My biggest mistake is saying "surely we don't feed the rhystic study player cards" every time- proceeded by my playgroup never paying the 1 out of pure spite
Rhystic is probably too good for a casual table, but its whatever. I once tried to ignore it, favoring rapid board development, and somewhat regreted. Plan was to push an opponent with a bunch of Humans FTW. Turned out the man with Rhystic Study assembled a very fine pubstomp jerkfest - wrath tribal with efficient and expensive counterspells, topped with tutors and Consultation-ThOracle combo. All in an Oloro shell for lifegain resiliency. He had been seriously claiming that deck to be casual, cos otherwise he wasnt reaching 80%+ winrate with weaker decks.
Honestly that’s what I thought this video was going to be based on the title. “When to pay your taxes” is definitely a skill/judgement call worth discussing. And I’m definitely not saying that just because I’d love tips for myself on how to tell when it’s time to pay vs time to race XD
@IvanKolyada Technically they are right. Oloro is not regarded as a competitively viable deck by the cedh community, which makes it a casual deck. Don't blame them, blame the fact that there are no clear rules for casual commander.
@@thelastdankbender4353 Man literally packed his wincin section of the deck with clear CEDH stuff, while responses were perfectly matched for casual tables - just wiping board constantly. Tbh, I dont care about some dumb technicalities, if a man does such shit for the sake of I dont know what even. Its moronic to do so.
I used to play a lot of games that ended with sour feelings. Then I read in a TH-cam comments section to be SUPER transparent about everything you're doing. Now, as far as I'm concerned, THAT is the casual way to play. Only competitive players would want to hide what they're doing. If people don't know if they should target you, tell them how close you are to a combo. If people aren't sure what your card does, hand it to them, and tell them why it's in your deck. I can't imagine this works too well with sweaty randos that lie about their deck's power level, but it had worked WONDERS in making our pod feel more casual, friendly, and fair. The best part is, once I did it, it kind of set the tone for everyone else.
I don’t think people really lie about their decks power level very often. I think it’s more an issue of the 1 to 10 power scale that everybody uses being very flawed. To somebody who plays a lot of battle cruiser magic and has never seen a cEDH deck pop off on turn 2 or 3, a deck that can pop off on turn 6 looks like a 9 or 10, but that player says it’s 7, because with the context of cEDH being a 10, that probably is a seven.
This is what someone at the store I go to is like and he's easily my favourite random to be paired with. Literally tells you to stop him from ever using his Ashnod's Alter lol. He's 100% honest.
Yeah just a few hours ago I was playing a game, realized after passing that on my next end step I'll be able to win with a 'you win the game' card I don't even have on the field yet. So I decided to let everyone know that I'll win on my next turn if nothing is done. You could argue that was an objectively bad move, and for that one game it, sure, but the game I'm playing is life, buddy. (and I did still win that game)
Wholeheartedly agreed. I would add two things that further this though. 1: Talk about the boardstate a lot, meaning you should talk about how the game is going for everyone to help transparency. 2: Not only should you point out when you are about to win, but also how people can stop you in future. A friend of mine basicly identified for us what makes a deck of his deck dangerous, it was counting the number of lands and cards in hand he has instead of watching out for specific permanents or even his commander.
Love this! Commander's hard, we often struggle to keep on top of our own stuff, let's help each other to play the most magic possible! Then things are always more fun
I hate when people don't let me take back an action in my own turn that changed nothing, just because they want to win at any cost. I just stop playing with people like that.
I'll never forget the time when I was playing standard, they passed turn, and it was to combat on my turn when they went "oh wait, I want to do this instead. I win now." I just left after that. If it is something like playing a different land, tapping differently, or missing a not super impactful trigger, I don't really care if they take it back even a turn later. If it is still their turn, I typically don't care at all if they take things back.
I find that letting people take things back in casual games is good karma. They are more likely to view you as a chill person which has so many benefits in and out of the game. For myself, I try not to take anything back as a personal choice, it helps me improve.
@@thetrinketmage I don't mind to play on tables with takebacks, but personally, I think simply allowing no takebacks is the best way to go about it. You avoid the discussion about what can be taken back and what can't, players learn more quickly because their actions actually have consequences and people stay more focused on the game and hopefully start planning their turns ahead instead of idling for 3 peoples turns and only start thinking about what they want to do during their own turn - thus it's actually speeding up the game. Ofc everyone makes mistakes, but I think the best reaction is always an honest "well shit, I tapped my mana wrong, well good for you guys, now I can't cast that thing for another turn. Pass turn"
one annoying thing I dealt with with counter that I agree with making sure your counters are properly displayed is planeswalker, one person I played against only counted the extra loyalty on their "Liliana, Dreadhorde General" so I saw a dice with the number 4 and though I was perfectly fine to leave her alone one more turn and hit some players, only to be told she had ten loyalty and all the rest of the table quickly lost due to her devastating ultimate, I'm not even sure how counting like this would even make planeswalkers easier for anyone as, I don't know how a player like this would track if there planeswaker had fewer than their starting loyalty
Yeah I would be really mad if someone did that. I've never seen anyone do that before, it seems like common sense for the die to show *current* loyalty, not extra loyalty beyond starting. How would they track it if it were below its starting amount?
We did this when we ran out of big enough dice and only had D6s so that could be? lol I always ask ‘how big is that guy?’ ‘What’s its toughness?’ ‘ how long till that planeswalker can ult?’ rather than squinting at the board state. I do the same for when I see them looking at my board- tell them what blockers I have up, toughness, what abilities I can activate on board, etc. Maybe that’s unfair to the other players to have to hear me yapping all the time but I never trust dice or my ability to read a card with paragraphs of text on it and don’t want the opponent to make a misplay because they miscounted my artifacts on board or didn’t see my Karns Bastion amongst my lands before I Ult Ral Zarek
I respectfully disagree with the dice problem on cards. In our playgroup placement of the dice matters. D20 on power and toughness means "new base power and toughness". Dice in the middle of the cards are plain +1+1 counters. Dice on top left indicates the number of copies there are of that card. But I agree with the construct problem. Usually, we have one die in front of our playmat for these kinds of things. This way, my opponents won't have to ask and simultaneously and indirectly give important information about the cards in their hand
Just as long as it's done consistently and is clear. Such as d6s in the center meaning counters and a d20 in the bottom right to represent it's base power/toughness in the construct example.
We used to like using dice to track things but we no longer do it because sometimes they fall out of sync and therefore they are unreliable. Even if the dice is correct 95% of the time, their value is meaningless because you can't be certain they are correct until you confirm they are correct, at which point you don't need them. Even if someone is sure they are correct, they might not be correct, so they may as well not be correct. Tracking non-counter stuff with dice just adds the extra step of "are those dice correct?", and then recounting anyway.
I always used dice on the card for counters and dice in front for the number of them. It always bothered me when people did the same for both and I didn't know whether it was a 5/5 or four 1/1s.
I have learned the magic number in commander is 3. That is the max damage you can do without drawing spite and ire. I learned this from playing ninja tribal Yuriko or aristocrat decks. the number 3 also applies to life gain, card draw, mana generation, etc.
Very true, I find it also helps if you make it very clear you have no intention to kill. I might bring a player down to 10 or less life fairly early if theyre open and it makes sense, but ill make it clear to them and the table that I wont be killing that player so early and that I'm just dealing some damage but will shift focus after. This is good because it makes people not think youre going to knock somebody out early which it generally bad manners in such a long format and youre still able to get the player low enough that late game even if they pop off and can win on their next turn and you probably can all in them and still take them out in time.
Additionally, there are a LOT of cards that scale based on opponents. The most obvious example for wanting to spread damage is stuff like thopter spy network which lets you draw a card for each opponent you hit. But also stuff like smothering tithe, etali, and expropriate can potentially give you worthwhile value even at the cost of leaving an opponent alive; value enough to just overwhelm all your opponents in a single turn
Correctly identifying attack targets is soooo crucial. If someone's got a Black Market Connections or a Sylvan Library up, if you can't remove that card outright then just drill them. Pound them in the dome untik they stop full sending that shit. If they have no board, hit them until they go to their moxfield and add some 2-drops or a Propaganda. Truthfully, I kind of blame gameplay channels for this as many of them have really tried to instill the culture of "a good game is one where everyone gets to do their thing." If you like that style of game, more power to you, but as mentioned in the video most decks "doing their thing" mostly represents a game-ending threat nowadays. You can win an unreal amount of games by just non-threateningly durdling, drawing cards, and occasionally counterspelling stuff as long as you never present an on-board threat until you're ready to win. For as much as people like to play politics they are generally quite bad at it. Striking deals is a fraction of the political gameplay when your on-board posture is going to speak volumes to the person who knows what to look for.
This one really resonated with me. Last week, I played against a guy who was on Brudiclad, and had over 10 tokens on board, including a karnstruct, and I was at a loss for words when, after a big slugfest where basically everyone elses' boards had gotten decimated, he just played another token maker, holding up 6 mana (he hadn't played Brudiclad at all yet) and passed the turn to me. After which I stormed off and won. Like... What is he doing?!
My mistake is never standing up for myself because im a newer player. I've been playing for 3 months, and I've had so many times where more experienced players try to exploit that fact. I was against a chiss-goriya player who never went through their steps and didnt declare attacks so he went straight to his triggers. I was supposed to drown in dreams before he went to combat/when the ability went on the stack, but he insisted that he already did the trigger and did all his things and i just let him since i couldnt phrase my thoughts properly and i didnt want to hold up the table any longer
It can be though as a new player since you might not have that confidence in the rules! Keep at it though you will get there eventually and once you see something once you can be more sure of it and stand up for yourself!
The words "Stop" and "Hold" are powerful! Don't be afraid to tell someone to slow down and play the game properly. They don't get to skip other people's window to interact with their card just cause they have an attack trigger they want to make sure goes off. You could even specifically say "Hang on, you skipped a few steps"
When a player fails to announce moving to combat it's almost always in our favor when we catch it and have interaction. It's one of the forced rollback situations in the game. Say you had the ability to tap down their voltron attacker but you weren't sure you'd rather use your held up mana for that or something else later in turn cycle if they didn't attack YOU... If they simply move from main phase to "swinging at you" where the attack trigger is the most important part for them, you can force a rollback to when they were moving to combat phase and tap them down, removing their ability to activate an attack trigger with that creature and it is all their own fault and a valid objection on your part.
If that player refuses to rewind to the point before they went to declare attackers, they are actively cheating and manipulating people's emotions to win a fantasy card game. If self confidence is an issue, look to the others in the pod for backup. If nobody can articulate what is going wrong or how to fix it, call over a more experienced player or judge. It's not fun to get stomped on by a cheater (whether intentional or not), and speaking up will build a better play experience for everyone by allowing space for discussion to clarify rules and disincentivize cheating.
"Just attack more" is 100% ironclad concrete advice for anyone struggling to win. I know that I do the exact opposite after I get two wins in a row. The third game is going to be me building a giant wall of cool stuff until I inevitably lose because I'm throwing it for the sake of the table's fun.
A friend I play with sometimes is very new to magic, and tends to do exactly what you say with not attacking. Last game I played with him I gave him my kumena deck and he spent the whole game building up counters and drawing cards instead of attacking the table, specifically me running my new squirrels deck. He passed the turn without attacking to play it safe and I drew an overwhelming stampede and swung for lethal over all of his blockers, when he could’ve spent his last 2 combats killing me.
Dude you have some excellent content coming out, I really like how you managed to tell the mega-timmy's how it is without being a jerk about it, this is some excellent advice and I wish I could find a way to show my whole LGS this video LOL XD
personally if a player wants to count a construct I ALWAYS tell them to put their dice for stats elsewhere, as creatures can both be */* big and have a +1/+1 counter or two on them ://
I like using dice on cards. I like giving players a rough idea of what theyre attacking into, as opposed to expecting them to do the math themselves every single time they consider an action against whatever card is in question. Occasionally I forget to move the dice up as a trigger occurs, but when that happens, I follow the same rule as i do any time I make a mistake in game and just say "Oh, I forgot to take X action, so we're going to use the worse result so that I'm less likely to forget next time." Punishing yourself for mistakes is a good way to stop making misplays, and it doesnt pull the rug out from under your opponent when they make a valid play based on flawed information you provided to them.
When it comes to the dice on cards, I hate it when people put dice on planeswalkers to show variation from it’s base loyalty. Some people will play a Planeswalker , +1 it and then put a dice facing “1” and then after will -3 it and change the dice to a “2” because it’s two less
There were some other comments from people saying they see people do this. To me that’s insane and a terrible way to denote how much loyalty is on a walker
Steps and phases are the biggest mistake areas I see just because it effects priority so much. But in essence I agree don't leave dmg on the table when you have good attacks.
Youre totally right. Unfortunately there are people that get very emotional about this game and get mad af when you attack them or even throw them out of the game.
Hit the nail on the head there brother. I had to stop playing with my group because of this exact thing. One time for example, a player was running a deck that has won multiple times on turn 5, like we all knew how easily this dude could pop off. So, I swung in, then the next player did. As soon as the other player swung, the problem-player gets up, scoops and says "guess we're playing archenemy" and leaves, totally ruining the day.
With the counter thing, I'll sometimes put non +1/+1 counters off to the side. I have played with a number of different people who will sit there, then if you even swing at them with a 1/1, they will target you for the rest of the game. Playing against one of them is the only time I've legitimately gotten mad while playing. Also had a guy who would throw a temper tantrum any time someone would attack him when he was "doing nothing", and even when I attacked him while he was the biggest threat. One time he even admitted that he would have won the next turn if I didn't take him out, and still threw a fit.
One person at my LGS will do something, take it back, have us respond, and take back the take back again. They Nin'd a stuffy doll to draw 3, said "can I change the target to this one" "ok then ill remove that thing that isnt indestructible" "oh then ill stick with the stuffy" bruh... The other thing that I get annoyed a bit with is when I'm like "I do this, for the win" and everyone goes okay. Then I'll be like "You could have removed this artifact on my turn and I wouldnt have had the win on board" and then they go "oh then ill do that" no bud... I won
Unless you're playing new players and trying to teach, your second paragraph sounds like you troll when you win. I would be annoyed if someone said, "You could have stopped me from winning but you didn't and now it's too late."
I totally agree with the idea that you should attack when able, but I think it's usually more correct to spread out damage unless one player obviously needs to be eliminated the lower your opponents' life totals are in general, the easier it is to take them all out at once later. then again, I play a lot of direct damage decks...
Literally watched a guy play creature on 1, creature on 2, creature on 3 w haste, creature on 4 with haste. He attacked 0 times (Naya Aggro),and then next turn got wiped. I do not undersrand.
I've started just swinging all out every turn. Literally zero retaliation. I have two 3/3s, you have two 3/3s. I attack you, you don't block. You don't attack me because then you can't block. I attack you the next turn, you don't block. What's the point?
This exact issue is why in the past 2 weeks I’ve put together a thantis warweaver deck that has been a blast to play and by consequence my playgroup has had to change their decks up a bit because they had so many creatures in that they never planned on attacking with. Love your channel man keep making videos 👍
"Oh no, the elemental steps on your head, to make sure you're dead" I always pull out that quote whenever I essentially play the game correctly, it's a quote from a story Matt Colleville told about a GM being ruthless towards the players, where his party was fighting against some earth elementals and his wizard gets knocked unconscious and the elemental continues to attack. Upon asking if the elemental wouldn't move on 'cause he's no longer a threat the GM responds with the quote above. Yes it would be kind to let the player pull off their combo or build up their board state, but being kind instead of trying to win is how you lose games.
I know this isn't a universal solution or anything, but with my usual playgroup, one of my friends is a lot newer and doesn't even have her own decks. She's still learning how to play and borrows decks. So when playing, we're a lot easier on her primarily because if we aren't, she doesn't get to do much of anything. It's also very casual to the point where whomever owns the deck she's borrowing at the time often helps her figure out what she can do when she's struggling. Again, we're a very casual group and all friends. But one game it came up that she was doing surprisingly well. I was testing a new deck and she was borrowing my mill deck. And it didn't really look like I was going to win, I just happened to draw the perfect card to manage that turn and got an unexpected combo, I hadn't even realized the combo when I made the deck. But we saw how easily she could have won with the setup we had, so we went through my turn showing that I could win. Checked if anyone had responses, double checked that I had the right amount of mana for the combo and that the final attack would be enough to finish everyone off. But instead of actually ending the game, we wanted to see if she could have won had I not gotten that perfect draw, so we rolled things back to before I did the combo and I ended my turn. Next person took her turn and, as expected, wasn't able to really do much anyway. And then it was her turn. With her combo, she ended up making everyone wheel four times and milling everyone for more than 60 cards. She already had the game winning combo, she just didn't have the mana to do it the previous turn, she needed one more turn to set up. Meanwhile, I won because of a lucky draw. We didn't deny the fact I was the actual winner, it was just fun seeing basically a "what if" for if I hadn't gotten the perfect draw or had misplayed or something. Again, I'm not saying it's something that should always be done if a player is struggling, but once in a while, especially with the right playgroup, it can be fun to see what could happen if a less skilled player got a little more time or a player that's been unlucky that game had one more turn. Sometimes it can help them feel more motivated in their next game, sometimes it can help someone better identify a problem with their deck, and sometimes it can lead to something unexpected happening. But again, it's situational. It doesn't always work, it's not always a good idea. Just don't be inherently against the idea ever happening.
A mistake that I've seen pretty often and really irks me is players going into the draw step BEFORE the upkeep and untap, as if, again, they were on a hurry, and it hurts them more than others since they're skipping potential upkeep triggers and having no mana to respond to anything.
That one's a mistake people make even in competitive, at least for upkeeps. The classic memory aid is something ontop of your deck to clue you in that you have an upkeep trigger.
One of the biggest mistakes I see players do is burning a counter spell or removel spells on things that don't matter. A few examples of this are. When it's an early game, they just burn their counter spells/ removal spells on a spell/ permanent that is low to no impact. Just because you have a spell doesn't mean you need to play it. When a player counters a tutor instead of countering what they grab with the tutor. Unless you know they are likly grabing a spell that can't be counter, or has a strong cast trigger hold your spells. Removal and counter spells are very strong. You should be looking to 2 for 1 of your opponents at any chance you can. The last one is player burn combat bored wipes at the wrong time. If you have an opponent who has a large bored, you can politic so they won't attack you and will attack another opponent. So you can cast your spell ( like aetherize or Aetherflux) when they move to the end of combat damage when the move to the end of combat. This way, your opponent damage will till fully go through, and you're in a spot where you can decide if you want to bounce the attackers bored. As a bonus, you can make a deal with the other players. So they will swing in on the player who just attacked if you bounce their attacking creatures. So many times, I've seen people do it pre damage step and miss out on the most powerful part of these spells. Always look to maximize the value of your cards in control. 2 fo1 or 3 for 1, your opponents, any chance you can. And remember, your life is a resource. I've won more games below 10 life than above 30. Taking damage is completely fine if it lets you get or keep an advantage on your opponents.
One mistake I see way too often is not enough removal. My main playgroup complains i run too much removal when I'm just running the recommended 10 to 12 interaction pieces. Its kinda insane how mad people get when I remove threats that are on board even though I have to be the removal guy.
The problem you are facing is you are playing to win. I am finding in casual formats that most people want to do silly things and that the actual game to be played is shameful if you don't allow said player to do silly things and suddenly you are now a competitive player in a casual format. The more I play the more I hate "casual" games. I want to win, a deck that has a 15% win rate is not a good deck, when it should be around 25% the least. The name of the game is to win. Swing. Remove. Counter. Board wipe. Target. Politic. I am not winning turn 1 or turn 2 (built my first deck but it needs 5 specific cards in hand on turn 1). I want someone winning by turn 6 or 7. If we go to turn 10 it better because a slugfest and an excellent bout not because we are waiting till someone has 15 mana to do something silly. OP said it best, if losing early game to aggro isn't something you like - build your deck to be better against those things.
General rule of thumb. If you don't need your creatures for mana, attack. If you don't need your creatures for blocking, attack. If your creature can attack and still do it's thing (such as a Beast Whisperer that has indestructible for whatever reason), attack.
For Dice On Cards: I have an EDH deck featuring Adrix and Nev, where I try to "get to Calculus" with multiple copies of them on the field. It also features cards that add +1/+1 counters. On a good day, the deck can easily exceed my space on the table, so I use spin-down d20s to track the number of tokens, and small d6s to track the number of +1/+1 counters. I also use the spin-down d20s with decks that plonk down a lot of Clues and/or Treasures.
Probably my most formative MtG moment was being at my first tournament, totally green, no idea what I was doing. I was paired up with a guy who would reach over quietly every turn to tap my Scryb Sprites, attacking him. I could tell he was frustrated and at the moment I was intimidated, but he didn't complain. He'd just reach over and make sure I got that free swing in every turn. I don't think I won, but I think about that guy almost every time I play now. Frankly, I wish I could go back and thank him.
I totally agree. We use dice with +1/+1 printed on them for counters, and sometimes regular dice for indicating "this is 5 zombie tokens" because running out of tokens happens a lot, and stocking up with 20+ tokens just in case gets expensive (and hard to find depending on the token). One additional mistake I run into a lot is threat assesment and how eager some players are to use their targeted removal. I've had so many of my "nice, but not essential" creatures targeted from players while there's an absolutely lethal kill-on-sight abomination of a deck/commander sitting across from me about to go off. Or I/we know it has some really horrific cards in it that'll make our lives miserable. Just save the removal for when it's actually needed! I'm completely fine with having my stuff removed *when* they're actually a threat. Wasting removal on my "I might get to draw one extra card on my turn" when there's like Krenko out with 10 goblins about to become 20+ goblins this turn... This even extends to things like, if someone plays a really gnarly creature or it gets really big. Wait to remove it until it swings your way or you suspect it's gonna get hexproof'd. If another player is dealing tons of damage to one of your other opponents they're kind of helping you (until they're not).
Another bonus note for putting dice on cards, since you brought it up: I recently played with some cedh players recently that put dice on their Lotho to represent their treasure count. I was borrowing a deck and walked right into a non-free counterspell because my opponent was clearly tapped out with no representation of treasure tokens... except for literal counters on a creature. DO NOT DO THIS. They wouldn't let me take back the play because information had clearly been gained, but I also noted that "if this was competitive I would call a judge and with a complaint for misrepresentation of the board state" and moved on with my life... and that is the point. Putting dice on a creature is not an acceptable means of tracking an entirely separate permanent. It might be reasonable to put a die on a token to represent "quantity of this permanent" instead of counters, especially non-creature permanents, but putting a die on a creature to represent the number of tokens it has produced is a big no-no, and so is any other similar representation.
So I'd like to add a little something regarding the dice thing: I agree with you on the fact that.dice should be used for counters and not base-power/toughness. HOWEVER I think dice can also be for a larger amount of tokens (say for example you cast an "Army of the Damned" and now you have 13 black 2/2 Zombie Tokens.)what could be done here, of course is using different dice; a D20 for the amount of Tokens and D6 for Counters. Or you could say: Counters go ONTO the token the amount of tokens goes next to it but you get what I'm saying
I like to play characters in commander. Usually it's Tired, old wizard who doesn't care about winning or losing, just hurry up so he can go smoke. 😅 It helps that I'm old looking most days
Sometimes when I play a really big spell like a Flood of Tears, I'll say "I'm gonna cast a Flood of Tears, any responses to that?" and I look at the person next in priority. It helps people who are unfamiliar with my deck or my card understand that this may be something worth countering or worth pausing to ask what it does first, and helps keep responses in order.
A mistake I have seen often is when assigning attackers. My opponent will attack one player first, wait for a response, then swing the rest at another and wait instead of declaring all attackers at once. This happened recently where I had an aetherize and open mana, but my opponent, who had no response, started picking up his cards until the attacker at me came and I played aetherize, then we had to go back and replace his boardstate.
When it comes to Dice on Cards, the other main reason someone would put dice on one is to count how many there are, specifically when Tokens come into play. I have a Magus Lucea Kane deck that has this come up a lot, since she copies X spells that means a creature will enter with +1/+1 counters AND have enough copies that having enough of the Copy token isn't feasible. My easy solution is to put dice ON the card to represent counters, and then dice ABOVE the card to represent quantity. So if I have eight 7/7 Hydras (One original and seven copies), I'd have two dice on the card itself for the stats and two dice directly above the card for the total. Still fairly reasonable to parse the gamestate, unless you tap a certain number of them and not just all of them, where you'd need a third set of dice.
+1/+1 counters are dice on the card, "gain +1/+1 until end of turn" is a dice above the card. A die on a token is how many of that token I have, I don't put counters on token usually
I always help people remember their triggers, even if they are a detriment to me. Mostly because I don't want them remembering it in a later phase and resolving it then after cards have been played and the board state has changed. I also can't tell you how many games I've been in where a player has an ability they could activate at any time and I look at them and announce, "Untap. . . Upkeep. . . Draw. . . Main pha-" "WAIT I WANTED TO DO SOMETHING ON YOUR UPKEEP!" As far as people fast-playing and skipping priority, I try to let people respond in turn order but I'm also the only one at my lgs who seems to do it. As such, when a big spell like a board wipe is on the stack and I ask people in turn order if they have responses, I get the feeling they think that is me signaling that I have a response so they all pass to me before they do anything to see if I can stop the spell. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. Some tryhard introduced "mana bullying" to me in this regard when I was last in turn order and didn't respond so said tryhard instructed another player to tap a land for mana to create another round of priority. A real shitty concept, imo.
I think that the point about just not playing creature-focused decks is something worth honing into. That tends to be the rule of thumb advice I give in situations like this. I tend to try and think laterally when addressing problems of attitude and adjusting to that, make it not about what you should be doing, but rather why you refuse to do it and if instead you need a shift in approach altogether. It's also why I tend to make a big deal about becoming more tolerant to different deck archetypes and allowing players to enjoy Magic how they do. There's a risk when you overdo the salt, that you create these harsh stigmas against certain playstyles that pigeonholes players to conform to them, where they now are pressured play more "acceptable" decks they actually don't care about as much in trying to avoid conflict. I'd rather play against whatever the opponent wants to play, I try to make that clear at every table with my go-to motto "It's my responsibility to make sure that I win, not yours." If your heart says Zo-Zu Ponza or Toxrill control, go for it. Win the way you want to and I'll just make sure I win how I want to first.
I just recently finished building a Lathliss deck and after a few games I have realized exactly what you are saying: either I don't want to be "mean" or I want to "hold blockers". But...it's a mono red dragons deck. It's meant to attack lol. So I will be doing more of that now. Great video! :)
Gotta disagree on the dice thing, while I agree that some people go overboard or use them weird, I have decks which have different types of modulations and there is no universe where I can keep track of them without the help of dice, and same thing for my opponents. I use different dice depending on what they are supposed to mark (like +1/+1 dice for counters or using different colors for example) but its something that helps so much for me and the table because they dont want me to have to ask 8 times what their creatures are at per turn because I forget or me have to try and remember my entire board state in order whenever someone asks about one of my cards because that is the alternative. Using dice is almost all upside, it allows you to not have to ask which makes it obvious that its relevant what its at, and if its something that might be changing more often or its especially relevant then just ask like you would without dice and the die just serves as a helpful reminder that modulation of some sort is happening there. If anything I find it to be annoying when some people will show up with a token deck or a equipment deck without any dice and we spend half the game recounting and rechecking cards to remember what its at until I just grab them some extra dice and the game can continue smoothly.
i do play just to play and not for winning cause i still have fun but i do think it makes lots of sense to start careing less about making enemys and stuff like that great video ^^
Completely agree, only time I "pull my punches" (not making enemies, not attacking planeswalkers, etc that was brought up in the video) is when I'm playing with a friend who is workshopping a deck and its not going well for them. Give them a turn or 2 to get a little more info about the strengths and weaknesses of the deck so that we can BOTH use that to make the deck more fun to play and consistent. If you're playing with friends I think the goal should always be to have fun and make sure your friends also are having fun. There's no problem with having a strong deck but if you ONLY play super strong decks and essentially force your friends to change how they want to play just to avoid getting killed by turn 5, they are not gonna have fun just getting stomped each time you're in the pod. Doesn't mean you should pull your punches if their deck is just bad, there's just a difference in attacking vs targeting the person with the "weakest" board state/potential.
Im definitely guilty of not attacking consistently enough. The main circumstance for me is that I feel bad hitting people that are open bc they are behind. Ive been trying to do it more bc it speeds up games but I do kinda feel bad still.
I remember one game with my buddies where me and one person were both playing precons, with maybe 10 upgrades between the two decks, where my other friend was playing his highly tuned Experiment Kraj deck that usually combos out 1-2 turns after dropping Kraj. Solution? Attacking more. We never allowed Kraj to untap and focused him down in combat. Ended up being a really fun game, plus the Kraj player enjoys feeling like the “archenemy” so we all had a good time
My friend also plays slow control decks with a lot of lategame value. I'm a strong 60 card player but new to commander. I quickly figured out that even if he has a weak board state in the early game, it is a trick. You shouldn't pressure the player with the weakest board state or spread out damage, but cut down the lategame players first, so that the table can still often "emergency player remove" them once they start to blow everything up and pop off themselves. Especially when they love to use black to turn life into value.
There is one thing I think is justified to use dice over stats like in 4:18 is when a creature's **base** stats change. Stuff like Tree of Perdition or when you don't have tokens of a specific p/t.
Yeah I do this when playing melek, reforged researcher. It tracks the amount of instants and sorceries in my graveyard and especially on webcam games that is quite difficult for other players to keep track of
The first commander list I built for myself after getting back into magic about a year ago was a straightlaced Arahbo cat typal aggro/beatdown list, and... it wins a shocking percentage of games in my usual pod just from how relentless the combat damage is. I wouldn't even say that the group I usually play with is necessarily hesitant about combat damage either, but simply not giving slower decks time to establish a win condition that I can't interact with has been very effective. Notably, some of the big blowouts where I've lost horribly were because I let a Niv-Mizzet, Parun land on the board and hadn't spent the prior 5 turns getting that player down to 15 life as they sat there with a mostly open board. I have since learned my lesson, and the cats are thriving for it. Also... wow, things like Qasali Slingers are powerful effects for interaction. Sometimes it feels a little petty to just blow up a mana rock or two, but there are regularly high value enchantments to hit which tend to otherwise be allowed to just lay low for far too long. It could just be an issue with my pod, but I feel like enchantment removal gets severely overlooked in a lot of lists.
I'm a newbie and have only played commander for a month but from my brief experience, IRL game in LGS is just so much better than playing online with random pods. All of these problems with players lying about their power level, being so sweaty that they try to exploit every mistake another player made, not allowing turn rollbacks, getting mad that others interact with their board (removing/countering etc), even shit talking others for plays they think is bad, all of which made the games sour and ankward pretty much only happens in online spelltable games. I've attended 10 commander parties in 3 LGS and everyone is so accepting to newbies and even when I'm playing against players with higher level decks I never had a game where anyone would argue/shit talk to the point the game felt sour. When someone made a mistake like forgetting to trigger something, the others would usually remind them or when we got stuck because we're not sure about the exact ruling for a weird situation, we wouldn't argue and just google it or ask the LGS owner who just so happens to be an ex-judge. Do i get stomped by them? Sometimes, but even then everyone made sure to have fun and jokes about it to keep the mood lighthearted. I just plays on spelltable if I'm that desperate and can't attend a commander party.
Misplays are a part of the experience, for me. Mistakes become a part of the tapestry of the game, just as much as the good plays. Makes it a challenge to rise above. Some of my fondest games were those were i made a huge blunder on a critical combo, but still managed to crawl back from 1 life and pull a win. The only exceptions are for forgetting to physically change dice/tokens when both players understand the state has change. We just agree to retroactively modify the object to match that understood state.
My personal playgroup is pretty ruthless so we don't have this problem at all, so it always surprises me when I go to an LGS and people are really timid about swinging. I played a game where a voltron player had lethal for several turns but didn't swing because they "weren't provoked yet." They lost.
I play with a table that's very chill. Except for one player who tends to exploit us a bit. He absolutely holds grudges if we attack him for even one damage. His favorite line is, "If you attack me, im going to come after you." Even if he's the only one open. This player often times gets about 15 to 20 monsters on the field in 3 turns, so we tend to leave him alone. He also gets upset when we attack, and he can't do anything. Constantly saying, "i dont like being attacked for no reason."
@@RegisJim He's the only one with the available space for us to play. We don't have a game shop in our town. I am getting better at ignoring his whining and attacking him more. I just started playing a few months ago, so my decks are still relatively weak. So I'm still very nervous to attack someone who tends to have a lot of monsters very early in game. However, I'm getting better.
The one deck where I don't do a ton of attacking is the Council of Four. I make a ton of knights and play some anthems, but my main wincon is to draw a bunch of cards with vodalian wave knight or knowledge is power on the field. Having a board full of reasonably unthreatening 2/2s is absolutely critical and if I'm constantly losing them in combat attacking someone for 9 on turn 6, I'm definitely going to lose. I could probably attack more, and I do get more aggressive when I have something like knight exemplar on the field, but for the most part, if I expect to lose a knight in combat, I'm just not attacking.
I have a Taii Wakeen deck I adore, mainly because I love chomping up creatures via spell slinging. Since I run it as a burn deck though, my pop-off COULD win, but also it could fall short, and I still felt cool!
Yeah, I have seen a dinosaur typal player have 20+ power on board and their argument for not attacking with anything but the gishath is that they don't want to swing out until it kills everyone. So their strategy is to swing with gishath until they have 100+ power on board (or an overrun effect that does similar things).
(Warning, long-winded echoing of what was already said in the video) Man i'm glad seeing someone calling out all the stuff about attacking 😀. If one of the most basic game actions is considered rude, your opponents are not mature enough for any non-cooperative multiplayer game. Try voicing that sentiment in almost any other game and people will be dumbfounded. "How does my build/deck/strategy hold up against pressure" is one of the core questions that any player has to answer unless they go for an early win. I'd argue having to make that equation is part of what makes games interesting, no matter if you have to solve that puzzle, or you force the question onto others with aggresion. EDH is a communal experience where we want everyone to have fun, but the moment the cards are down it is not our obligation to let your deck do its thing, and pretending otherwise is a disservice to the intelligence of everyone at the table. Expect pressure, build around it. T. started as a Stax/control player that got tired of seeing people durdle for six turns, started making much more aggresive decks not because i like the playstyle much but because it was a much needed proverbial piranha in the fishtank. Needed to vent my frustration 🤓
3:45 I keep a counter off of the creature to the side on top of the token for virtuous role token. I keep track of specifically auras and enchantments in general. Two numbers. So I tell people to let me know when to count
I try to use dry erase tokens and with labels like 3, 3T for 3, 3 tapped, but sometimes it's just smoother to use a rolldown to count how many tokens if that number changes a lot. d6 for counters, provided all the tokens being counted are the same. I'd also add that I built a non-pillowfort monarchy deck to encourage more people to swing in casual pods since they either do that or I win off of the card advantage from monarch.
I 100% agree with the „attack more often“ point! I taught my gf to play magic and that’s how she loses more often than not!! She could have 5 creatures out that are 2/2 but as soon as I put down a 3/3 she will just freeze in her tracks and start passing instead of attacking
Something I often notice when Attacking doesn't happen is if 2 or 3 players or even everyone builds up a board and then we enter a cold war staring contest as nobody can leverage their board without massive risk to their board state and leaving themselves open to a counter attack from the other players. In regards to dice, I have two dice colors. One is for +1/+1 Counters, the other for number of copies for tokens.
As somebody who has many years of experience and thousands of games under my belt I agree with all of this. I actively try to slow my turns down give proper priority to people and be transparent about spells I'm casting and how they can affect the current board state. I don't want to win with a "gotcha moment" it leads to feel bads more often then not and never feels good to win that way. I also try to help direct on other peoples turns to make sure the board states are being properly represented and people have a chance to have priority when needed for the sake of everyone in the game. Now this being said I still make some of these mistakes sometime on purpose even though I know better because and its a bad habit of mine sometimes, but i want people to play their decks and I enjoy seeing them pop off and trying to come back from that.
Hey man I just want to say thanks to your videos I got my friends to actually come out and play commander. We're all new to this hobby and are definitely not playing optimally, but we're having a lot of fun !
Chip damage is soo important! 2 weeks ago i used my Hakim, Loreweaver deck. It's mostly centered around theft, but this time i only got my voltron pieces (a bunch of draw auras, Thran Power Suit and Auramancer's Guise (which i kept in hand for a whiiile). My Stormchaser Drake had like 4 enchantments on him, one of them being Curiosity. Luckily, i wasn't the biggest threat, and i didn't equip the Suit onto my dragon, however, i was allowed to attack an opponent 5 times (for a total of 10 damage) in order to draw cards and was thanked for it cause i was "looking for an answer for the threatening player". In a little bit i could equip my suit and put guise + nerds rage on my drake, and suddenly i had 30+ damage on a drake that could take out my opponents. Had i not chipped for 10 earlier, they would have had an extra turn to search for an answer.
I agree with everything EXCEPT the spreading the love strategy, but with a caveat. I completely and totally agree that if all you are looking to improve is your winrate, absolutely if you have an attack that benefits you more than it hinders you, you should always attack. That being said, I find it a lot more fun to let players play out their decks, after all, nobody came out to watch you win the game. They wanted to play the game, so i add that handicap of im playing a combat heavy deck that if i do attack, i have to spread it around the table until someone becomes too much of a threat or is becoming too much of a threat to let them live. I find that it creates a more fun experience in my playgorups and ive had numerous people after the game tell me they appreciated me letting them get their deck out before just swatting them out of the game. But that is also just my playgroup, every playgroup is different, but thats my personal take with my experience playing.
About chip damage, it depends. My favourite deck involves getting to 6 power (which is 1 more than the stated 5) but armed with double strike and unblockable with two combat phases as it's ability. Needless to say, everytime I cast it out, assuming it has haste, this "chip" damage turns into 24 commander damage lethal. It really depends on the deck and for voltron, 99% of the time it just means attacking = someone is dying.
I recently started playing magic earlier this year. All my early games, I swung when I could and won a lot. Recently I noticed that I haven't been winning as often because I became more cautious. That early damage saved me in the end. So I totally agree with you.
I think the biggest reason people don't attack in commander is because when you attack that one defenseless dude, you're tapping your creatures and leaving yourself open for the other 2 players who aren't necessarily defenseless. So what you end up with is 4 players sitting around because they don't want to weaken their defenses for potential attacks. When you attack with your voltron commander, he can't defend the other guy's voltron commander. Now me personally I have a go wide deck with Iroas, God of Victory as my commander, and attacking is almost always the correct play for me, because even if I'm tapping my creatures while attacking, I have stuff like rabble rousing and Krenko, tin street kingpin which generates more bodies from attack triggers which I can use to defend. Not attacking usually results in me having LESS potential blockers funnily enough.
On the dice issue, I heartily agree that non-counters shouldn't be dice. I specifically have WUBRG dice in my bag to account for different types of counters. I do think it's safe for folks when the math gets hairy to have dice next to their cards. You still run into mistakes about updating them, so they should re-count before thinking about play lines. It can make game state much clearer for everyone and save time when someone is thinking about actions and their attention gets split so they have trouble remembering what those numbers were.
Re: Dice If I have something with variable power (like the Karnstruct or Mortivore), I might put a dice near me so I can try and keep a quick tally going, but I don't put it on the card itself. I put dice on cards for +1/+1 counters, or I put dice ABOVE a card to indicate I have multiples of it, like Scute Swarm and the like, so I don't need to carry 50+ token cards around. Any lord style effects I just keep an eye on but don't use dice to track at all, if it's truly excessive I might pull out an infinitoken and write down on it what the current cumulative anthem effect is.
Oh yeah, wholeheartedly agree that people don’t attack nearly as often as they should. Hopefully we can see that paradigm shift a bit more going forward, so I don’t instantly get vilified for eking out every bit of damage I can. XD All that said, I think there sometimes is a case for actually spreading your attacks out, namely in decks that also have a gameplan of dishing out tons of board-wide damage. I have a Ganax, Astral Hunter/Agent of the Iron Throne deck that constantly drains opponents when I sacrifice Treasures, and keeping all my opponents’ life totals under certain thresholds with my Dragon attacks is actually super useful in allowing me to take out everyone at once with things like a Bolas’s Citadel. Not to mention effects like Grim Hireling and Professional Face-Breaker that actually net me more value (and overall damage, thanks to the Background) if I actually do hit everyone with at least one thing. Bit niche compared to your average combat-heavy deck, but still.
I don't attack much because my opponents usually make decks I can't attack into. Lots of go wide decks that I need a boardwipe for. That and I have a player that holds grudges for minor things like getting a thing removed once or getting hit for a bit of damage. So I just play Aristocrats burn decks instead so I can enjoy everything I love in commander without needing to make myself anxious over potential grudges over 3 damage
I was playing with a group (which I left for various of reason), that were very shy on attacking. They would either play defense ou would choose randomly. One game I was playing aggro and I was only attacking a control player because it was MY biggest threat and he was very pissed at it, always telling me that I should split my attacker or I should stop "bullying" him. I said no and attacked for a bunch, explaining that I do not care about the other 2 decks. He became angry and for next game, changed to an another deck and focused exclusively on me. He was trash talking me saying thing like "how do you like that, being the target" or "it wouldn't happen if I attacked everybody at once". Very un unphased I just told him "This is the point of the game, swing at me, it's all good". I don't know why but he was angrier after that. Never played with that group after that game.
I play Adrianna, which gives my creatures melee, in a Boros Knights deck. I can play her on turn 5 or 6 depending on my ramp. Up to then I play ramp or knights. The game is always short because I start swinging once I get her out and don't stop until I win or lose, or I get board wiped.
I made a new deck, and in it I put a combo of painters servant and akroma's memorial. I chose black for painters servants first ability and my friend complained it's literally impossible to deal with the combo. So I said "ok, then use cards that make me sacrifice it" 'but it's such a niche thing to have cards that do that!' "Ok, then just exile the akroma's memorial, memorial isn't indestructable, only my creatures have protection from black and red" then I showed him a card that would fit in his deck since his deck is red blue and the card I showed as an example is red. He then goes "but I don't want to, that's not the point of the deck!" So I go " ok, then maybe next time don't waste your counter spells on the other guy's commander since he can bring it back at any time, look at his mana pool." It has no enter the battlefield effects aside from discarding cards to give it keywords" *well I would still need to have the counter spell when you play that card*. Note, he has a few counter spell type cards in his deck, not just the original counter spell. He told me to just not play that combo anymore which annoys me because there are so so many cards that remove artifacts. I even told him I have no way to do anything about exile, so if he just finds a way to exile my memorial I just can't do anything about it. Maybe do a combo of destroying memorial then exiling my graveyard. I find that scenario especially funny because when I was building the deck I told him it was graveyard based and he just kept showing me cards that exile the graveyard and going "ok well I can just play this and your deck is no longer usable" but he couldn't seem to do that same thing regarding my memorial. Also, keep in mind, it's an artifact deck. I would say my deck is like 60% artifacts, 30% black permanents and 10% green permanents. So running artifact and graveyard removal would shut down my deck hardcore. Now I'm torn cuz I really like this deck, and this combo isn't even one I search out, I just happened to top deck it. I have like 4 tutors, a couple of which I can bring back like moonsilver key, and the plan is never to search these cards out, it's to search out stuff like Wurmcoil Engine, Toski, portal to phyrexia, and Imotekh the Stormlord. He said the deck was basically a cedh deck but I don't think it's gonna be consistent enough. That's a 2 card combo and I just happened to draw them. It's not like that's gonna happen every game, what are the odds I'm gonna draw 2 separate cards in an edh game every deck, especially if I'm not searching for them? I've never had a deck pop off before and the whole thing just kinda soured the first real victory I've had since I got back into magic. I got back into magic in 2021 and occasionally go and play. I go to the lgs to play maybe once every couple months so I've played MAYBE 30 games in all that time and I have won maybe 2 or 3 times. Just feels kinda shitty I finally have a good deck that CAN win due to its synergy and I'm just... Not allowed to use part of it when nobody else really seems to have a problem with that. Idk, I feel like it's a rather standard graveyard artifact deck, there's a lot of cards in it that could probably be substituted for much stronger cards which would make it more cedh. Even after he scooped I almost died to the last guy, I was at 39 HP when my friend scooped, and when I won against our third, he had taken me down to 4 HP. So it's not like the deck is impossible to do anything against, the deck that almost killed me isn't a cedh deck, it's probably a 7 on a power level scale, maybe even an 8, so if it's going neck and neck with mine when I happen to draw my best cards I'd consider mine also a 7 or an 8. I just don't feel someone can really complain about a broken combo if they're unwilling to do anything in their deck to counter, not the combo, but the card type (artifacts). I'm building another keyword deck right now but idk if I even really wanna play it because I feel like the same thing is gonna happen of him not having flyers and just getting mad that my deck just gives everyone flying due to Odric's ability (assuming I have a card with flying on the battlefield, which most of them do) and it just makes me thing that even though he's my best friend, I don't really want to play with him if every time I actually manage to do good it gets soured by "well that's dumb you're not allowed to play that!" He even told me "I'd rather play against a infinite because you can actually do something about those!" And I told him "you can do less about an infinite, unless you have an instant that stops it the game is literally over, with this you can get rid of akroma's any time, so long as you have at least 1 HP to stay alive, you can always stop it and it's easier to stop than an infinite because you can stop it at any time, not just when it first starts" I really wanna emphasize what I said earlier about the fact that over the course of 30 or so games I've won maybe 2. I have a vampire precon which I never won with, which I played maybe 5 games with and deemed I don't really like the deck, and the rest were my original Glissa deck which I just reworked this week into the one that popped off last night. That's a 1/24 win rate (assuming the numbers are correct, I obviously haven't kept track of how many times I've played it). So far I've played 1 game with this new deck and won, yeah that's a 100% win rate but that's not indicative of anything, I just got a good first game with it. Sorry for rambling I just really wanted to talk about this because of the topic of the video being gameplay mistakes, and I took advantage of his mistakes like waiting until our third used duress to see my friend's hand, seeing he had only lands, and then going "cool, I don't have to worry about this being countered then" and him being unwilling to cover a removal type in his deck. Now, I can respect wanting to keep a theme of a deck, but when you're running a deck that is built around fucking around, I don't see the point of getting mad at losing to a deck not built to fuck around. Ironic because I'll pose meme deck ideas I'm not planning to make and he shoots them down because they're either not serious enough, too niche to get a combo going, or has something that's just weird to play against.
I super agree about attacking, When I first started playing edh I built a lot of creature decks and could just never ever win with them unless I popped off and craterhoofed like turn 7 with a ton of creatures which happened like twice ever. So I started building and playing decks that dont attack because the risk reward of trading my attackers or leaving myself open doesnt feel good to me as a player. Now I play janky combo decks or control decks exclusively.
The lesson is a bit more complicated than "attack more" or "attack the late game threat in the early game". Your opponent's life is an obstacle AND a defensive resource. When you attack you reduce the threshold needed for someone else to win before you pop off (or after you pop off and are stopped. Interaction is healthy!). At the same time you are reducing the threshold you need to win. Sometimes people attacking means another player jumps in and wins without waiting until "they pop off" because everyone was damaged enough that the player did not need to wait for the exponential part of their curve. At the same time if nobody attacks, then you need to assemble 120 damage. In general a mid-late or late game deck will be best prepared to deliver the 120 damage in a single turn. The early game attacks are the players voting on whether the game will be decided by who can do 30 damage in a turn through 120 damage in a turn. You should attack or not attack depending on what damage threshold your deck is best able to steal a win with. From how I build decks, I like to see each deck grow (do its thing), try to win, and get stopped. Currently I plan for around a 70-90 hp threshold (but can get to a 120 threshold if given time). Thus it is in my interest to not attack unless I get something from it. For example Ghired attacking populates a creature at the cost of ~6 damage. I can count on the other players attacking enough to whittle the hp down from 120hp to 80hp or less before I pop off (thus I don't even need to attack the late game threat because the table did it for me). Other decks in my metagame are planning for only a swing of 30-60. They should attack more so the total hp is at 60 when they pop off rather than still at 80 a few turns later when I would pop off. This nuance affects even the fastest aggro deck although it usually affects how they distribute the damage rather than having them slow down. The fastest aggro deck needs to distribute the damage so the 2nd fastest aggro deck does not have the opportunity to kill the fastest deck and polish off the other two. This means the fastest aggro deck biases their damage towards the 2nd early game threat (to avoid making usurping easy) while not discounting the late game threat(in case the fastest aggro deck fails their 1st attempt at winning and the game continues). Now this nuance only exists between the players going for a damage victory condition and whose damage potential is finite but growing. Combo based decks skip this nuance. They don't need to attack since that reduces the time they have to find their combo. They can also be faster than the late game deck. To top off all that nuance there is also the nuance of "are you on defense, or offense, or both right now?" I have seen plenty of times when a deck is playing the archenemy but won't have enough steam before they are interacted with. I have also seen times when a player can't attack the threat but can attack someone else (which can make sense. see above) but unfortunately did enough damage that now the threat can close out the game (this is easiest to notice when you are the threat. While you are counting life totals trying to make a plan, one of the other players donates 8 damage to your calculations). So the basic lesson of "attacking is often a good idea" is a good lesson. The later lessons bring back the nuance of "not attacking is often a good idea" and how to differentiate.
I mean, you're just describing a control-deck/philosophy, but there's a reason that midrange is the most popular, and aggro is important to keep control in check. Classically, it's rock-paper-scissors, at it's core (albeit with a ton of variance), though EDH does break this by making an aggro win need 6x the effort, while maintaining the ease of things like combos/alt wins/etc.
@@healdrop9313 I don't think that is the control-deck philosophy. It is based on commander having a 3rd player. Thus aggro and midrange are more concerned about the sniped win risk than a control deck is. Consider 3 midranged decks. The fastest one grows the slowest and should be attacking all out. The other two should choose how much to attack based on not losing to the fastest deck while also beating the other deck. The middle deck attacks the fastest a bit but mostly prepares to kill both the fastest and slower decks. The slowest midrange deck avoids attacking to avoid making it any easier on the fastest and middle decks. The fastest deck hopes the other 2 decks attack too much. The middle deck hopes they and the slowest deck deal just enough damage for them to snipe the win. The slowest deck hopes they and the middle deck attack too little for the middle's plans but have enough interaction (including damage as player remove if needed) to stop the fastest deck.
@@healdrop9313 Honestly control decks could ignore my post unless they win by damage. Most true control decks win by interaction volume. They may kill with damage, but everyone was already defeated when Brago can repeatedly delete (counter/remove) any attempt at damaging them. Thus they, like combo, would just not attack because they are not a damage deck. My post was mostly about the interaction between 3+ players and 2+ damage based decks.
@@Ent229 You just described aggro, midrange, and control but said they were all midrange? Like, it’s entirely the speed of your deck. Aggro isn’t just “attack with creatures”, and control isn’t just “stax/pillowfort”; they’re the rate at which you try to win the game, and strategy is downstream from that. Control wanting to win the slowest means that they need to survive to win late, which means they need some method of controlling the game until then. That doesn’t necessarily have to be an interaction lock, you can have a “true control” deck with fog-type effects, for instance. Which is why I say that your philosophy of going really slow and letting the others beat on one-another is textbook control. Goad is control, and you’re effectively describing that.
@@healdrop9313 Would you agree that Isshin, Two Heavens as One, Balan Wandering Knight, and Krenko Mob Boss are generally built as aggro decks in commander? (Isshin might be more of a aggro/midranged hybrid. It straddles that line a bit) If they sit down to a game are you going to relabel them as 1 aggro, 1 midrange, and 1 control deck just because the relative speeds are different? Regardless, my advice applies to all 3 players. The fastest deck should attack all out but be careful with their distribution. The middle deck should attack carefully, they want to deal enough but not too much damage if they want to snipe the win from the fastest deck. The slowest deck would want to avoid attacking unless they have an attack trigger (even then they need to weigh the cost/benefit). Then if I add my Ghired midranged deck to the pod the math changes again. There is still no control deck in the pod, but now Isshin can take it a bit easier since the relatively slower Ghired deck is also forced to play control without a control deck. If someone added an Angus Mackenzie fog control deck, the math changes yet again. Although Angus can ignore the math because they are not going to win by a damage snipe. They are instead going to win by negating everyone else's damage and then eventually cleanup the game with damage. Instead of engaging in the multiplayer damage minigame, the control deck negates the minigame and then cleans up.
The thing i would had loved if you had covered was "recognizing you need to build your deck better." Often times you are in that situation where someone does aggro you out and for as salty as it is to be singled out as you watch the other players improve their situation because they weren't attacked or because they revealed they had removal when they were. Sometimes we put so much effort into building our deck to "do the thing" without realizing we didn't put in enough mana sources for the deck to "do the thing." And this convo can circle back to the super mana rocks like Mana Crypt. And on that note, i'm trying to raise awareness for Sol Talisman, Lotus Bloom, and Mox Tantilite. In my opinion, WotC should be putting these in every future commander precon, and they do need reprinting. The suspend 3 is disheartening, but i play them in my competitive deck and i'm amazed at how often they save me from a loss. The look on my opponents faces when i sac'd Urza's Saga and slapped a Lotus Bloom on field was priceless. And there are other things that can cheat those mana rocks onto the field like Mystic Forge and Bolas's Citadel. But you do have to keep in mind that they don't actually have a casting cost so you can't cast them from exile. people forget that the whole point of the "mana dork" is if you end up not needing the mana, it's a 1/1 that can do 1 damage to someone's face for 1 damage, that someone having 0 creatures on board.
One thing about eliminating players is that I look at my opponents as a resource. They can be a source of removal for a permanent type my colors aren't good at, them existing might deter another player hitting and/or eliminating me for fear of a crackback or with new Bloomburrow cards they might be the most inconsequential player to gift them something. So I often try not to eliminate players for as long as possible: generally until they're in danger of winning the game.
my big thing with the attacking issue is that whenever i would attack, it would do nothing to progress the game in a way that would benefit me, i’d often just lose some of my big things or just literally get blocked and lose my creatures
For things likely artifact count, I put the dice on the side of the battlefield as a reminder for myself, but out of the way. And I do occasionally do the dice-as-p/t thing, but *only* when it's a cloned creature. Using dice to indicate anthems gets confusing. Aaaalso, don't get me started on dice on tokens. If you don't have enough tokens hard to use dice to indicate number of tokens and also +1 counters!
Biggest recent mistake was not planning my mana out correctly, so I was missing one coloured mana and I couldn't play my sephara after a big turn, got hit with a board wipe directly after :(
We put a dice counter on cards with a static global affect to show it easily. Since if that card goes away so does the global counter. Then we keep the variable cards without counters.
I see this all the time. I would even tell people to attack more, there's literally no reason not to. They only started paying attention when I won a game at exactly 1 life and I told them 'if you guys just swung a random utility creature at me at any point of the game, you could have won'
Biggest mistake for players in my group was never counting the amount of ramp or cards in hand as part of evaluating advantage. It seems simple, but lifting your gaze and seeing that one guy seems to have 6 permanents in play and is hellbent and another guy has only his commander in play but 10 cards in hand can be hard to learn. Attack the guy with 10 cards in hand, every time, unless he is saying (and telling the truth about) holding 10 basics he land-taxed out of his deck. If a control player draws 20 cards with a sea-gate restoration and passes, he should probably not be allowed to untap.
About the 'not attacking' mistake, I think it depends on the playgroup. In our playgroup players who aren't aggressive still win games, just because they make no enemies. I'm usually trigger happy and swing the first opportunity I have, which leads to all kinds of blood feuds with the players I attacked 😂
whenever i play my ellivere deck from the wilds of eldraine precon, i always have two dice on the side, one to represent enchantment count, and the other to represent actual power and toughness from enchantments (incase of an anthem or anything) then if theres counters or an ancestral mask it makes those a little easier to keep track of
I think the dice thing is tricky. If you can clearly denote something with the dice, it's completely valid. What if I have 100 soldier tokens? Am I just supposed to use 100 actually tokens? Should I use separate dice to the side? How do those dice attack? What I tend to do is use at least two tokens of relevant types in a token deck and represent the amount of that creature that I have with a die in the top left corner. If some need to attack, I take the second token and split the counts. I do think using counters to represent buffs from equipment and anthems is a mistake however. If you organize your battlefield properly, it's easy to tell what those buffs are.
The decks I build tend to be more aggressive in nature in Gruul and Naya (favorite color combos), and it's insane always going up against these blue decks who win through accumulated value, just constantly group hugging each other and being surprised I'm swinging into them when I know their entire goal is just an oracle or omniscience. Then they get offended that I am actively putting pressure on them like I'm supposed to just let them do whatever they want. Insanity.
I agree on attacking. It's important to get in shots where you can and if you're opening yourself up to attacks by having no blockers early on, the risk is minimal so I really think it's worth it. Anyone who says "don't attack the Planeswalker" player because they haven't done anything or things along those lines are a fool! A little bit of sandbagging is fine. Throw some misdirection out there. "I'm really not that big of a threat. My deck just isn't clicking right now. Are you sure you want to attack me?" When they say "yes," accept that their attack is valid and it's an honor because they have reason to fear you. I, like you, tend to build decks that look like they're doing nothing and pop off out of nowhere with greedy plays. Tawnos is a deck I run and it goes from 0 to 60 1 well timed turn. So I accept that when I'm open, my usual play group will get shots in and I will not begrudge them
My biggest mistake is saying "surely we don't feed the rhystic study player cards" every time- proceeded by my playgroup never paying the 1 out of pure spite
That’s another classic mistake and will probably be its own video
Rhystic is probably too good for a casual table, but its whatever. I once tried to ignore it, favoring rapid board development, and somewhat regreted. Plan was to push an opponent with a bunch of Humans FTW. Turned out the man with Rhystic Study assembled a very fine pubstomp jerkfest - wrath tribal with efficient and expensive counterspells, topped with tutors and Consultation-ThOracle combo. All in an Oloro shell for lifegain resiliency. He had been seriously claiming that deck to be casual, cos otherwise he wasnt reaching 80%+ winrate with weaker decks.
Honestly that’s what I thought this video was going to be based on the title. “When to pay your taxes” is definitely a skill/judgement call worth discussing. And I’m definitely not saying that just because I’d love tips for myself on how to tell when it’s time to pay vs time to race XD
@IvanKolyada Technically they are right. Oloro is not regarded as a competitively viable deck by the cedh community, which makes it a casual deck. Don't blame them, blame the fact that there are no clear rules for casual commander.
@@thelastdankbender4353 Man literally packed his wincin section of the deck with clear CEDH stuff, while responses were perfectly matched for casual tables - just wiping board constantly. Tbh, I dont care about some dumb technicalities, if a man does such shit for the sake of I dont know what even. Its moronic to do so.
I used to play a lot of games that ended with sour feelings. Then I read in a TH-cam comments section to be SUPER transparent about everything you're doing. Now, as far as I'm concerned, THAT is the casual way to play. Only competitive players would want to hide what they're doing.
If people don't know if they should target you, tell them how close you are to a combo. If people aren't sure what your card does, hand it to them, and tell them why it's in your deck.
I can't imagine this works too well with sweaty randos that lie about their deck's power level, but it had worked WONDERS in making our pod feel more casual, friendly, and fair. The best part is, once I did it, it kind of set the tone for everyone else.
I don’t think people really lie about their decks power level very often. I think it’s more an issue of the 1 to 10 power scale that everybody uses being very flawed. To somebody who plays a lot of battle cruiser magic and has never seen a cEDH deck pop off on turn 2 or 3, a deck that can pop off on turn 6 looks like a 9 or 10, but that player says it’s 7, because with the context of cEDH being a 10, that probably is a seven.
This is what someone at the store I go to is like and he's easily my favourite random to be paired with. Literally tells you to stop him from ever using his Ashnod's Alter lol. He's 100% honest.
Yeah just a few hours ago I was playing a game, realized after passing that on my next end step I'll be able to win with a 'you win the game' card I don't even have on the field yet. So I decided to let everyone know that I'll win on my next turn if nothing is done. You could argue that was an objectively bad move, and for that one game it, sure, but the game I'm playing is life, buddy.
(and I did still win that game)
Wholeheartedly agreed. I would add two things that further this though. 1: Talk about the boardstate a lot, meaning you should talk about how the game is going for everyone to help transparency. 2: Not only should you point out when you are about to win, but also how people can stop you in future. A friend of mine basicly identified for us what makes a deck of his deck dangerous, it was counting the number of lands and cards in hand he has instead of watching out for specific permanents or even his commander.
Love this! Commander's hard, we often struggle to keep on top of our own stuff, let's help each other to play the most magic possible! Then things are always more fun
I hate when people don't let me take back an action in my own turn that changed nothing, just because they want to win at any cost. I just stop playing with people like that.
Agreed! It just speeds up the game too. If we don’t let any take backs then I need to be very slow and methodical when playing cards
I'll never forget the time when I was playing standard, they passed turn, and it was to combat on my turn when they went "oh wait, I want to do this instead. I win now." I just left after that. If it is something like playing a different land, tapping differently, or missing a not super impactful trigger, I don't really care if they take it back even a turn later. If it is still their turn, I typically don't care at all if they take things back.
@@AlexOvTheAbyss missing lethal and trying to roll it back is pretty funny
I find that letting people take things back in casual games is good karma. They are more likely to view you as a chill person which has so many benefits in and out of the game.
For myself, I try not to take anything back as a personal choice, it helps me improve.
@@thetrinketmage I don't mind to play on tables with takebacks, but personally, I think simply allowing no takebacks is the best way to go about it.
You avoid the discussion about what can be taken back and what can't, players learn more quickly because their actions actually have consequences and people stay more focused on the game and hopefully start planning their turns ahead instead of idling for 3 peoples turns and only start thinking about what they want to do during their own turn - thus it's actually speeding up the game.
Ofc everyone makes mistakes, but I think the best reaction is always an honest "well shit, I tapped my mana wrong, well good for you guys, now I can't cast that thing for another turn. Pass turn"
one annoying thing I dealt with with counter that I agree with making sure your counters are properly displayed is planeswalker, one person I played against only counted the extra loyalty on their "Liliana, Dreadhorde General" so I saw a dice with the number 4 and though I was perfectly fine to leave her alone one more turn and hit some players, only to be told she had ten loyalty and all the rest of the table quickly lost due to her devastating ultimate, I'm not even sure how counting like this would even make planeswalkers easier for anyone as, I don't know how a player like this would track if there planeswaker had fewer than their starting loyalty
That is hilariously wrong! Maybe they use a different color of dice when the loyalty is lower?
Yeah I would be really mad if someone did that. I've never seen anyone do that before, it seems like common sense for the die to show *current* loyalty, not extra loyalty beyond starting. How would they track it if it were below its starting amount?
We did this when we ran out of big enough dice and only had D6s so that could be? lol
I always ask ‘how big is that guy?’ ‘What’s its toughness?’ ‘ how long till that planeswalker can ult?’ rather than squinting at the board state. I do the same for when I see them looking at my board- tell them what blockers I have up, toughness, what abilities I can activate on board, etc.
Maybe that’s unfair to the other players to have to hear me yapping all the time but I never trust dice or my ability to read a card with paragraphs of text on it and don’t want the opponent to make a misplay because they miscounted my artifacts on board or didn’t see my Karns Bastion amongst my lands before I Ult Ral Zarek
6:36 I need to know if you intentionally tapped the only creature with vigilance.
😂😂😂
Bro, I go in with the mentality of a Dark Soul’s boss. Lord Gwyn didn’t wait to throw fists and I won’t either.
I respectfully disagree with the dice problem on cards. In our playgroup placement of the dice matters. D20 on power and toughness means "new base power and toughness". Dice in the middle of the cards are plain +1+1 counters. Dice on top left indicates the number of copies there are of that card.
But I agree with the construct problem. Usually, we have one die in front of our playmat for these kinds of things. This way, my opponents won't have to ask and simultaneously and indirectly give important information about the cards in their hand
Dice to indicate number of copies can also be fine, honestly forgot about that when making the video.
Just as long as it's done consistently and is clear. Such as d6s in the center meaning counters and a d20 in the bottom right to represent it's base power/toughness in the construct example.
If I pull up with more than one or two copy effects, I bring copy tokens with me. I'll put a die on that for numbers, helps keep things clear.
We used to like using dice to track things but we no longer do it because sometimes they fall out of sync and therefore they are unreliable.
Even if the dice is correct 95% of the time, their value is meaningless because you can't be certain they are correct until you confirm they are correct, at which point you don't need them.
Even if someone is sure they are correct, they might not be correct, so they may as well not be correct.
Tracking non-counter stuff with dice just adds the extra step of "are those dice correct?", and then recounting anyway.
I always used dice on the card for counters and dice in front for the number of them. It always bothered me when people did the same for both and I didn't know whether it was a 5/5 or four 1/1s.
I feel like spreading damage can sometimes be useful because if I attack someone for 20 everyone is afraid, more than if I attack everyone for 6/7
It can also be useful if you have spells like Earthquake.
Yeah the moment I do more than 10 damage to someone in a single combat, the whole table decides to delete me from the game.
I have learned the magic number in commander is 3. That is the max damage you can do without drawing spite and ire. I learned this from playing ninja tribal Yuriko or aristocrat decks. the number 3 also applies to life gain, card draw, mana generation, etc.
Very true, I find it also helps if you make it very clear you have no intention to kill. I might bring a player down to 10 or less life fairly early if theyre open and it makes sense, but ill make it clear to them and the table that I wont be killing that player so early and that I'm just dealing some damage but will shift focus after. This is good because it makes people not think youre going to knock somebody out early which it generally bad manners in such a long format and youre still able to get the player low enough that late game even if they pop off and can win on their next turn and you probably can all in them and still take them out in time.
Additionally, there are a LOT of cards that scale based on opponents. The most obvious example for wanting to spread damage is stuff like thopter spy network which lets you draw a card for each opponent you hit. But also stuff like smothering tithe, etali, and expropriate can potentially give you worthwhile value even at the cost of leaving an opponent alive; value enough to just overwhelm all your opponents in a single turn
I disagree. You can easily use dice to represent the number of tokens you have 😌
I recommend using different colored dice, as it keeps clear the amount of creatures and power/toughness!
I use spin downs to indicate number of tokens
Honestly just didn’t think about that when making the video. But I don’t mind dice for that reason
@@Ox7moron also summoning sickness ones if that's relevant for the game state
@@io-di4xw I feel like summoning sickness is better represented with some sort of counter.
Correctly identifying attack targets is soooo crucial. If someone's got a Black Market Connections or a Sylvan Library up, if you can't remove that card outright then just drill them. Pound them in the dome untik they stop full sending that shit. If they have no board, hit them until they go to their moxfield and add some 2-drops or a Propaganda.
Truthfully, I kind of blame gameplay channels for this as many of them have really tried to instill the culture of "a good game is one where everyone gets to do their thing." If you like that style of game, more power to you, but as mentioned in the video most decks "doing their thing" mostly represents a game-ending threat nowadays.
You can win an unreal amount of games by just non-threateningly durdling, drawing cards, and occasionally counterspelling stuff as long as you never present an on-board threat until you're ready to win. For as much as people like to play politics they are generally quite bad at it. Striking deals is a fraction of the political gameplay when your on-board posture is going to speak volumes to the person who knows what to look for.
This one really resonated with me. Last week, I played against a guy who was on Brudiclad, and had over 10 tokens on board, including a karnstruct, and I was at a loss for words when, after a big slugfest where basically everyone elses' boards had gotten decimated, he just played another token maker, holding up 6 mana (he hadn't played Brudiclad at all yet) and passed the turn to me. After which I stormed off and won. Like... What is he doing?!
My mistake is never standing up for myself because im a newer player. I've been playing for 3 months, and I've had so many times where more experienced players try to exploit that fact. I was against a chiss-goriya player who never went through their steps and didnt declare attacks so he went straight to his triggers. I was supposed to drown in dreams before he went to combat/when the ability went on the stack, but he insisted that he already did the trigger and did all his things and i just let him since i couldnt phrase my thoughts properly and i didnt want to hold up the table any longer
It can be though as a new player since you might not have that confidence in the rules! Keep at it though you will get there eventually and once you see something once you can be more sure of it and stand up for yourself!
Yeah, players like that you have to lightning focus on and make sure you can do YOUR triggers before they can just do theirs.
The words "Stop" and "Hold" are powerful! Don't be afraid to tell someone to slow down and play the game properly. They don't get to skip other people's window to interact with their card just cause they have an attack trigger they want to make sure goes off. You could even specifically say "Hang on, you skipped a few steps"
When a player fails to announce moving to combat it's almost always in our favor when we catch it and have interaction. It's one of the forced rollback situations in the game. Say you had the ability to tap down their voltron attacker but you weren't sure you'd rather use your held up mana for that or something else later in turn cycle if they didn't attack YOU... If they simply move from main phase to "swinging at you" where the attack trigger is the most important part for them, you can force a rollback to when they were moving to combat phase and tap them down, removing their ability to activate an attack trigger with that creature and it is all their own fault and a valid objection on your part.
If that player refuses to rewind to the point before they went to declare attackers, they are actively cheating and manipulating people's emotions to win a fantasy card game. If self confidence is an issue, look to the others in the pod for backup. If nobody can articulate what is going wrong or how to fix it, call over a more experienced player or judge. It's not fun to get stomped on by a cheater (whether intentional or not), and speaking up will build a better play experience for everyone by allowing space for discussion to clarify rules and disincentivize cheating.
Ruric thar has been the my go to since forever, people are always like 'oh dang is it all creatures' and then I play Hall of Gemstones
Just to mess with people cos it shuts down multicoloured decks or is there a combo or something im not seeing?
@@jaredcross897 I'm assuming to keep people miserable 😂
"Just attack more" is 100% ironclad concrete advice for anyone struggling to win. I know that I do the exact opposite after I get two wins in a row. The third game is going to be me building a giant wall of cool stuff until I inevitably lose because I'm throwing it for the sake of the table's fun.
2:14 That's why I almost always start my turn by saying, "Untap, Upkeep, Draw" and go to my attacks by saying, "Move to declare attackers?"
A friend I play with sometimes is very new to magic, and tends to do exactly what you say with not attacking. Last game I played with him I gave him my kumena deck and he spent the whole game building up counters and drawing cards instead of attacking the table, specifically me running my new squirrels deck. He passed the turn without attacking to play it safe and I drew an overwhelming stampede and swung for lethal over all of his blockers, when he could’ve spent his last 2 combats killing me.
Dude you have some excellent content coming out, I really like how you managed to tell the mega-timmy's how it is without being a jerk about it, this is some excellent advice and I wish I could find a way to show my whole LGS this video LOL XD
You could bring a projector to your LGS! Throw this vid on the wall! Thanks for the kind words!
personally if a player wants to count a construct I ALWAYS tell them to put their dice for stats elsewhere, as creatures can both be */* big and have a +1/+1 counter or two on them ://
I always like to put +1/+1 counters on the P/T of the creature and if there is multiples of them I try to keep a counter where the CMC would be ;p
yeah, like, if I'm playing Elivere, I put a dice off to the side for "enchantment count"
I like using dice on cards. I like giving players a rough idea of what theyre attacking into, as opposed to expecting them to do the math themselves every single time they consider an action against whatever card is in question. Occasionally I forget to move the dice up as a trigger occurs, but when that happens, I follow the same rule as i do any time I make a mistake in game and just say "Oh, I forgot to take X action, so we're going to use the worse result so that I'm less likely to forget next time."
Punishing yourself for mistakes is a good way to stop making misplays, and it doesnt pull the rug out from under your opponent when they make a valid play based on flawed information you provided to them.
Yeah, I like taking the punishment for my own mistakes. It helps me to learn, and it doesn't punish others for my screwup.
When it comes to the dice on cards, I hate it when people put dice on planeswalkers to show variation from it’s base loyalty. Some people will play a Planeswalker , +1 it and then put a dice facing “1” and then after will -3 it and change the dice to a “2” because it’s two less
There were some other comments from people saying they see people do this. To me that’s insane and a terrible way to denote how much loyalty is on a walker
That should be a crime
Shouldn't the number be just whatever the current loyalty is. Why would you donate with the difference?
xD
Steps and phases are the biggest mistake areas I see just because it effects priority so much.
But in essence I agree don't leave dmg on the table when you have good attacks.
Youre totally right. Unfortunately there are people that get very emotional about this game and get mad af when you attack them or even throw them out of the game.
Hit the nail on the head there brother. I had to stop playing with my group because of this exact thing.
One time for example, a player was running a deck that has won multiple times on turn 5, like we all knew how easily this dude could pop off. So, I swung in, then the next player did. As soon as the other player swung, the problem-player gets up, scoops and says "guess we're playing archenemy" and leaves, totally ruining the day.
With the counter thing, I'll sometimes put non +1/+1 counters off to the side. I have played with a number of different people who will sit there, then if you even swing at them with a 1/1, they will target you for the rest of the game. Playing against one of them is the only time I've legitimately gotten mad while playing. Also had a guy who would throw a temper tantrum any time someone would attack him when he was "doing nothing", and even when I attacked him while he was the biggest threat. One time he even admitted that he would have won the next turn if I didn't take him out, and still threw a fit.
One person at my LGS will do something, take it back, have us respond, and take back the take back again. They Nin'd a stuffy doll to draw 3, said "can I change the target to this one" "ok then ill remove that thing that isnt indestructible" "oh then ill stick with the stuffy" bruh...
The other thing that I get annoyed a bit with is when I'm like "I do this, for the win" and everyone goes okay. Then I'll be like "You could have removed this artifact on my turn and I wouldnt have had the win on board" and then they go "oh then ill do that" no bud... I won
Unless you're playing new players and trying to teach, your second paragraph sounds like you troll when you win. I would be annoyed if someone said, "You could have stopped me from winning but you didn't and now it's too late."
I totally agree with the idea that you should attack when able, but I think it's usually more correct to spread out damage unless one player obviously needs to be eliminated
the lower your opponents' life totals are in general, the easier it is to take them all out at once later. then again, I play a lot of direct damage decks...
Literally watched a guy play creature on 1, creature on 2, creature on 3 w haste, creature on 4 with haste. He attacked 0 times (Naya Aggro),and then next turn got wiped. I do not undersrand.
I've started just swinging all out every turn. Literally zero retaliation.
I have two 3/3s, you have two 3/3s. I attack you, you don't block. You don't attack me because then you can't block. I attack you the next turn, you don't block.
What's the point?
This exact issue is why in the past 2 weeks I’ve put together a thantis warweaver deck that has been a blast to play and by consequence my playgroup has had to change their decks up a bit because they had so many creatures in that they never planned on attacking with. Love your channel man keep making videos 👍
"Oh no, the elemental steps on your head, to make sure you're dead"
I always pull out that quote whenever I essentially play the game correctly, it's a quote from a story Matt Colleville told about a GM being ruthless towards the players, where his party was fighting against some earth elementals and his wizard gets knocked unconscious and the elemental continues to attack. Upon asking if the elemental wouldn't move on 'cause he's no longer a threat the GM responds with the quote above.
Yes it would be kind to let the player pull off their combo or build up their board state, but being kind instead of trying to win is how you lose games.
I know this isn't a universal solution or anything, but with my usual playgroup, one of my friends is a lot newer and doesn't even have her own decks. She's still learning how to play and borrows decks. So when playing, we're a lot easier on her primarily because if we aren't, she doesn't get to do much of anything. It's also very casual to the point where whomever owns the deck she's borrowing at the time often helps her figure out what she can do when she's struggling. Again, we're a very casual group and all friends.
But one game it came up that she was doing surprisingly well. I was testing a new deck and she was borrowing my mill deck. And it didn't really look like I was going to win, I just happened to draw the perfect card to manage that turn and got an unexpected combo, I hadn't even realized the combo when I made the deck. But we saw how easily she could have won with the setup we had, so we went through my turn showing that I could win. Checked if anyone had responses, double checked that I had the right amount of mana for the combo and that the final attack would be enough to finish everyone off. But instead of actually ending the game, we wanted to see if she could have won had I not gotten that perfect draw, so we rolled things back to before I did the combo and I ended my turn. Next person took her turn and, as expected, wasn't able to really do much anyway. And then it was her turn. With her combo, she ended up making everyone wheel four times and milling everyone for more than 60 cards. She already had the game winning combo, she just didn't have the mana to do it the previous turn, she needed one more turn to set up. Meanwhile, I won because of a lucky draw.
We didn't deny the fact I was the actual winner, it was just fun seeing basically a "what if" for if I hadn't gotten the perfect draw or had misplayed or something.
Again, I'm not saying it's something that should always be done if a player is struggling, but once in a while, especially with the right playgroup, it can be fun to see what could happen if a less skilled player got a little more time or a player that's been unlucky that game had one more turn. Sometimes it can help them feel more motivated in their next game, sometimes it can help someone better identify a problem with their deck, and sometimes it can lead to something unexpected happening. But again, it's situational. It doesn't always work, it's not always a good idea. Just don't be inherently against the idea ever happening.
Yeah, I think playgroup balance is the most important thing. It's rough though for those trying to find a random playgroup.
A mistake that I've seen pretty often and really irks me is players going into the draw step BEFORE the upkeep and untap, as if, again, they were on a hurry, and it hurts them more than others since they're skipping potential upkeep triggers and having no mana to respond to anything.
That one's a mistake people make even in competitive, at least for upkeeps. The classic memory aid is something ontop of your deck to clue you in that you have an upkeep trigger.
One of the biggest mistakes I see players do is burning a counter spell or removel spells on things that don't matter. A few examples of this are.
When it's an early game, they just burn their counter spells/ removal spells on a spell/ permanent that is low to no impact. Just because you have a spell doesn't mean you need to play it.
When a player counters a tutor instead of countering what they grab with the tutor. Unless you know they are likly grabing a spell that can't be counter, or has a strong cast trigger hold your spells. Removal and counter spells are very strong. You should be looking to 2 for 1 of your opponents at any chance you can.
The last one is player burn combat bored wipes at the wrong time. If you have an opponent who has a large bored, you can politic so they won't attack you and will attack another opponent. So you can cast your spell ( like aetherize or Aetherflux) when they move to the end of combat damage when the move to the end of combat. This way, your opponent damage will till fully go through, and you're in a spot where you can decide if you want to bounce the attackers bored. As a bonus, you can make a deal with the other players. So they will swing in on the player who just attacked if you bounce their attacking creatures. So many times, I've seen people do it pre damage step and miss out on the most powerful part of these spells.
Always look to maximize the value of your cards in control. 2 fo1 or 3 for 1, your opponents, any chance you can. And remember, your life is a resource. I've won more games below 10 life than above 30. Taking damage is completely fine if it lets you get or keep an advantage on your opponents.
One mistake I see way too often is not enough removal. My main playgroup complains i run too much removal when I'm just running the recommended 10 to 12 interaction pieces. Its kinda insane how mad people get when I remove threats that are on board even though I have to be the removal guy.
The problem you are facing is you are playing to win. I am finding in casual formats that most people want to do silly things and that the actual game to be played is shameful if you don't allow said player to do silly things and suddenly you are now a competitive player in a casual format. The more I play the more I hate "casual" games. I want to win, a deck that has a 15% win rate is not a good deck, when it should be around 25% the least. The name of the game is to win. Swing. Remove. Counter. Board wipe. Target. Politic. I am not winning turn 1 or turn 2 (built my first deck but it needs 5 specific cards in hand on turn 1). I want someone winning by turn 6 or 7. If we go to turn 10 it better because a slugfest and an excellent bout not because we are waiting till someone has 15 mana to do something silly.
OP said it best, if losing early game to aggro isn't something you like - build your deck to be better against those things.
I played in the complete opposite games, it's a board wipe every turn if a card does not replace itself immediately then it's dead weight.
General rule of thumb. If you don't need your creatures for mana, attack. If you don't need your creatures for blocking, attack. If your creature can attack and still do it's thing (such as a Beast Whisperer that has indestructible for whatever reason), attack.
For Dice On Cards: I have an EDH deck featuring Adrix and Nev, where I try to "get to Calculus" with multiple copies of them on the field. It also features cards that add +1/+1 counters. On a good day, the deck can easily exceed my space on the table, so I use spin-down d20s to track the number of tokens, and small d6s to track the number of +1/+1 counters. I also use the spin-down d20s with decks that plonk down a lot of Clues and/or Treasures.
Probably my most formative MtG moment was being at my first tournament, totally green, no idea what I was doing. I was paired up with a guy who would reach over quietly every turn to tap my Scryb Sprites, attacking him. I could tell he was frustrated and at the moment I was intimidated, but he didn't complain. He'd just reach over and make sure I got that free swing in every turn. I don't think I won, but I think about that guy almost every time I play now. Frankly, I wish I could go back and thank him.
Man, this is such a cute story! I'm sending a virtual hug to that guy. ❤
I totally agree. We use dice with +1/+1 printed on them for counters, and sometimes regular dice for indicating "this is 5 zombie tokens" because running out of tokens happens a lot, and stocking up with 20+ tokens just in case gets expensive (and hard to find depending on the token).
One additional mistake I run into a lot is threat assesment and how eager some players are to use their targeted removal. I've had so many of my "nice, but not essential" creatures targeted from players while there's an absolutely lethal kill-on-sight abomination of a deck/commander sitting across from me about to go off. Or I/we know it has some really horrific cards in it that'll make our lives miserable. Just save the removal for when it's actually needed! I'm completely fine with having my stuff removed *when* they're actually a threat. Wasting removal on my "I might get to draw one extra card on my turn" when there's like Krenko out with 10 goblins about to become 20+ goblins this turn...
This even extends to things like, if someone plays a really gnarly creature or it gets really big. Wait to remove it until it swings your way or you suspect it's gonna get hexproof'd. If another player is dealing tons of damage to one of your other opponents they're kind of helping you (until they're not).
Another bonus note for putting dice on cards, since you brought it up: I recently played with some cedh players recently that put dice on their Lotho to represent their treasure count. I was borrowing a deck and walked right into a non-free counterspell because my opponent was clearly tapped out with no representation of treasure tokens... except for literal counters on a creature. DO NOT DO THIS. They wouldn't let me take back the play because information had clearly been gained, but I also noted that "if this was competitive I would call a judge and with a complaint for misrepresentation of the board state" and moved on with my life... and that is the point. Putting dice on a creature is not an acceptable means of tracking an entirely separate permanent. It might be reasonable to put a die on a token to represent "quantity of this permanent" instead of counters, especially non-creature permanents, but putting a die on a creature to represent the number of tokens it has produced is a big no-no, and so is any other similar representation.
So I'd like to add a little something regarding the dice thing:
I agree with you on the fact that.dice should be used for counters and not base-power/toughness.
HOWEVER I think dice can also be for a larger amount of tokens (say for example you cast an "Army of the Damned" and now you have 13 black 2/2 Zombie Tokens.)what could be done here, of course is using different dice; a D20 for the amount of Tokens and D6 for Counters. Or you could say: Counters go ONTO the token the amount of tokens goes next to it but you get what I'm saying
I like to play characters in commander. Usually it's Tired, old wizard who doesn't care about winning or losing, just hurry up so he can go smoke. 😅 It helps that I'm old looking most days
Sometimes when I play a really big spell like a Flood of Tears, I'll say "I'm gonna cast a Flood of Tears, any responses to that?" and I look at the person next in priority. It helps people who are unfamiliar with my deck or my card understand that this may be something worth countering or worth pausing to ask what it does first, and helps keep responses in order.
A mistake I have seen often is when assigning attackers. My opponent will attack one player first, wait for a response, then swing the rest at another and wait instead of declaring all attackers at once. This happened recently where I had an aetherize and open mana, but my opponent, who had no response, started picking up his cards until the attacker at me came and I played aetherize, then we had to go back and replace his boardstate.
When it comes to Dice on Cards, the other main reason someone would put dice on one is to count how many there are, specifically when Tokens come into play. I have a Magus Lucea Kane deck that has this come up a lot, since she copies X spells that means a creature will enter with +1/+1 counters AND have enough copies that having enough of the Copy token isn't feasible. My easy solution is to put dice ON the card to represent counters, and then dice ABOVE the card to represent quantity. So if I have eight 7/7 Hydras (One original and seven copies), I'd have two dice on the card itself for the stats and two dice directly above the card for the total. Still fairly reasonable to parse the gamestate, unless you tap a certain number of them and not just all of them, where you'd need a third set of dice.
+1/+1 counters are dice on the card, "gain +1/+1 until end of turn" is a dice above the card.
A die on a token is how many of that token I have, I don't put counters on token usually
I always help people remember their triggers, even if they are a detriment to me. Mostly because I don't want them remembering it in a later phase and resolving it then after cards have been played and the board state has changed. I also can't tell you how many games I've been in where a player has an ability they could activate at any time and I look at them and announce, "Untap. . . Upkeep. . . Draw. . . Main pha-" "WAIT I WANTED TO DO SOMETHING ON YOUR UPKEEP!"
As far as people fast-playing and skipping priority, I try to let people respond in turn order but I'm also the only one at my lgs who seems to do it. As such, when a big spell like a board wipe is on the stack and I ask people in turn order if they have responses, I get the feeling they think that is me signaling that I have a response so they all pass to me before they do anything to see if I can stop the spell. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. Some tryhard introduced "mana bullying" to me in this regard when I was last in turn order and didn't respond so said tryhard instructed another player to tap a land for mana to create another round of priority. A real shitty concept, imo.
I think that the point about just not playing creature-focused decks is something worth honing into. That tends to be the rule of thumb advice I give in situations like this. I tend to try and think laterally when addressing problems of attitude and adjusting to that, make it not about what you should be doing, but rather why you refuse to do it and if instead you need a shift in approach altogether. It's also why I tend to make a big deal about becoming more tolerant to different deck archetypes and allowing players to enjoy Magic how they do. There's a risk when you overdo the salt, that you create these harsh stigmas against certain playstyles that pigeonholes players to conform to them, where they now are pressured play more "acceptable" decks they actually don't care about as much in trying to avoid conflict. I'd rather play against whatever the opponent wants to play, I try to make that clear at every table with my go-to motto "It's my responsibility to make sure that I win, not yours." If your heart says Zo-Zu Ponza or Toxrill control, go for it. Win the way you want to and I'll just make sure I win how I want to first.
I just recently finished building a Lathliss deck and after a few games I have realized exactly what you are saying: either I don't want to be "mean" or I want to "hold blockers". But...it's a mono red dragons deck. It's meant to attack lol. So I will be doing more of that now. Great video! :)
Gotta disagree on the dice thing, while I agree that some people go overboard or use them weird, I have decks which have different types of modulations and there is no universe where I can keep track of them without the help of dice, and same thing for my opponents. I use different dice depending on what they are supposed to mark (like +1/+1 dice for counters or using different colors for example) but its something that helps so much for me and the table because they dont want me to have to ask 8 times what their creatures are at per turn because I forget or me have to try and remember my entire board state in order whenever someone asks about one of my cards because that is the alternative.
Using dice is almost all upside, it allows you to not have to ask which makes it obvious that its relevant what its at, and if its something that might be changing more often or its especially relevant then just ask like you would without dice and the die just serves as a helpful reminder that modulation of some sort is happening there. If anything I find it to be annoying when some people will show up with a token deck or a equipment deck without any dice and we spend half the game recounting and rechecking cards to remember what its at until I just grab them some extra dice and the game can continue smoothly.
i do play just to play and not for winning cause i still have fun but i do think it makes lots of sense to start careing less about making enemys and stuff like that great video ^^
Completely agree, only time I "pull my punches" (not making enemies, not attacking planeswalkers, etc that was brought up in the video) is when I'm playing with a friend who is workshopping a deck and its not going well for them. Give them a turn or 2 to get a little more info about the strengths and weaknesses of the deck so that we can BOTH use that to make the deck more fun to play and consistent.
If you're playing with friends I think the goal should always be to have fun and make sure your friends also are having fun. There's no problem with having a strong deck but if you ONLY play super strong decks and essentially force your friends to change how they want to play just to avoid getting killed by turn 5, they are not gonna have fun just getting stomped each time you're in the pod. Doesn't mean you should pull your punches if their deck is just bad, there's just a difference in attacking vs targeting the person with the "weakest" board state/potential.
Im definitely guilty of not attacking consistently enough. The main circumstance for me is that I feel bad hitting people that are open bc they are behind. Ive been trying to do it more bc it speeds up games but I do kinda feel bad still.
I remember one game with my buddies where me and one person were both playing precons, with maybe 10 upgrades between the two decks, where my other friend was playing his highly tuned Experiment Kraj deck that usually combos out 1-2 turns after dropping Kraj. Solution? Attacking more. We never allowed Kraj to untap and focused him down in combat. Ended up being a really fun game, plus the Kraj player enjoys feeling like the “archenemy” so we all had a good time
My friend also plays slow control decks with a lot of lategame value. I'm a strong 60 card player but new to commander. I quickly figured out that even if he has a weak board state in the early game, it is a trick. You shouldn't pressure the player with the weakest board state or spread out damage, but cut down the lategame players first, so that the table can still often "emergency player remove" them once they start to blow everything up and pop off themselves. Especially when they love to use black to turn life into value.
There is one thing I think is justified to use dice over stats like in 4:18 is when a creature's **base** stats change. Stuff like Tree of Perdition or when you don't have tokens of a specific p/t.
I agree to some extent, but it's easy to get lost on that too with complex board states.
Yeah I do this when playing melek, reforged researcher. It tracks the amount of instants and sorceries in my graveyard and especially on webcam games that is quite difficult for other players to keep track of
The first commander list I built for myself after getting back into magic about a year ago was a straightlaced Arahbo cat typal aggro/beatdown list, and... it wins a shocking percentage of games in my usual pod just from how relentless the combat damage is. I wouldn't even say that the group I usually play with is necessarily hesitant about combat damage either, but simply not giving slower decks time to establish a win condition that I can't interact with has been very effective. Notably, some of the big blowouts where I've lost horribly were because I let a Niv-Mizzet, Parun land on the board and hadn't spent the prior 5 turns getting that player down to 15 life as they sat there with a mostly open board. I have since learned my lesson, and the cats are thriving for it.
Also... wow, things like Qasali Slingers are powerful effects for interaction. Sometimes it feels a little petty to just blow up a mana rock or two, but there are regularly high value enchantments to hit which tend to otherwise be allowed to just lay low for far too long. It could just be an issue with my pod, but I feel like enchantment removal gets severely overlooked in a lot of lists.
I'm a newbie and have only played commander for a month but from my brief experience, IRL game in LGS is just so much better than playing online with random pods. All of these problems with players lying about their power level, being so sweaty that they try to exploit every mistake another player made, not allowing turn rollbacks, getting mad that others interact with their board (removing/countering etc), even shit talking others for plays they think is bad, all of which made the games sour and ankward pretty much only happens in online spelltable games.
I've attended 10 commander parties in 3 LGS and everyone is so accepting to newbies and even when I'm playing against players with higher level decks I never had a game where anyone would argue/shit talk to the point the game felt sour. When someone made a mistake like forgetting to trigger something, the others would usually remind them or when we got stuck because we're not sure about the exact ruling for a weird situation, we wouldn't argue and just google it or ask the LGS owner who just so happens to be an ex-judge.
Do i get stomped by them? Sometimes, but even then everyone made sure to have fun and jokes about it to keep the mood lighthearted. I just plays on spelltable if I'm that desperate and can't attend a commander party.
Misplays are a part of the experience, for me. Mistakes become a part of the tapestry of the game, just as much as the good plays. Makes it a challenge to rise above. Some of my fondest games were those were i made a huge blunder on a critical combo, but still managed to crawl back from 1 life and pull a win.
The only exceptions are for forgetting to physically change dice/tokens when both players understand the state has change. We just agree to retroactively modify the object to match that understood state.
My personal playgroup is pretty ruthless so we don't have this problem at all, so it always surprises me when I go to an LGS and people are really timid about swinging. I played a game where a voltron player had lethal for several turns but didn't swing because they "weren't provoked yet." They lost.
I play with a table that's very chill. Except for one player who tends to exploit us a bit. He absolutely holds grudges if we attack him for even one damage. His favorite line is, "If you attack me, im going to come after you." Even if he's the only one open.
This player often times gets about 15 to 20 monsters on the field in 3 turns, so we tend to leave him alone.
He also gets upset when we attack, and he can't do anything. Constantly saying, "i dont like being attacked for no reason."
"You're playing a game where attacking is the #1 way to win the game. You are basically saying, 'Let me win the game, my way'."
Omg, why do you tolerate this person?
@@RegisJim
He's the only one with the available space for us to play. We don't have a game shop in our town.
I am getting better at ignoring his whining and attacking him more. I just started playing a few months ago, so my decks are still relatively weak. So I'm still very nervous to attack someone who tends to have a lot of monsters very early in game. However, I'm getting better.
The one deck where I don't do a ton of attacking is the Council of Four. I make a ton of knights and play some anthems, but my main wincon is to draw a bunch of cards with vodalian wave knight or knowledge is power on the field. Having a board full of reasonably unthreatening 2/2s is absolutely critical and if I'm constantly losing them in combat attacking someone for 9 on turn 6, I'm definitely going to lose.
I could probably attack more, and I do get more aggressive when I have something like knight exemplar on the field, but for the most part, if I expect to lose a knight in combat, I'm just not attacking.
I have a Taii Wakeen deck I adore, mainly because I love chomping up creatures via spell slinging. Since I run it as a burn deck though, my pop-off COULD win, but also it could fall short, and I still felt cool!
I like dice UNDER cards to indicate flying. Its goofy but its fun.
Yeah, I have seen a dinosaur typal player have 20+ power on board and their argument for not attacking with anything but the gishath is that they don't want to swing out until it kills everyone. So their strategy is to swing with gishath until they have 100+ power on board (or an overrun effect that does similar things).
(Warning, long-winded echoing of what was already said in the video)
Man i'm glad seeing someone calling out all the stuff about attacking 😀. If one of the most basic game actions is considered rude, your opponents are not mature enough for any non-cooperative multiplayer game. Try voicing that sentiment in almost any other game and people will be dumbfounded.
"How does my build/deck/strategy hold up against pressure" is one of the core questions that any player has to answer unless they go for an early win. I'd argue having to make that equation is part of what makes games interesting, no matter if you have to solve that puzzle, or you force the question onto others with aggresion.
EDH is a communal experience where we want everyone to have fun, but the moment the cards are down it is not our obligation to let your deck do its thing, and pretending otherwise is a disservice to the intelligence of everyone at the table. Expect pressure, build around it.
T. started as a Stax/control player that got tired of seeing people durdle for six turns, started making much more aggresive decks not because i like the playstyle much but because it was a much needed proverbial piranha in the fishtank.
Needed to vent my frustration 🤓
3:45 I keep a counter off of the creature to the side on top of the token for virtuous role token. I keep track of specifically auras and enchantments in general. Two numbers. So I tell people to let me know when to count
I try to use dry erase tokens and with labels like 3, 3T for 3, 3 tapped, but sometimes it's just smoother to use a rolldown to count how many tokens if that number changes a lot. d6 for counters, provided all the tokens being counted are the same. I'd also add that I built a non-pillowfort monarchy deck to encourage more people to swing in casual pods since they either do that or I win off of the card advantage from monarch.
I 100% agree with the „attack more often“ point! I taught my gf to play magic and that’s how she loses more often than not!! She could have 5 creatures out that are 2/2 but as soon as I put down a 3/3 she will just freeze in her tracks and start passing instead of attacking
Something I often notice when Attacking doesn't happen is if 2 or 3 players or even everyone builds up a board and then we enter a cold war staring contest as nobody can leverage their board without massive risk to their board state and leaving themselves open to a counter attack from the other players.
In regards to dice, I have two dice colors. One is for +1/+1 Counters, the other for number of copies for tokens.
As somebody who has many years of experience and thousands of games under my belt I agree with all of this. I actively try to slow my turns down give proper priority to people and be transparent about spells I'm casting and how they can affect the current board state. I don't want to win with a "gotcha moment" it leads to feel bads more often then not and never feels good to win that way. I also try to help direct on other peoples turns to make sure the board states are being properly represented and people have a chance to have priority when needed for the sake of everyone in the game. Now this being said I still make some of these mistakes sometime on purpose even though I know better because and its a bad habit of mine sometimes, but i want people to play their decks and I enjoy seeing them pop off and trying to come back from that.
Hey man I just want to say thanks to your videos I got my friends to actually come out and play commander. We're all new to this hobby and are definitely not playing optimally, but we're having a lot of fun !
Chip damage is soo important! 2 weeks ago i used my Hakim, Loreweaver deck. It's mostly centered around theft, but this time i only got my voltron pieces (a bunch of draw auras, Thran Power Suit and Auramancer's Guise (which i kept in hand for a whiiile). My Stormchaser Drake had like 4 enchantments on him, one of them being Curiosity. Luckily, i wasn't the biggest threat, and i didn't equip the Suit onto my dragon, however, i was allowed to attack an opponent 5 times (for a total of 10 damage) in order to draw cards and was thanked for it cause i was "looking for an answer for the threatening player". In a little bit i could equip my suit and put guise + nerds rage on my drake, and suddenly i had 30+ damage on a drake that could take out my opponents. Had i not chipped for 10 earlier, they would have had an extra turn to search for an answer.
I agree with everything EXCEPT the spreading the love strategy, but with a caveat. I completely and totally agree that if all you are looking to improve is your winrate, absolutely if you have an attack that benefits you more than it hinders you, you should always attack. That being said, I find it a lot more fun to let players play out their decks, after all, nobody came out to watch you win the game. They wanted to play the game, so i add that handicap of im playing a combat heavy deck that if i do attack, i have to spread it around the table until someone becomes too much of a threat or is becoming too much of a threat to let them live. I find that it creates a more fun experience in my playgorups and ive had numerous people after the game tell me they appreciated me letting them get their deck out before just swatting them out of the game. But that is also just my playgroup, every playgroup is different, but thats my personal take with my experience playing.
About chip damage, it depends. My favourite deck involves getting to 6 power (which is 1 more than the stated 5) but armed with double strike and unblockable with two combat phases as it's ability. Needless to say, everytime I cast it out, assuming it has haste, this "chip" damage turns into 24 commander damage lethal.
It really depends on the deck and for voltron, 99% of the time it just means attacking = someone is dying.
I recently started playing magic earlier this year. All my early games, I swung when I could and won a lot. Recently I noticed that I haven't been winning as often because I became more cautious. That early damage saved me in the end. So I totally agree with you.
I think the biggest reason people don't attack in commander is because when you attack that one defenseless dude, you're tapping your creatures and leaving yourself open for the other 2 players who aren't necessarily defenseless. So what you end up with is 4 players sitting around because they don't want to weaken their defenses for potential attacks. When you attack with your voltron commander, he can't defend the other guy's voltron commander.
Now me personally I have a go wide deck with Iroas, God of Victory as my commander, and attacking is almost always the correct play for me, because even if I'm tapping my creatures while attacking, I have stuff like rabble rousing and Krenko, tin street kingpin which generates more bodies from attack triggers which I can use to defend. Not attacking usually results in me having LESS potential blockers funnily enough.
On the dice issue, I heartily agree that non-counters shouldn't be dice. I specifically have WUBRG dice in my bag to account for different types of counters. I do think it's safe for folks when the math gets hairy to have dice next to their cards. You still run into mistakes about updating them, so they should re-count before thinking about play lines. It can make game state much clearer for everyone and save time when someone is thinking about actions and their attention gets split so they have trouble remembering what those numbers were.
Re: Dice
If I have something with variable power (like the Karnstruct or Mortivore), I might put a dice near me so I can try and keep a quick tally going, but I don't put it on the card itself. I put dice on cards for +1/+1 counters, or I put dice ABOVE a card to indicate I have multiples of it, like Scute Swarm and the like, so I don't need to carry 50+ token cards around. Any lord style effects I just keep an eye on but don't use dice to track at all, if it's truly excessive I might pull out an infinitoken and write down on it what the current cumulative anthem effect is.
Oh yeah, wholeheartedly agree that people don’t attack nearly as often as they should. Hopefully we can see that paradigm shift a bit more going forward, so I don’t instantly get vilified for eking out every bit of damage I can. XD
All that said, I think there sometimes is a case for actually spreading your attacks out, namely in decks that also have a gameplan of dishing out tons of board-wide damage. I have a Ganax, Astral Hunter/Agent of the Iron Throne deck that constantly drains opponents when I sacrifice Treasures, and keeping all my opponents’ life totals under certain thresholds with my Dragon attacks is actually super useful in allowing me to take out everyone at once with things like a Bolas’s Citadel. Not to mention effects like Grim Hireling and Professional Face-Breaker that actually net me more value (and overall damage, thanks to the Background) if I actually do hit everyone with at least one thing. Bit niche compared to your average combat-heavy deck, but still.
Thantis: "Allow me to introduce myself..."
I don't attack much because my opponents usually make decks I can't attack into. Lots of go wide decks that I need a boardwipe for. That and I have a player that holds grudges for minor things like getting a thing removed once or getting hit for a bit of damage. So I just play Aristocrats burn decks instead so I can enjoy everything I love in commander without needing to make myself anxious over potential grudges over 3 damage
I was playing with a group (which I left for various of reason), that were very shy on attacking. They would either play defense ou would choose randomly. One game I was playing aggro and I was only attacking a control player because it was MY biggest threat and he was very pissed at it, always telling me that I should split my attacker or I should stop "bullying" him. I said no and attacked for a bunch, explaining that I do not care about the other 2 decks. He became angry and for next game, changed to an another deck and focused exclusively on me. He was trash talking me saying thing like "how do you like that, being the target" or "it wouldn't happen if I attacked everybody at once". Very un unphased I just told him "This is the point of the game, swing at me, it's all good". I don't know why but he was angrier after that. Never played with that group after that game.
I play Adrianna, which gives my creatures melee, in a Boros Knights deck. I can play her on turn 5 or 6 depending on my ramp. Up to then I play ramp or knights. The game is always short because I start swinging once I get her out and don't stop until I win or lose, or I get board wiped.
I made a new deck, and in it I put a combo of painters servant and akroma's memorial. I chose black for painters servants first ability and my friend complained it's literally impossible to deal with the combo. So I said "ok, then use cards that make me sacrifice it"
'but it's such a niche thing to have cards that do that!'
"Ok, then just exile the akroma's memorial, memorial isn't indestructable, only my creatures have protection from black and red" then I showed him a card that would fit in his deck since his deck is red blue and the card I showed as an example is red. He then goes "but I don't want to, that's not the point of the deck!" So I go " ok, then maybe next time don't waste your counter spells on the other guy's commander since he can bring it back at any time, look at his mana pool."
It has no enter the battlefield effects aside from discarding cards to give it keywords" *well I would still need to have the counter spell when you play that card*. Note, he has a few counter spell type cards in his deck, not just the original counter spell. He told me to just not play that combo anymore which annoys me because there are so so many cards that remove artifacts. I even told him I have no way to do anything about exile, so if he just finds a way to exile my memorial I just can't do anything about it.
Maybe do a combo of destroying memorial then exiling my graveyard. I find that scenario especially funny because when I was building the deck I told him it was graveyard based and he just kept showing me cards that exile the graveyard and going "ok well I can just play this and your deck is no longer usable" but he couldn't seem to do that same thing regarding my memorial. Also, keep in mind, it's an artifact deck. I would say my deck is like 60% artifacts, 30% black permanents and 10% green permanents.
So running artifact and graveyard removal would shut down my deck hardcore. Now I'm torn cuz I really like this deck, and this combo isn't even one I search out, I just happened to top deck it. I have like 4 tutors, a couple of which I can bring back like moonsilver key, and the plan is never to search these cards out, it's to search out stuff like Wurmcoil Engine, Toski, portal to phyrexia, and Imotekh the Stormlord. He said the deck was basically a cedh deck but I don't think it's gonna be consistent enough.
That's a 2 card combo and I just happened to draw them. It's not like that's gonna happen every game, what are the odds I'm gonna draw 2 separate cards in an edh game every deck, especially if I'm not searching for them? I've never had a deck pop off before and the whole thing just kinda soured the first real victory I've had since I got back into magic.
I got back into magic in 2021 and occasionally go and play. I go to the lgs to play maybe once every couple months so I've played MAYBE 30 games in all that time and I have won maybe 2 or 3 times. Just feels kinda shitty I finally have a good deck that CAN win due to its synergy and I'm just... Not allowed to use part of it when nobody else really seems to have a problem with that. Idk, I feel like it's a rather standard graveyard artifact deck, there's a lot of cards in it that could probably be substituted for much stronger cards which would make it more cedh. Even after he scooped I almost died to the last guy, I was at 39 HP when my friend scooped, and when I won against our third, he had taken me down to 4 HP.
So it's not like the deck is impossible to do anything against, the deck that almost killed me isn't a cedh deck, it's probably a 7 on a power level scale, maybe even an 8, so if it's going neck and neck with mine when I happen to draw my best cards I'd consider mine also a 7 or an 8.
I just don't feel someone can really complain about a broken combo if they're unwilling to do anything in their deck to counter, not the combo, but the card type (artifacts).
I'm building another keyword deck right now but idk if I even really wanna play it because I feel like the same thing is gonna happen of him not having flyers and just getting mad that my deck just gives everyone flying due to Odric's ability (assuming I have a card with flying on the battlefield, which most of them do) and it just makes me thing that even though he's my best friend, I don't really want to play with him if every time I actually manage to do good it gets soured by "well that's dumb you're not allowed to play that!"
He even told me "I'd rather play against a infinite because you can actually do something about those!" And I told him "you can do less about an infinite, unless you have an instant that stops it the game is literally over, with this you can get rid of akroma's any time, so long as you have at least 1 HP to stay alive, you can always stop it and it's easier to stop than an infinite because you can stop it at any time, not just when it first starts"
I really wanna emphasize what I said earlier about the fact that over the course of 30 or so games I've won maybe 2. I have a vampire precon which I never won with, which I played maybe 5 games with and deemed I don't really like the deck, and the rest were my original Glissa deck which I just reworked this week into the one that popped off last night. That's a 1/24 win rate (assuming the numbers are correct, I obviously haven't kept track of how many times I've played it). So far I've played 1 game with this new deck and won, yeah that's a 100% win rate but that's not indicative of anything, I just got a good first game with it.
Sorry for rambling I just really wanted to talk about this because of the topic of the video being gameplay mistakes, and I took advantage of his mistakes like waiting until our third used duress to see my friend's hand, seeing he had only lands, and then going "cool, I don't have to worry about this being countered then" and him being unwilling to cover a removal type in his deck. Now, I can respect wanting to keep a theme of a deck, but when you're running a deck that is built around fucking around, I don't see the point of getting mad at losing to a deck not built to fuck around. Ironic because I'll pose meme deck ideas I'm not planning to make and he shoots them down because they're either not serious enough, too niche to get a combo going, or has something that's just weird to play against.
I super agree about attacking, When I first started playing edh I built a lot of creature decks and could just never ever win with them unless I popped off and craterhoofed like turn 7 with a ton of creatures which happened like twice ever. So I started building and playing decks that dont attack because the risk reward of trading my attackers or leaving myself open doesnt feel good to me as a player. Now I play janky combo decks or control decks exclusively.
The lesson is a bit more complicated than "attack more" or "attack the late game threat in the early game". Your opponent's life is an obstacle AND a defensive resource. When you attack you reduce the threshold needed for someone else to win before you pop off (or after you pop off and are stopped. Interaction is healthy!). At the same time you are reducing the threshold you need to win. Sometimes people attacking means another player jumps in and wins without waiting until "they pop off" because everyone was damaged enough that the player did not need to wait for the exponential part of their curve. At the same time if nobody attacks, then you need to assemble 120 damage. In general a mid-late or late game deck will be best prepared to deliver the 120 damage in a single turn. The early game attacks are the players voting on whether the game will be decided by who can do 30 damage in a turn through 120 damage in a turn. You should attack or not attack depending on what damage threshold your deck is best able to steal a win with.
From how I build decks, I like to see each deck grow (do its thing), try to win, and get stopped. Currently I plan for around a 70-90 hp threshold (but can get to a 120 threshold if given time). Thus it is in my interest to not attack unless I get something from it. For example Ghired attacking populates a creature at the cost of ~6 damage. I can count on the other players attacking enough to whittle the hp down from 120hp to 80hp or less before I pop off (thus I don't even need to attack the late game threat because the table did it for me). Other decks in my metagame are planning for only a swing of 30-60. They should attack more so the total hp is at 60 when they pop off rather than still at 80 a few turns later when I would pop off.
This nuance affects even the fastest aggro deck although it usually affects how they distribute the damage rather than having them slow down. The fastest aggro deck needs to distribute the damage so the 2nd fastest aggro deck does not have the opportunity to kill the fastest deck and polish off the other two. This means the fastest aggro deck biases their damage towards the 2nd early game threat (to avoid making usurping easy) while not discounting the late game threat(in case the fastest aggro deck fails their 1st attempt at winning and the game continues).
Now this nuance only exists between the players going for a damage victory condition and whose damage potential is finite but growing. Combo based decks skip this nuance. They don't need to attack since that reduces the time they have to find their combo. They can also be faster than the late game deck.
To top off all that nuance there is also the nuance of "are you on defense, or offense, or both right now?" I have seen plenty of times when a deck is playing the archenemy but won't have enough steam before they are interacted with. I have also seen times when a player can't attack the threat but can attack someone else (which can make sense. see above) but unfortunately did enough damage that now the threat can close out the game (this is easiest to notice when you are the threat. While you are counting life totals trying to make a plan, one of the other players donates 8 damage to your calculations).
So the basic lesson of "attacking is often a good idea" is a good lesson. The later lessons bring back the nuance of "not attacking is often a good idea" and how to differentiate.
I mean, you're just describing a control-deck/philosophy, but there's a reason that midrange is the most popular, and aggro is important to keep control in check.
Classically, it's rock-paper-scissors, at it's core (albeit with a ton of variance), though EDH does break this by making an aggro win need 6x the effort, while maintaining the ease of things like combos/alt wins/etc.
@@healdrop9313 I don't think that is the control-deck philosophy. It is based on commander having a 3rd player. Thus aggro and midrange are more concerned about the sniped win risk than a control deck is. Consider 3 midranged decks.
The fastest one grows the slowest and should be attacking all out. The other two should choose how much to attack based on not losing to the fastest deck while also beating the other deck. The middle deck attacks the fastest a bit but mostly prepares to kill both the fastest and slower decks. The slowest midrange deck avoids attacking to avoid making it any easier on the fastest and middle decks.
The fastest deck hopes the other 2 decks attack too much.
The middle deck hopes they and the slowest deck deal just enough damage for them to snipe the win.
The slowest deck hopes they and the middle deck attack too little for the middle's plans but have enough interaction (including damage as player remove if needed) to stop the fastest deck.
@@healdrop9313 Honestly control decks could ignore my post unless they win by damage. Most true control decks win by interaction volume. They may kill with damage, but everyone was already defeated when Brago can repeatedly delete (counter/remove) any attempt at damaging them. Thus they, like combo, would just not attack because they are not a damage deck. My post was mostly about the interaction between 3+ players and 2+ damage based decks.
@@Ent229 You just described aggro, midrange, and control but said they were all midrange? Like, it’s entirely the speed of your deck.
Aggro isn’t just “attack with creatures”, and control isn’t just “stax/pillowfort”; they’re the rate at which you try to win the game, and strategy is downstream from that. Control wanting to win the slowest means that they need to survive to win late, which means they need some method of controlling the game until then. That doesn’t necessarily have to be an interaction lock, you can have a “true control” deck with fog-type effects, for instance.
Which is why I say that your philosophy of going really slow and letting the others beat on one-another is textbook control. Goad is control, and you’re effectively describing that.
@@healdrop9313 Would you agree that Isshin, Two Heavens as One, Balan Wandering Knight, and Krenko Mob Boss are generally built as aggro decks in commander? (Isshin might be more of a aggro/midranged hybrid. It straddles that line a bit) If they sit down to a game are you going to relabel them as 1 aggro, 1 midrange, and 1 control deck just because the relative speeds are different? Regardless, my advice applies to all 3 players. The fastest deck should attack all out but be careful with their distribution. The middle deck should attack carefully, they want to deal enough but not too much damage if they want to snipe the win from the fastest deck. The slowest deck would want to avoid attacking unless they have an attack trigger (even then they need to weigh the cost/benefit).
Then if I add my Ghired midranged deck to the pod the math changes again. There is still no control deck in the pod, but now Isshin can take it a bit easier since the relatively slower Ghired deck is also forced to play control without a control deck.
If someone added an Angus Mackenzie fog control deck, the math changes yet again. Although Angus can ignore the math because they are not going to win by a damage snipe. They are instead going to win by negating everyone else's damage and then eventually cleanup the game with damage. Instead of engaging in the multiplayer damage minigame, the control deck negates the minigame and then cleans up.
The thing i would had loved if you had covered was "recognizing you need to build your deck better." Often times you are in that situation where someone does aggro you out and for as salty as it is to be singled out as you watch the other players improve their situation because they weren't attacked or because they revealed they had removal when they were. Sometimes we put so much effort into building our deck to "do the thing" without realizing we didn't put in enough mana sources for the deck to "do the thing." And this convo can circle back to the super mana rocks like Mana Crypt. And on that note, i'm trying to raise awareness for Sol Talisman, Lotus Bloom, and Mox Tantilite. In my opinion, WotC should be putting these in every future commander precon, and they do need reprinting. The suspend 3 is disheartening, but i play them in my competitive deck and i'm amazed at how often they save me from a loss. The look on my opponents faces when i sac'd Urza's Saga and slapped a Lotus Bloom on field was priceless. And there are other things that can cheat those mana rocks onto the field like Mystic Forge and Bolas's Citadel. But you do have to keep in mind that they don't actually have a casting cost so you can't cast them from exile.
people forget that the whole point of the "mana dork" is if you end up not needing the mana, it's a 1/1 that can do 1 damage to someone's face for 1 damage, that someone having 0 creatures on board.
One thing about eliminating players is that I look at my opponents as a resource. They can be a source of removal for a permanent type my colors aren't good at, them existing might deter another player hitting and/or eliminating me for fear of a crackback or with new Bloomburrow cards they might be the most inconsequential player to gift them something. So I often try not to eliminate players for as long as possible: generally until they're in danger of winning the game.
my big thing with the attacking issue is that whenever i would attack, it would do nothing to progress the game in a way that would benefit me, i’d often just lose some of my big things or just literally get blocked and lose my creatures
For things likely artifact count, I put the dice on the side of the battlefield as a reminder for myself, but out of the way.
And I do occasionally do the dice-as-p/t thing, but *only* when it's a cloned creature. Using dice to indicate anthems gets confusing.
Aaaalso, don't get me started on dice on tokens. If you don't have enough tokens hard to use dice to indicate number of tokens and also +1 counters!
Biggest recent mistake was not planning my mana out correctly, so I was missing one coloured mana and I couldn't play my sephara after a big turn, got hit with a board wipe directly after :(
On the dice topic, I'll use those little blue bits from the battle spirits game as my Omo everything counters to help unclutter my field a little.
We put a dice counter on cards with a static global affect to show it easily. Since if that card goes away so does the global counter. Then we keep the variable cards without counters.
I see this all the time. I would even tell people to attack more, there's literally no reason not to. They only started paying attention when I won a game at exactly 1 life and I told them 'if you guys just swung a random utility creature at me at any point of the game, you could have won'
Biggest mistake for players in my group was never counting the amount of ramp or cards in hand as part of evaluating advantage. It seems simple, but lifting your gaze and seeing that one guy seems to have 6 permanents in play and is hellbent and another guy has only his commander in play but 10 cards in hand can be hard to learn. Attack the guy with 10 cards in hand, every time, unless he is saying (and telling the truth about) holding 10 basics he land-taxed out of his deck. If a control player draws 20 cards with a sea-gate restoration and passes, he should probably not be allowed to untap.
About the 'not attacking' mistake, I think it depends on the playgroup. In our playgroup players who aren't aggressive still win games, just because they make no enemies. I'm usually trigger happy and swing the first opportunity I have, which leads to all kinds of blood feuds with the players I attacked 😂
whenever i play my ellivere deck from the wilds of eldraine precon, i always have two dice on the side, one to represent enchantment count, and the other to represent actual power and toughness from enchantments (incase of an anthem or anything)
then if theres counters or an ancestral mask it makes those a little easier to keep track of
Totally agree. Especially on the attack more point. Games where monarch is in play and everyone is gunning for it are always more fun and shorter
I think the dice thing is tricky. If you can clearly denote something with the dice, it's completely valid. What if I have 100 soldier tokens? Am I just supposed to use 100 actually tokens? Should I use separate dice to the side? How do those dice attack? What I tend to do is use at least two tokens of relevant types in a token deck and represent the amount of that creature that I have with a die in the top left corner. If some need to attack, I take the second token and split the counts. I do think using counters to represent buffs from equipment and anthems is a mistake however. If you organize your battlefield properly, it's easy to tell what those buffs are.
The decks I build tend to be more aggressive in nature in Gruul and Naya (favorite color combos), and it's insane always going up against these blue decks who win through accumulated value, just constantly group hugging each other and being surprised I'm swinging into them when I know their entire goal is just an oracle or omniscience. Then they get offended that I am actively putting pressure on them like I'm supposed to just let them do whatever they want. Insanity.
I agree on attacking. It's important to get in shots where you can and if you're opening yourself up to attacks by having no blockers early on, the risk is minimal so I really think it's worth it. Anyone who says "don't attack the Planeswalker" player because they haven't done anything or things along those lines are a fool! A little bit of sandbagging is fine. Throw some misdirection out there. "I'm really not that big of a threat. My deck just isn't clicking right now. Are you sure you want to attack me?" When they say "yes," accept that their attack is valid and it's an honor because they have reason to fear you. I, like you, tend to build decks that look like they're doing nothing and pop off out of nowhere with greedy plays. Tawnos is a deck I run and it goes from 0 to 60 1 well timed turn. So I accept that when I'm open, my usual play group will get shots in and I will not begrudge them
I love when people get mad when i attack them with a krenko deck. Uh bruhhh?? How tf am i gunna win? My commander poops out gobbies. For combat.....