(just to be clear, you can totally have a deck that is a group hug deck or a deck with chaos elements that can still close out the game, this video isn't talking about those kinds of decks)
if I am giving up a good play for something funny, it has to be really funny. but there are times when the funny play is also the best play, like killing someone for the monarch.
Like when you are on team edh and casting generous gift on the teammate's land before their turn so they can attack an enemy for their remainig life points (that was the best play but I only noticed that line during that player's turn oof)
When I was a newer mtg player, I played commander at an LGS with some people who were regulars there. I remember playing my Goreclaw ramp deck that wants to attack because of the +1/+1 and trample trigger. One player was playing a grouphug deck and very early on in the game, they claimed "If it becomes a 1v1, I'll scoop and be second, which is a win for me, and "anyone who attacks me, I won't help". I took that as "I won't help, you specifically" because my deck likes attacking and can't win otherwise. So I started attacking them so they would stop kingmaking the other two players. Why do I remember this after 5+ years? Because the concept of a deck that doesn't want to win was so alien to me. Since then, I always target the grouphug player who doesn't want to win.
That is a good strategy in general - but make sure the group hug player *actually* doesn't want to win. From my experience, especially when playing with strangers/lesser known aquaintances, group hug players tend to be sneaky and fully lean into the "I'm just so nice for giving out all of this free stuff, there is no reason to worry about me"-appearence to then suddenly destroy people. They might not admit it, but there are hints. When Kwain drops a Forced Fruition, they might not be doing it out of the kindness of their heart.
@@Nr4747I pulled something dirty with my grouphug combo and used Defense of the Heart to grab a Felidar Guardian and Felidar Sovereign when I already had a Saheeli Rai in play. Grouphugging into an infinite combo is kind of an annoying but effective play if people are caught off guard while using resources to fight each other.
On the topic of deliberate “feel bad” decks, an LGS that has now closed due to 2020 had a policy of handing out some kind of store credit based on Commander wins. This is a bad idea, for everybody, but the worst part that I experienced day one at this LGS was a man I’ll call Pramikon Jones. Pramikon Jones seemed to have cracked the system by playing the most infuriating control deck imaginable. If you can think of a card that gives two Pramikon, it was in the deck. More importantly, the removal suite seemed actively built to pick out the most concede-worthy cards that nobody prepares for. I was ready for removal, but I wasn’t exactly prepared for Pramikon Jones to play Agent of Treachery and then defend my commander with his life.
Goodness, I had a player in my playgroup whose philosophy was "if I can't win, everybody else must suffer". He had a monoblack artifact combo deck that failed to combo off quite often, so he stuffed his deck full of removal or group-slug pieces and, if his combo didn't go off, he would spend the whole game by systematically slowing everything down. We had to have a talk with him
I have a player like that in my current pod who has that exact philosophy, only 50% of the time he brings out a deck that intentionally is designed to lose, but slow down the game or target anyone but his best friend as much as possible. A boros deck full of nothing but pillowfort cards and board wipes, a mono-black filled with massive draw and removal but zero ways to win, etc etc.
@@Interrobang212 our best guess is that he actually enjoyed slowing the game down ahahaha Idk honestly, after the talk he switched to a much more enjoyable deck, but played less and less
The only thing I do is I will throw everything I have at the player who takes me out. Kill me next turn? Ima strip mine excavator 6 of your lands and bounce your whole board with rivers rebuke.
Recently I had a guy make a suicidal anti-slog play. At that game night, he bolted me to stop my living death from resolving, so that a third player could overwhelm him with board state and win. While I was mostly exchanging control of creatures, the third player had earned his board state. It's sportsmanlike, I appreciate it.
Almost every bad game of Magic I've had, someone was explicitly, loudly trying to have "fun" and "wasn't playing to win." "Not playing to win" every time I've seen it has meant "I get to determine who does win, though." I'm sure somebody out there just wants to explore mechanics and have fun, but "fun" for the folks I've met has meant controlling the match. Because it doesn't look mean - they're letting someone else win, after all! - they get to seem relaxed but also toy with a captive audience. Showing up and playing a genuine match with peers is enough to create fun. We don't need ringleaders or benevolent dictators or whatever.
Indeed, the issue stems from Magic’s game design (and perhaps game theory in general) making it far, far easier to grief a game than win a game. It’s bad enough when you try to grief with a deck made to win. It’s far worse when a deck made to grief tries to grief.
Playing a very dumb talrand deck where the goal is to get drakes down and aggressively protective everything with counterspells. All of the 4 opponents are playing much higher power levels than me in terms of card quality, because i’m playing every 3 mana or above counterspell to protect my board. Nobody’s attacking but me until they can make lethal threats, letting the planeswalker guy get off four ultimates and accidentally deck himself in the process. Board wipes are flying everywhere. I fundamentally cannot do anything after the fifth board wipe because the table needs to be wiped every turn to prevent the others players from winning and i’m playing a mono-blue aggro deck. Nobody’s attacked me, i’m still at 40 life somehow. I try to throw in my counterspells to help people win but nothing works. My one contribution to the game is someone else stealing my whelming wave to cast it to prevent the game ending
The worst game of EDH I ever played was a fairly casual group where someone showed up with a much higher power level deck and comboed off to victory on turn 2. The second worst game I ever played was a fairly casual group where someone showed up with an enchantress group hug deck with no win cons. In the latter case, it was a longer game, but I was able to interact with my other opponents more or less so I still enjoyed at least part of it. In the former, however, the high power level player only had their one deck and wouldn't play with anything else, so we either had to exclude them or get dunked on repeatedly. The rest of the playgroup chose the latter, so I left - not just the table, and not just the playgroup entirely, but MtG as a whole for nearly 10 years. I just didn't have any desire to play a game where nobody agreed with me on what would make for engaging gameplay. The selfishness of the players made me lose all interest.
One time, we spent 3 hours resolving a single upkeep because the group hug deck kept giving everyone the resources to add more and more shit on the stack. The bottom of the stack was a game-winning effect.
one of my worst edh games was with my zabaz modular deck. its focused on getting value from my creatures dying. so when my opponent pregame put down a leyline of the void (i even mentioned, hey that hoses my deck! i will attack you until either of us die if you play that card) and i didnt draw any interaction it was not fun because no one at the table had a win con besides the one green deck. another that i appreciate you pointing out is that people tend to get mad when people target your stuff or slow you down! yes! i am not going to let a chulane or some other comparable value piece stay on the board! it will win you the game!
The annoying part about commander is that the most optimal plays end up being socially discouraged. Is that one player missing land drops and cant block your early creatures? Kill them first and you have one less opponent.
The great thing about storm decks is that this problem is no longer even really an option. Playing my whole deck to try and win the game IS the funny thing i want to do with it, and i can do it at any amount of my own life left, so my opponents dont have the choice to hold back on me for not doing anything yet. Thank you for giving me another reason to believe storm and goad are the only two types of decks i ever need to run
I see this so much in new players and their first forays into deckbuilding. They don't do it intentionally, but many people just jam as much synergy into their list as they can and believe that the overwhelming value will win them the game. Stompy decks that do this actually have an end goal (turn sideways), but non-combat strategies suffer from meandering value piles not actually doing anything.
This is a great topic to bring attention to, I think oftentimes my own hubris causes me to spare my opponents often leading to my downfall. Once again love the video short and sweet :)
I'm a mostly reformed "doesn't play to win" player. I still don't care about winning, but I'm not just trying to prevent myself from losing leading to stale games. I think a big part of the reason I used to be like that was that I didn't get to play that often, and wanted to have the experience last as long as possible to compensate. Now, if I can take an action that will push the game towards an end and won't completely backfire mechanically in an obvious way, I will usually do so. I've also started playing more proactive strategies to combat my hesitant and forgetful nature. It's led to much more interesting and satisfying games. I'm not certain what to put for miserable games. I've had some bad experiences, such as against hard stax when I was still new, but those were methods to actually achieve a victory, not a way to prolong the game. In some ways, I had been blessed by facing players with regular tournament experience, who knew how to end a game. I guess my experience against a new player using Toxrill might count. He was more interested in being able to wipe the board clean with Toxrill, than actually winning. He didn't get to do it for long though.
This is an interesting perspective. My deckbuilding philosophy starts from "what can I build if I forget about winning?" but after I have the thematic core worked out, I then shift to "Okay, so how does this deck win?" and when I sit down to play, I do play to win (usually). But I used to play at a table where it seemed like nobody was actually trying to win, and yeah, there were some slogs at that table. And we'd rarely get in more than one, maaaaybe two games in a night because it would take 4 hours. I still had plenty of fun at that table--edh was really just an excuse to have dinner as a group, and as long as we all treated it like that, we'd have a good time.
been playing magic for about 6 years and just recently trying to get into commander, only played one session of 3 games and none of them were a slog but i have seen people pulling punches and asking people to pull their punches. coming from playing in a pretty competitive limited environment it's very strange. unwritten social contract stuff can be difficult for me so these videos are very helpful in trying to parse where the lines might be around people's expectations.
The thing is you have different personality types, the people who are there to play and win, the ones who are there to play/ socialize and mabey win, and ones who are there to get to strange and unusual game states. The conflict comes about when the difference personality types come with different expectations of the game. Everyone playing to win? Great! Everyone there to socialize and catch up over a game? Great! It's when these expectations are not met the aggravation of "not taking the game seriously" or " your bullying me" comes about
100% !! I didn’t start playing commander until i had played other magic formats first, so when i first got into a playgroup, i was honestly shocked at this like, bashful, “i don’t know if i should attack anyone, that would be *rude*” attitude that so many people seemed to have. It’s a game! In almost every scenario, there is only one winner! It is fun to have everybody trying their hardest to be that winner, and graciously losing if they don’t make it. I would much rather lose a game bc my opponents tried their best to win then shuffle up for another game, than experience an agonizing 90 minute snoozefest of each player sheepishly playing suboptimally in the name of mitigating “bad feelings”. Isn’t it way more fun knowing that if you win, your opponents were ACTUALLY trying to beat you? And if you lose, you know you tried your best?
thank you, really relatable. i play MTG for fun, with the minimal intention of winning and not the other way around. losing by playing the way i enjoy is far better than winning with most boring way.
Best advice i ever got for playing casual commander was "Build like a timmy, play like a spike" Put those silly overcosted cards in your deck but make game play choices like a Timetwister and full set of black border og duals is on the line. My regular pod got a lot more fun when we started building decks like that and playing like it. I can also name the worst game I ever played. There was turbofog angus mckenzie who's win con was everyone gets bored and leaves, And a Norin the Wary chaos deck with lots of thieve's auction, scrambleverse type effects. Pulled out Slicer for round 2 and had a nice 1v1 with the other guy who also had a deck trying to win after we blitzed the other two out of the game.
I've been guilty of being that scrambleverse player before. I threw all the big, dumb chaos cards in a Narset, Enlightened Master deck: scrambleverse, warp world, possibility storm, omen machine, eye of the storm. I liked the idea of having to figure out how best to use an unpredictable set of tools like a real-time draft, instead of following the same play pattern every game. I thought it would be fun. And it was! For me, specifically. What I didn't realize back then until I actually played a couple of those cards, and was extremely obvious in hindsight, is that the rest of the table wasn't interested in that type of game. They wanted to play their decks the way they built them, and I was preventing that. Every time I played that Narset deck it made everybody else miserable. It didn't take long for me to rebuild the deck without the chaos cards, and eventually I dropped Narset altogether. Recently, though, I've been thinking about that "real time draft" style again, and how I can achieve that just for myself without imposing it on everyone else.
I can reccomend Jeleva piloting a spellthief deck. As long as it's a tasteful theft deck you won't make too many enemies. There's also the dimir archetype of plundering your enemy's graveyards, working with an ever expanding card pool.
as much as i love commander, i am absolutely peeved by the bizarre effects that free for all games have on seemingly everyones psyche. Once the game goes beyond two players, all of a sudden we have people like you described, who are passive for fear of hurting someones feelings, and at the other end of the spectrum, we have the people who's feelings get hurt whenever you do absolutely anything in opposition to them whatsoever. You remove one of their creatures, counter a single spell, or even just swing at them once, and they take it as a personal attack and decide to do everything in their power to retaliate against you specifically no matter what else happens on the board after that. its really, really frustrating i wish people could use the same logical thinking they use in 1v1 formats in multiplayer formats as well. all logic goes out the window in favor of plays based on vibes and feelings, and i despise it. this is not limited to commander whatsoever, i dabbled in free for alls of various kinds, and in any game that has a social component, these same sorts of players manifest. i see this a TON on free for all battles in pokemon especially.
The unfortunate secret is that it’s not bizarre. Unlike 1v1 magic, where each and every interaction is strictly zero sum, multiplayer is only zero sum as a whole. Thus, retaliatory saltlord behavior (and/or threatening to do so) is not merely toxic; it is also a valid risk/reward play, as far as game theory is concerned. There isn’t a specific model in game theory I can point out, but it perhaps most resembles a 4-way prisoner’s dilemma where at least one opponent needs to defect, but the first to do so eats the penalty. And it is the presence of this ‘saltlord’s gambit’ that leads to the other type of player you mention: the one who will refuse to hit the biggest threat at the table out of fear of retaliation (which is one of the possible counterstrategies; the other is to call the saltlord’s bluff until they tire of throwing the game).
The worst games ive had is when the group is actively not wanting to have a rule zero discussion beyond just "I have power levl X" and someone then tries to argue resource denial stax decks are power level 6 somehow
Yay, Elky! 🎉❤ CEDH to me is like what Smash Bros tournaments were years ago, a casual game with an audience that found a way to make it competitive. Casual Smash Bros can get looong and boring with matches of "Hey lets do 10 stocks and no time limit!"
Truly, the msot consistent bad times I have are when my opponents are just not great at deckbuilding, so when I'm out ahead and trying to win, they wipe everything - often asymmetrically - but have absolutely no plan beyond that. It's just "oh, the others are too far ahead, let me just reset back to zero"... only for them not to make use of that advantage at all. Usually this is that same kind of "jank, but not trying to win" deck, because they feel like they've not gotten to do their funny jank thing enough yet. It irritates me especially when it's cyclonic rift-esque effects - assymetric bounce effects, exclusively because they don't make use of the time they buy, so all they've done is effectively waste everyone's time. Doing this occasionally is fine, but then another player might pull the same, because they'd over extended pre-wipe, and I didn't, so now I'm getting wiped again. It's at that point where I often feel myself go on tilt and I have concede the game, else boredom turns to genuine irritation. I never want to be that guy that gets annoyed for experiencing removal, but when it's turn-after-turn of nothing burgers, and any attempt I make to progress is wiped clean, I can't help but feel like nobody here is having fun, ahaha. Good video!
My worse match was with a guy running the mishra, artificer prodigy deck. A classic deck which out the gate everyone asks "oh how do you even get advantage from the ability its a singleton format" which people always answer "oh you will find out :)" and stay mysterious about it because there are cool tricks with it. But you quickly find out that a large proportion of the deck is just locking out other players and this guys only win condition was a time sieve so it was just him endless durdling while we didn't get to play. Idm stax but you GOT to have win conditions to back it up. Treat it like a moon stompy deck, you have to have the stompy part too not just the blood moon (in my oppinion the best stax commander is karn living legacy as he actually can get big and provides mana to break parity and acts as your win condition in the command zone)
I also get this same frustration in the games from that place because this guy has a few slow decks like an izzet goodstuff pile and everyone goes "aww no hes doing nothing lets not attack" and he he does alot of small bean syndrome talk until he inevitably does izzet things. That and a couple of other things is why im looking for a new group because i keep finding games there end up going very long
I always ask during rule 0 discussions on how try hard we are going to be, and I match the vibe. If people want relax and play less seriously, I will play a more social game with more social decks. If we are playing a tighter, play to win game, I’m playing 100%
Story time! I recently played a game on Spelltable and had a pretty miserable experience thanks to a very salty player. The room I joined was called something like 'Power 9 decks, chill players, play what you want.' As usual, I did a quick pre-game check, asking if it was okay to play my MLD Lord Windgrace deck. Immediately, I got insulted for having a 'rude deck,' but the salty player told me I could play if I was ready to get focused by him. Honestly, I should have left then, but I was eager to play, so I stayed and shuffled up. A few turns in, this guy was basically set to win unless someone did something. Seeing no one else had played any interaction over the 8 turns, I cast MLD to try and pull off the win with *Jokulhaups*. Cue a barrage of insults and complaints that I was 'pub stomping.' Salty gamer rage-quit, and the other two players followed suit, though at least without the insults. I’m not sure if I was in the wrong, but I still think insulting people over a game of Magic isn’t cool. What do you guys think? Am I going to Magic hell for playing that way?
The worst game I ever played was Orzhov vs Orzhov, basically a low-tier mirror-match, quickly drained the other players to death then it was just the longest slogfest of extorting eachother. I eventually took a tiny advantage and won, but to this day I will not play with two or more aristocrat decks at the table to avoid any chance of that happening again. :')
Yup, had that happen last game I played, felt fucking cool but the other two died about round 4 or 5 witch sucked. Reasons why I wish more formats than commander were popular, feels like the shit I like in EDH is hell for others lol :P
I just started going to a lgs and played my first few commander games. Most of the games have been fun, but one was not. It was a 3 player game because we had a 4th earlier but they left, so it was me and these two guys who seemed to be long time friends. The game felt like a 2v1, or like I wasn't there. I was starved for mana fairly early in the game. I got my commander out on turn 3, but it was immediately blown up, then I was stuck on 4 lands with not much going on in my hand. I ended up discarding a creature to the graveyard with an ability to exile it and search for a desert, which could let me play again, but one if my opponents had a card that stole my search. I just got bullied by both of them until I could do nothing, and they just left me alive until one of them won
I like that this elk is teaching me things! One of my favorite "group hug" deck is Blim. His idea is to give different bad cards to different players and watch as the whole table burns. I like this deck because it plays in two ways, either i am knocked out first for messing with people's decks or i live long enough to kill someone with commander damage. Either way it gives me fast games. (I am not playing cards that restrict players for casting somethin, rather i play cards that punish some casts but don't outright stop peoples decks)
As Maldhound put it, "Group hug comes in 3 flavors: 'I want to win', 'I want to choose who wins', and 'I want to play Mario Party'" I have played enough involuntary Mario Party for a lifetime
One time I was on a voltron ‘Ratonhnhaké:ton” list, playing at a table with Glenn, Satya, and an Angel’s commander (the one that melds, i don’t remember them, they died fast). The Satya player was interested in building Glenn, and wanted to see what the deck did, so they bargained with me to throw my damage somewhere else, or face relentless targeting. (They’re my brother, so the bargains are a bit brutal between us). I gave him the satisfaction, instead killing the Angels… and then watched helplessly as Glenn removed my ability to kill him or his pilot, as my one window to clear my fellow Voltron deck passed. Ultimately, the game was still quite fun, but sometimes, you’ve gotta take some flack from the table to go for a win.
Personally i get as much enjoyment from my opponents doing cool things as when I do them myself do i want them to be playing there combos and trying to win.
Same here! I am okay with other decks succeeding. You don’t have to force magic to be interesting by pulling a punch. The game is incredible at generating those experiences already.
Playing against a Pramikon stax/pillow fort deck filled to the gills to stop anything on the board from attacking at a casual LGS commander night. There was no win condition, the game became a standstill of draw-go while he had Narset Parter of Veils out, and he'd counterspell any removal. There was no hug, it was a smothering as he played by himself =___=
Damn, this kinda hits close home? I realised this was actually me in so many games i've played in the past. Honestly, it's a bit conflicting because I feel like I would have more fun doing what you mentioned, doing politics, helping the most behind person in the game, creating chaos, but I do also get what you mean and what it actually causes. Mhm, I think MY problem overall is that I don't want to tryhard and I find most ways to finish games either that way, or involve expensive cards that i don't even wanna include in digital nor proxying, so wincons and game enders are hard for me to include. The ''making others feel bad'' narrative is also REALLY true. I have lost several games because I have let somebody live more turns, and games become so much slower because dealing high amounts of damage, especially to those who are behind or have no blockers feels ''rude'' and I'm also pretty perceptive of other player's tone and energy. So if the energy has this non-goofy, hostile touch to it, I cease to enjoy the game because i'm too focused in that everyone is annoyed. But in the end it's a game of course. This vid has helped me realise sometimes I might be the problem to my games going on for so long ngl. Talking with everyone beforehand to see if they wanna have a ''goofy game'' seems like the way to go. I see this might have happened with stuff like Zedruu, Breena Grouphug (and not wanting to kill people early with commander damage :P), Jon Irenicus...and just gifting stuff, Vote and player interaction tribals (politics tivit, kenrith), etc etc. Thanks tho!
The greatest game we've ever played, that we tell stories of like legend, was with some of the worst cards in the format. My brother was stomping me out of the game and I had a Gideon, champion of Justice at 10 loyalty counters. He's an awful planeswalker, so the reasoning was it'd be quicker to kill me outright than attack the Gideon first. He attacked me down to like 5 hp and he was still at 19 and I had no creatures. So when he passed, on my turn I used gideon's 0 ability to turn him into a 10/10 then casted Flying crane technique to give him flying and double strike. He couldn't believe it.
I don't dwell on the bad games, so I've already forgotten the worst one. However, I had a game recently where I let an Obeka, Splitter of Seconds go through without removing it and regretted it. I had the removal, but the card was brand new at the time and the player hadn't increased her power any yet. "It's just two extra triggers, let him do his deck's fun thing, then remove it" ...and then he ran away with the game. It wasn't a slow game though 😅
While the game I'm going to talk about was a pain in the ass, I had to become the problem kingmaker to fix the state of the night. We were 2.5 hours into a game that was still going on 10 minutes after the store was supposed to be closed. Player 1 was on Xenagos Player 2 was on dinosaurs? Player 3 was on OTJ Ghonti I was on Trelesarra Lifegain (WG) I was completely locked out of the game because my deck finds it's win con through my commander's scry 1 into a tutor/the win con and player 3 was stealing the top card of my deck every upkeep so I couldn't get what I needed. However, I was at about 150 life and gained 3 with each etb of anyone's creatures. This meant that Players 2 and 3 couldn't kill me because as soon as player 3 died, I would be re-unleashed in a winning position. Player 1 had the damage necessary but was at 12 hp and was killable by pretty much anyone. The turn cycle before I ended it, Player 1 blew up my life gain engine putting me dead in the water. Then player 2 kept putting down dinos and chose not to swing. Player 3 took their turn and left 1 alive as well. Finally it was my turn and I explained to them that 1) the store was closing and that me and the owner want to sleep tonight 2) I can not proceed with any beneficial line of play that isn't kill player 1 and slowly starve to death as I get land after land. 3) Player 1 had 12 health so any of us could have killed him 4) He has garruk's uprising along with a mimic vat with an Anzrag the quake mole under it. 5) I'm gonna let his combo happen because I'm not gonna sit here and wait another 20 minutes to get 3rd because I can't make a good play. Point 5 had to be explained to Player 1 a couple of times before he realized what I was doing.
I thankfully havent really ever had any "nightmarish" games that i can remember. However, i think the most frustrating thing I've encountered is something similar, and that's a player who would just roll to see who they were attacking, or would always send one creature at each opponent, and refused to do actual threat assessment. I think it made me just as frustrated because, it's not like they just weren't attacking, they were, but then if you got attacked three rounds in a row, it's not their fault, it's the dice's.
I don’t think it was my worst game ever, but just recently I was playing Commodore Guff and managed to get Ajani Steadfast’s ultimate. I wasn’t in a great spot when I got it off so it gave me some more time to try and win but also extended the game by about an hour since me and my planeswalkers could only take one damage from any source at a time. I did manage to win the game but it was a pretty boring rest of the game. Chandra, Awakened Inferno’s +2 was what needed up winning the game for me grinding out my opponent slowly over time
worst game was with a Nicanzil player. He usually plays at a higher power table, so while the rest of us were running somewhat unoptimized jank for fun, he was running a hyperconsistent deck that meant that we basically just had to focus on him the whole time and still lost.
I think in the spectrum of players there also comes a *Secret 4th Option* that many players can also fall into: Plays the best deck, does not play to win. That's truly the worst when it comes to games, imo. My worst game of of cEDH (and EDH in general) was sitting down with three guys at an LGS ready and shuffling up to play cEDH. I was on thras/bruse pod, there was an urza, a krikk, and the last guy was playing Slicer. We all kinda did what our decks do, I got down a t2 seedborn, urza had 1 gorillion permanents, krikk had two swamps, but Slicer player just passed the turn with a treasonous ogre and mana vault up. He didn't wanna cast slicer and "become the archenemy." We eventually had to beg him to play Slicer, or at least advance the game state in some meaningful manner. He, very begrudgingly, won the game after the slicer clock hit 21 on each of our life totals. He was not happy to win the game either. I come from playing modern/standard/pioneer and just enjoying magic mostly in the competitive sense, so I can appreciate - even if I don't fully understand - playing commander with the main goal of having fun. But walking into a CompetitiveEDH game and one of the players not playing with a Competitive mindset made the rest of us feel like we were losing our minds.
I specifically remember the three times someone did a thoracle win in my pod and how it just made everyone but the winner roll their eyes at the wasted potential of otherwise great games unfolding. I only want to win if it's close. But then I'm a red player at heart.
I'll admit, I once bounced my opponents Reliquary Tower because he was playing a non-reanimator deck with 60+ cards in his hand. It was not the optimal play, but it was funny as heck. I lost the game.
Sometimes it’s just fun to play a game. It’s a game. Playing to win can be just as boring, because it ignores the GAME. I want to laugh and smile and goof. I don’t mine losing if I have FUN.
This is one of the reasons why i built my Mogis, God of Slaughter groupSLUG deck. The idea is to make it difficult for players to get to ahead early less they pay for it (with effects like zo-zu the punisher and smothering rug) but to not let the game become the pace of an actual slug by speeding it up enough with overall life loss effects (and having actual cards to close out the game like torment of hailfire) so that the game achieves a nice medium similar to a steak
worst edh I ever played was against a guy who, apparently, spent his entire student loan on his deck. It was mostly counterspells until an infinite turn combo using omniscience, where, because he has so few creatures, he ended up just playing very excited solitaire on the corner. It went on way too long, and it was one of my first edh games ever, so I didn't know to just forfeit or leave the game.
I currently don’t have a deck that’s “lower power” they’re all pretty interesting and different. And this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good either. My mono green deck tries to stomp FAST and win by turn 6, and can struggle to win if it doesn’t by then. My Dino deck is the opposite, trying to slow the game down so it can erupt into a big ass board state and win late game I have a mothman deck, that’s not amazing, but has some combos in it that scare players I play with so I get rightfully targeted. And my last deck, artifacts, aims to combo off like most artifacts. My problem is that I experience the “this is mean I shouldn’t do this” scenario a lot more than I wish I did. I like my decks being strong, but I want my opponents to be able to play the decks they want to play too… I think it comes from a place of empathy, and also being competitive, where you know how it feels to want to win and the guy in front of you is doing so much better. It can feel bad sometimes and I don’t want to cause that feeling for people. This is especially so right now because there’s an influx of newer players at my LGS right now, so it’s more than ever. At least me not pulling my punches against my friends has had a positive effect of them improving their decks to combat the effectiveness of mine, it’s very cool to watch theirs improve in response to mine
I had a game a couple of days ago where a buddy in my pod was playing Atemsis, All-Seeing. In this game the stars happen to align and I had just enough mana to cast Captivating Crew and steal the Atemsis and kill someone off its ability since no one else had any flyers. The correct play would've been 100% to kill the atemsis player, so nobody would have to deal with it. But the idea of "don't be mean to other players by playing correct" took over and I ended up rolling a dice because I still thought the play was hilarious. I didn't attack the Atemsis player and he ended up winning in the next couple of turns.
Worst game of Commander I played was a night where I swear when ever anyone got a board state there was a board wipe. So for I think was 3 to 4 or more hours it was like okay can we get on with it. Which maybe it wasn't so much the time spent but the fact that no one got to do anything. I've had longer games but they had grand storylines that honestly get often told when I talk to other magic players.
This video explains the inner conflict of a voltron deck spreading damage around or targeting one player at a time in order to get the commander damage to pay off. I think there are situations where either is the better choice.
I used to be a bit like this, in a way. Started playing commander with a simple white deck made from just stuff I already owned, didn't do much but it made enough tokens. Some guy comes along and gets annoyed that they can't win against my deck, so they go out and spend a lot of money building decks specifically to be able to beat me, and then bragged about it. So I pivoted to Gaddock Teeg deck, and any game he was in from then on went incredibly slowly for him by the time I was done. I stopped playing to win for a while, but luckily they eventually got the message, so Gaddock is retired now.
Hmm... my worst game would have to be when we were relatively green with the game. Aa & Bb had just brewed relatively strong decks and Cc and I were running precons. The game was running for almost 40 minutes at this point with each of us taking our time with our turns and responses; while Bb and I were satisfied with how the game was running, we could tell Aa and Cc were getting frustrated. Cc was then knocked out, and out of what I can only imagine as a mix of relief, disappointment, and frustration, he dropped his head on the table creating an audible THUD. He confessed he felt powerless with his little artifacts precon. We were quick to console him but the mood had dulled for the rest of the evening. umm... so yeah! I agree, communicating your goals before the game could help avoid stuff like this from happening. Loved the video and I love your elk sprites (they're very cute)!
My worst game of commander came playing Falco Spara vs a Dimir blink/recursion deck. One of the other players had been knocked out of the pod and the only other player on board had resources and represented a sizable threat. I was able to get near-lethal commander damage on the Dimir player, who then, after resolving an Archon of Cruelty, relentlessly bullied me with the triggers by blinking him over and over again, claiming I was the "biggest threat" even though he had a response to every answer I had, but he still refused to kill me by anything other than blinking the Archon. I can count on my hands the amount of times I got that angry at anything.
the worst game of commander i ever played was one of my formative experiences playing the format where i turned one player's syr gwyn into a fog bank with mystic reflection, tried to explain to the rest of the table that stopping this card from entering the battlefield was preventing that player from running away with the game, only to get the rest of the table to collude with the syr gwyn player to hit me back for having "stopped them from playing the game" only to be prove right three turns later when syr gwyn killed everyone for game.
It is not often you find someone that also thinks dividing the community into to categories is harmful and wrong. The biggest problem the format has boils down to difference of subjective opinions and definition of the word "fun", decks that don't actually do anything or win and waste time, massive skill gaps, and a fundamental difference in how the game "should be played" vs how it is supposed to be played.
Whenever i play my group hug or group slug decks I rarely if ever play to win. But when I do play, everyone has a fun time. Sometimes ill get a win or 2 in but its never really my objective to win, just to have fun. I only ever run a few pieces of removal and board wipes in my group hug decks in case theres a big threat that comes up, otherwise I'm just helping people. It's how you build and play your decks guys.
I recently fell out of love with my playgroup due to a lot of these dynamics. A couple of the players aren't really there to end games, but there to vibe. Other players among us are there for *violence*. Doesn't mix.
Yes to all this, but I'll add my own rant about using board wipes properly. Another way that a game becomes a drawn-out slog is when the board is repeatedly wiped as soon as someone is threatening a win. I've played games where a board clear was cast multiple turn cycles in a row, making the games take way longer than they needed too. It's one thing if you use your board clear to secure a win; it's quite another if you're way behind and just desperately trying to turn things in your favor, or worse, just being spiteful. If you are including board wipes in your deck, make them one-sided. This can be done through deck building--say playing an enchantment-based deck and running creature wipes--or through card choice. I think people put way too much value on mana-efficient wipes like Damnation that are pretty much always symmetrical, when they should be favoring more expensive options that are asymmetrical. In Garruk's Wake may be 9 mana, but's it's often a card that effectively says "You win the game," which is well worth 9 mana. There's a reason Cyclonic Rift is as good as it is. Finally, if someone is about to win, and you have a wipe in hand, but no way to win quickly after casting it, consider just letting that game end, and start a new one. Games have to end. Don't wipe the board just to stop someone from winning; do it to secure a win.
I think every single time I pulled a punch on a person in a card game I usually end up losing to the person I wanted to have "one more turn" or not to be mean to them and kill them first instead of evenly wearing the whole table down first
I would say, that on my first commander game 2 months ago, where I first made Neera, Wild Mage not only online but I got the cards irl. I dont have any insane cards, nor decent cards, but I was glad to made it. In the moments of the first game, I couldve use my deflection against the mono blue counterspell deck, but I thought itll be rude, and it happens every single time; I dont want to attack someone with no creatures in play, I pay no mind where they ambushed me with 13 2/2 zombies at turn 4 where I have Clockwork Fox, I could use my beacon of Tomorrows, to have a chance, but thatll make me a enemy, and get targeted on sight. I dont know why I kept doing that, I still am, even I tried to break out of it.
hi! i've been watching your videos and now that you made this video i feel compeled to say something. i'm in that third category, but also i'm the kind of person that if you want to do a tournament and you want to practice against a certain deck, i will pilot that deck for you. so i'm very flexible in how i can enjoy myself but also i don't enjoy a game afterwards if i notice something that happened because of the second type of player play pattern
Most of my games are pretty good, but I'll buck the trend and say some of the worst have been when you get singled out. Be it because you are playing with an established group, you're playing a precon that has a face commander that is part of a combo, or you play a "powerful" spell without any way to leverage it. I will add, someone pointed out that if your deck is weak the best thing you can do it fill it with removal, because being a non-threat while your opponents kill each other or you deploy a "weak" win con can work if you prevent one person from popping off. This can lead to a lot of the "I don't want to hurt their feelings" plays or decks without clear lines to win. I enjoy playing lower power, more often I get stuck with mid-level decks, but I generally encourage people to pressure life totals or swing in(even at myself) if there is an opening since we are all here to kill each other. I'll add to your example at the start as to what makes games good/bad: most people don't mind red/black, the colors commonly associated with killing stuff and being aggressive. What people hate are green/blue, the colors who like to sit back to ramp/draw and accrue huge late-game advantage but are slow to close games out. White has a foot in each camp, being either highly controlling or aggressive, and usually sits between it seems.
My working theory is that matchup (in terms of deck building, experience, and preference) tends to have a way bigger impact than power level, this seems to fit with that xD
I had a game where one of the guys, one of my good friends, was brand-new. I will happily play lower power or unoptimized decks with new players, but I dont pull punches, since I really only started to learn magic once I had to start learning it the hard way. I played one of my precon decks and the table killed me turn 7 or 8, but then started pullling their punches with the new guy. The game ended up taking another 2 hours to resolve bc it bogged down for everyone. I left after about 45 minutes of sitting and watching 3 other people play turn after turn. My buddy hasn't really expressed any interest in coming back around to play again since then either. Just ended up being an unfun experience and a waste of a game night for everyone.
Sometimes, I try to get ahead of the smol bean complaints by saying "ok I'm going to start trying to close out this game over the next turn or two" before I go for it. I think it helps communicate that it ain't personal if you get deleted first, I'm trying to knock everybody out haha. That being said, if it looks like I could only knock ONE person out but have no quick follow up for the next two people, I might wait a bit before going for it. It sucks to get iced out and then have to wait 40 minutes for the next game. Overall, I don't really care how someone wins, whether it's combat, infinite combo, whatever, as long as there's at least 1 turn for the rest of the table to be able to stop it after the big threat is presented. That's the casual/high-power level we play at in my meta, anyway. I tracked my games for about 6 months and our games usually ended between turns 7-9, so thankfully, there aren't a lot of slogfests.
I don’t remember having a bad game of commander before in the sense of it feeling unfair, but it may be due to a lot of communication that I begin before and during game. Such as what’s the goal of their deck and stating the goals of my decks, asking how long they played and formates they played, etc.
At a recent FNM somebody to my left played mana flair. I used it for two turns to ramp and get ahead then blew it up because I had no need for it anymore. The player of the mana flair spent the next 10 or so minutes grumbling about how they gave everyone double mana and only got to use it for one turn while everyone else got to use it for two. I was like “so because of my position in the turn order I’m an a hole for playing interaction?”
@@dungeonsathome haha disrupt decorum is a fun card. I played it against krenko deck and a scary voltron deck once and it really flipped things around 😂
4 man pod, 2 guys get knocked out 30 minutes in. My opponent is playing Phelddagrif, and I'm playing Adeline, Resplendent Cathar (human tribal ofc). I can't kill his commander, and mine is too easy to get back. We've run out of nearly all removal. We both have a board state of token creatures numbering in the thousands (and I don't have trample). The fateful draw, turn god-knows-what, Fumigate, with Aetherflux Reservoir in hand. With no removal, my play goes off unhindered, I gain thousands of life, and repeatedly nuke his life total until it hits 0. We both agreed to never face one another with those decks in the same game ever again.
It does make me nervous to make plays or remove threats sometimes. I play a lot of 1v1 constructed so these are nothing new to me but I run into players often who get upset when my deck interacts with them. It feels bad :(
Some of those Thassa's Oracle finishes were some of the worst EDH games I've played, as the rest of the table wasn't expecting them and had their engines set up and running, getting towards the finish line, and then a player just pops a combo from behind. Very unfun
I've tried explaining to some of my friends why constantly spreading damage between all players is just not a good idea. Also my worst match was against a korvold deck that kept taking 10-15 minute turns.
I have a Korvold Treasure deck. I rarely play it and when I do I almost never play it to its greatest potential because I am aware that no one wants to sit there and watch me take super long turns
I think this video really exemplifies why Commander is just not the format for me. It dosent support the aggro or burn strategies that I find fun, and i have come to realize the group hug/chaos decks I do like to play are generally seen as BM decks. Not even my intent when I play, I just wanna see what kind of funky shit I can enable my other degenerates in doing, but it feels like no matter how I build it ends up accidentally slowing the game down in a way I did not intend when I want to do the opposite.
Worst game of edh I ever played was with my friends while I was playing a jeleva spell slinger deck. I cast telamin performance on the momir vig deck at the table because I knew they ran powerful creatures and the other players were playing decks that were either karlov soul sisters or Doran high toughness creatures. At this point in the game, I had only cast jelera once and she exiled a card the player had wanted. They were upset that I used the performance on them as well even though I only got a mana dork. They proceeded to use all their resources on their next turn to kill me, but they couldn’t do anything else to the other players. I was told by the group that the game would be over soon and we’d do another game after that one, but it ended up being almost an hour before it was finished and everyone was so salty by the end that nobody was willing to play another game with me for the rest of the evening. 0/10 would not recommend sitting for an hour listening to your friends getting progressively angrier
The worst game I ever played was when one of my friends played a lord windgrace land destruction deck. He capitalized on it by playing lands from the graves of opponents, but it was incredibly slow. Either you aren’t doing anything as your mana curve is too high or you are making a deal with the other player to kill the land destruction player because he disrupts the progression of the game.
See, this is why I play Gruul. My commander costs like half a mana and summons 35 tokens per turn. By round two I have 700 mana at my disposal and immediately become the biggest threat to gang up on. In other words: "Boardwipe me. I want you to boardwipe me, Jerry! Boardwipe me!!!"
I don't play to win, I'm just there so people have a fourth. I do not want to put a paycheck into a deck, and I will never act coy about not wanting to win. There's already a 75% chance of losing, and I already conceded before shuffling.
I played a game where one guy was playing krenko and his only goal was too get as many goblins as possible and nobody told me so all my opponents just left him alone while I sat there trying too kill krenko it was definitely something I ended up winning but like he should have said he wasn't planning on winning
@Russian_engineer_bmstu kind of but the rest of the table ignored him he said he had 2krenkos and just recasted it for 4 mana and had 500 goblins at the end before somone board wiped 😭
I was that problem player, I played a mono red land hate deck that didn't actually have enough stuff to win the game since it had like... 30 land hate spells. That deck is going into the garbage can.
I usually play to have fun but I do not pull my punches anymore. I know my play group and they know the play group and we have learnt after many games to not pull punches even if the player doesn’t seem to have a “crazy” board state. I’ve had a couple games where one player had only mana rocks and lands and then proceeded to take a 50 minute turn playing solitaire and ended up winning (or taking 1 or 2 players out) and no one had any responses because we were all tapped out lol.
I've had both situations actually (regarding whether I played to win) at mid power level, playing the same artifact control Grixis deck once I didn't remove someone's Morophon because I had been removing all their enablers (they were a First Sliver deck) under a promise of not destroying me that turn ... well they popped off and killed everyone including me which felt unfair and unsatisfying and once the game had already gone for way too long, and I wrathed because it was the optimal play, and I took a 5 min turn and I eventually won the game but that didn't feel satisfying at all everyone was tired, game should've closed up 15-20 min ago and I should've let it even if it was a losing play
the worst games I've ever had were all because someone decided that I needed to die out of nowhere even though I wasn't in a controlling position, because they "wanted to get second place"
The reason i don't fully commit is so that I don't get wrathed and end up with little to no resources left. Small increments, just attack and leave some mana open, just don't be the easiest target on board and you're fine
How do you all deal with these two situations where you’re playing with your friends: You’re ahead and there is an opportunity to kill a player but there is no guarantee that the game will end in a few turns after they’re dead, potentially making them wait a long time or even all night You’re about to lose the game and your only way to stay in is using a sweeper which may only bring you to parody, not ahead of the opponents, slowing the game down by a full hour or more?
![[EDH] My favorite green commander WANTS to be destroyed](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/uqiygfohojM/mqdefault.jpg)
![[EDH] My favorite green commander WANTS to be destroyed](/img/tr.png)
![[EDH] Sephara: Please don't run Healer's Hawk](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QdbzQz-YT5g/mqdefault.jpg)
![[EDH] Combos & Tutors are only boring if you are](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/8dyv9En2g80/mqdefault.jpg)
(just to be clear, you can totally have a deck that is a group hug deck or a deck with chaos elements that can still close out the game, this video isn't talking about those kinds of decks)
"Build for fun. Play to win." This is my commander philosophy and I feel more strongly about it as time goes on.
if I am giving up a good play for something funny, it has to be really funny. but there are times when the funny play is also the best play, like killing someone for the monarch.
Like when you are on team edh and casting generous gift on the teammate's land before their turn so they can attack an enemy for their remainig life points (that was the best play but I only noticed that line during that player's turn oof)
When I was a newer mtg player, I played commander at an LGS with some people who were regulars there. I remember playing my Goreclaw ramp deck that wants to attack because of the +1/+1 and trample trigger.
One player was playing a grouphug deck and very early on in the game, they claimed "If it becomes a 1v1, I'll scoop and be second, which is a win for me, and "anyone who attacks me, I won't help". I took that as "I won't help, you specifically" because my deck likes attacking and can't win otherwise. So I started attacking them so they would stop kingmaking the other two players.
Why do I remember this after 5+ years? Because the concept of a deck that doesn't want to win was so alien to me. Since then, I always target the grouphug player who doesn't want to win.
That is a good strategy in general - but make sure the group hug player *actually* doesn't want to win. From my experience, especially when playing with strangers/lesser known aquaintances, group hug players tend to be sneaky and fully lean into the "I'm just so nice for giving out all of this free stuff, there is no reason to worry about me"-appearence to then suddenly destroy people. They might not admit it, but there are hints. When Kwain drops a Forced Fruition, they might not be doing it out of the kindness of their heart.
@@Nr4747I pulled something dirty with my grouphug combo and used Defense of the Heart to grab a Felidar Guardian and Felidar Sovereign when I already had a Saheeli Rai in play.
Grouphugging into an infinite combo is kind of an annoying but effective play if people are caught off guard while using resources to fight each other.
Something about multiple, identical elks representing different people is really charming and I love it.
it's because they all got hit by Oko's ability
On the topic of deliberate “feel bad” decks, an LGS that has now closed due to 2020 had a policy of handing out some kind of store credit based on Commander wins. This is a bad idea, for everybody, but the worst part that I experienced day one at this LGS was a man I’ll call Pramikon Jones.
Pramikon Jones seemed to have cracked the system by playing the most infuriating control deck imaginable. If you can think of a card that gives two Pramikon, it was in the deck. More importantly, the removal suite seemed actively built to pick out the most concede-worthy cards that nobody prepares for.
I was ready for removal, but I wasn’t exactly prepared for Pramikon Jones to play Agent of Treachery and then defend my commander with his life.
Goodness, I had a player in my playgroup whose philosophy was "if I can't win, everybody else must suffer". He had a monoblack artifact combo deck that failed to combo off quite often, so he stuffed his deck full of removal or group-slug pieces and, if his combo didn't go off, he would spend the whole game by systematically slowing everything down.
We had to have a talk with him
I have a player like that in my current pod who has that exact philosophy, only 50% of the time he brings out a deck that intentionally is designed to lose, but slow down the game or target anyone but his best friend as much as possible. A boros deck full of nothing but pillowfort cards and board wipes, a mono-black filled with massive draw and removal but zero ways to win, etc etc.
why didnt he just add more combo pieces and/or ramp or card advantage...? LOL
@@Interrobang212 our best guess is that he actually enjoyed slowing the game down ahahaha Idk honestly, after the talk he switched to a much more enjoyable deck, but played less and less
The only thing I do is I will throw everything I have at the player who takes me out. Kill me next turn? Ima strip mine excavator 6 of your lands and bounce your whole board with rivers rebuke.
Recently I had a guy make a suicidal anti-slog play. At that game night, he bolted me to stop my living death from resolving, so that a third player could overwhelm him with board state and win. While I was mostly exchanging control of creatures, the third player had earned his board state. It's sportsmanlike, I appreciate it.
Almost every bad game of Magic I've had, someone was explicitly, loudly trying to have "fun" and "wasn't playing to win."
"Not playing to win" every time I've seen it has meant "I get to determine who does win, though." I'm sure somebody out there just wants to explore mechanics and have fun, but "fun" for the folks I've met has meant controlling the match. Because it doesn't look mean - they're letting someone else win, after all! - they get to seem relaxed but also toy with a captive audience.
Showing up and playing a genuine match with peers is enough to create fun. We don't need ringleaders or benevolent dictators or whatever.
Indeed, the issue stems from Magic’s game design (and perhaps game theory in general) making it far, far easier to grief a game than win a game. It’s bad enough when you try to grief with a deck made to win. It’s far worse when a deck made to grief tries to grief.
@@lawrencehu7654The philosophy of it being casual, commonly interpreted as not trying to win, just throws fuel into this fire.
Playing a very dumb talrand deck where the goal is to get drakes down and aggressively protective everything with counterspells. All of the 4 opponents are playing much higher power levels than me in terms of card quality, because i’m playing every 3 mana or above counterspell to protect my board. Nobody’s attacking but me until they can make lethal threats, letting the planeswalker guy get off four ultimates and accidentally deck himself in the process. Board wipes are flying everywhere. I fundamentally cannot do anything after the fifth board wipe because the table needs to be wiped every turn to prevent the others players from winning and i’m playing a mono-blue aggro deck. Nobody’s attacked me, i’m still at 40 life somehow. I try to throw in my counterspells to help people win but nothing works. My one contribution to the game is someone else stealing my whelming wave to cast it to prevent the game ending
The worst game of EDH I ever played was a fairly casual group where someone showed up with a much higher power level deck and comboed off to victory on turn 2.
The second worst game I ever played was a fairly casual group where someone showed up with an enchantress group hug deck with no win cons.
In the latter case, it was a longer game, but I was able to interact with my other opponents more or less so I still enjoyed at least part of it. In the former, however, the high power level player only had their one deck and wouldn't play with anything else, so we either had to exclude them or get dunked on repeatedly. The rest of the playgroup chose the latter, so I left - not just the table, and not just the playgroup entirely, but MtG as a whole for nearly 10 years. I just didn't have any desire to play a game where nobody agreed with me on what would make for engaging gameplay. The selfishness of the players made me lose all interest.
One time, we spent 3 hours resolving a single upkeep because the group hug deck kept giving everyone the resources to add more and more shit on the stack. The bottom of the stack was a game-winning effect.
I smell forced fruition
@sunbro7853 no, just 3 mana doublers, a bunch of draw effects, and a goofy board state
one of my worst edh games was with my zabaz modular deck.
its focused on getting value from my creatures dying.
so when my opponent pregame put down a leyline of the void (i even mentioned, hey that hoses my deck! i will attack you until either of us die if you play that card) and i didnt draw any interaction it was not fun because no one at the table had a win con besides the one green deck.
another that i appreciate you pointing out is that people tend to get mad when people target your stuff or slow you down! yes! i am not going to let a chulane or some other comparable value piece stay on the board! it will win you the game!
The annoying part about commander is that the most optimal plays end up being socially discouraged. Is that one player missing land drops and cant block your early creatures? Kill them first and you have one less opponent.
The great thing about storm decks is that this problem is no longer even really an option. Playing my whole deck to try and win the game IS the funny thing i want to do with it, and i can do it at any amount of my own life left, so my opponents dont have the choice to hold back on me for not doing anything yet. Thank you for giving me another reason to believe storm and goad are the only two types of decks i ever need to run
I see this so much in new players and their first forays into deckbuilding. They don't do it intentionally, but many people just jam as much synergy into their list as they can and believe that the overwhelming value will win them the game. Stompy decks that do this actually have an end goal (turn sideways), but non-combat strategies suffer from meandering value piles not actually doing anything.
Love the video! Something that not a lot of other creators would make.
This is a great topic to bring attention to, I think oftentimes my own hubris causes me to spare my opponents often leading to my downfall. Once again love the video short and sweet :)
I'm a mostly reformed "doesn't play to win" player. I still don't care about winning, but I'm not just trying to prevent myself from losing leading to stale games.
I think a big part of the reason I used to be like that was that I didn't get to play that often, and wanted to have the experience last as long as possible to compensate.
Now, if I can take an action that will push the game towards an end and won't completely backfire mechanically in an obvious way, I will usually do so. I've also started playing more proactive strategies to combat my hesitant and forgetful nature. It's led to much more interesting and satisfying games.
I'm not certain what to put for miserable games. I've had some bad experiences, such as against hard stax when I was still new, but those were methods to actually achieve a victory, not a way to prolong the game. In some ways, I had been blessed by facing players with regular tournament experience, who knew how to end a game.
I guess my experience against a new player using Toxrill might count. He was more interested in being able to wipe the board clean with Toxrill, than actually winning. He didn't get to do it for long though.
This is an interesting perspective. My deckbuilding philosophy starts from "what can I build if I forget about winning?" but after I have the thematic core worked out, I then shift to "Okay, so how does this deck win?" and when I sit down to play, I do play to win (usually). But I used to play at a table where it seemed like nobody was actually trying to win, and yeah, there were some slogs at that table. And we'd rarely get in more than one, maaaaybe two games in a night because it would take 4 hours. I still had plenty of fun at that table--edh was really just an excuse to have dinner as a group, and as long as we all treated it like that, we'd have a good time.
been playing magic for about 6 years and just recently trying to get into commander, only played one session of 3 games and none of them were a slog but i have seen people pulling punches and asking people to pull their punches. coming from playing in a pretty competitive limited environment it's very strange. unwritten social contract stuff can be difficult for me so these videos are very helpful in trying to parse where the lines might be around people's expectations.
The thing is you have different personality types, the people who are there to play and win, the ones who are there to play/ socialize and mabey win, and ones who are there to get to strange and unusual game states. The conflict comes about when the difference personality types come with different expectations of the game. Everyone playing to win? Great! Everyone there to socialize and catch up over a game? Great! It's when these expectations are not met the aggravation of "not taking the game seriously" or " your bullying me" comes about
100% !! I didn’t start playing commander until i had played other magic formats first, so when i first got into a playgroup, i was honestly shocked at this like, bashful, “i don’t know if i should attack anyone, that would be *rude*” attitude that so many people seemed to have. It’s a game! In almost every scenario, there is only one winner! It is fun to have everybody trying their hardest to be that winner, and graciously losing if they don’t make it. I would much rather lose a game bc my opponents tried their best to win then shuffle up for another game, than experience an agonizing 90 minute snoozefest of each player sheepishly playing suboptimally in the name of mitigating “bad feelings”. Isn’t it way more fun knowing that if you win, your opponents were ACTUALLY trying to beat you? And if you lose, you know you tried your best?
Exactly this.
thank you, really relatable.
i play MTG for fun, with the minimal intention of winning and not the other way around.
losing by playing the way i enjoy is far better than winning with most boring way.
Best advice i ever got for playing casual commander was "Build like a timmy, play like a spike" Put those silly overcosted cards in your deck but make game play choices like a Timetwister and full set of black border og duals is on the line. My regular pod got a lot more fun when we started building decks like that and playing like it. I can also name the worst game I ever played. There was turbofog angus mckenzie who's win con was everyone gets bored and leaves, And a Norin the Wary chaos deck with lots of thieve's auction, scrambleverse type effects. Pulled out Slicer for round 2 and had a nice 1v1 with the other guy who also had a deck trying to win after we blitzed the other two out of the game.
@@Ragnarok633 awesome advice!
I've been guilty of being that scrambleverse player before. I threw all the big, dumb chaos cards in a Narset, Enlightened Master deck: scrambleverse, warp world, possibility storm, omen machine, eye of the storm. I liked the idea of having to figure out how best to use an unpredictable set of tools like a real-time draft, instead of following the same play pattern every game. I thought it would be fun. And it was! For me, specifically. What I didn't realize back then until I actually played a couple of those cards, and was extremely obvious in hindsight, is that the rest of the table wasn't interested in that type of game. They wanted to play their decks the way they built them, and I was preventing that. Every time I played that Narset deck it made everybody else miserable.
It didn't take long for me to rebuild the deck without the chaos cards, and eventually I dropped Narset altogether.
Recently, though, I've been thinking about that "real time draft" style again, and how I can achieve that just for myself without imposing it on everyone else.
It's a cool idea, I think if you cleared it with the pod they might have been receptive to it.
I can reccomend Jeleva piloting a spellthief deck.
As long as it's a tasteful theft deck you won't make too many enemies.
There's also the dimir archetype of plundering your enemy's graveyards, working with an ever expanding card pool.
as much as i love commander, i am absolutely peeved by the bizarre effects that free for all games have on seemingly everyones psyche. Once the game goes beyond two players, all of a sudden we have people like you described, who are passive for fear of hurting someones feelings, and at the other end of the spectrum, we have the people who's feelings get hurt whenever you do absolutely anything in opposition to them whatsoever. You remove one of their creatures, counter a single spell, or even just swing at them once, and they take it as a personal attack and decide to do everything in their power to retaliate against you specifically no matter what else happens on the board after that. its really, really frustrating
i wish people could use the same logical thinking they use in 1v1 formats in multiplayer formats as well. all logic goes out the window in favor of plays based on vibes and feelings, and i despise it.
this is not limited to commander whatsoever, i dabbled in free for alls of various kinds, and in any game that has a social component, these same sorts of players manifest. i see this a TON on free for all battles in pokemon especially.
The unfortunate secret is that it’s not bizarre. Unlike 1v1 magic, where each and every interaction is strictly zero sum, multiplayer is only zero sum as a whole. Thus, retaliatory saltlord behavior (and/or threatening to do so) is not merely toxic; it is also a valid risk/reward play, as far as game theory is concerned. There isn’t a specific model in game theory I can point out, but it perhaps most resembles a 4-way prisoner’s dilemma where at least one opponent needs to defect, but the first to do so eats the penalty. And it is the presence of this ‘saltlord’s gambit’ that leads to the other type of player you mention: the one who will refuse to hit the biggest threat at the table out of fear of retaliation (which is one of the possible counterstrategies; the other is to call the saltlord’s bluff until they tire of throwing the game).
The worst games ive had is when the group is actively not wanting to have a rule zero discussion beyond just "I have power levl X" and someone then tries to argue resource denial stax decks are power level 6 somehow
Yay, Elky! 🎉❤
CEDH to me is like what Smash Bros tournaments were years ago, a casual game with an audience that found a way to make it competitive. Casual Smash Bros can get looong and boring with matches of "Hey lets do 10 stocks and no time limit!"
Truly, the msot consistent bad times I have are when my opponents are just not great at deckbuilding, so when I'm out ahead and trying to win, they wipe everything - often asymmetrically - but have absolutely no plan beyond that. It's just "oh, the others are too far ahead, let me just reset back to zero"... only for them not to make use of that advantage at all. Usually this is that same kind of "jank, but not trying to win" deck, because they feel like they've not gotten to do their funny jank thing enough yet.
It irritates me especially when it's cyclonic rift-esque effects - assymetric bounce effects, exclusively because they don't make use of the time they buy, so all they've done is effectively waste everyone's time. Doing this occasionally is fine, but then another player might pull the same, because they'd over extended pre-wipe, and I didn't, so now I'm getting wiped again. It's at that point where I often feel myself go on tilt and I have concede the game, else boredom turns to genuine irritation.
I never want to be that guy that gets annoyed for experiencing removal, but when it's turn-after-turn of nothing burgers, and any attempt I make to progress is wiped clean, I can't help but feel like nobody here is having fun, ahaha. Good video!
My worse match was with a guy running the mishra, artificer prodigy deck. A classic deck which out the gate everyone asks "oh how do you even get advantage from the ability its a singleton format" which people always answer "oh you will find out :)" and stay mysterious about it because there are cool tricks with it. But you quickly find out that a large proportion of the deck is just locking out other players and this guys only win condition was a time sieve so it was just him endless durdling while we didn't get to play. Idm stax but you GOT to have win conditions to back it up. Treat it like a moon stompy deck, you have to have the stompy part too not just the blood moon (in my oppinion the best stax commander is karn living legacy as he actually can get big and provides mana to break parity and acts as your win condition in the command zone)
I also get this same frustration in the games from that place because this guy has a few slow decks like an izzet goodstuff pile and everyone goes "aww no hes doing nothing lets not attack" and he he does alot of small bean syndrome talk until he inevitably does izzet things. That and a couple of other things is why im looking for a new group because i keep finding games there end up going very long
I always ask during rule 0 discussions on how try hard we are going to be, and I match the vibe. If people want relax and play less seriously, I will play a more social game with more social decks. If we are playing a tighter, play to win game, I’m playing 100%
Story time! I recently played a game on Spelltable and had a pretty miserable experience thanks to a very salty player. The room I joined was called something like 'Power 9 decks, chill players, play what you want.' As usual, I did a quick pre-game check, asking if it was okay to play my MLD Lord Windgrace deck. Immediately, I got insulted for having a 'rude deck,' but the salty player told me I could play if I was ready to get focused by him. Honestly, I should have left then, but I was eager to play, so I stayed and shuffled up.
A few turns in, this guy was basically set to win unless someone did something. Seeing no one else had played any interaction over the 8 turns, I cast MLD to try and pull off the win with *Jokulhaups*. Cue a barrage of insults and complaints that I was 'pub stomping.' Salty gamer rage-quit, and the other two players followed suit, though at least without the insults.
I’m not sure if I was in the wrong, but I still think insulting people over a game of Magic isn’t cool. What do you guys think? Am I going to Magic hell for playing that way?
The worst game I ever played was Orzhov vs Orzhov, basically a low-tier mirror-match, quickly drained the other players to death then it was just the longest slogfest of extorting eachother.
I eventually took a tiny advantage and won, but to this day I will not play with two or more aristocrat decks at the table to avoid any chance of that happening again. :')
Yup, had that happen last game I played, felt fucking cool but the other two died about round 4 or 5 witch sucked. Reasons why I wish more formats than commander were popular, feels like the shit I like in EDH is hell for others lol :P
I just started going to a lgs and played my first few commander games. Most of the games have been fun, but one was not. It was a 3 player game because we had a 4th earlier but they left, so it was me and these two guys who seemed to be long time friends. The game felt like a 2v1, or like I wasn't there. I was starved for mana fairly early in the game. I got my commander out on turn 3, but it was immediately blown up, then I was stuck on 4 lands with not much going on in my hand. I ended up discarding a creature to the graveyard with an ability to exile it and search for a desert, which could let me play again, but one if my opponents had a card that stole my search. I just got bullied by both of them until I could do nothing, and they just left me alive until one of them won
I like that this elk is teaching me things!
One of my favorite "group hug" deck is Blim. His idea is to give different bad cards to different players and watch as the whole table burns. I like this deck because it plays in two ways, either i am knocked out first for messing with people's decks or i live long enough to kill someone with commander damage.
Either way it gives me fast games.
(I am not playing cards that restrict players for casting somethin, rather i play cards that punish some casts but don't outright stop peoples decks)
As Maldhound put it, "Group hug comes in 3 flavors: 'I want to win', 'I want to choose who wins', and 'I want to play Mario Party'"
I have played enough involuntary Mario Party for a lifetime
One time I was on a voltron ‘Ratonhnhaké:ton” list, playing at a table with Glenn, Satya, and an Angel’s commander (the one that melds, i don’t remember them, they died fast). The Satya player was interested in building Glenn, and wanted to see what the deck did, so they bargained with me to throw my damage somewhere else, or face relentless targeting. (They’re my brother, so the bargains are a bit brutal between us). I gave him the satisfaction, instead killing the Angels… and then watched helplessly as Glenn removed my ability to kill him or his pilot, as my one window to clear my fellow Voltron deck passed.
Ultimately, the game was still quite fun, but sometimes, you’ve gotta take some flack from the table to go for a win.
Personally i get as much enjoyment from my opponents doing cool things as when I do them myself do i want them to be playing there combos and trying to win.
Same here! I am okay with other decks succeeding. You don’t have to force magic to be interesting by pulling a punch. The game is incredible at generating those experiences already.
Playing against a Pramikon stax/pillow fort deck filled to the gills to stop anything on the board from attacking at a casual LGS commander night. There was no win condition, the game became a standstill of draw-go while he had Narset Parter of Veils out, and he'd counterspell any removal. There was no hug, it was a smothering as he played by himself =___=
Boys: "Oh no, maybe I shouldn't attack that player, I don't want to make anyone feel bad..."
Men: *Laughs in Heartless Hidetsugu*
Damn, this kinda hits close home? I realised this was actually me in so many games i've played in the past. Honestly, it's a bit conflicting because I feel like I would have more fun doing what you mentioned, doing politics, helping the most behind person in the game, creating chaos, but I do also get what you mean and what it actually causes.
Mhm, I think MY problem overall is that I don't want to tryhard and I find most ways to finish games either that way, or involve expensive cards that i don't even wanna include in digital nor proxying, so wincons and game enders are hard for me to include. The ''making others feel bad'' narrative is also REALLY true. I have lost several games because I have let somebody live more turns, and games become so much slower because dealing high amounts of damage, especially to those who are behind or have no blockers feels ''rude'' and I'm also pretty perceptive of other player's tone and energy. So if the energy has this non-goofy, hostile touch to it, I cease to enjoy the game because i'm too focused in that everyone is annoyed.
But in the end it's a game of course. This vid has helped me realise sometimes I might be the problem to my games going on for so long ngl. Talking with everyone beforehand to see if they wanna have a ''goofy game'' seems like the way to go. I see this might have happened with stuff like Zedruu, Breena Grouphug (and not wanting to kill people early with commander damage :P), Jon Irenicus...and just gifting stuff, Vote and player interaction tribals (politics tivit, kenrith), etc etc. Thanks tho!
The greatest game we've ever played, that we tell stories of like legend, was with some of the worst cards in the format.
My brother was stomping me out of the game and I had a Gideon, champion of Justice at 10 loyalty counters. He's an awful planeswalker, so the reasoning was it'd be quicker to kill me outright than attack the Gideon first.
He attacked me down to like 5 hp and he was still at 19 and I had no creatures.
So when he passed, on my turn I used gideon's 0 ability to turn him into a 10/10 then casted Flying crane technique to give him flying and double strike. He couldn't believe it.
I don't dwell on the bad games, so I've already forgotten the worst one. However, I had a game recently where I let an Obeka, Splitter of Seconds go through without removing it and regretted it. I had the removal, but the card was brand new at the time and the player hadn't increased her power any yet. "It's just two extra triggers, let him do his deck's fun thing, then remove it" ...and then he ran away with the game. It wasn't a slow game though 😅
While the game I'm going to talk about was a pain in the ass, I had to become the problem kingmaker to fix the state of the night.
We were 2.5 hours into a game that was still going on 10 minutes after the store was supposed to be closed.
Player 1 was on Xenagos
Player 2 was on dinosaurs?
Player 3 was on OTJ Ghonti
I was on Trelesarra Lifegain (WG)
I was completely locked out of the game because my deck finds it's win con through my commander's scry 1 into a tutor/the win con and player 3 was stealing the top card of my deck every upkeep so I couldn't get what I needed. However, I was at about 150 life and gained 3 with each etb of anyone's creatures. This meant that Players 2 and 3 couldn't kill me because as soon as player 3 died, I would be re-unleashed in a winning position. Player 1 had the damage necessary but was at 12 hp and was killable by pretty much anyone. The turn cycle before I ended it, Player 1 blew up my life gain engine putting me dead in the water. Then player 2 kept putting down dinos and chose not to swing. Player 3 took their turn and left 1 alive as well. Finally it was my turn and I explained to them that
1) the store was closing and that me and the owner want to sleep tonight
2) I can not proceed with any beneficial line of play that isn't kill player 1 and slowly starve to death as I get land after land.
3) Player 1 had 12 health so any of us could have killed him
4) He has garruk's uprising along with a mimic vat with an Anzrag the quake mole under it.
5) I'm gonna let his combo happen because I'm not gonna sit here and wait another 20 minutes to get 3rd because I can't make a good play.
Point 5 had to be explained to Player 1 a couple of times before he realized what I was doing.
I thankfully havent really ever had any "nightmarish" games that i can remember. However, i think the most frustrating thing I've encountered is something similar, and that's a player who would just roll to see who they were attacking, or would always send one creature at each opponent, and refused to do actual threat assessment. I think it made me just as frustrated because, it's not like they just weren't attacking, they were, but then if you got attacked three rounds in a row, it's not their fault, it's the dice's.
I don’t think it was my worst game ever, but just recently I was playing Commodore Guff and managed to get Ajani Steadfast’s ultimate. I wasn’t in a great spot when I got it off so it gave me some more time to try and win but also extended the game by about an hour since me and my planeswalkers could only take one damage from any source at a time. I did manage to win the game but it was a pretty boring rest of the game.
Chandra, Awakened Inferno’s +2 was what needed up winning the game for me grinding out my opponent slowly over time
worst game was with a Nicanzil player. He usually plays at a higher power table, so while the rest of us were running somewhat unoptimized jank for fun, he was running a hyperconsistent deck that meant that we basically just had to focus on him the whole time and still lost.
I think in the spectrum of players there also comes a *Secret 4th Option* that many players can also fall into: Plays the best deck, does not play to win. That's truly the worst when it comes to games, imo. My worst game of of cEDH (and EDH in general) was sitting down with three guys at an LGS ready and shuffling up to play cEDH. I was on thras/bruse pod, there was an urza, a krikk, and the last guy was playing Slicer. We all kinda did what our decks do, I got down a t2 seedborn, urza had 1 gorillion permanents, krikk had two swamps, but Slicer player just passed the turn with a treasonous ogre and mana vault up. He didn't wanna cast slicer and "become the archenemy." We eventually had to beg him to play Slicer, or at least advance the game state in some meaningful manner. He, very begrudgingly, won the game after the slicer clock hit 21 on each of our life totals. He was not happy to win the game either.
I come from playing modern/standard/pioneer and just enjoying magic mostly in the competitive sense, so I can appreciate - even if I don't fully understand - playing commander with the main goal of having fun. But walking into a CompetitiveEDH game and one of the players not playing with a Competitive mindset made the rest of us feel like we were losing our minds.
I specifically remember the three times someone did a thoracle win in my pod and how it just made everyone but the winner roll their eyes at the wasted potential of otherwise great games unfolding.
I only want to win if it's close. But then I'm a red player at heart.
I'll admit, I once bounced my opponents Reliquary Tower because he was playing a non-reanimator deck with 60+ cards in his hand. It was not the optimal play, but it was funny as heck. I lost the game.
I would have done the same that shit is hilarious
Sometimes it’s just fun to play a game. It’s a game. Playing to win can be just as boring, because it ignores the GAME. I want to laugh and smile and goof. I don’t mine losing if I have FUN.
I have a great time losing too some games. That being said i would feel bad if i win and the win wasn’t earned? Ykwim?
Some people just wanna watch the world burn. I’ll never understand it
This is one of the reasons why i built my Mogis, God of Slaughter groupSLUG deck. The idea is to make it difficult for players to get to ahead early less they pay for it (with effects like zo-zu the punisher and smothering rug) but to not let the game become the pace of an actual slug by speeding it up enough with overall life loss effects (and having actual cards to close out the game like torment of hailfire) so that the game achieves a nice medium similar to a steak
Great general advice, keep up the good work !
worst edh I ever played was against a guy who, apparently, spent his entire student loan on his deck. It was mostly counterspells until an infinite turn combo using omniscience, where, because he has so few creatures, he ended up just playing very excited solitaire on the corner. It went on way too long, and it was one of my first edh games ever, so I didn't know to just forfeit or leave the game.
I currently don’t have a deck that’s “lower power” they’re all pretty interesting and different. And this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good either.
My mono green deck tries to stomp FAST and win by turn 6, and can struggle to win if it doesn’t by then.
My Dino deck is the opposite, trying to slow the game down so it can erupt into a big ass board state and win late game
I have a mothman deck, that’s not amazing, but has some combos in it that scare players I play with so I get rightfully targeted.
And my last deck, artifacts, aims to combo off like most artifacts.
My problem is that I experience the “this is mean I shouldn’t do this” scenario a lot more than I wish I did. I like my decks being strong, but I want my opponents to be able to play the decks they want to play too… I think it comes from a place of empathy, and also being competitive, where you know how it feels to want to win and the guy in front of you is doing so much better. It can feel bad sometimes and I don’t want to cause that feeling for people.
This is especially so right now because there’s an influx of newer players at my LGS right now, so it’s more than ever.
At least me not pulling my punches against my friends has had a positive effect of them improving their decks to combat the effectiveness of mine, it’s very cool to watch theirs improve in response to mine
I had a game a couple of days ago where a buddy in my pod was playing Atemsis, All-Seeing. In this game the stars happen to align and I had just enough mana to cast Captivating Crew and steal the Atemsis and kill someone off its ability since no one else had any flyers. The correct play would've been 100% to kill the atemsis player, so nobody would have to deal with it. But the idea of "don't be mean to other players by playing correct" took over and I ended up rolling a dice because I still thought the play was hilarious. I didn't attack the Atemsis player and he ended up winning in the next couple of turns.
Ok to be fair i would 100% try to steal atemsis too in this situation. Hard to resist.
Worst game of Commander I played was a night where I swear when ever anyone got a board state there was a board wipe. So for I think was 3 to 4 or more hours it was like okay can we get on with it. Which maybe it wasn't so much the time spent but the fact that no one got to do anything. I've had longer games but they had grand storylines that honestly get often told when I talk to other magic players.
This video explains the inner conflict of a voltron deck spreading damage around or targeting one player at a time in order to get the commander damage to pay off. I think there are situations where either is the better choice.
Voltron can never win unless they target one at a time it's just to hard
I used to be a bit like this, in a way. Started playing commander with a simple white deck made from just stuff I already owned, didn't do much but it made enough tokens. Some guy comes along and gets annoyed that they can't win against my deck, so they go out and spend a lot of money building decks specifically to be able to beat me, and then bragged about it. So I pivoted to Gaddock Teeg deck, and any game he was in from then on went incredibly slowly for him by the time I was done. I stopped playing to win for a while, but luckily they eventually got the message, so Gaddock is retired now.
Eyy, back already.
Hmm... my worst game would have to be when we were relatively green with the game. Aa & Bb had just brewed relatively strong decks and Cc and I were running precons. The game was running for almost 40 minutes at this point with each of us taking our time with our turns and responses; while Bb and I were satisfied with how the game was running, we could tell Aa and Cc were getting frustrated. Cc was then knocked out, and out of what I can only imagine as a mix of relief, disappointment, and frustration, he dropped his head on the table creating an audible THUD. He confessed he felt powerless with his little artifacts precon. We were quick to console him but the mood had dulled for the rest of the evening.
umm... so yeah! I agree, communicating your goals before the game could help avoid stuff like this from happening. Loved the video and I love your elk sprites (they're very cute)!
My worst game of commander came playing Falco Spara vs a Dimir blink/recursion deck. One of the other players had been knocked out of the pod and the only other player on board had resources and represented a sizable threat. I was able to get near-lethal commander damage on the Dimir player, who then, after resolving an Archon of Cruelty, relentlessly bullied me with the triggers by blinking him over and over again, claiming I was the "biggest threat" even though he had a response to every answer I had, but he still refused to kill me by anything other than blinking the Archon. I can count on my hands the amount of times I got that angry at anything.
the worst game of commander i ever played was one of my formative experiences playing the format where i turned one player's syr gwyn into a fog bank with mystic reflection, tried to explain to the rest of the table that stopping this card from entering the battlefield was preventing that player from running away with the game, only to get the rest of the table to collude with the syr gwyn player to hit me back for having "stopped them from playing the game" only to be prove right three turns later when syr gwyn killed everyone for game.
It is not often you find someone that also thinks dividing the community into to categories is harmful and wrong. The biggest problem the format has boils down to difference of subjective opinions and definition of the word "fun", decks that don't actually do anything or win and waste time, massive skill gaps, and a fundamental difference in how the game "should be played" vs how it is supposed to be played.
Whenever i play my group hug or group slug decks I rarely if ever play to win. But when I do play, everyone has a fun time. Sometimes ill get a win or 2 in but its never really my objective to win, just to have fun. I only ever run a few pieces of removal and board wipes in my group hug decks in case theres a big threat that comes up, otherwise I'm just helping people. It's how you build and play your decks guys.
I recently fell out of love with my playgroup due to a lot of these dynamics. A couple of the players aren't really there to end games, but there to vibe. Other players among us are there for *violence*. Doesn't mix.
Yes to all this, but I'll add my own rant about using board wipes properly. Another way that a game becomes a drawn-out slog is when the board is repeatedly wiped as soon as someone is threatening a win. I've played games where a board clear was cast multiple turn cycles in a row, making the games take way longer than they needed too. It's one thing if you use your board clear to secure a win; it's quite another if you're way behind and just desperately trying to turn things in your favor, or worse, just being spiteful. If you are including board wipes in your deck, make them one-sided. This can be done through deck building--say playing an enchantment-based deck and running creature wipes--or through card choice. I think people put way too much value on mana-efficient wipes like Damnation that are pretty much always symmetrical, when they should be favoring more expensive options that are asymmetrical. In Garruk's Wake may be 9 mana, but's it's often a card that effectively says "You win the game," which is well worth 9 mana. There's a reason Cyclonic Rift is as good as it is. Finally, if someone is about to win, and you have a wipe in hand, but no way to win quickly after casting it, consider just letting that game end, and start a new one. Games have to end. Don't wipe the board just to stop someone from winning; do it to secure a win.
I think every single time I pulled a punch on a person in a card game I usually end up losing to the person I wanted to have "one more turn" or not to be mean to them and kill them first instead of evenly wearing the whole table down first
I would say, that on my first commander game 2 months ago, where I first made Neera, Wild Mage not only online but I got the cards irl. I dont have any insane cards, nor decent cards, but I was glad to made it. In the moments of the first game, I couldve use my deflection against the mono blue counterspell deck, but I thought itll be rude, and it happens every single time; I dont want to attack someone with no creatures in play, I pay no mind where they ambushed me with 13 2/2 zombies at turn 4 where I have Clockwork Fox, I could use my beacon of Tomorrows, to have a chance, but thatll make me a enemy, and get targeted on sight. I dont know why I kept doing that, I still am, even I tried to break out of it.
hi! i've been watching your videos and now that you made this video i feel compeled to say something. i'm in that third category, but also i'm the kind of person that if you want to do a tournament and you want to practice against a certain deck, i will pilot that deck for you. so i'm very flexible in how i can enjoy myself but also i don't enjoy a game afterwards if i notice something that happened because of the second type of player play pattern
It all boils down to pregame discussion. If you want to play the third category of deck that’s totally fine! Just make sure everyone is on board!
Most of my games are pretty good, but I'll buck the trend and say some of the worst have been when you get singled out. Be it because you are playing with an established group, you're playing a precon that has a face commander that is part of a combo, or you play a "powerful" spell without any way to leverage it.
I will add, someone pointed out that if your deck is weak the best thing you can do it fill it with removal, because being a non-threat while your opponents kill each other or you deploy a "weak" win con can work if you prevent one person from popping off. This can lead to a lot of the "I don't want to hurt their feelings" plays or decks without clear lines to win. I enjoy playing lower power, more often I get stuck with mid-level decks, but I generally encourage people to pressure life totals or swing in(even at myself) if there is an opening since we are all here to kill each other.
I'll add to your example at the start as to what makes games good/bad: most people don't mind red/black, the colors commonly associated with killing stuff and being aggressive. What people hate are green/blue, the colors who like to sit back to ramp/draw and accrue huge late-game advantage but are slow to close games out. White has a foot in each camp, being either highly controlling or aggressive, and usually sits between it seems.
My working theory is that matchup (in terms of deck building, experience, and preference) tends to have a way bigger impact than power level, this seems to fit with that xD
I had a game where one of the guys, one of my good friends, was brand-new. I will happily play lower power or unoptimized decks with new players, but I dont pull punches, since I really only started to learn magic once I had to start learning it the hard way. I played one of my precon decks and the table killed me turn 7 or 8, but then started pullling their punches with the new guy. The game ended up taking another 2 hours to resolve bc it bogged down for everyone. I left after about 45 minutes of sitting and watching 3 other people play turn after turn. My buddy hasn't really expressed any interest in coming back around to play again since then either. Just ended up being an unfun experience and a waste of a game night for everyone.
Sometimes, I try to get ahead of the smol bean complaints by saying "ok I'm going to start trying to close out this game over the next turn or two" before I go for it. I think it helps communicate that it ain't personal if you get deleted first, I'm trying to knock everybody out haha. That being said, if it looks like I could only knock ONE person out but have no quick follow up for the next two people, I might wait a bit before going for it. It sucks to get iced out and then have to wait 40 minutes for the next game.
Overall, I don't really care how someone wins, whether it's combat, infinite combo, whatever, as long as there's at least 1 turn for the rest of the table to be able to stop it after the big threat is presented. That's the casual/high-power level we play at in my meta, anyway. I tracked my games for about 6 months and our games usually ended between turns 7-9, so thankfully, there aren't a lot of slogfests.
I don’t remember having a bad game of commander before in the sense of it feeling unfair, but it may be due to a lot of communication that I begin before and during game. Such as what’s the goal of their deck and stating the goals of my decks, asking how long they played and formates they played, etc.
very true video i also love how many of the elk creature you put into this video thank you
Amazing video as usual, the cedh point is great!
At a recent FNM somebody to my left played mana flair. I used it for two turns to ramp and get ahead then blew it up because I had no need for it anymore. The player of the mana flair spent the next 10 or so minutes grumbling about how they gave everyone double mana and only got to use it for one turn while everyone else got to use it for two. I was like “so because of my position in the turn order I’m an a hole for playing interaction?”
I want everyone to use the mana flare to play their big creatures and tap out so I can goad it all!!
@@dungeonsathome haha disrupt decorum is a fun card. I played it against krenko deck and a scary voltron deck once and it really flipped things around 😂
4 man pod, 2 guys get knocked out 30 minutes in. My opponent is playing Phelddagrif, and I'm playing Adeline, Resplendent Cathar (human tribal ofc).
I can't kill his commander, and mine is too easy to get back. We've run out of nearly all removal. We both have a board state of token creatures numbering in the thousands (and I don't have trample).
The fateful draw, turn god-knows-what, Fumigate, with Aetherflux Reservoir in hand. With no removal, my play goes off unhindered, I gain thousands of life, and repeatedly nuke his life total until it hits 0.
We both agreed to never face one another with those decks in the same game ever again.
It does make me nervous to make plays or remove threats sometimes. I play a lot of 1v1 constructed so these are nothing new to me but I run into players often who get upset when my deck interacts with them. It feels bad :(
At my lgs no one attacks with their creatures, and just about every game ends up as a miserable slog
Some of those Thassa's Oracle finishes were some of the worst EDH games I've played, as the rest of the table wasn't expecting them and had their engines set up and running, getting towards the finish line, and then a player just pops a combo from behind. Very unfun
I've tried explaining to some of my friends why constantly spreading damage between all players is just not a good idea.
Also my worst match was against a korvold deck that kept taking 10-15 minute turns.
I have a Korvold Treasure deck. I rarely play it and when I do I almost never play it to its greatest potential because I am aware that no one wants to sit there and watch me take super long turns
I feel called out haha. I remember I extended a game a few hours because I used a board wipe and I had no way to end the game.
I think this video really exemplifies why Commander is just not the format for me. It dosent support the aggro or burn strategies that I find fun, and i have come to realize the group hug/chaos decks I do like to play are generally seen as BM decks. Not even my intent when I play, I just wanna see what kind of funky shit I can enable my other degenerates in doing, but it feels like no matter how I build it ends up accidentally slowing the game down in a way I did not intend when I want to do the opposite.
Worst game of edh I ever played was with my friends while I was playing a jeleva spell slinger deck. I cast telamin performance on the momir vig deck at the table because I knew they ran powerful creatures and the other players were playing decks that were either karlov soul sisters or Doran high toughness creatures. At this point in the game, I had only cast jelera once and she exiled a card the player had wanted. They were upset that I used the performance on them as well even though I only got a mana dork. They proceeded to use all their resources on their next turn to kill me, but they couldn’t do anything else to the other players. I was told by the group that the game would be over soon and we’d do another game after that one, but it ended up being almost an hour before it was finished and everyone was so salty by the end that nobody was willing to play another game with me for the rest of the evening. 0/10 would not recommend sitting for an hour listening to your friends getting progressively angrier
The worst game I ever played was when one of my friends played a lord windgrace land destruction deck. He capitalized on it by playing lands from the graves of opponents, but it was incredibly slow. Either you aren’t doing anything as your mana curve is too high or you are making a deal with the other player to kill the land destruction player because he disrupts the progression of the game.
I regularly hold back, but the goal is to improve EVERYONE else’s fun.
The game is supposed to be fun.
See, this is why I play Gruul. My commander costs like half a mana and summons 35 tokens per turn. By round two I have 700 mana at my disposal and immediately become the biggest threat to gang up on. In other words:
"Boardwipe me. I want you to boardwipe me, Jerry! Boardwipe me!!!"
I don't play to win, I'm just there so people have a fourth. I do not want to put a paycheck into a deck, and I will never act coy about not wanting to win. There's already a 75% chance of losing, and I already conceded before shuffling.
I played a game where one guy was playing krenko and his only goal was too get as many goblins as possible and nobody told me so all my opponents just left him alone while I sat there trying too kill krenko it was definitely something I ended up winning but like he should have said he wasn't planning on winning
Isn't that what literally all krenko does?
@Russian_engineer_bmstu kind of but the rest of the table ignored him he said he had 2krenkos and just recasted it for 4 mana and had 500 goblins at the end before somone board wiped 😭
@@mgmed0368 I didn't mean making goblins, I meant sitting on them and doing nothing
My friend only does that, so we ignore him
@@mgmed0368 on a related note, didn't you happen to have that game in a unicorn on novoslobodskaya? Or Liga on dmitrovskaya?
I was that problem player, I played a mono red land hate deck that didn't actually have enough stuff to win the game since it had like... 30 land hate spells. That deck is going into the garbage can.
I usually play to have fun but I do not pull my punches anymore. I know my play group and they know the play group and we have learnt after many games to not pull punches even if the player doesn’t seem to have a “crazy” board state. I’ve had a couple games where one player had only mana rocks and lands and then proceeded to take a 50 minute turn playing solitaire and ended up winning (or taking 1 or 2 players out) and no one had any responses because we were all tapped out lol.
Good points. This is why I hate group hug decks.
I've had both situations actually (regarding whether I played to win)
at mid power level, playing the same artifact control Grixis deck
once I didn't remove someone's Morophon because I had been removing all their enablers (they were a First Sliver deck) under a promise of not destroying me that turn ... well they popped off and killed everyone including me which felt unfair and unsatisfying
and once the game had already gone for way too long, and I wrathed because it was the optimal play, and I took a 5 min turn and I eventually won the game but that didn't feel satisfying at all everyone was tired, game should've closed up 15-20 min ago and I should've let it even if it was a losing play
the worst games I've ever had were all because someone decided that I needed to die out of nowhere even though I wasn't in a controlling position, because they "wanted to get second place"
The reason i don't fully commit is so that I don't get wrathed and end up with little to no resources left.
Small increments, just attack and leave some mana open, just don't be the easiest target on board and you're fine
That’s strategic and not the kind of holding back I’m referring to in this video
You talk about pulling punches, meanwhile my playgroup punches down. Half of us on blue and deciding one person's commander is not resolving this game
How do you all deal with these two situations where you’re playing with your friends:
You’re ahead and there is an opportunity to kill a player but there is no guarantee that the game will end in a few turns after they’re dead, potentially making them wait a long time or even all night
You’re about to lose the game and your only way to stay in is using a sweeper which may only bring you to parody, not ahead of the opponents, slowing the game down by a full hour or more?