set of interactions - I'd like to get to make meaningful decisions. One of the crazy and kind of insidious things about the negative externalities situation is that it can screw you over even if your job isn't to try to win at all costs! Any time and effort spent targeting someone else is resources you could have been spending on doing your goofy value play or whatever that you wanted to pull off. If your only goal playing the game is to try to get to your interesting silly thing you came up with and wanted to build your deck into doing... then you're ALSO incentivized to focus on yourself because if you remove stuff you don't really get to develop much. Ironically though by doing this you often end up unable to do the things you wanted to do anyway, since if you progress too much people target you, and if you don't interact too much it's likely someone else is going to combo off or whatever and instantly ruin your attempts to achieve something. It's a really tricky situation
It is quite tricky and often requires players to build their decks to support it and play the game in a more collaborative way. Those things aren’t in the ruleset, they are just a way of playing commander players have determined as the best way to play and varies by play group. As for your example of focusing on doing the thing. The issue is if anyone’s thing wins them the game. If they do the thing first everyone else doesn’t get to do the thing. This leads to a race to the top of doing your thing the fastest and most efficiently to make sure you get to do it at all. Basically cEDH.
I've found control decks to be a powerful answer to "how do I do my thing and also not randomly lose". My thing in a control deck is interaction and building card advantage at the same time, slowly winning.
My first Commander deck was a removal-only Toshiro Umezawa deck. I had a lot of fun just getting in the way of people! To this day, I would rather play a mostly-removal-only Deck (and enjoy it over "trying to win")!! Still, I learned that first game that not everyone likes Removal, even if I did.. specially in the form of "Death Cloud" 🤷
I keep imagining a king of Tokyo style of commander where a player is always king. Who that player is can change throughout the game, much like the monarch, haven’t decided how. But, the kings creatures all have myriad and their single target spells/abilities get copied for each other player. A constantly changing archenemy
~2:30 you allude to this in a bit but, after a few games against decks like that, you kind of have to treat them like they're a threat all the time. Every deck ends up reaching a point where they win if they untap, those decks just need less on the field to do it. My point is you can absolutely threat assess against a deck that has nothing on the board. Don't get me wrong, the lack of permanents definitely helps obfuscate your power level, but understanding the plan of the deck and the player matter way more.
Yeah. Generally speaking, those kinds of decks only really get to take advantage of that once or twice. If i know you have a 2-3 card combo in your deck that just wins you the game on the spot I'm putting pressure on you from the jump. Because i don't know if you'll just untap and win on turn 7.
I didn't run removal in high school because I was over-conscious of effects that would steal my cards. So whatever removal spells I did run couldn't hit anything I had in my deck.
I guess I just naturally work around this in deck construction. I find ways to use my good cards as removal and have modular cards much more than was intended. More options in the same 100 cards and then I can just run removal for "free" the cost is just deck construction
My problem is that there’s a lot of mutually exclusive kinds of things that need dealing with. Creatures are easy enough, but they’re liable to come back from the graveyard and undo your play. And sometimes they come in army form, which laughs at spot removal. Artifacts show up pretty reliably as mana rocks, but they’re not always the threat. Enchantments appear less, but they’re much more likely to be important to the game plan when they do. Spells? Good luck if you’re not in blue. And then there’s lands. Is something flickering? Exploiting ETBs or death triggers? Do you need kill spells, ghostly prison effects, board wipes, protection, graveyard hate, counterspells, or other hate pieces? Who knows whether it’ll be your game-winner or a dead card? That just doesn’t feel fun to me.
Agreed. There’s too many threats to answer. You’re better off using counterspells that double as a way to hinder your opponent or protect your win and play a very proactive game plan.
@@Fluffkitscripts At the end of the day, something's gonna get you. You're aiming for a 25% win rate on average so you're not in control of everything but my point is that deck space is more important than 1 mana most of the time (except cEDH but nobody cares about those weirdos lol). And to preserve deck space, using removal that fits with what your trying to do is important. I have a GW enchantress deck for instance. I could play swords to plowshare but I don't because that's a dead, reactive deck slot that feels bad. Instead I play oblivion ring which removes anything and triggers all the enchantment stuff on my side. Sometimes I'll die from missing mana for the removal or it being sorcery speed but it's tradeoff I'm willing to make in casual edh with friends. However, I agree that spells are annoying because wotc are bad at designing their game and they decided 30 years ago that only blue has access to counterspells. Force of will should have been red but some idiot in the RnD changed it last minute smh. It should be that, at minimum, white should have access to spell pierce/mana tithe effects and red to force of will effects (lose card advantage to counter spell) or redirect effects and black to some punishing-spellcasting effects leaving only green not interacting with the stack. But oh well, Mark Rosewater still kept a job after Mirrodin so that's not gonna happen lol.
The problem at large is commander is different things to different people. Which is why, much like TTRPGs, it is better to be played with friends. And that is fine it was a system designed to have fun with cards in your collection you might not always get to use and play in between your serious games. Interesting video, though.
Yeah, fundamentally correct take, at least within the first minute of listening. Single target removal is card disadvantage in a 4 player game. I'm mostly on board wipes and fogs, with one or two instant speed single targets for emergencies.
Generally speaking I've found that playing mostly single targets but knowing what to hit and when along with a few board wipes for emergencies can work just as well as like 5+ board wipes and a few spot removal cards. Also it helps to recognize that removing a player when the option is available to you makes it a lot easier to handle
How are you ever going to have a piece of Spot Removal in hand, if you only play a couple? I tend to play a ton of Selesnya, and even running Swords, Path, Beast Within, Generous Gift, Stroke of Midnight, and Heliod’s Intervention + a Force of Vigor, in addition to a minimum 2 wipes often isn’t enough, even with the *mountain* of Draw I generally run (including a TOR) often isn’t enough to guarantee I have a second answer for some horrible threat.
I run massive quantities of interaction and am terrible at trying to utilize “small bean syndrome”. I took a bunch of cards in my collection, and listed the ones that did at least two of four: * remove/reduce the value of cards in opponents’ hands/the stack * remove/reduce the value of cards in opponents’ battlefields * add more playable cards to my hand, graveyard (ie flashback), exile (ie impulse) * cause damage/life loss This meant I had a lot of spells providing new cards/interaction while being able to pressure life totals. Then I made estimates of each card’s card advantage in Excel, and scored them in two groups: * card advantage per card spent * card advantage per mana spent As a result, I’m usually playing a 3-for-1 at a minimum when interacting with opponents. I’ll slam interaction aggressively since a lot of my cards give me board presence and interact with opponents such as Massacre Wurm. The downside has been a higher average mana value in decks since I’m forcing each card to do more on its own, but its quite fun.
I am very much have the impression that the: "casual first, everyone needs to do their thing" mentality is the very vocal minority on the internet that is perpetuated by certain content creators. Ive been playing since 2016 and in real life Ive only ever encountered 1 player that had this sentiment in commander. (Who also said that Approach of the Second Sun was a broken card because he only had 1 counterspell in his grixis deck 🙃)
My whole group is like that. We play wincons that aren't going to win on the stack (normally) and take time to develop. We try to reach the end game together
Its a vocal majority. To the point that whole categories of cards are frowned upon. The minority are the guys that thinks that mld and stax are actually cool to play with and against
@@vittoriosavian9964 the thing is they are cool to play against, just that the people who put them into decks just play them out for no reason other than to play them out. For example of someone is playing a jetmir deck and sets up a sufficient board to start taking names an armageddon or stax effect is a very viable way of shutting the door on their opponents and closing out a game. Instead you have Jimmy doing nothing meaningful and slamming mld on the table without a clock on his opponents and makes the game take an additional hour and a half.
Every deck I have, has at least 1 board wipe, plethora of targeted removal cards and in my red decks, a lil bit of land hate goes a long looong way when trying to destabilize someone elese tactics. I also really enjoy removing graveyard access. It's funny.
Do you think the addition of benefits for targeting opponents' stuff (Hinata, the new Marchesa, etc.) helps to shift this balance? I think the crime mechanic is an attempt to get players to be more "proactive" by giving an additional benefit (card advantage, cheapen the target, create zombies, etc.).
Yup! This can be accounted for in deck building, but your goal really would need to be destroy target thing, draw 2 cards or equivalent to maintain parody. Even then it doesn’t really solve the issue of moving you closer to winning. This is why counterspells are the main form of interaction in cEDH and they’re used to protect your win condition.
I love You guys' content about Commander, it's like peering into a mirror mirror universe. "You see the real problem with commander is [my favorite thing] and That's only really a problem because it leads to [my second favorite thing]"
Haha we definitely have a different perspective than most. What I think is important is to be aware of these potential problems and ignore them if you aren’t concerned with optimal play. Also, we are talking about systemic incentives in a vacuum. Magic is a complex game where sometimes the right thing to do isn’t technically optimal, especially in commander where politics are involved.
I built one of my decks with this exact incentive structure in mind and collected an improbable number of wins. The combination of sandbagging your boardstate so everyone beats the tar out of each other, accruing modest value so as to not attract attention, and exploiting how bad people are at running enough removal means you can actually just sit on your hands, interact only when it makes you look heroic or when you are directly threatened, and play soft control pieces until you can win unchallenged. People will just let Blind Obedience sit on the board until a Farewell clips it. You can cast Out of Time with 9 time counters on it and there is a good chance 3 adults with 600 dollar decks in 5 colors will not have a disenchant effect on them and fold to a phased out commander. It is no exaggeration that this deck has like a 70% winrate, even in pods that have seen it before. You can claim that you'd just beat me up early, but once turn 3 rolls around and someone is going for an early, cheated-in beater that will pull them way ahead and I'm sitting on a 2/2 and a mana rock you are going to forget that I won the last 4 games on turn 8 from my hand.
For myself, my least favorite part of adding removal is it rarely gets to feel like it's a part of the same deck. I wish I could include some on theme removal, but some decks just have to run stp because they need SOMETHING
I wonder if you ever played Forgetfull fish, another really fun format played with mtg cards that, in my opinion lends itself way better to the mtg mechanics.
10:30 - i've definitely had all those feelings about the 1-1 nature of removal but now I've started treating them like extra turn spells. Might just be how our games play out, but often enough a well timed removal spell means I get to untap where I might not have otherwise. Harder to evaluate the proactive removal spells, but at the later turns, the removal/turn ratio is pretty good.
i think itd be interesting to see more Battlebond style effects like, expensive removal or board wipes that allow other players to help, and maybe do something like draw cards if you provided mana
Exactly. I don't even play edh yet I know edh players don't play enough removal. The reason I know this is that every single content creator says to add more removal as a tip for edh deck building meaning that most people don't add enough removal, otherwise that advice wouldn't be that common
I've been playing edh since 2010, the meta of my playgroup is so razor thin that people are running Spell Pierce and it's shockingly effective. Depending on the deck I jam cheap removal harder than probably anyone else; and my group is running a lot. I don't know if we're quite cEDH, but we're all playing fetches and true duals, and games can end around turn 4 or 5, it doesn't happen too often, but it's not rare.
@@TrisketIts probably a fair assessment to say your group is at the very least high powered with hyper consistent manabases, and pretty efficient removal.
@@Trisket Spell Pierce is a great card for high power and cEDH because it's so efficient. If you don't know if your group is playing at cEDH levels, I'd say it's quite probable you're not playing cEDH decks. But it certainly sounds like high power. High power and cEDH decks are quite similar, both play low curves, perfect manabases and a lot of tutors and cheap efficient removal. The difference is that only a couple commanders are actually cEDH viable and they need a close to perfect list for that still. High power is super fun though, I love it.
I think one point that needs to be clarified here is that land destruction isn't the issue. It's MASS land destruction that is the issue. I think people have misconstrued this like a game of telephone. Targeted land removal should NOT be frowned upon but accepted and wanted. Otherwise, a cabal coffers or a gaea's cradle is just gonna run rampant at the table. Mass land destruction just slows the game down. And resets the game to a 4 way mana screw for no other purpose. I'd also like to clarify that if the mass land destruction helps close out a game for a certain deck and it's a setup to a win, that is slightly different. As opposed to just delaying the game state. Commander is such a weird game mode. "It's OK to win. But not that way because..."
i hope more people watch this video, though i'd like to add that running specific removal is really only good in competitive commander where removing one thing could lead to literally "winning the game" versus in a casual pod where it's just better to do a board wipe because of the disadvantage and often as you pointed out removing "one thing" doesn't do much of anything if at all.
The wonderful thing about commander is that suboptimal playstyles often are the most fun when you have played long enough. When you can play commander not to win but to interact and create stories of those interactions the true bliss of the format opens up... however having this mindset often forgoes playing optimally... so the real question is ... do you derive pleasure from the personal struggle of triumph or from the creation of interactions within the game at hand? Which is why commander is DND lite for me lol.
$1 Best Card is Volcanic Offering, Destroy 2 lands and deal 4 damage 2 times, you get to pick half the targets and pick and opponent who will pick the other half, None of these effects can target you. It is political harms 2 players and allows someone to play catch up or king make. If there is a clear threat and a person who is resource rich it allows you to deal with both problems simultaneously.
As a commander player, I play lots of removal. The removal spells change depending on playgroup but you best believe if I am running white than there is definitely a cataclysm and faith's reward.
I don't see this mentioned, so I'm going to put on my Um Akshually nerd glasses. A negative externality is when a firm can improve its operation efficiency by pushing the cost onto the surrounding environment, or community. The easiest example of this is pollution: you don't have to pay for garbage removal service if you dump all your trash in the river, but then the river gets polluted. The situation in Commander with removal is the opposite of this: a positive externality, where your operations create a benefit to the environment/community but at additional cost to yourself, and no particular benefit to your customers.
Running removal and reducing your chance to win in a vacuum is nothing compared to real games where well-timed removal can snuff out an opponents chances of winning to near zero sometime. So many people run greedy monolithic commanders with decks that hardly function without them. Yes, I Swords to Plowshares target your Zhuladok. No, I don't feel bad even 1%. The same can be said for commanders like new Rowan and Will, Kaalia, OG Mizzix, and many more. Using removal on those decks can be tantamont to Time Stop in some circumstances. Especially having been on the receiving end. Also, running answers to graveyard decks is a must. Scavenging Grounds and Soul-guide Lqntern are boring, but I have won more than a few games by exiling a graveyard players deck right before the result of their grand crescendo. Nonetheless, we haven't gotten enough good removal to combat the speed increase in the format. I've started running Whiplash Trap to get the cheap 241 when someone starts playing a fistfull of creatures.
I think all of the problems with Commander can be boiled down to there being entirely too much social bullshit surrounding the game; bullshit that actually has nothing to do with playing the game, politicking, or the game's rules, but everything to do with policing how people are allowed to approach the game in the first place. Imagine if people sat down to play chess, but had to have a conversation at the beginning about how you shouldn't be allowed to move anything but pawns for the first 10 moves, because developing a knight on turn one over another piece is too "high power." (no fast mana) Also you're not allowed to castle because I think that the king should only ever be allowed to move one square even if it has the help of another piece. (no cheating costs or combos of any kind) Oh yeah, and we banned queens because they just kinda take over the game, which is super un-fun. (I hate [insert any commander on EDHREC's top 50 here]! those decks only ever [insert personal grievance from 4 years ago here] and are super unfun to play against!) And one more thing... if you take a piece that the other person just moved, don't expect to be invited back to many tables. That was their favorite piece. And you taking it right away is really mean, and try-hard. (You really removed my Atraxa? I just played it. I was only gonna plus some planeswalkers, talk about rude now I have to wait a turn and pay Commander tax. I'm gonna hold this against you for the next 30 games we play together) To be honest, I'm just gonna get upset if you do anything that even slightly hinders me from durdling my way to a victory in 137 turns, and don't you even *think* about winning this before I can. If this game isn't at least 6 hours long I'm gonna feel like I wasted my time and take it out on you. Welcome to Commander, where Rule 0 removes LITERALLY half the game.
Optimal commander play is cedh, and you learn the hard way that removal is a trap and sandbagging is king. Never interact to not lose, only interact to win. Boardstates are for casuals.
Yeah that's why Force of Negation and Mindbreak Trap (which are basically only played not to lose instead of protecting your own win) are absolute staples of the format.
To make removal balanced for commander they need to make it so you benefit from using it, like “kill target opponent’s thing, then draw a card for each opponent you didn’t target” or something like that
This is why I run Forbidden Orchard in my Glissa, the Traitor deck. I politic them into having a creature I can kill so I don't have to destroy their good creatures.
One of the few ways in the rules that you can punish people holding removal and not playing it hoping that someone else will is being a pain in the ass about priority. If you have passed priority you don't get to cast a spell unless someone else puts something new on the stack. Which means if you are sitting to the left of the person who played the thing you want countered you can either counter it or risk it resolving. But it is a problem in all FFA games
I completely agree with this. I have so many games where I have removal and just… don’t. Or at least until this massive threat is coming at me. It’s not even me purposely doing this it just happens. It’s one of the many reasons I move more and more to 60 card formats because I’m not a fan of the inaction commander rewards.
If you are doing nothing and stocking up on cards, the correct play is to poke you and make you use the cards. That's how a multiplayer meta self regulates.
Who your commander is also influences the table, whether you realize it or not. If you show up with an Ur-Dragon deck people are going to make threat assessments before the game even starts. Removing a commander can feel pretty bad (for both parties), especially when it's central to a gameplan. It basically offsets you by 2 turns, and can leave a player feeling ostracized from the game. We can say in the abstract that protecting important pieces is part of a player's job, or that having synergy centralized around a single card is bad deckbuilding, but the amount of popular deck techs I see that require the commander to be on board for multiple turns has developed a culture where removing commanders is taboo.
@@distractionmakers Yeah. I'm actually a huge advocate of Eminence for this reason. It provides a stable foundation to make a deck unique. We see this in most digital card games (Hearthstone, Yugioh Duel Links, Shadowverse). Most of the current instances of Eminence are too powerful, but I'd love to see the ability utilized more in precons.
I play removal in every single deck I make. The only difference is the removal I put in wipes the whole board instead of one creature. There's something satisfying watching a board with like 30 cards on it. And it's fair too, because we ALL lose our cards.
I play 21 to instamts in my wub deck - beside from all good counterspells I do have Swords, Path to Exile, Thoughtsize etc in there. Technically these are all removals
I think one-for-one removal being inefficient is a good thing for the game, because it is then used sparingly. This contributes to everyone "getting to do their thing", because you don't stop someone unless they are threatening AND they are coming for you. And if you do counter a game-winning spell without negotiating some benefits from the other two players first, that's on you. 😉 That said i can totally understand your frustration with commander from a design standpoint because the rules alone don't make for a fun game and it instead requires a number of conventions which vary by what people find fun. Having found a playgroup that is a great fit for me, i see this less as a problem and more as an intriguing oddity. For me a key part of finding the fun in commander is treating it more as a king of the hill game or maybe even something like a free-for-all show wrestling match, where the winner is the one who gets to do the most "cool stuff" in a dramatic fight. In that frame it can be rewarding to be the person who had a counterspell (or even better: mana tithe) at just the right moment. It's a good show, even if you don't necessarily win with it. One big challenge that remains is finding people with the same definition of "cool stuff" as you, since in the beginning you may not even know what you like.
having removal is not only about big threats but also about pieces in other decks that would actively stop your wincon. best exmaple my friend has elish norn (the ETB stopper) in his deck and i play and Flicker/ETB deck. so removing her is MY priority because it doenst effect the other players as much but fucks over MY whole deck. even if i going card disadvantage , atleast i can keep playing instead of straight up loosing because it counters my whole wincon.
I hate that the more removal i run the less my deck even works Until i tuned my dino deck to be the aoe board wipe deck, i didnt really have a deck that interacted enough
While single target removal does slow down your tempo, you can make a deal with the other two players to not attack or let you trigger something if you take care care of the problematic permanent.
in my newest deck, I somewhat solved this one for one problem by having a deck based around small creatures / artifacts, where most of my removal package is boardwhipes that destroy every big creature / up to a certain amount of total power etc.
That only applies to low power decks, at some Point even outside of competitive you get to Situations where if you don't remove permanent a or permanent b before it's controller successfully resolves playing permanent c then they win. If they win then you don't just loose Infinite card Advantage, so going -2 in order to prevent yourself going -infinite is worth it. And that doesent have to be sliver queen, alrar and blood artist but might well just be yuriko and senseis top or something similar.
Back in the 90's we called this the "Mario Party Effect." Everything is incredibly social but at the end of the day it is a 4-person FFA and only ONE can win. Kids strangled each other with controller cables and rubbed a patch of our skin clean off the center of the palm to win.
I wouldn't say at all in any world that commander players "don't play removal." Commander players play TOO much removal. It is the heaviest removal format in Magic the Gathering. But yes, more gas is more gas. Don't play NO removal.
Single-Target-Removal is indeed bad in most cases. Exceptions could be cheap things like [Swords to Plowshares] in a deck that has a lot of draw anyways, so you only spend a tiny fraction of your mana and hand to get rid of that one big threat. Onesided boardwipes are obviously the best. Symmetric boardwipes are good (enough) for control strategies. Then there's multi-removal cards that are playable when you have a good ramp plan like [Decimate] or [Casualties of War]
Only ppl with greed in their hearts think one for ones feel bad. Threats need to be answered. If you’re not currying favor by getting rid of problems, your politicking needs works.
Yeah, those spells are all expensive to cast, cheap interaction that surgically takes out priority targets and using your remaining mana to advance your position is a far more effective strategy than spending 4 mana to take out the real problem and 2 insignificant problems. If you need to take out multiple significant problems that's what wipes are for.
@@AgentMurphy286 I know it's technically part of the game, but our group doesn't politic really. There's no deals being made, no ganging up or king making, we basically just try and play as 'optimally' as possible and remove threats as they come. But also I do run a lot of single target removal too of course, but it does feel like I'm doing two opponents a favour sometimes, hence why I like running stuff that hits multiple targets. Plus if someone is really far ahead you can use those multi target spells to get rid of multiple threats that player might have, whereas a Swords to Plowshares might not be good enough. But we also don't play CEDH or really high power stuff, usually we try to make clean $100 budget decks and pit them against each other.
@@Trisket eh, agree to disagree. Maybe at high power tables or CEDH that's true, and I'd agree with you, but in lower powered more casual tables I think it's fine to have slower removal.
I'm a firm believer you will lose more games if you can't stop your opponents then the 1 for 1 will ever harm you. The biggest issue I see in deck building is people get so fixated on jamming not really good cards they just enjoy. It a card that works with one other and another that meshes well with a couple other cards you have. Or if I've got this 4 cards out and nobody stops me I'll have this really cool synergy that's super op! (Doesn't win the game probably). You have 3 players trying to stop your cool synergy and disrupt your gameplay. You have 3 players trying to win. You NEED ways to prevent this. I have a friend who's obsessed with elfball. Claiming it's crazy strong, and "busted". Elves CAN be strong. Elves can do a lot of things. But they won't run enough responses, removal, or ways to prevent board wipes to get to that critical mass, so they rarely win. Am I saying everyone should run nearly half their deck as responses like me? No. But in every deck, think of HOW it wins, then think of what stops that. A single Heroic Intervention is not enough to stop all the board wipes in a game. If your deck can't handle more then 1 reset, if you can't handle an opponent winning faster then you. You've built wrong.
Oh and also, IF YOU BUILT A CREATURE DECK DONT FEEL BAD ABOUT ATTACKING EARLY AND ATTACKING OFTEN ITS YOUR WINCON. Don't give others time to build up and don't give combo players time to combo out. This is a game you're here to win. There is nothing wrong with targeting a player out of you KNOW they're gonna combo. Do exile the graveyard players graveyard, board wipes the token player. Punish the players who have weak boards. Blow up lands, make people discard, play opposition agent on the combo player. Imprison someone's commander in the moon or turn it into a 0/1 bug with indestructible. If they can't work around you just playing the game it's on them for building poorly. Do not just give free wins away to be "fair" or whatever. We all have the same pool of cards in mtg, it is fair. And just to clarify idgaf if you proxy, can't afford a cradle? Print it. Need a better mana base? Print it, sharpie it, order fakes online. Nobody around you has a jeweled lotus for trade? GOOD OLE HEWLETT PACKARD is always down to make you as many as you want. Price of cardboard with fancy ink on it should never be an excuse as to why your deck sucks. If you are both on a budget of a middle schoolers lunch money and a puritan snob who thinks proxies are for bums, then don't get upset when you lose often. "Oh I just play for fun." You know what's more fun then mtg? Winning mtg. If you win, then you get to play another game right after! Winning a game doesn't stop the mtg. It opens the door for another shuffle up. If someone's mad you countered their overpriced dinosaur or shattered their glass cannon, then it really speaks of their level of maturity. If your playgroup is upset since you've won the past 100 games? Teach them how to deck build. Make them better players, don't let them rot in the ideology that responses are bad and weird battle cruiser style solitaire where nobody messes with anyone else for the first 20 turns is the best way to play commander. Don't let the stupid artifact player say he's "just got rocks" as an excuse to not get in free damage. Kick his teeth in. If you know a player has thassa's oracle in their deck. Take your cute vampire tokens you've been spawning and crucify them. Play eldrazi in your animar deck free big monsters is cool. Proliferate poison counters, ultimate your Planeswalkers. Wrath of God with krovus bell and urborg. Combo off with kinnan or momir. That's all the fun splashy moments that make commander games memorable for months to come. Nobody says "you remember that time we all played solitaire until one of us won with a combo they drew into?" Or do you talk about the time "Steve made 7000 goblins with krenko on turn 8 then sacked them all to skirk to kill everyone in response to my board wipe!" "Tezzeret found me my Warhammer and my blight steel with his ult and since I already had a lighting grieves I got to kill Tom after he swung out at Alice!" Make some real fun memories. It is good to try and win, we're all trying to win. Rule 0 shouldn't be restrictions on ways to win it should be extra fun stuff! Like everyone can have an enchantment in their command zone, or a non legendary creature, commanders start face down until cast. Don't need your deck to let someone feel like their poor choices are justified
Casual Magic vs Tournament magic all comes down to one question. If your opponent doesn't want to play anymore and scoops because you made a good play and or they didn't or because you got lucky and or they didn't, do you count that as a win? Meaning: are you more concerned with winning a game, or are you focused on everyone having a good time? Hopefully you can win your matches AND help everyone have a good time in the process, but when push comes to shove, and you have the opportunity to make that game winning play, are you more likely to let your opponent win, or to take the win. This is a very real question, and in casual settings, letting your opponents win sometimes is not just recommended, it is essential to building a MtG community. It's something no one talks about, but what people are really saying when they complain about power level is "It's not fair. I'm not having fun. Why won't you let me win sometimes." I think the most important part about transitioning from competitive games to casual games is knowing when and how to reward your opponents for playing well by letting them win sometimes. After all, they're not going to have any fun if they just lose game after game even when they think they are making all the correct decisions.
I think this is something the community needs to talk more about. The issue is, just like in DnD, if you fudge it and let someone win and they know about it they might never believe they legitimately won.
The "do nothing and win" strategy only works if you are the only one doing it. If nobody does anything about the threat then the player placing the threat wins.
I like that commander plays that way. It goes beyond who makes the most mistakes loses like 1v1 mtg games. You have to thing about the bigger picture and maybe even making a mistake can help in a way you didn't predict
there is a non insignificant amount of players who don't play removal enough. i try to keep my total amount of removal (Board wipes + single target) around 15 cards sometimes ending up with more if the deck i'm playing particularly wants or synergizes with removal. However i often end up feeling like i'm the table police if my deck gets going especially if that removal is repeatable
@@chibiraptora lot of, not all, but a lot of new players start with precons which usually have a decent amount of removal in them to begin with. I suppose it's fair when they build their first deck they may struggle with adding removal but most players I've met and played with tend to clue into needing more ways to answer problems super quickly.
on top of that they do have a point. you're disincentivized to play removal because most of the efficient removal you'd want to play so you can build your board and solve problems is 1 for 1 which feels bad because you're going down cards against the two other opponents and you're best way to win is to look like you aren't doing anything until you start pushing for a win
@jmanwild87 none of that is a problem, though. They act like it's a detriment to the game. It isn't. It's part of it. They can make fun of it all they want but it IS about threat assessment. Do YOU really need to remove that threat? Or can you risk it going through? You're still going to have to be the one to remove things if it hurts you bad enough. Like an enchant that only allows you to play 1 spell a turn when you're a storm deck. It's just part of the game. Not an issue at all
After watching this video 2 weeks ago I paid closer attention to which decks play removal and which don't. In my experience they all did but some only had it in there incidental to their theme. Treating those as not playing removal I realized that without exception they did not win. Well timed removal or key target removal enabled another player to dismantle the leader or potential competitor and seal the deal. In short, I thought this take was weird when I heard it and based on my next dozen+ games I think this is a hot take that should be passed.
There’s a reason every cEDH deck plays almost no removal and mostly counterspells. Counterspells stop someone else from winning when they have to and can also protect your win. What we’re discussing is how the rules of the format push things in a direction of noninteraction and combo wins.
@@distractionmakers I have only seen a few of your videos and in those you appear to be interested in talking about game design in general. I don't know if you have established that you frame of reference for commander is cEDH. Without that caveat I believe it is obvious that when speaking of "commander players" (per the title) the assumption is that you are talking about the OG, casual mindset & game as it has the overwhelming majority of players, games and, probably most applicable to this discussion, decks. You seem to be sending mixed messages in your response with the comment about counterspells and noninteraction. It is contrary to the stated "noninteraction and combo wins" and it sounds like you need to do more thinking about the topic. As a rebuttal, Commander has been around since the 90's and if the rules were indeed pushing toward "noninteraction and combo wins" then it begs the question of why removal and non-combo are so prevalent after 28 years. Is it a weak push? Does that only apply to a fringe group (like cEDH)?
I can't tell you how often I win EDH games I don't "deserve" to win. I play the small bean, pay my taxes and make sure someone else is always looking more dangerous than me. I play the subtle political game: I don't make deals with people very often, but I do make casual, indirect references to who the overt threats are while holding removal (or protection) for when it's about to hit the fan. I also play humble or I should say I do my best to sound and look humble and smile a lot and sit back watching people go for "the threat" and not the evil behind smiling eyes.
I tend to run removal light as a player. Many of my decks run none at all. But it's mostly because of my design philosophy of "you have your fun. I'll have mine." Is you sit down with a hardcore masturbatory win and on turn for deck, no one has fun.
My pod has gone thru an evolution of a couple boardwipes/removal because we were new, to everyone being salty and adding alot of removal with everyone being miserable fairly often and just not wanting to play things or throwing a game to action bias/kingmaking, to back to a few pieces of removal because it's way better to do something that advances your wincon instead of wasting cards on removal. Our games have been much more balanced since.
Having a policy of retaliation is not necessarily a bad idea when competing in a series of games and that reputation causes other players to not target you even when it would technically be “optimal”
I think also in commander when you run removal it nearly always the same card and you play commander you want to play different cards doing different things
I'm not from the US and in my country people play with removals in commander all the time. Personally I feel complaining about someone using that kind of cards is childish. Although I have a couple of removals in my decks it's also true that by adding too many removals, you're probably taking a place for other cards that could work better with your strategy, so I leave a place for removals only if I feel it's going to make a difference in my strategy.
Commander is largely all about the social experience. If you're playing commander to win every game, you're not going to have fun or be fun to play against. Your deck should only have a 25% win rate if its actually a balanced deck. I had a game recently where i had used a card on my opponent [Curse of Obsession] with the idea that my friend would have to deal with discarding his hand every turn... But i had accidentally given him everything he needed to win, since he was actually starting to draw into more lands and get more resources on the board so he could actually keep the board set to Day against my werewolf deck. I lost and had a good chuckle with him when he pointed out that it might actually have been a better play to enchant myself with the curse of obsession.
On the point of land destruction, my experience is that people generally don't mind targeted land removal - arguably one of the reasons that beast within has been a staple for so long is that it targets anything, lands included. The issue is mass land destruction, or blowing up lands as a thing your deck just does all the time. It takes interesting games and grinds them to a crawl.
That said, you guys are correct about the concept of giving something "social hexproof" being problematic. But any time I've ever strip mined a cabal coffers or ancient tomb the table is cheering, except for that one guy, but fuck that guy
Correct. Targeted land removal is there for the dangerous lands. Chaos Warp that Glacial Chasm/Cabal Coffers/etc. People don't mind removal of threatening lands.
Some of the coolest plays I've seen have come as a response to playing a land sweeper. Wrath effects need to be used responsibly, but to consider the entire idea off the table is unhealthy. And, even if the game is set back to start, at least individual turns go by quickly. Instead of the decks I've dismantled because they took twenty to thirty minute turns and didn't have the curtesy to actually end the game. It's the reason one of my decks is built to use Obliterate and Worldfire as an attempt to end the game instead of being an extra turn deck. I don't know if taking a bunch of extra turns would end any particular game, but the entire table would have to find out together.
And the people I encounter complaining about mass land destruction play dedicated stax or throw a fit when an otherwise poor deck happens to get a perfect draw. I know what conclusions I've drawn from this.
When the land can do busted things then it's a very fair removal target.
@@wesleywyndam-pryce5305 My point wasn't that stax was bad, it was to point out a hypocrisy I find all too common. Pretty much all criticism leveled at MLD can also be leveled at hard enough stax pieces, but people will gleefully demonize the former while playing the later. And what I said about other builds was a statement about decks I don't personally enjoy playing myself, not a statement that something shouldn't exist in the game.
All of which could be easily sussed out with some basic reading comprehension. Perhaps you could try it before throwing accusations around. You can, in fact, take some time to think before hitting the reply button.
Why would you strip mine Cabal Coffers when you can just play Vesuva and copy it? You don't even need to be playing black because of Urborg
To everyone who falls too deep into the idea of "hurting themselves" with 1-for-1 removal, please remember this:
Losing because you packed insufficient spot removal gives you much more card disadvantage than going down the removal spell.
This.
In a multiplayer format, 1-for-1 removal/interaction needs to be played to either protect yourself or to stop someone from winning or you are disadvantaging yourself. Let them hurt each other as long as you don't need the other(s) alive. Protecting another player can get you unspoken favor from them which can make the difference in a game (and in future games when you have developed that reputation).
Note: Protecting yourself be preemptively kneecapping an opponent so they can't develop fast enough to be relevant.
One-Sided board wipes are so much more efficient than 1 for 1 removal
@@laytonjr6601 Yes, but not really my point.
@@laytonjr6601 Yes they are! 😄
However if your the only one at the table that doest you have huge advantage. This is prisoner delema
So as someone who has enjoyed listening to these two, and as someone that enjoys a commander game now and then - it’s interesting to me how much they analyze why they believe commander does work. Here are my disorganized thoughts:
1. Commander is a three-body problem. 1v1 is difficult enough to ‘plan’ around, but 4 players choosing from hundreds of thousands of cards is going to be a shit show. It’s simply not risk or catan that has 3 options. This is near-infinite options. And I think that’s what people like about it - there’s a mystery box of promise that you’ll see something interesting, stupid, funny or clever, and you’ll be inspired to go home and play with an idea you saw.
2. Besides this episode they talk a lot about how some of the options “feel bad” or how threat assessment comes into play. The social element here can’t be understated. You must first make sure everyone is on the same page. Everyone has to be cool with how petty or how friendly the decks are. The other part of this is yes- playing a card may put a big target on your back - so you’ve got to work the table and sway your opponents minds. I’d argue that most of commander IS that social experience. A weaker deck can come out ahead because two titans at the table decide to battle it out to sweep the weaker, but leave themselves too vulnerable after.
3. My buddies that play commander are from vastly different levels of experience, and I feel like commander evens the field. I like the feeling that we all have a reasonable chance of winning, but that there’s so much table talk and rules lawyering and fun argument that it makes my friends who don’t play as much better players too.
Anyways.
Thanks for coming to my TedX talk.
I will not validate parking.
Sounds like you could, but refuse to go through the trouble to do so
I think there's another element that's really important for commander - winning isn't everybody's main goal when playing Magic. There are lots of cards that have really cool effects and there are tons of really cool synergies that require tons of setup or fold under the slightest pressure. Those cards are unplayable in any mildly competitive environment, but they can be exciting and inspirational, and some people might just want to play with those cards.
When I first started playing commander over a decade ago, the format almost felt like it was explicitly designed to give those crazy cards a place to live. Being multiplayer takes pressure off each individual player, giving them more room to put together overly complex combos. Being singleton decreases consistency, making it less likely to see incidental counters to your cards. As such, commander allows you to play cards and strategies that aren't viable anywhere else. Doing whatever thing your deck is designed to do can be a ton of fun, even if you end up losing.
And that perspective lends itself to the "no removal" playstyle because of the variance from the 100-card singleton format. Why would I fill my deck with removal when I could instead include more cards that help me do the thing I'm here to do?
I think part of the current problem with commander (and part of the reason there are so many videos and discussions about topics like this) is that Wizards has changed how commander feels by designing specifically for it. I think it USED to feel like a home for crazy cards, but the ever-growing array of cards designed for commander has pushed more of those crazy cards out and attracted more competitively-minded players. That creates conflicts - if a competitive player is at a table with someone who just wants to play with some weird cards, somebody's not going to have fun, and everybody's going to blame someone else for missing the point.
Your 1. point is very true and it resonates strongly with me. I am generally a competitive player and I have a background of competing in other tcgs/formats and while I love the idea of commander I always end up a little disappointed every time I play. The inability to properly strategize makes it feel like I'm just a passenger and not an active player. But I'm sure that's also a big reason for it's popularity within the casual community - you show up, cast spells, whacky things happen. It scratches a completely different itch.
Something else is in a 1v1, you don't remove the you can fairly safely assume that suckers turning sideways and straight for your face. In commander, it starts out as a 1/3rd chance is coming at you but 2/3s chance it's going somewhere else which can be influenced by the ever present politics and it's basically like you had the on your side. Why would you spend your cards to remove something that can help you?
That is a really solid point.
There's two types of players and one is far more common than the other.
You're either a "smoll bean syndrome" player or you see "being the threat" as a compliment.
Everyone always underestimates their board state and overestimates their opponents.
Seriously though, if you're playing one of those "top rated commanders on EDHREC" don't be shocked when people come at you. I'm already paying my respects to the poor soldiers who are getting that upcoming eldrazi deck for an exorbitant amount of cash just to be the threat the entire game and complain about being the threat the entire game.
this incentive structure is what i feel is most disappointing about every battle royale game.
fighting is almost always the wrong choice because you spend your resources AND risk dying, losing instantly. but, fighting is the fun part of the game, so players feel like having fun is the wrong way to play.
and it also means when you play to win, another player/team forcing a fight on you (because fighting is fun) feels almost like griefing. they're doing something that hurts both you and them, and only benefits the potential third team who isn't involved. and that just breeds resentment and frustration among your community...
This is broadly true about the core concept of a battle royale game, but these games solve this problem in a couple different ways. First, killing other players is rewarded with something that makes you stronger; better weapons, more health, etc. And second, a time limit is enforced by a steadily closing play area. The combination of these two factors means that all players will inevitably be required to fight, and that players who fight more throughout the game will be better equipped than players who don't. "Never fight anyone" isn't a viable strategy in most battle royale games. Interestingly, MTG has started using similar strategies to fix these problems in Commander. Mechanics like Monarch, Initiative, and Goad reward/require combat and help push the game along.
@@Dupernerd This is part of why I like Goad so much. Aggression that pushes the game state along, but that specifically forces your OPPONENTS to fight each other, so that the person doing the Goading isn't in nearly as much danger, and they're able to try and make their opponents perform 1-for-1s against each other (ideally with stuff like the Impetus auras, so the target is goaded until it dies). Without needing to tap your potential blockers, you're still able to send *something* aggressive towards your opponents and apply pressure. And since you aren't the one choosing the attack target, you're (partially) able to avoid the pushback that comes from picking someone to victimize.
Yup pretty much, Commander's core problem was it was always trying to force a square peg into a round hole as far as game design and intention... Y'all just gotta accept this was never what MTG was suppose to do or how it should function.
And that’s why commander becoming the main format might be the single worst thing to happen to MTG
Adding to this, it’s a terrible format for a new player to engage with. Too many cards to understand and games take forever. So much time spent waiting, not learning.
I remember getting the 7th edition starter kit that taught you how to play. You received two 30 card decks, two player guides with a demo game, a CD with more learning materials. Most of the creatures had no rules text. The most complex card was maybe slight of hand.
Now they give new players 100 card decks. Then they play 3 more people at the same time with 100 different cards in there decks, all before they remember how to untap, upkeep, draw.
Ya’ll call this casual?
@darty788 no, it's called depth. Nobody playing mtg now cares about cards without text, that's not a bragging point
@@Lufaine01 he’s not saying it is, he’s saying that throwing new players into the deep end with all of the complex mechanics when the game already has so much to learn before all that does not make for a good learning experience
@@darty788I left magic a decade ago and when I came back had this exact experience. I like trying to play well, but with literally dozens of cards and Mechanics i had never seen used every game, threat evaluation became impossible, and so did feeling anything towards the game. Out again, wish I could grock what keeps bringing folks back to commander.
Reminder: maintaining card advantage is more important than going down a card to not lose :^)
Only if you value winning more than enjoying a new format. Removing a big threat feels great butnonly feels bad if the next person to take their turn has an insane combo sitting in their hand/field which implies you're probably playing cEDH, not commander.
13:35 I think that commander play is mostly driven by a goal that tends to stay a little subconscious, and that goal is the need for social interaction.
People can try to win if they want, and that is a fine goal too, not to mention winning in certain ways can be part of a social interaction, but I think the vocal majority mostly doesn't know what they want and mostly wants an effective social outlet.
I hate the curse of FFA games that commander has where winning the game is often political, but I played it anyway (without commanders and other aberrations because the format didn't exist yet) because my friends wanted to play it, and it was a good time.
I really wish WotC had put more time into trying to develop some kind of 3v1 game like Archenemy, or just a PvM co-op game where three people fight against a boss deck, because the expression and flavor of Commander deck building is so fun and engaging and expressive, but playing a competitive game incentivizes playing in a way that doesn't align with the original design goals of that kind of format.
I'm actually going to challenge this, while yes you are technically down a card when using removal, YOU get to make the decision. Your principle only works for game ending threats, when a) someone must answer the threat or lose or b) when it threatens the whole table. If you are playing an artifact deck and someone plays meltdown, not only will no one counter it, but everyone else actively wants it to resolve. In that case, you get punished for not having a counterspell. You need to play removal because sometimes you will get singled out and you need to protect yourself, and if other people have removal they will not spend it to save you.
Agreed…if there is a threat that is going to take over the game, you must take it out.
Counterspell is protection though, not removal. If you know you’re sent to the shadow realm by one Vandalblast, you’re not going to counter something unless it literally loses you the game if you don’t. Also meltdown/vandalblast etc are one sided board wipes, they are way more efficient than spot removal which is being discussed here. Finally, you can also run Arcane Denial or Mana Drain which keep your value in line with the rest of the table when you use them. It’s not the same as running swords and path in every deck, they are over rated.
Idk why people have this mentality of deckbuilding or playing in hopes that someone will save you. Very flawed. Nor does it make any sense that "you go down a card" when you cast/play X -- of course you do, that's the game. You play cards. Everyone checking super technicality on this but really it's just what we have to do to keep playing/staying ahead
You could just be playing winning plays though.
I tend to include 10 pieces of single (or multi-targeted) pieces of removal and 2-5 board wipes in my decks and I try to include Beast Within and Generous Gift style cards in any deck that could support them because of their versatility in being able to hit any permanent, lands included. I've been on the receiving end of many Strip Mine loops and other single targeted removal for my Cabal Coffers and the like, so I am all for targeted land destruction. One of my favorite experiences of land destruction was when I was stuck on 3 lands into the late game while one of my friends, who had been ramping the whole game, decided to target all 3 of my lands with their Terastodon, blowing up my only lands as a joke, despite their being other viable threatening targets in the game.
Sometimes removal will help win you the game by removing a big blocker or a key piece of an opponent's preventing you from winning. Sometimes removal will save you from outright losing, hopefully keeping you around to eventually win. Other times, you can kick your friend when they're down or blow up a friend's favorite card that had little to no bearing on them winning or not and they just wanted to play their pet card. My point is, just play removal of all kinds and play more of it. Commander games are more interesting when there's interaction instead of everyone playing solitaire.
It's a big problem in Worms. If you allow Jetpack, it's just going to create a kingmaker final 3.
as in worms armageddon?
Im 9 minutes into the video and you also havent mentioned one of the core issues of edh. threats have become stronger but removal has more or less stayed the same. the only thing that has gotten better in a vacuum and because threats have become stronger: boardwipes. because of the 1vs3 uphill battle Im much more incentivized to deal with all players at the same time. but this is only true if all decks are equal. if my win conditions or threats match my opponent then we can trade threats. but if my win condition is weaker then even if I use removal wether its inefficient single target removal or boardwipes im still gonna be behind.
I presume that's mostly because Threats started out so much weaker than removal. Swords to Plowshares was printed way before any of the more modern targets you'd see it used on. So Threats had a lot of catching up to do. Though there are still some really strong answers being printed. Say Farewell and the Black board wipe similar to it that was spoiled in MH3. Or the evoke elementals in MH2
Hell just in recent standard sets we have the spree removal spells like 3 steps ahead and Final Showdown
Cards like bitter triumph, Get Lost, Pile on
Stroke of midnight anoint with affliction in poison decks Sunfall
All of which are commander playable
Hell pest control is probably a meta call in edh but is seeing play in Legacy
I just wish all fast mana was banned. Including Sol Ring. Dockside and Smothering Tithe need to go too. Idc that I own many copies of each, the format would be better with them gone.
Also, unban Golos.
Lol unbanning golos, from a cedh player: No.
Nadu and ramp+advantage commanders along those lines would have to be banned too.
Threats haven't gotten better, people are just willing to play a+b combos now.
We probably need much more "For each opponent, destroy target X", at rates competitive with the usual single target removal. Removal is important and it being a third as effective in Commander affects it in a way that probably isn´t great.
The game wasn't designed for 4 people. That's new.
During my time working on my lgs I helped a lot of players on their commander decks and the usual frase I would use is "how much interaction you play? Retorical question, double it." The problem in more casual commander is not noticing that the best way to win is stopping you friends of winning.
Commander is complicated Munchkin.
Because people want to believe its not munchkin, while by rule and in fact it kinda is
@@vittoriosavian9964 Yeah like, I don't mean that in a bad way at all. The political and social play patterns of Munchkin are super interesting, and Commander layers a bunch of extra rules on top of that. Like implementing a MOBA inside a RTS game.
Haha, perfect, came here to mention how much this reminds me of Munchkin.
I quit Magic 20 years ago, never played any multiplayer Commander, only recently undusted my cards and now I'm trying to catch up a bit, mostly with youtube videos.
But we used to play some Munchkin during those 20 years, and, let's be honest, most of those games ended pretty stupid, like, everyone throwing all their stuff against the one player trying to win, way more than actually needed, and then, with no more disruption in hand, next player in line would just win easily. Since we didn't play that regularly and with the same people, most of them wouldn't really "learn" anything from it and nothing would change... I guess another problem was that some people played to WIN, while others just wanted to have a nice evening with friends, without thinking too much, or making anyone "angry". Also, the fact that in Munchkin, you can help someone and negotiate a reward was kinda abused by the couples, who would sometimes help each other for no reward, just to be nice to each other... disgusting... imagine playing a multiplayer game and NOT hitting your significant other the hardest 😆
Well, I guess now I know with whom I might try to play commander and who to avoid for even mildly competitive games.
speaking of people having this grudges, i have a friend who works in our lgs who when i told her that i want to play commander with her because i want to see what she would build in commander, she told me that she wants to play with us to beat someone that comes to the shop who gets to her nerves. people can have grudges against people they haven't even played a game with before. and if you ask me if board games gives us the opportunity to punch someone in the face without having to be violent, that is a great new application i couldn't have thought of. :p
also something that many don't do in commander because we try to be kind is that even when we could take someone out of the equation with one removal we don't do because we want to be kind and let them play the game. which is good practice as a human being having a social interaction and a terrible strategy to have around the table.
I mean, good for you. Doesnt mean that if i destroy your only blocker im a bad person. Lots of people dont understand this concept
@@vittoriosavian9964 i meant more like stack on 3 lands a and 4artifacts and you play vandalblast to cut them out of the game.
@@hellNo116 y not. If they are dangerous, y should you let them be dangerous
04:09 "Games, uh, simulate real-life..." Harry S. Truman played board-wipes... two of them. Just not globally as some scientists originally feared might occur. If he were alive today, he might lean more towards playing Cyclonic Rift rather than Farewell.
My suggestion to anyone getting into commander that balances both pragmatism and fun is if you don't want to compromise too many slots, it's ok to go with mediocre removal with high synergy with your deck.
I made a cycling deck where almost every card had cycling. I didn't worry about card draw, removal, ramp, counterspells, etc because I found versions of those with cycling. They were not as optimized but they also didn't cost tempo when I wanted to go on the offense and pop off.
The more you bend rules to be "fun" and "social", the less fun and social it is.
I've seen people arguing bitterly about these _non-written rules_ instead of actually playing and having fun.
At our LSG we have this year more fights than we have had in the last DECADE. Yes, fist fight about "fun" and non-existing rules
Lol please record that itd be wild
Yikes
Welcome to the Commander experience!
I bet it was over someone trying too hard to win in a casual format ;)
People crying about stuff being better than others. If you aren’t playing to win then just don’t play.
Honestly I think the core issue that’s wrong with Commander is that the inclusive aspect is antithetical to what the core game is, and that issue is exemplified by the culture of players who see the format as a “board game version of Magic”
If each player didn’t have their own respective life totals, then it would be understandable why the community acts the way they do about Commander. But at the end of the day, the game has to end, and there has to be three losers no matter what.
It truly is a shame that new players are introduced to MTG through Commander, without having any understanding of the inherent etiquette of creature battler card games. Instead, they learn that Magic is a safe-space-simulator, because of the modern culture surrounding Commander.
It’s pretty much just “good vibes bro” which itself is fine, but WOTC’s decade-long push to prioritize Commander over Constructed is that now Constructed players either have to cater to handicapped pods/playstyles, or exclusively play CEDH.
so playing magic shouldn't be a safe space? are players supposed to envision playing magic as a means to deal harm to their opponents?
On the flip side CEDH is just as cutthroat if not more so than regular 60-card so I don't really understand your hate towards it. There are creature-based CEDH strategies just like there are spellslinger-combo-based 60-card strategies. You seem to be implying that Magic must be played with creature-first strategies but what makes it an enduring game is that it doesn't have to be that way.
@@Starkipraggythat's not what he said at all
@@Starkipraggy it should be a safe space in the sense that i treat the other person woth respect, not that i dont play certain unbanned cards because you dont want to see them. Its a different thing.
this comment is dead on. great take @tastysnackies
I never knew that commander was supposed to be a game where there shouldn't be removal and an acual attempt to win. I was never taught this and never taught that to others, I just enjoy playing regardless of whether or not I'm losing or winning, I'm playing the game to win, the decks I use are designed to win. Whenever I'm teaching someone how to play I'm teaching them how to win using whatever you can, removal, ramp, boardwipes, counterspells, land destruction if you really want. I always pictured commander as a subformat in mtg where everyone is locked in a war, and in a war you don't want to go easy on your enemies, and I don't want people going easy on me.
Something on removal spells too is I think too many removal (when used) is used on 1 for 1 or complete removal. there are mini sweepers like dismantling wave which I’ve pushed friends to run more. It’s a 1-3 ratio and puts you more in line with 1v1 removal. Something also is unlike a board wipe like farewell you don’t reset the game essentially and rather gain a mana /temp advantage.
This! I listed a bunch of creatures such as Massacre Wurm and Sheoldred // The True Scriptures in Excel, then scored them based on how well they interacted with multiple opponents. It’s been great for having a 3-for-1 as the floor.
those are control spells. you wanna throw together esper control in commander its 3 for 1s all day.
for every other non control deck you only need low costed instant speed interaction to remove immediate game ending threats ONLY IF they end the game for you.
otherwise just let people pop off.
I would say land destruction stigma is primarily against mass land destruction or repeatable loops, people dont really flinch at things like a ghost quarter, or removing a problematic land.
I've generally only had pretty bad experiences with Commander because of the fundamental way in which you need to be playing with a group of people who agree to play in a specific way before the game for it to work, and it's interesting to me sometimes to see how different a lot of people's time with it is. I think that even if your goal is not to win the game, what I want to get out of the game is an interesting set of interactions - I'd like to get to make meaningful decisions. One of the crazy and kind of insidious things about the negative externalities situation is that it can screw you over even if your job isn't to try to win at all costs! Any time and effort spent targeting someone else is resources you could have been spending on doing your goofy value play or whatever that you wanted to pull off. If your only goal playing the game is to try to get to your interesting silly thing you came up with and wanted to build your deck into doing... then you're ALSO incentivized to focus on yourself because if you remove stuff you don't really get to develop much. Ironically though by doing this you often end up unable to do the things you wanted to do anyway, since if you progress too much people target you, and if you don't interact too much it's likely someone else is going to combo off or whatever and instantly ruin your attempts to achieve something. It's a really tricky situation
It is quite tricky and often requires players to build their decks to support it and play the game in a more collaborative way. Those things aren’t in the ruleset, they are just a way of playing commander players have determined as the best way to play and varies by play group. As for your example of focusing on doing the thing. The issue is if anyone’s thing wins them the game. If they do the thing first everyone else doesn’t get to do the thing. This leads to a race to the top of doing your thing the fastest and most efficiently to make sure you get to do it at all. Basically cEDH.
I've found control decks to be a powerful answer to "how do I do my thing and also not randomly lose". My thing in a control deck is interaction and building card advantage at the same time, slowly winning.
If your goal isn’t to win you’re coping. Our culture is just done for if people unironically are saying they aren’t playing games to win.
A board game that leans into the problem beautifully is Inis. It is the king of "you deal with the problem." "No, you deal with the problem."
Looks interesting! We’ll check it out!
Cosmic Encounter is another boardgame that woul appeal to commander players.
Richard Garfield cites it as a big inspiration for magic the gathering
My first Commander deck was a removal-only Toshiro Umezawa deck. I had a lot of fun just getting in the way of people! To this day, I would rather play a mostly-removal-only Deck (and enjoy it over "trying to win")!!
Still, I learned that first game that not everyone likes Removal, even if I did.. specially in the form of "Death Cloud" 🤷
I love death cloud 😆
The thing with Commander is that it also has the intent of "I get to use the cards in my collection" so it's kind of stuck with the rest of Magic
I keep imagining a king of Tokyo style of commander where a player is always king. Who that player is can change throughout the game, much like the monarch, haven’t decided how. But, the kings creatures all have myriad and their single target spells/abilities get copied for each other player. A constantly changing archenemy
~2:30 you allude to this in a bit but, after a few games against decks like that, you kind of have to treat them like they're a threat all the time. Every deck ends up reaching a point where they win if they untap, those decks just need less on the field to do it. My point is you can absolutely threat assess against a deck that has nothing on the board.
Don't get me wrong, the lack of permanents definitely helps obfuscate your power level, but understanding the plan of the deck and the player matter way more.
Yeah. Generally speaking, those kinds of decks only really get to take advantage of that once or twice. If i know you have a 2-3 card combo in your deck that just wins you the game on the spot I'm putting pressure on you from the jump. Because i don't know if you'll just untap and win on turn 7.
I didn't run removal in high school because I was over-conscious of effects that would steal my cards. So whatever removal spells I did run couldn't hit anything I had in my deck.
I really, really enjoy your channel and subjects. Thank you
I guess I just naturally work around this in deck construction. I find ways to use my good cards as removal and have modular cards much more than was intended. More options in the same 100 cards and then I can just run removal for "free" the cost is just deck construction
My problem is that there’s a lot of mutually exclusive kinds of things that need dealing with. Creatures are easy enough, but they’re liable to come back from the graveyard and undo your play. And sometimes they come in army form, which laughs at spot removal. Artifacts show up pretty reliably as mana rocks, but they’re not always the threat. Enchantments appear less, but they’re much more likely to be important to the game plan when they do. Spells? Good luck if you’re not in blue. And then there’s lands. Is something flickering? Exploiting ETBs or death triggers?
Do you need kill spells, ghostly prison effects, board wipes, protection, graveyard hate, counterspells, or other hate pieces? Who knows whether it’ll be your game-winner or a dead card? That just doesn’t feel fun to me.
Agreed. There’s too many threats to answer. You’re better off using counterspells that double as a way to hinder your opponent or protect your win and play a very proactive game plan.
Playing slower, more generalist removal is the way to go.
If it can only remove 1 type of permanent, it's got nothing to do in edh.
@@garak55 sure, but that’s not gonna help when your problem is spells, graveyards or triggers.
@@Fluffkitscripts
At the end of the day, something's gonna get you. You're aiming for a 25% win rate on average so you're not in control of everything but my point is that deck space is more important than 1 mana most of the time (except cEDH but nobody cares about those weirdos lol).
And to preserve deck space, using removal that fits with what your trying to do is important. I have a GW enchantress deck for instance. I could play swords to plowshare but I don't because that's a dead, reactive deck slot that feels bad. Instead I play oblivion ring which removes anything and triggers all the enchantment stuff on my side. Sometimes I'll die from missing mana for the removal or it being sorcery speed but it's tradeoff I'm willing to make in casual edh with friends.
However, I agree that spells are annoying because wotc are bad at designing their game and they decided 30 years ago that only blue has access to counterspells. Force of will should have been red but some idiot in the RnD changed it last minute smh. It should be that, at minimum, white should have access to spell pierce/mana tithe effects and red to force of will effects (lose card advantage to counter spell) or redirect effects and black to some punishing-spellcasting effects leaving only green not interacting with the stack. But oh well, Mark Rosewater still kept a job after Mirrodin so that's not gonna happen lol.
The problem at large is commander is different things to different people. Which is why, much like TTRPGs, it is better to be played with friends. And that is fine it was a system designed to have fun with cards in your collection you might not always get to use and play in between your serious games. Interesting video, though.
Yeah, fundamentally correct take, at least within the first minute of listening. Single target removal is card disadvantage in a 4 player game. I'm mostly on board wipes and fogs, with one or two instant speed single targets for emergencies.
Generally speaking I've found that playing mostly single targets but knowing what to hit and when along with a few board wipes for emergencies can work just as well as like 5+ board wipes and a few spot removal cards. Also it helps to recognize that removing a player when the option is available to you makes it a lot easier to handle
How are you ever going to have a piece of Spot Removal in hand, if you only play a couple?
I tend to play a ton of Selesnya, and even running Swords, Path, Beast Within, Generous Gift, Stroke of Midnight, and Heliod’s Intervention + a Force of Vigor, in addition to a minimum 2 wipes often isn’t enough, even with the *mountain* of Draw I generally run (including a TOR) often isn’t enough to guarantee I have a second answer for some horrible threat.
I run massive quantities of interaction and am terrible at trying to utilize “small bean syndrome”.
I took a bunch of cards in my collection, and listed the ones that did at least two of four:
* remove/reduce the value of cards in opponents’ hands/the stack
* remove/reduce the value of cards in opponents’ battlefields
* add more playable cards to my hand, graveyard (ie flashback), exile (ie impulse)
* cause damage/life loss
This meant I had a lot of spells providing new cards/interaction while being able to pressure life totals. Then I made estimates of each card’s card advantage in Excel, and scored them in two groups:
* card advantage per card spent
* card advantage per mana spent
As a result, I’m usually playing a 3-for-1 at a minimum when interacting with opponents. I’ll slam interaction aggressively since a lot of my cards give me board presence and interact with opponents such as Massacre Wurm.
The downside has been a higher average mana value in decks since I’m forcing each card to do more on its own, but its quite fun.
I am very much have the impression that the:
"casual first, everyone needs to do their thing"
mentality is the very vocal minority on the internet that is perpetuated by certain content creators.
Ive been playing since 2016 and in real life Ive only ever encountered 1 player that had this sentiment in commander.
(Who also said that Approach of the Second Sun was a broken card because he only had 1 counterspell in his grixis deck 🙃)
My whole group is like that. We play wincons that aren't going to win on the stack (normally) and take time to develop. We try to reach the end game together
Its a vocal majority. To the point that whole categories of cards are frowned upon. The minority are the guys that thinks that mld and stax are actually cool to play with and against
@@vittoriosavian9964 the thing is they are cool to play against, just that the people who put them into decks just play them out for no reason other than to play them out. For example of someone is playing a jetmir deck and sets up a sufficient board to start taking names an armageddon or stax effect is a very viable way of shutting the door on their opponents and closing out a game. Instead you have Jimmy doing nothing meaningful and slamming mld on the table without a clock on his opponents and makes the game take an additional hour and a half.
@@swolegolisopod7340 tbh, i think this doesnt happen as much as people think it does
Every deck I have, has at least 1 board wipe, plethora of targeted removal cards and in my red decks, a lil bit of land hate goes a long looong way when trying to destabilize someone elese tactics. I also really enjoy removing graveyard access. It's funny.
Do you think the addition of benefits for targeting opponents' stuff (Hinata, the new Marchesa, etc.) helps to shift this balance? I think the crime mechanic is an attempt to get players to be more "proactive" by giving an additional benefit (card advantage, cheapen the target, create zombies, etc.).
Yup! This can be accounted for in deck building, but your goal really would need to be destroy target thing, draw 2 cards or equivalent to maintain parody. Even then it doesn’t really solve the issue of moving you closer to winning. This is why counterspells are the main form of interaction in cEDH and they’re used to protect your win condition.
I love You guys' content about Commander, it's like peering into a mirror mirror universe. "You see the real problem with commander is [my favorite thing] and That's only really a problem because it leads to [my second favorite thing]"
Haha we definitely have a different perspective than most. What I think is important is to be aware of these potential problems and ignore them if you aren’t concerned with optimal play.
Also, we are talking about systemic incentives in a vacuum. Magic is a complex game where sometimes the right thing to do isn’t technically optimal, especially in commander where politics are involved.
I built one of my decks with this exact incentive structure in mind and collected an improbable number of wins. The combination of sandbagging your boardstate so everyone beats the tar out of each other, accruing modest value so as to not attract attention, and exploiting how bad people are at running enough removal means you can actually just sit on your hands, interact only when it makes you look heroic or when you are directly threatened, and play soft control pieces until you can win unchallenged. People will just let Blind Obedience sit on the board until a Farewell clips it. You can cast Out of Time with 9 time counters on it and there is a good chance 3 adults with 600 dollar decks in 5 colors will not have a disenchant effect on them and fold to a phased out commander.
It is no exaggeration that this deck has like a 70% winrate, even in pods that have seen it before. You can claim that you'd just beat me up early, but once turn 3 rolls around and someone is going for an early, cheated-in beater that will pull them way ahead and I'm sitting on a 2/2 and a mana rock you are going to forget that I won the last 4 games on turn 8 from my hand.
I’ve had similar results. I’m curious to see your deck list.
For myself, my least favorite part of adding removal is it rarely gets to feel like it's a part of the same deck. I wish I could include some on theme removal, but some decks just have to run stp because they need SOMETHING
I wonder if you ever played Forgetfull fish, another really fun format played with mtg cards that, in my opinion lends itself way better to the mtg mechanics.
10:30 - i've definitely had all those feelings about the 1-1 nature of removal but now I've started treating them like extra turn spells. Might just be how our games play out, but often enough a well timed removal spell means I get to untap where I might not have otherwise. Harder to evaluate the proactive removal spells, but at the later turns, the removal/turn ratio is pretty good.
i think itd be interesting to see more Battlebond style effects like, expensive removal or board wipes that allow other players to help, and maybe do something like draw cards if you provided mana
ITT all the worlds greatest cedh players who absolutely play "a lot" of removal
Exactly. I don't even play edh yet I know edh players don't play enough removal. The reason I know this is that every single content creator says to add more removal as a tip for edh deck building meaning that most people don't add enough removal, otherwise that advice wouldn't be that common
I've been playing edh since 2010, the meta of my playgroup is so razor thin that people are running Spell Pierce and it's shockingly effective. Depending on the deck I jam cheap removal harder than probably anyone else; and my group is running a lot. I don't know if we're quite cEDH, but we're all playing fetches and true duals, and games can end around turn 4 or 5, it doesn't happen too often, but it's not rare.
@@TrisketIts probably a fair assessment to say your group is at the very least high powered with hyper consistent manabases, and pretty efficient removal.
@@Trisket
Spell Pierce is a great card for high power and cEDH because it's so efficient.
If you don't know if your group is playing at cEDH levels, I'd say it's quite probable you're not playing cEDH decks. But it certainly sounds like high power. High power and cEDH decks are quite similar, both play low curves, perfect manabases and a lot of tutors and cheap efficient removal. The difference is that only a couple commanders are actually cEDH viable and they need a close to perfect list for that still.
High power is super fun though, I love it.
I think one point that needs to be clarified here is that land destruction isn't the issue. It's MASS land destruction that is the issue.
I think people have misconstrued this like a game of telephone.
Targeted land removal should NOT be frowned upon but accepted and wanted. Otherwise, a cabal coffers or a gaea's cradle is just gonna run rampant at the table.
Mass land destruction just slows the game down. And resets the game to a 4 way mana screw for no other purpose.
I'd also like to clarify that if the mass land destruction helps close out a game for a certain deck and it's a setup to a win, that is slightly different. As opposed to just delaying the game state.
Commander is such a weird game mode. "It's OK to win. But not that way because..."
i hope more people watch this video, though i'd like to add that running specific removal is really only good in competitive commander where removing one thing could lead to literally "winning the game" versus in a casual pod where it's just better to do a board wipe because of the disadvantage and often as you pointed out removing "one thing" doesn't do much of anything if at all.
The wonderful thing about commander is that suboptimal playstyles often are the most fun when you have played long enough. When you can play commander not to win but to interact and create stories of those interactions the true bliss of the format opens up... however having this mindset often forgoes playing optimally... so the real question is ... do you derive pleasure from the personal struggle of triumph or from the creation of interactions within the game at hand?
Which is why commander is DND lite for me lol.
The monarch mechanic except its for permanent destruction.
I play mostly cedh and this podcast has gotten me to MUCH better understand the importance of card draw and generally got me better at magic
$1 Best Card is Volcanic Offering, Destroy 2 lands and deal 4 damage 2 times, you get to pick half the targets and pick and opponent who will pick the other half, None of these effects can target you. It is political harms 2 players and allows someone to play catch up or king make. If there is a clear threat and a person who is resource rich it allows you to deal with both problems simultaneously.
As a commander player, I play lots of removal. The removal spells change depending on playgroup but you best believe if I am running white than there is definitely a cataclysm and faith's reward.
I don't see this mentioned, so I'm going to put on my Um Akshually nerd glasses. A negative externality is when a firm can improve its operation efficiency by pushing the cost onto the surrounding environment, or community. The easiest example of this is pollution: you don't have to pay for garbage removal service if you dump all your trash in the river, but then the river gets polluted.
The situation in Commander with removal is the opposite of this: a positive externality, where your operations create a benefit to the environment/community but at additional cost to yourself, and no particular benefit to your customers.
Running removal and reducing your chance to win in a vacuum is nothing compared to real games where well-timed removal can snuff out an opponents chances of winning to near zero sometime.
So many people run greedy monolithic commanders with decks that hardly function without them.
Yes, I Swords to Plowshares target your Zhuladok. No, I don't feel bad even 1%.
The same can be said for commanders like new Rowan and Will, Kaalia, OG Mizzix, and many more.
Using removal on those decks can be tantamont to Time Stop in some circumstances. Especially having been on the receiving end.
Also, running answers to graveyard decks is a must. Scavenging Grounds and Soul-guide Lqntern are boring, but I have won more than a few games by exiling a graveyard players deck right before the result of their grand crescendo.
Nonetheless, we haven't gotten enough good removal to combat the speed increase in the format. I've started running Whiplash Trap to get the cheap 241 when someone starts playing a fistfull of creatures.
I think all of the problems with Commander can be boiled down to there being entirely too much social bullshit surrounding the game; bullshit that actually has nothing to do with playing the game, politicking, or the game's rules, but everything to do with policing how people are allowed to approach the game in the first place. Imagine if people sat down to play chess, but had to have a conversation at the beginning about how you shouldn't be allowed to move anything but pawns for the first 10 moves, because developing a knight on turn one over another piece is too "high power." (no fast mana) Also you're not allowed to castle because I think that the king should only ever be allowed to move one square even if it has the help of another piece. (no cheating costs or combos of any kind) Oh yeah, and we banned queens because they just kinda take over the game, which is super un-fun. (I hate [insert any commander on EDHREC's top 50 here]! those decks only ever [insert personal grievance from 4 years ago here] and are super unfun to play against!) And one more thing... if you take a piece that the other person just moved, don't expect to be invited back to many tables. That was their favorite piece. And you taking it right away is really mean, and try-hard. (You really removed my Atraxa? I just played it. I was only gonna plus some planeswalkers, talk about rude now I have to wait a turn and pay Commander tax. I'm gonna hold this against you for the next 30 games we play together) To be honest, I'm just gonna get upset if you do anything that even slightly hinders me from durdling my way to a victory in 137 turns, and don't you even *think* about winning this before I can. If this game isn't at least 6 hours long I'm gonna feel like I wasted my time and take it out on you. Welcome to Commander, where Rule 0 removes LITERALLY half the game.
Great video, guys.
Optimal commander play is cedh, and you learn the hard way that removal is a trap and sandbagging is king. Never interact to not lose, only interact to win. Boardstates are for casuals.
And stax isn’t real and can’t hurt you. Parity breaking > card economy.
There's nothing wrong with playing casual and playing c e d h you don't have to be one or the other and neither is Superior or inferior😊
Yeah that's why Force of Negation and Mindbreak Trap (which are basically only played not to lose instead of protecting your own win) are absolute staples of the format.
Also cEDH decks typically play way more removal in general than casual decks...
Spoken by a true casual if you're punching down.
And then there's me, who packs 10-14 pieces of targeted removal and a sweeper or two in every deck.
I only play removal, creatures always die what's the point of playing them
To make removal balanced for commander they need to make it so you benefit from using it, like “kill target opponent’s thing, then draw a card for each opponent you didn’t target” or something like that
This is why I run Forbidden Orchard in my Glissa, the Traitor deck. I politic them into having a creature I can kill so I don't have to destroy their good creatures.
One of the few ways in the rules that you can punish people holding removal and not playing it hoping that someone else will is being a pain in the ass about priority.
If you have passed priority you don't get to cast a spell unless someone else puts something new on the stack. Which means if you are sitting to the left of the person who played the thing you want countered you can either counter it or risk it resolving.
But it is a problem in all FFA games
I completely agree with this. I have so many games where I have removal and just… don’t. Or at least until this massive threat is coming at me. It’s not even me purposely doing this it just happens. It’s one of the many reasons I move more and more to 60 card formats because I’m not a fan of the inaction commander rewards.
If you are doing nothing and stocking up on cards, the correct play is to poke you and make you use the cards. That's how a multiplayer meta self regulates.
Who your commander is also influences the table, whether you realize it or not. If you show up with an Ur-Dragon deck people are going to make threat assessments before the game even starts.
Removing a commander can feel pretty bad (for both parties), especially when it's central to a gameplan. It basically offsets you by 2 turns, and can leave a player feeling ostracized from the game. We can say in the abstract that protecting important pieces is part of a player's job, or that having synergy centralized around a single card is bad deckbuilding, but the amount of popular deck techs I see that require the commander to be on board for multiple turns has developed a culture where removing commanders is taboo.
Good point. I’d add that the expectations of the format also are that you get to build around and play your commander.
@@distractionmakers Yeah. I'm actually a huge advocate of Eminence for this reason. It provides a stable foundation to make a deck unique. We see this in most digital card games (Hearthstone, Yugioh Duel Links, Shadowverse). Most of the current instances of Eminence are too powerful, but I'd love to see the ability utilized more in precons.
I play removal in every single deck I make. The only difference is the removal I put in wipes the whole board instead of one creature. There's something satisfying watching a board with like 30 cards on it. And it's fair too, because we ALL lose our cards.
I play 21 to instamts in my wub deck - beside from all good counterspells I do have Swords, Path to Exile, Thoughtsize etc in there. Technically these are all removals
I think one-for-one removal being inefficient is a good thing for the game, because it is then used sparingly. This contributes to everyone "getting to do their thing", because you don't stop someone unless they are threatening AND they are coming for you. And if you do counter a game-winning spell without negotiating some benefits from the other two players first, that's on you. 😉
That said i can totally understand your frustration with commander from a design standpoint because the rules alone don't make for a fun game and it instead requires a number of conventions which vary by what people find fun. Having found a playgroup that is a great fit for me, i see this less as a problem and more as an intriguing oddity. For me a key part of finding the fun in commander is treating it more as a king of the hill game or maybe even something like a free-for-all show wrestling match, where the winner is the one who gets to do the most "cool stuff" in a dramatic fight. In that frame it can be rewarding to be the person who had a counterspell (or even better: mana tithe) at just the right moment. It's a good show, even if you don't necessarily win with it. One big challenge that remains is finding people with the same definition of "cool stuff" as you, since in the beginning you may not even know what you like.
having removal is not only about big threats but also about pieces in other decks that would actively stop your wincon. best exmaple my friend has elish norn (the ETB stopper) in his deck and i play and Flicker/ETB deck. so removing her is MY priority because it doenst effect the other players as much but fucks over MY whole deck. even if i going card disadvantage , atleast i can keep playing instead of straight up loosing because it counters my whole wincon.
I hate that the more removal i run the less my deck even works
Until i tuned my dino deck to be the aoe board wipe deck, i didnt really have a deck that interacted enough
While single target removal does slow down your tempo, you can make a deal with the other two players to not attack or let you trigger something if you take care care of the problematic permanent.
in my newest deck, I somewhat solved this one for one problem by having a deck based around small creatures / artifacts, where most of my removal package is boardwhipes that destroy every big creature / up to a certain amount of total power etc.
Great episode. Realizing how my "small bean" persona and inaction techniques helped me win many games. 🧠
That only applies to low power decks, at some Point even outside of competitive you get to Situations where if you don't remove permanent a or permanent b before it's controller successfully resolves playing permanent c then they win. If they win then you don't just loose Infinite card Advantage, so going -2 in order to prevent yourself going -infinite is worth it. And that doesent have to be sliver queen, alrar and blood artist but might well just be yuriko and senseis top or something similar.
Back in the 90's we called this the "Mario Party Effect."
Everything is incredibly social but at the end of the day it is a 4-person FFA and only ONE can win.
Kids strangled each other with controller cables and rubbed a patch of our skin clean off the center of the palm to win.
I wouldn't say at all in any world that commander players "don't play removal." Commander players play TOO much removal. It is the heaviest removal format in Magic the Gathering. But yes, more gas is more gas. Don't play NO removal.
"I'm just a baby, can't do anything." Definitely wouldn't want to play dishonest, flaky games with you.
Single-Target-Removal is indeed bad in most cases. Exceptions could be cheap things like [Swords to Plowshares] in a deck that has a lot of draw anyways, so you only spend a tiny fraction of your mana and hand to get rid of that one big threat. Onesided boardwipes are obviously the best. Symmetric boardwipes are good (enough) for control strategies. Then there's multi-removal cards that are playable when you have a good ramp plan like [Decimate] or [Casualties of War]
One for ones in a 4-player game does feel bad. Thats why you gotta run removal that targets each opponent or have multiple targets.
Only ppl with greed in their hearts think one for ones feel bad. Threats need to be answered. If you’re not currying favor by getting rid of problems, your politicking needs works.
Yeah, those spells are all expensive to cast, cheap interaction that surgically takes out priority targets and using your remaining mana to advance your position is a far more effective strategy than spending 4 mana to take out the real problem and 2 insignificant problems. If you need to take out multiple significant problems that's what wipes are for.
@@AgentMurphy286 I know it's technically part of the game, but our group doesn't politic really. There's no deals being made, no ganging up or king making, we basically just try and play as 'optimally' as possible and remove threats as they come. But also I do run a lot of single target removal too of course, but it does feel like I'm doing two opponents a favour sometimes, hence why I like running stuff that hits multiple targets. Plus if someone is really far ahead you can use those multi target spells to get rid of multiple threats that player might have, whereas a Swords to Plowshares might not be good enough. But we also don't play CEDH or really high power stuff, usually we try to make clean $100 budget decks and pit them against each other.
@@Trisket eh, agree to disagree. Maybe at high power tables or CEDH that's true, and I'd agree with you, but in lower powered more casual tables I think it's fine to have slower removal.
OR removal that can be reused.^^
My decks are generally 20% draw/tutor, 5% wincon, 35% mana sources, and 40% responses. IE counter spells, removal, and board wipes
I'm a firm believer you will lose more games if you can't stop your opponents then the 1 for 1 will ever harm you. The biggest issue I see in deck building is people get so fixated on jamming not really good cards they just enjoy. It a card that works with one other and another that meshes well with a couple other cards you have. Or if I've got this 4 cards out and nobody stops me I'll have this really cool synergy that's super op! (Doesn't win the game probably). You have 3 players trying to stop your cool synergy and disrupt your gameplay. You have 3 players trying to win. You NEED ways to prevent this. I have a friend who's obsessed with elfball. Claiming it's crazy strong, and "busted". Elves CAN be strong. Elves can do a lot of things. But they won't run enough responses, removal, or ways to prevent board wipes to get to that critical mass, so they rarely win. Am I saying everyone should run nearly half their deck as responses like me? No. But in every deck, think of HOW it wins, then think of what stops that. A single Heroic Intervention is not enough to stop all the board wipes in a game. If your deck can't handle more then 1 reset, if you can't handle an opponent winning faster then you. You've built wrong.
Oh and also, IF YOU BUILT A CREATURE DECK DONT FEEL BAD ABOUT ATTACKING EARLY AND ATTACKING OFTEN ITS YOUR WINCON. Don't give others time to build up and don't give combo players time to combo out. This is a game you're here to win. There is nothing wrong with targeting a player out of you KNOW they're gonna combo. Do exile the graveyard players graveyard, board wipes the token player. Punish the players who have weak boards. Blow up lands, make people discard, play opposition agent on the combo player. Imprison someone's commander in the moon or turn it into a 0/1 bug with indestructible. If they can't work around you just playing the game it's on them for building poorly. Do not just give free wins away to be "fair" or whatever. We all have the same pool of cards in mtg, it is fair. And just to clarify idgaf if you proxy, can't afford a cradle? Print it. Need a better mana base? Print it, sharpie it, order fakes online. Nobody around you has a jeweled lotus for trade? GOOD OLE HEWLETT PACKARD is always down to make you as many as you want. Price of cardboard with fancy ink on it should never be an excuse as to why your deck sucks. If you are both on a budget of a middle schoolers lunch money and a puritan snob who thinks proxies are for bums, then don't get upset when you lose often. "Oh I just play for fun." You know what's more fun then mtg? Winning mtg. If you win, then you get to play another game right after! Winning a game doesn't stop the mtg. It opens the door for another shuffle up. If someone's mad you countered their overpriced dinosaur or shattered their glass cannon, then it really speaks of their level of maturity. If your playgroup is upset since you've won the past 100 games? Teach them how to deck build. Make them better players, don't let them rot in the ideology that responses are bad and weird battle cruiser style solitaire where nobody messes with anyone else for the first 20 turns is the best way to play commander. Don't let the stupid artifact player say he's "just got rocks" as an excuse to not get in free damage. Kick his teeth in. If you know a player has thassa's oracle in their deck. Take your cute vampire tokens you've been spawning and crucify them. Play eldrazi in your animar deck free big monsters is cool. Proliferate poison counters, ultimate your Planeswalkers. Wrath of God with krovus bell and urborg. Combo off with kinnan or momir. That's all the fun splashy moments that make commander games memorable for months to come. Nobody says "you remember that time we all played solitaire until one of us won with a combo they drew into?" Or do you talk about the time "Steve made 7000 goblins with krenko on turn 8 then sacked them all to skirk to kill everyone in response to my board wipe!" "Tezzeret found me my Warhammer and my blight steel with his ult and since I already had a lighting grieves I got to kill Tom after he swung out at Alice!" Make some real fun memories. It is good to try and win, we're all trying to win. Rule 0 shouldn't be restrictions on ways to win it should be extra fun stuff! Like everyone can have an enchantment in their command zone, or a non legendary creature, commanders start face down until cast. Don't need your deck to let someone feel like their poor choices are justified
I think it’s just a matter of. It’s easier to build your way to victory then to try and set somebody back that being said I still run removal.
Distraction Makers = Kendrick. Commander = Drake.
Casual Magic vs Tournament magic all comes down to one question. If your opponent doesn't want to play anymore and scoops because you made a good play and or they didn't or because you got lucky and or they didn't, do you count that as a win? Meaning: are you more concerned with winning a game, or are you focused on everyone having a good time? Hopefully you can win your matches AND help everyone have a good time in the process, but when push comes to shove, and you have the opportunity to make that game winning play, are you more likely to let your opponent win, or to take the win. This is a very real question, and in casual settings, letting your opponents win sometimes is not just recommended, it is essential to building a MtG community. It's something no one talks about, but what people are really saying when they complain about power level is "It's not fair. I'm not having fun. Why won't you let me win sometimes." I think the most important part about transitioning from competitive games to casual games is knowing when and how to reward your opponents for playing well by letting them win sometimes. After all, they're not going to have any fun if they just lose game after game even when they think they are making all the correct decisions.
I think this is something the community needs to talk more about. The issue is, just like in DnD, if you fudge it and let someone win and they know about it they might never believe they legitimately won.
The "do nothing and win" strategy only works if you are the only one doing it. If nobody does anything about the threat then the player placing the threat wins.
I like that commander plays that way. It goes beyond who makes the most mistakes loses like 1v1 mtg games. You have to thing about the bigger picture and maybe even making a mistake can help in a way you didn't predict
Welcome back to We Hate Commander with Forrest and Gavin!
BTW big fan, love this channel!
My main commander deck is Vaevictis asmadi, the dire, so I usually attack everyone at once. But fair
pretty much what has been said by me since 2017 and why I don't touch it anymore. Its just not built for it xD, 1v1 is the way to go.
Commander players do play removal. A lot of it. And a lot of board wipes. Where are you getting your information from lmao
A lot of players have to be told to add more removal to their decks. They're not speaking about higher level players.
there is a non insignificant amount of players who don't play removal enough. i try to keep my total amount of removal (Board wipes + single target) around 15 cards sometimes ending up with more if the deck i'm playing particularly wants or synergizes with removal. However i often end up feeling like i'm the table police if my deck gets going especially if that removal is repeatable
@@chibiraptora lot of, not all, but a lot of new players start with precons which usually have a decent amount of removal in them to begin with. I suppose it's fair when they build their first deck they may struggle with adding removal but most players I've met and played with tend to clue into needing more ways to answer problems super quickly.
on top of that they do have a point. you're disincentivized to play removal because most of the efficient removal you'd want to play so you can build your board and solve problems is 1 for 1 which feels bad because you're going down cards against the two other opponents and you're best way to win is to look like you aren't doing anything until you start pushing for a win
@jmanwild87 none of that is a problem, though. They act like it's a detriment to the game. It isn't. It's part of it. They can make fun of it all they want but it IS about threat assessment. Do YOU really need to remove that threat? Or can you risk it going through? You're still going to have to be the one to remove things if it hurts you bad enough. Like an enchant that only allows you to play 1 spell a turn when you're a storm deck. It's just part of the game. Not an issue at all
After watching this video 2 weeks ago I paid closer attention to which decks play removal and which don't. In my experience they all did but some only had it in there incidental to their theme. Treating those as not playing removal I realized that without exception they did not win. Well timed removal or key target removal enabled another player to dismantle the leader or potential competitor and seal the deal.
In short, I thought this take was weird when I heard it and based on my next dozen+ games I think this is a hot take that should be passed.
There’s a reason every cEDH deck plays almost no removal and mostly counterspells. Counterspells stop someone else from winning when they have to and can also protect your win.
What we’re discussing is how the rules of the format push things in a direction of noninteraction and combo wins.
@@distractionmakers I have only seen a few of your videos and in those you appear to be interested in talking about game design in general. I don't know if you have established that you frame of reference for commander is cEDH. Without that caveat I believe it is obvious that when speaking of "commander players" (per the title) the assumption is that you are talking about the OG, casual mindset & game as it has the overwhelming majority of players, games and, probably most applicable to this discussion, decks.
You seem to be sending mixed messages in your response with the comment about counterspells and noninteraction. It is contrary to the stated "noninteraction and combo wins" and it sounds like you need to do more thinking about the topic.
As a rebuttal, Commander has been around since the 90's and if the rules were indeed pushing toward "noninteraction and combo wins" then it begs the question of why removal and non-combo are so prevalent after 28 years. Is it a weak push? Does that only apply to a fringe group (like cEDH)?
can we see the cat?
my favourite part of the podcast is when cats come about
Yes it's on the right toward the end of the video.
anyone else wondering the cats name? lol
I can't tell you how often I win EDH games I don't "deserve" to win.
I play the small bean, pay my taxes and make sure someone else is always looking more dangerous than me. I play the subtle political game: I don't make deals with people very often, but I do make casual, indirect references to who the overt threats are while holding removal (or protection) for when it's about to hit the fan. I also play humble or I should say I do my best to sound and look humble and smile a lot and sit back watching people go for "the threat" and not the evil behind smiling eyes.
I tend to run removal light as a player. Many of my decks run none at all. But it's mostly because of my design philosophy of "you have your fun. I'll have mine." Is you sit down with a hardcore masturbatory win and on turn for deck, no one has fun.
It's tactical restraint, but it's also a risk if you let other people get too far ahead of you to the point they can't be stopped.
My pod has gone thru an evolution of a couple boardwipes/removal because we were new, to everyone being salty and adding alot of removal with everyone being miserable fairly often and just not wanting to play things or throwing a game to action bias/kingmaking, to back to a few pieces of removal because it's way better to do something that advances your wincon instead of wasting cards on removal. Our games have been much more balanced since.
Having a policy of retaliation is not necessarily a bad idea when competing in a series of games and that reputation causes other players to not target you even when it would technically be “optimal”
I’ve had a friend scoop because I had three counterspells in a deck.
I think also in commander when you run removal it nearly always the same card and you play commander you want to play different cards doing different things
I'm not from the US and in my country people play with removals in commander all the time. Personally I feel complaining about someone using that kind of cards is childish. Although I have a couple of removals in my decks it's also true that by adding too many removals, you're probably taking a place for other cards that could work better with your strategy, so I leave a place for removals only if I feel it's going to make a difference in my strategy.
Commander is largely all about the social experience. If you're playing commander to win every game, you're not going to have fun or be fun to play against. Your deck should only have a 25% win rate if its actually a balanced deck.
I had a game recently where i had used a card on my opponent [Curse of Obsession] with the idea that my friend would have to deal with discarding his hand every turn... But i had accidentally given him everything he needed to win, since he was actually starting to draw into more lands and get more resources on the board so he could actually keep the board set to Day against my werewolf deck. I lost and had a good chuckle with him when he pointed out that it might actually have been a better play to enchant myself with the curse of obsession.