This Is Your Brain On Commander
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ก.ย. 2024
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Let's talk about the casual mentality, and the ongoing damage it does to Magic as a game.
#EDH #commander #mtgarena
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Commander has taught me, from a distance, that people are doughy and soft.
We're also fussy because if you really want to make it so your commander doesn't get hit by as much removal, there's plenty of options for legendary creatures that have indestructible and do different things.
My personal motto is:"Build for fun, play to win." Meaning that I aim to build a deck that isn't a terrible, groan inducing experience to play/loose against, but I won't hold back when actually playing the game, trying to outplay and outpolitic everyone at the table. And I know that this social trickery dimension is very important to my enjoyment of the game. 1v1 Magic doesn't have that, so I am not as interested in any 1v1 formats. And Arena doesn't interest me at all, because I play Magic to socialise and get out of the house in the first place.
I do the same, but I'm mainly a faerie tempo player xD (and the decks that are not that way have "hoops" I invented for them)
I don't use ultra fast mana nor tutors, I like when a deck has different ways to win, and I have to figure it out which one while playing it. But I do play against those "strong decks" (not cEDH) without bothering them for bringing the most busted thing to the table, and even then I do tend to win a lot of the games.
I like to build jank deck but build them as strong as possible and someone actually started complaining that I used a craterhoof in my BIRD TRIBAL deck. I have no idea how you decide that the wincon for a goofy tribe is the problem when you are running Edgar Markov.
I’ve been building decks with heavy restrictions and theme requirements lately. I’m still playing the game as efficiently as I can once I shuffle up though.
I'm glad this is one of the top comments, because no one should be complaining about players wanting to have fun playing the game
@@SnowFoxWithAGasMask Yeah, that's a little hypocritical of them. Vampires have so much support they don't need a Craterhoof. However, I am always disappointed when I see a Craterhoof show up as a generic Wincon. Apparently you weren't playing Azorius birds, but I think there's enough other ways out there to not just slap in a Craterhoof. I can see that as being anticlimactic to a game. It takes away from the "jank" premise of the deck.
Of the corner of your eye, you see him crawling on all fours…!
Shia LaBeouf!
SAME BRAIN…. I literally thought this was the opening of the video
Unfortunately you were caught in a new common from Duskmourn - Bear Trap!
But you have more than 3 toughness.
Brought a mono blue list to my LGS and had the rule zero convo with the randoms up there and they seemed fine with it after interrogating me about the deck. Then they salted out after I countered and bounced a few things (I'm not even running free counterspells or cyclonic rift). At this point I'm operating under the assumption that a random person playing commander really just wants to play solitaire and build a rube goldberg machine unless proven otherwise.
And you’d be right.
Well it is possible to make a computer from magic cards so 😜
I just tell people if they don't want to get counterspelled they need to stop playing cards that need to be counterspelled.
Mono-Blue tends to make people salty. It just feels like the only game plan is to keep anyone from doing anything. And the worst is when it doesn't seem to have a real wincon or game plan except for saying no.
The "brain on commander" effect is the reason why I don't play commander with randoms at the LGS and I only play commander with friends. When you play with people you know, you avoid all the weird "it's rude to win" mentality cause the main reason you're playing is the just hang out with your friends.
It's also why I'll always prefer 1v1 cause when I sit down with an opponent we both know that the goal is to win. Same with cEDH.
My play group transitioned to cedh a while ago because we were bored of tiptoing around the power level argument.
If people want to jump in we give them a big heads up we're playing cedh. Suddenly more and more locals bave started turning up with cedg
@@johndtcgThat’s awesome! It’s almost like people want to play the game as the rules imply, someone wins.
I'm the rando with no friends or play group hoping to get recruited but I like playing Mothman 😂
@@johndtcgThe irony is that the people concerned about power level and etiquette are the ones making the format expensive, they're the ones gatekeeping a game they don't even really like. Just saying, a budget agro deck could smash most pods, you just need to play Armageddons.
Fr cedh and edh with close friends are the only way commander is bearable
Can’t wait to read the whole book.
I think magic players like that need to learn about what the most prolific game designer in human history thinks about that. Dr Reiner Kiniza tweeted in 2011 the following words: "When playing a game, the goal is to win, but it is the goal that is important, not the winning."
Wow, very interesting quote :o
Commander sounds like the most bipolar format. On one hand, you'll get shunned if you try to win. But on the other, everybody is salivating for the next cookie cutter $40 Made For Commander combo piece.
Social format. People have different expectations.
"Try to win" is overly simplified. What it means is that if you come in swinging from turn 1 trying to end the game on turn 5, when everyone is still setting up their mana, that's when you get shunned. But even, shunned is a harsh word. People won't really appreciate that it ended before anyone really got to play much. They probably won't want to play with you much more. Imagine if some guys were playing basketball and let you in on a game and while you were tying your shoes to get ready, they finished the whole game and were walking off the court when you were ready. It's something more like that.
The secret is that Commander is actually multiple formats at the same time, and you often only learn what version of the format you're expected to be playing by the others in-game, even if some level of pre-game conversation occurs.
It’s not just commander. There’s all sorts of people who basically just play 60 card casual that will get salty if you wanna play a deck that’s even vaguely meta.
My issue with arena is that outside of the one daily you get the game only rewards you for wins and this is an economy issue affecting how i play the game. It means if i want to progress a collection i have to spend my currency on things to win instead of forcing some weird jank deck to work. I could play more games for more chances at winning but i dont have the time or patience to play much more than I already do. Lesser rewards for just playing I think would be more encouraging to more casually engaging with arena.
@mafviseuking999 I think this is also bad on the competitive side, and it's not just because it counts wins. One of the problems I encountered when trying to build a collection is that going for wins encouraged not just using the best deck in the format but also the fastest deck. The more games you can play, the higher your EV if you're going for number of wins, even with a lower win rate if the win rate difference is not proportionate to the time saved.
This has the effect of incentiving aggro decks that end games win or lose, in 5 minutes over control or combo decks that take 15-30 minutes to end games.
Unfortunately, this doesn't go away entirely if you shift to just games played because you play more games going aggro as well. It's so unfortunate incentive systems that alter the way people play magic in ways I find unfun.
@@RedOphiuchus I feel that. I think if the weekly quest steps weren't just win a game but became play 2 games or win 1 game, I don't think the amount of aggro would necessarily increase. The people playing it for the rewards still will but other players might feel its now worth to slow down and those already getting blown out are still getting something.
@mafviseuking999 I think it would definitely reduce it for sure. If you're going for the max 15 wins every day and suddenly it's only 15 games, then a lot more people will elect to play slower decks because they know the approximate maximum time it will take them is only a few hours instead of potentially 8+.
Even just lessening the incentive is good, I agree.
@@RedOphiuchus completely. In fact, it matters far more that it is fast than it being good. Even a 10% difference in winrate is negligible if you shave off 4-5 minutes of gameplay every game.
It literally rewards playing as little as possible.
Learn to play Limited
I haven't spent a dollar on MTGA in over a year have any card i need for constructed
I love this because my "group hug" deck Ms Bumbleflower was hated on after the first time I ever ran it because I was able to kill the table with a 22/22 bunny. This actually triggered one of the guys in our playgroup as I had said pregame I didn't know if my deck had an absolute win condition.
fellas is it unfair playing the game of magic the gathering and casting spells?
@@valeriosellan284 it sure is!
@@valeriosellan284this is why I play stax. Fair magic 😅
@@valeriosellan284 you're supposed to stroke the ego among other things of the artifact player and let everyone get off
*I mean go off
Is removal such a foreign concept in your pod ? lol
Commander magic may be the biggest case of " square peg jammed into a round hole" in the history of gaming.
I like to play Sealed to scratch "that itch" and I really can't recommend it enough. It puts everyone on as even a power level as possible and tests your luck, deckbuilding from limited resources in limited time, and 1v1 skill. It also manages to be both high stakes and low stakes, as taking 1st typically just means a few more packs, but that doesn't stop it from feeling important in the moment.
And the more players who show up to Sealed and other pre-release events, the more fun it is for everyone, the more/better prizes your LGS will provide, and the more it shows WOTC that Draft Boosters need to come back.
Sealed and draft have been some of the most fun I've had in magic. The boys and I are picking up our Duskmourn boxes Friday after work and coming back to the crib to do sealed
I find every discussion about this topic literally boils down to "Everyone has a different reason for playing and everyone is always pointing fingers at the other side to say it is the wrong way to play."
The only real answer is: play how you want to play and try to find likeminded people to join you. Thats it. There really isn't a wrong way to play commander. Its just preference.
If I had a penny for every poster who showed up on r/Pauper expecting it to be as laid back as Commander, I'd be able to afford another deck.
I gave up on "casual" commander long ago. People always told me that it's way more chill than cEDH but I couldn't disagree more. I have played cEDH with randoms a lot and most of them are super chill because we are all there to play the same game and it ends up being a laugh. Sure, there are bad eggs and salt mines, but you can avoid them and still have a good variety of players to play with. It's easy to build a community of cEDH players because they are all there to do the same thing.
Casual commander on the other hand is way more stressful because unless you only play with the same 4 people, you know not everyone at the table is on the same page and it's like walking through an emotional minefield where casting any spell has the potential to set of one or more of those mines and the atmosphere from that point on is pure shit. I often feel like a good amount casual players are actually more competitive than cEDH players in their own little world. It's a very strange experience and I don't like it.
I’ve seen the reverse. Guy started with arena and try playing control in a four pod. Then got mad that he lost.
You can definitely play control in a pod. It just looks a lot different than playing 1v1. Guy must've thought that he could Thoughtseize his way to victory against three opponents.
@@majestyzx9081 pretty much all his removal was one for one. I showed him how to play control with my Sauron, the Dark Lord deck. I use the army with sacrifice outlets and grave pact effects.
@@richardthomas7925You're a monster for that alone but I like the cut of your gib G 😂
Winning is fun. If you're not winning then the secret sauce to having fun is understanding that attempting to win and even losing are also fun. It's like the first rule of good sportsmanship
Nah, the Road is what should be fun (my opinion of course). Winning or losing doesnt matter, for me they exist to end the game, because all good things need an end. Ad / Thara for example is a very, very bad ending. It all about the "how" and for me, that holds true the whole game. If someone boringly slams down staple after staple and the same boring things, the road is not fun - and then i need to ask "why even play?". If i sit down 2 hours for a game it should be fun until it lasts. 30 minute commander-games can only tick my "negative-boxes", so they are out of the question.
But in the end, i dont blame the players - i blame 10% edhrec, 85% wotc-commander design with powercreep and 5% commanderyoutuber who cant wrap their head around verdalken artifacts. Now we have a powercreeped format with a bad rc that doesnt want to balance a game that is in dire need of balancing.
I view magic through a Modern format lens, so for me there are two groups of people:
People that take competitive play seriously, and everybody else.
I've come across tons of commander-only players who, once exposed to competitive formats that actually reward skilled building/play, find that they were never fully experiencing the thrill of magic.
While I applaud that the guy was able to come to such realization, the point still stands that the mentality is still the norm in Commander, to the point that card design is already being influenced by it. Lest we forget that Nadu was changed at the last minute because playing at instant speed is considered rude in Commander. In a set made straight for Modern.
nadu was also not playtested at all in his final iteration which i think is more so the problem overall with recent card design mistakes
I play group hug, so I never win. But all my best memories of edh are from games I lost while doing something wonky.
If winning is your only way to have fun, you only have fun a part of the time.
Great point.
I miss the old days of magic where it didn't revolve around cmdr, and the social aspect was talking about your deck builds and playing, but that's okay I just play in formats I enjoy.
Yeah I don't like how EDH is now "the social format." Standard and Draft used to be social formats. I wasn't sitting in a cubicle by myself when I went to all those FNMs. EDH is fun but it isn't THE social format.
I feel like there were much better r/edh threads to use for the message of this video. The particular post used as the example here seems very reasonable. On the other hand, there was quite literally a "Am I mean if I attack the group hug player?" thread a day or two ago.
And the answer is no, since most likely they have a wincon thats barely interactable (second sun anyone?) or just weirdly imbalance the game in a simmiliar way to chaos or stax players.
Aside from just commander brain, it really does feel like there has been a shift in game design and culture since 2018's FIRE design. I've found myself enjoying magic less and less as it feels like the game is made less about having fun (which includes winning), and more about maximizing profits for WOTC and having cards that makes packs fly off the shelves. Are those cards selling because people enjoy and love the cards, or because they don't stand a competitive chance without playing the one ring in modern? This is the frustration i've had with Arena since it's inception. WOTC is obviously doing it for Nugget Town.
Good video. Really, you made a lot of great points here.
Old man here, literally. I've been saying this for years, that commander is not Magic: the Gathering, it's "Magic: the Gathering: The Board Game" that most don't try to win.
I think the commander mentality is unique to Magic because it's become the face of magic at this point.
Competitive games very often do have non-competitive options within them that fill a role similar to commander. LoL has ARAM which started as a custom game with self-enforced rules, much like commander. StarCraft and Halo both have a plethora of custom game modes made by fans that completely change how you play. CoD has the zombie horde mode.
But at the end of the day, these are modes within the base game. You aren't jumping right into ARAM when you first play LoL, you play regular matches first and it unlocks later. For Magic, EDH is now the base game. Many players jump into that first, and it molds how they look at the rest of the game.
This mentality also exists in Dead By Daylight, actually. Very similar mindset among some casuals not helped by the fact that the game is very poorly balanced for high-level play.
"Commander is the ARAM of MtG" is baffling yet true
Winning CAN be an obstacle to fun, it's a thoroughly documented thing: we call it grinding/farming.
Winning is fun, that's true, but there's a point where winning becomes the goal and overrides the fun, and our brain has a horrible tendency towards optimizing fun out of a game.
We usually don't notice because most games are designed to ensure that the optimal way to play is also the most fun.
But this is not true of Arena or most free to play games. Because making people not enjoy playing is a way to get people to pay.
I'm not saying commander isn't partially at fault, but the arena economy will really rot your brain if you let it. Especially the season pass.
I'm a fucking competitive tryhard and I know it, yet the perverse incentives of the area economy made winning into a chore, something I had to do to not waste the gems I had already spent on the season pass. It was miserable, I hated it and even quit magic for a year after because it was actually making me more unhappy than not playing at all.
To me this sounds like someone in the same situation, someone who fell onto the dark patterns of the game until fun became a complete afterthought to grinding. They just lack the game design language to properly explain their experience.
I hate Arena due to it's overbearing economy. I would love to try it as a more "accessible" introduction into 1v1 magic but I DESPISE all the F2P pitfalls
Lol, you are NOT a competitive try-hard, you're just a filthy casual from 20 years ago, prior to the creation of this new ultra-feminine level of casual. Like, seriously, 20 years ago 5 Color banned sleeves in hopes of eliminating expensive cards, and thus making the format more accessible... so, I picked up a second set of dual lands and power and raw dogged 'em.
Yeah. This, I can't add anything worthwhile, this is just correct.
This argument is exactly why EDH became a thing in the first place. We played a competitive format and wanted something fun to do on the side. It was our way to recharge the fun when we were getting too competitive. But the thing is, that's what it was meant to be, a casual thing to do on the side when we weren't being competitive. It wasn't originally intended to be this front and center format. Now that it is, player's idea on what a magic player is or should do is completely skewed. I have the most fun playing Magic when i'm playing competitively. I will play how I want and I will play to win. I also accept that when I build janky rogue decks and they don't do well, it's my own fault.
I stopped playing commander because there's social structures in place now that tell people how or how not to play commander. I love Grand Arbiter Augustin IV. He's one of my most favorite commanders from back in the day, and I would continue to use him if I could, but it's not socially acceptable (even though I feel there are much worse commanders now). It's crazy how bad and toxic people think Rhystic Study is when they find a card like Guardian Project perfectly fine. Realistically, you're drawing way more cards off the Guardian Project than the Rhystic Study. Just because you're "making" the opponent pay 2 to make it so you don't draw. Imagine how bad Guardian Project would be if it had that text on it. As soon as people feel like they're being "taxed", they think they don't get to have fun anymore. Part of these games is strategy and figuring out ways to beat your opponent. If you want to play solitaire and win with your opponent not interacting, you should literally play solitaire.
If you want to make winning through optimal deck design your entertainment experience, you’re literally spoiled for choice with cEDH and all the 60-card formats.
Why does EDH have to be filled with super consistent 9.5s, with anyone who’s not down for that at the LGS being a big baby who’s complaining too much?
I played Legacy competitively for several years, albeit back in the day. If I never play another game against another angle-shooting, win-at-every-cost-except a rules breach that can’t be hidden/explained away Sweatlord, it’ll be a not-insignificant component of my dying content.
I came back to MtG for EDH precisely because it was everything that the game I fled without a backward glance was not.
Of course I object to EDH becoming cEDH-lite.
To be clear: Players should be playing to win. Of course they should.
I’m even supportive of staple use, just short of beginning to look like 65% of a cEDH list, because I’d be a hypocrite otherwise.
But building a list you know will be a misery for everyone but you?
In EDH? Why?
I have this conversation frequently with a friend who loves non-targeting Edict loops. In a play-space where we’re trying very hard to get people to stop emulating the pubstomper Combo players, him frequently blowing out *everything and anything* where multiple creatures on board is part of the game plan is 100% counterproductive to generating less win-from-hand Combo Artists.
“XXXX, your Meren list is incredibly effective, and I’d love it if you could shelve it for 6-7 FNMs, until we can get more people willing to play something not designed to windmill a Vito-infinite or Dualcaster as the game plan.”
This issue actually isn't a new thing, it's just a terminally discussed thing by people who spend more time concept testing magic and theorycrafting, than actually sitting down and playing. I started playing commander back in 2015 and some of the rule 0 banlists from the LGS players were ridiculous in hindsight. One of the most extreme examples I remember was a player who banned all countermagic, which included effects like remand and redirects, banned all hatebears, stax pieces, extra turns, true name nemesis, hand disruption, and color hate. In his words commander needs to be fun, or it isn't worth wasting both the time he spent playing, and the money he spent on his deck. Needless to say I and many others didn't play with him.
Lol this player you described wears diapers. I bet ya.
@@WizardLogic i have friends like this, although nothing gets banned they’re only satisfied by creature damage or burn, “fair stuff” - they just need to run a lot more removal but refuse to, because more permanents = more synergies.
Im from an era were "commander" was called EDC and we played to win. One of my LGS is full of people that seem to want games to go on forever and I try to win in as few of turns as possible. They have tried to ban whole mechanics from their game thats not even part of commander rules. They hate any combos, they hate when I use vintage cards, They even get mad when you use board wipes...its madness
This is why Spike Feeders is the best commander channel. Everyone is unapologetically trying to play their best, whether with cEDH decks or not.
Commander doesn't have to be about winning but surely all games are at least somewhat about trying to win?!
What I like most about the spikes is the mental. They can all show up with jank decks and just play them well. Not filled to the brim with expensive cards doing silly things, but tuned game plans even with jank starting points. I even changed out a few pieces in my own decks just seeing how stuff like a random $3 card they used in a match actually plays, compared to stuffing generic commander goodstuff cards in. And even when one deck stomps on camera, its not "that deck is BS" but "that deck was cool!" Love their content, my favorite commander channel
I almost find it impossible to play EDH with randoms at my LGS because one too many times the player(s) I sit down with want to play to such a casual extreme that I have been literally yelled at for interacting with my opponent's board. Mind you, I'm not sitting down with a hypertuned/cEDH deck to pubstomp people, I specifically have built decks to play at a lower power level for these random pickup games and even still I have extremely casual-minded players groaning at interaction.
The "casualization" of EDH has poisoned the well imo and doesn't allow players to interact with each other. Long gone are the days of being able to sit down and play games with anyone and have a good time, it's all feel-bads because one player starts winning and another player goes on a tirade because of it. People don't want to make good game decisions anymore in these random pickup games either, they want to hard-target and revenge the player who dared to interact with their board.
I have legit been singled out in a game because I played Path to Exile on an opponent's commander who was leading ahead by turn 5 and meanwhile I've missed 3 land drops. Casual players take this game way too seriously and I think that's the tragic irony here. Casual players are so up tight over a "casual" game of EDH that they make it unfun for themselves and those around them.
I recently played a duel commander deck in a 4 player commander game, an aggressive Boros deck. I was fully aware that I probably just didn´t have the reach to actually win the game because it just wasn´t a good fit with far too low a curve etc. but I wanted to try it. I did NOT expect some people to get as angry as they did when I blew up their ramp creature with an Incinerate or countering something they tapped out for with a Mana Tithe to slow them down. Neither of those cards are actually good in multiplayer Commander but goddamn, some people are completely oblivious to turn 1-4 interaction and attacking people before they can get online.
Of course I eventually lost since I just couldn´t compete with 7 or 8 mana spells and people had way too much life but christ, one of them actually treated me like I brought a cEDH list and deliberately wanted to pubstomp. That attitude is just so foreign to me, I don´t know how you would get someone like that to play a 1v1 format.
Probably just the shock of experiencing something new :) Commander hasn't started to accelerate only last year. Dockside is five years old at this point. People should have gotten used to meaningful plays in early rounds, and for their opponents to be ready to stifle those plays to stop things from spiraling out of control.
Managing aggro is a skill and part of commander. You complaining that people retaliated when you fucked with them, by your own admission not for any good reason, strikes me more as a misunderstanding of the game on your part than theirs.
I once vandablast someone's turn 1 sol ring, he wasn't happy
@@EwMatias ??? what does "not for any good reason" mean, do I need a doctor's note to play the game now? slowing down your opponents is a perfectly legitimate strategy to keep an advantage, and getting hostile because a player is playing the game is just toxic behavior
@@kodicraft Not any good reason means it didn't result in you winning. To the contrary, it contributed to you losing.
This is a dense and sprawling topic that I applaud you for trying to tackle inside of a 15 minute video. I knew nothing about Brawl, so I couldn't really draw any parallels between Commander and Brawl. After reading up on it, things started to make a bit more sense.
You know this, but I didn't. Brawl is split into two categories: Standard, which is a 60 card singleton format with a commander that uses only standard legal options, and Historic, which is (and correct me if I'm wrong) 100 card singleton with a commander that uses any card printed in the Arena client. Other small concessions are that your commander can be a planeswalker. Standard Brawl offers a limited card pool with a build-around-me commander, which limits what win conditions you can typically see. Historic brawl's card pool is a bit more broad, but still limits what options you might see out of a higher powered format. Still, there are stronger combos and certain strategies afforded by the Historic format. You start at 25 in 1v1, and 35 in multiplayer, and the ban list is constantly updated if things seem out of band for a commander.
This is compared to Commander, which is 100 card singleton with a commander with a fairly limited ban list from the entire lifetime of MtG centered around a 4 player game. There are a lot of things that can kill you seemingly out of nowhere in this format if the decks are built correctly. Even if a deck isn't going to kill you outright, there's cards like Blood Moon, Arcane Laboratory, Null Rod or Rest in Peace that can turn off entire strategies many of whose analogues inside of Brawl are outright banned from the jump or made into creatures instead.
Arena Brawl is a 1v1 format in Bo1 that rewards you more for winning than losing, yet has no matchmaking ranking beyond weight assigned to specific cards. Standard Brawl may be a reasonable onboarding point (easier deckbuilding, narrower card pool, limited set of win conditions), but Historic has plenty of nasty combos without the interaction that paper magic provides such as Fierce Guardianship, Force of Will or Force of Negation. Adding planeswalkers to your list of commanders also unlocks guaranteed hosing options in your commander slot like Liliana of the Veil for midrange stompy decks or Teferi, Time Raveler to deny interaction. Beyond that, we also have the same free mulligan rule that Commander has, which lend a bit of an edge to combo oriented strategies. If you're optimizing for best gains from the Arena format, you're leaning into combo decks that can duck or deny interaction and then looking at the two free opening hands you get and choosing to instascoop if you didn't get the nuts or a matchup you wanted. You are incentivized to not treat your opponents as people, and simply just burn through them at the fastest pace possible for the rewards.
In paper commander, you're signing up to play with 3 friends (or strangers, depending) for a set amount of time, and it's often in the interest of the group to "Rule 0" what you're fighting against to attempt to have some semblance of a fun, balanced game. There's often no reward structure in paper commander, and what constitutes "succeeding" with your deck doesn't necessarily mean winning. You can opt out of fighting infect, land destruction, hand disruption, fast mana, or infinite combos before you even sit down to play. Further limitations on budget, even with proxies, results in soft bans for EDH staples like Rhystic Study, Smothering Tithe and Dockside Extortionist. This rule 0 discussion expands the card pool and viability of strategies that would usually not see the light of day in a format with the possible power level and breadth of cards that Commander has.
I think the original poster can be forgiven for expecting the two to be similar, if only because Brawl has a similar ruleset to Commander. That similarity stops at the rules. The incentive structure, anonymization and platform are completely different and vastly change how you approach deckbuilding and play. Attempts to cross those streams by adding or removing incentives have been disastrous. If you take away the incentive structure from Brawl, people would not play that mode other than for fun. Given the choice between modes that do reward you for playing it versus modes that don't, people will gravitate towards modes that reward you. If you add incentive structure to Commander, you end up with debacles like the Moxfield cEDH tournaments with rampant cheating and collusion.
I guess the tl;dr of all this is: Brawl is not Commander. It wears its skin and pretends to be Commander, but in reality the nature of how its designed and how it lives inside of the Arena ecosystem makes it a competitive format. Brawl markets itself as being a casual format while at the same time incentivizing competitive play which results in constantly mismatched expectations.
the kind of people who play commander are just not the same kind of people that play 1v1
Yeah, commander for me has turned into a social activity, which also happens to feature magic
not true at all lol
All fun and games till you start playing 1v1 commander
I mostly play commander in at my lgs which is 1v1 commander...so you're wrong and you should feel bad.
@@villainousTCG literally the worst format
So, I will say that actually, you do see this in Call of Duty and other lobbies. Years ago, for a brief overlap of my interaction with the Call of Duty community I found a large thread of CoD players complaining about SBMM. Not that it was broken and not appropriately matching them with people of equal skill, but that they DIDN'T WANT to be matched with people of equal skill. They had an above average level of skill and wanted to get more games where their opponents were noticeably worse than them so they don't have to "sweat" to win. Some put out the argument that they're streamers, and it's hard to sweat and be entertaining to an audience at the same time.
Anyway, my point is that this is definitely happening in other games, and I find it extremely bizarre.
Above average COD players don't realise that when they play with players of a similar skill, those players have similar ability to delete them. Being above average and then switching input methods to a new one, ie you are now much worse, is interesting to demonstrate how effective SBMM is. You quickly get adjusted to games you are competetive in and it's quite enjoyable, not easy, but feels fair. Then when you queue with the same buddies as before you realise how much the game has been putting you in lobbies of your level, as you return to trickier lobbies and get destroyed.
Thats not years old that´s recent. After Activision? or whoever manages the onlinemode leaked their data of how and why MM worked all the above points were regurtitated.
Fact was if not for SBMM the playercount would run dry very quickly.
@ceeagelevair3630 for me, I saw the arguments in like 2019 which is, imo, old at this point. But I agree, SBMM definitely helps retain players for longer and increases the chances players will move up the ladder by creating a difficulty curve in a multiplayer game.
People need to shut the hell up about SBMM because you're not losing because of some magical algorithm putting you into an impossible match, but because people are just getting better at video games in general. Especially post pandemic where people did nothing but play games for hours a day like some addicted redditor. If you want to be "entertaining without having to sweat" then go play some Weenie Hut Jr. game like Destiny
Before Planetside 2 died, it was a good showcase of how scale overcomes matchmaking. It doesn't really matter if one player is a demon with a kdr of 6. If the other team brought 120 players vs your 70, you will lose. There was no matchmaking because individual players couldn't totally change the outcome.
Contradictory oppinion here, this is fine. It takes a lot of emotional maturity to come to an agreement with four people that youre just here to have fun.
Standard isnt being hurt by casuals who want to play 60 card casual, it just means theres something not in standard that would attract these people. So they act out the way they want to play.
There are three ways of playing commander "im playing to win", "check This out", and "cedh" and theyre all fine! If these people as you say, are acting improperly, dont have the ability to become compatible with winning as a core goal, then theyll just go back to commander or make a new format. Which is fine!
I would go so far as to say the first half of this video has nothing to do with the second. No post was provided here to describe the "commander mentality". I really feel as if this is a bad feeling thats being had rather than a reality with specific things that can be tackled.
My only takeaway is that Craterhoof Behemoth is exactly camping in Modern Warfare.
Commander games should be fun but they should also end. 1 hr/game is great! But if it reaches that 2hr-3hr mark everyone is a hostage and would like to go home or play a new game/with other pods.
If you want fast wins? You can look for a cEDH pod or let people know as you all sit down because I guarantee you that if you let people know you'll try to win (Yeah I know, we all assume that's what we're here for but for some people they just want to hang out and do their hobby.) People will enjoy racing one another for a win, cEDH or not, speed varying depending on cards etc.
Winning is indeed fun, but i'm guessing the person that made that post never found out.
This is an important video. A lot of points that needed to be addressed. And I’m absolutely guilty of sometimes blaming my opponents for lost games and being salty, that their decks (that tried to win) win against my casual, funny meme-deck. Maybe that’s just the reality of commander that all players just have to deal with. After all … it’s a complex game. In every possible way and sense of the word.
2:15 id compare it more to complaining about people "trying to win" in RP servers on stuff like gta but you opened regular gta not the rp server
The problem is selling brawl as commander on arena. It's not. It has all the power level issues of commander without the social counterbalances.
The problem is that this isn't the player's fault, wizards made the format and the daily rewards for winning, of course people will try to win as much as possible. Game design shapes player action.
It really doesn't help when Standard on Arena is almost completely dominated by Red and Blue. I rarely touch Arena cuz I don't get to play the decks or colors I want to play.
Either way, its difficult to go from playing Commander for 9 years to a format that is very competitive and hyper meta focused, hence Red and Blue being format warping for Standard.
It's already off-putting enough having to play a specific deck for a chance to win. It removes the fun from the format for me.
For me, I don't see the point in bothering with those formats when I can play Commander and build any deck I want and still have a chance of winning, as well as learn unique interactions that won't happen in any other format while also obtaining a deeper understanding of the game.
Standard is dominated by black. Red is only in best of one, which is not the way standard is meant to be played.
A comment you criticized in your video on proxies comes to mind where someone asks their pod if it's okay to play with proxies, and the response they get from someone is, "Sure, just let me just grab my proxy deck that is insanely overpowered and can win on turn 3." Playing Arena online feels like you are playing against that person, so I will only play on Arena against the people I play paper magic with in real life. One of the only times I tried playing online, I lost on like turn 4 to someone running the sanguine bond/exquisite blood combo doing one damage to me. They're allowed to play to win, and I'm allowed to not play against them if I think it's a pointless, unfun endeavor.
If you are basing power on whether a deck has proxies or not then maybe you should find another playgroup.
If my friends said: "we are playing with no infinite combos" and I pulled out my proxy deck that has no infinite combos, and they said: "ok since you are playing proxies I will play infinite combos" then I will switch to my proxy deck with infinite combos. This logic runs through until we are playing cedh.
Bro just play solitaire its more your speed.
I've found a playgroup where we generally have a solid power level, it's not CEDH but we all know the game well enough to generally play competently. Variance comes from trying out different commanders and decks, sometimes tuning them up if we vibe with the deck. Only real contention thus far has been one friend using Armageddon in one of his decks. Most of us aren't fond of the card due to its unsavory effect.
I think that LD shouldn't be a taboo in Commander games as long as the player has a game plan involving it. Not touching lands means Green maintains a huge edge in Commander because ramping is its thing in a format where ramping is essential because the design requires mana.
Otherwise, it's great to find a pod of people on the same page, that is the whole goal of a regular commander group.
@styfen this is why I run Ezuri's Predation in my Jolrael deck. MLD *with* an actual wincon.
@@casteanpreswyn7528 I put a Ruination in my Zada, Hedron Grinder deck because there are so few non-basics in it. I haven't tested it yet, but the idea is to basically delay the table a turn or two so I can really grind on that Hedron if you know what I'm sayin'
@@styfen green is definitely not the strongest color in commander and mld almost always leaves the non-green players further behind, the green player will recover more quickly. people also just don't like not being able to play, its not about winning or losing its just boring sitting there with no lands when you have a limited amount of time to play. i usually treat mld as a high-priority game-ending threat and try to remove that player immediately.
Starting off, I've been told I have a scrub mentality because I actively choose not to play easy win cons like demonic/thoracle. I play doomsday so my opponents have an opportunity to stop me from my 5 card win pile. I play cards like tergrid without any way of forcing my opponents to discard. This way of playing has left me more happy than watching a tergrid windfall resolve. Seeing people actively having to play around a card, instead of it just deflating the game; that is what I enjoy. I cant remember many wins, but I remember lots of fun stuff like a force of will off the top of a rhystic trigger, countering a demonic/thoracle combo... that game lasted another 3 hours as a slong.
Was really waiting for Shia LaBeouf to jump out at me in that intro
I'm going to blur the name on the post.... But you know who you are
Yeah arena made me realize that I care more about the social aspect of paper magic than the actual game. Digital magic is super boring to me. Getting to mythic the first time was somewhat fun, but after that it became stale quickly.
But players always tried to gatekeep what is and isn't the "real" way to play magic long before edh existed. Go to any tournament and play a bogles pile and watch your opponent make excuses how your win doesn't really count. Or the meme level complaints about tron we had for more than a decade.
Commander is what you want Commander to be. The key to Commander is finding people who are in the same mind set about Commander that you have. You want to have super competitive Commander? There are people who want to do that. You want to create jank decks? There are people who want to do that. I try to play casual and social Commander, but I am definitely playing to win, I am just not creating sweaty or highly optimized decks to do so. 1v1 MTG is all about winning. 1v1 is all about making optimized decks to beat your opponent.
Based on what the OP wrote, I don't think he was saying that the other Arena players trying to win are bad for doing so. It sounded like they were self reflecting that type of environment just wasn't for them which is 100% ok. Competitive environments are not everyone's cup of tea.
the game is literally a competition
@@erik556 yes, but there is a breadth of players perspective: from "winning is all that matters" to "it would be nice to win, but I want to focus on fun first" to "I just want to play silly cards and have no interest in winning"
@@RazgrizAce67 playing silly cards is totally fine, the expectation is that you don't be a whiner when you lose. it's a game that has an end, there has to be a winner.
If a 4 person pod includes 4 people playing silly cards with no intention of winning then 3 of those people are unnecessary, just goldfish your deck, it's the same thing.
@@erik556 1. I wasn't talking about being a sore loser, agreed that is not good behavior.
2. Goldfishing is not the same as playing with friends. I have a deck where I play the un-set card Eye to Eye which is literally a worse version of Murder which is in itself worse than most kill spells so obviously I don't play it trying to be efficient and win the game. I play it because it makes for hilarious times with my friends. I don't get those moments by myself either.
@@RazgrizAce67 yeah no doubt. i think playing powered down ( and still trying to win ) is not what we’re talking about. its the doughy “dont play to win at my table” attitude that is stupid and leads to 3 hour games that feel like purgatory
I love playing Standard/Timeless in Arena, I don't feel bad for winning the match. In commander, I have to constantly worry if what I'm doing is a dick move. Am I focusing on one player too much? I hope I didn't just turn my turn into a game of Solitaire. I hope I didn't just accidentally "king make". etc.
It really makes me sad how few players turn up to even prerelease these days. It used to be a great time to get the whole community together, and now there's sometimes more people playing Commander at prerelease events than we get in the event itself :(
On the flip side, my local scene had a bunch of Store Champs over the last month or so, which was great to see!
My LGS only has commander events. I miss Friday night Magic drafts... and I have to drive 45 minutes to the nearest city for a game of cardboard standard.
@@Lembo101 this was definitely an exception, although we have regular drafts with a dedicated group of people
didn't pre-releases get a price hike this year with the transition to play boosters, probably a big part of it
@@themoops4006 it's been like that for a couple of years, but it certainly hasn't helped
What I‘ve learned playin Commander at my LGS is, that you just cannot please everyone in Magic.
People basically complain about everything, even if it includes playing common Bunnies in a tribal deck and ultimately winning the game, after several turns, where the board was vulnerable to board wipes or cyclonic rift.
Thus when I slam the Hoof/Moonshaker Cavalry on turn 12, people would still be ludacris mad at me, for just ending the game.
I mean cmon, everybody played the game, it took over an hour so far, but still some people want to keep on durdling around.
Folks, look at it from another perpective:
Commander games should not last 5 hours, you can actually just shuffle up and play AGAIN after someone won the last round.
The only thing I myself hate is the turn 4 Urza win, but that is, I guess, out of the conversation.
There definitely is a disconnect about expectations when playing Commander. There was someone on Reddit who mentioned winning most of their games, then listed commanders and went “Well these two are tuned but not that bad” and it’s like pulling teeth to figure out what “not that bad” means. It leads to general advice because people don’t have anything to go off of.
Then instead of considering other perspectives or actually giving us details, they went on about the subreddit “gatekeeping” and pretty much going “Oh I’m considering this commander, just give me other ideas or screw off” while only giving a single list. We can’t help you if we don’t know what’s too strong for your group, what’s “not that bad”, or if you just plain won’t consider anything past your own perspective.
been playing for many years and only started commander last year when the dr who decks dropped- mostly with a new group at an lgs.
I usually only play casual 60 card jank multiplayer (legacy decks on a pauper budget) with a small group of friends, as we have done for over 20 years.
anyway, I haven’t enjoyed a single commander game yet, have been accused of trying to win and aggressively politicked against in every game, even when i’ve been playing very soft stuff and purposefully trying to form alliances. it’s almost like there is a stigma around wanting to win in commander which i find deeply dishonest and essentially game breaking. i’m unfortunately left with the feeling that commander is the worst thing to ever happen to mtg. open to suggestions that may improve my experience/ tell me what i’m missing
do other players say 'hey this guy is a threat' and remove your stuff and/or stop you from winning or do they just get salty and complain? if its the latter then those people just suck.
I can... completely understand the posters position... as it is a feeling I often get too... with the bigger issue being Arena is the only way I can really play mtg regularly as... am a broke ass person, even budget decks are hard to justify...
I want to play magic, I don't care if I win or lose most the time, I just want to be able to play my silly decks with my absurd concepts and actually get to... you know... play... but like... 80% of the decks I run into on Arena are either Hyperspeed Samey wincon, No you can't do anything, or Don't care I built a fort and am going to sit in it until I can one shot you without any risk to me... and hey, I get it, playing to win a competitive thing makes sense... I just wish there was a ranked for it for those people that play the same eight or so commanders to heck off too so I can play my silly or not perfectly optimized stuff without having to go through 20 or so matches to find one where it's a more even match and they don't instantly concede... I play mtg as a leisure activity and am tired of everyone who plays it like they have to be absolutely optimum in unranked random or else it doesn't matter... I miss casual games I suppose is what I mean...
I hate that Arena is making me feel like all Praetors and a handful of other cards are now an "Easy Mode" for players, anything where no thought is required and the card alone does everything for you... I hate that that is what these perfectly built super high power decks have made me think the hyper optimization or Nothing but Legendaries is either Easy Mode or "Look at how much money I have" assholes... as I know that isn't the case.
.... not even going to get into how often people tend to always get the exact answer they need to either go off or shut down what I am doing, it is crazy how often that happens... alright, going to stop now, didn't mean to rant... just tired.
Im more and more realizing commander just isnt for me. The politics, the power level nonsense. Ive just really been enjoying 60 card constructed, and would love to play more canlander and gladiator for singleton vibes
I will never understand the mindset that playing a game for fun and attempting to win at a game have to be mutually exclusive.
Yeah. I like my first EDH deck quite a bit, but I know it is low power and I may not have too much fun if the opponents are very aggressive. It is a Laughing Jasper Flint-outlaw deck, and the strength of it is that it can match power level a fair bit if I manage to get a lot of creatures out. Unless that happens, it is a fairly weak deck.
Yesterday I played a game at my LGS where the player who thought it was "fun" to phase out our cards one by one indefinitely complained that I cast Insurrection after he got out 4x 8/8 Krakens that won me the game. Apparently, this is too simple of a win con.
People be weird
Lots of games have that casual salt. You win a round in a shooter it's "Go to comp" or "you're so sweaty" or some other seething.
Why do people who win have to feel bad for trying? Or feel bad for swapping tactics mid-match to counter the enemy? Or sideboard in things against strategies you don't normally need to worry about?
They don't. But the point remains valid: any PvP game ultimately is really ONLY about winning. Whatever other expectation you may have for the game, it's not going to be there, not in the long run. That's not an obvious realization for many, so it is worth pointing it out.
@@Volkbrecht also, throwing for goofs annoys me. It's a tee hee moment for the thrower, and a pain in the ass for teammates. Or an insult to the opponent's effort.
13:15 You have a TH-cam channel?
I would argue that there's a big difference between "playing competitively" and "only playing to win".
For example, if I played a fighting game only to win, I'd only ever play against low ranked players that I knew didn't stand a chance against me, and only against characters that I'm comfortable fighting against. But if I were to play competitively, I'd be looking to practice combos repeatedly, pick a high tier character, and match up against strong opponents so I can improve my skills. The former is incredibly lame, but the latter is perfectly acceptable. I think the issue here is that people experience the former (or who they _think_ are the former), whereas for others, they hear "playing to win" and assume they mean the latter.
I used to play with a commander group that got upset every time I won. Specifically me, didnt really understand what that was about. One of the guys at the table literally told me he woukdnt play against some of my decks because "they just win." Meanwhile the pod also had a Kalamax combo deck that could win turn 3, a 4 color no black group hug deck that decked us out, and a Rakdos burn control deck that constantly made you sacrifice and discard cards, yet my Golgari Elf Tribal deck that punched face was the problem or my Veyran spell slinger deck was "too combo focused". And it made me think, I have 0 issue with someone winning. I have 0 issue with someone winning fast. If all of our decks are doing the thing and the game is going quick and maybe ends turn 5, cool, shuffle up and get another game in. I dont play with them anymore after they spent an hour shitting on my Aesi deck because "its just generic landfall stuff," meanwhile the mono red burn player and the group hug player got no pushback on playing all of the generic burn and group hug cards.
Moral of the story is: someone has to win, and id rather you win fast and in a way that was crazy so that we can shuffle up and go again than for you to drag out a game to multiple hours cuz of "feels bad"
In warhammer we call those types of players “toxic casuals” who want everyone to never try to win, but then also get mad when they don’t win.
I'm a casual gamer at hearth, especially in MtG. But I totally agree. The goal of the game is to win. Especially in Magic. Either you're content with what you did or you play for the win. Anyway in EDH, if everything's balanced perfectly, you can only expect to win 1/4 of the time. And that's if you play with just 4 people. My win rate is low, mostly cause I don't like to play meta stuff, even within my pod. But if I run a game where I had a good number of interactions, I'm satisfied. And if y'all wanna know, I'm a Mono White Angel core player. But lately, I've been enjoying Dimir Control. Playing since Enditch Moon.
Commander vs. Arena gives me different types of fun. I grew up in 90s magic and when I returned 20 years later I had to learn about commander and I loved how creative it was. But being back for 3 years now I learned quickly that the competitive flavor between the different formats had to be held to different expectations or you'd get... exactly what you're seeing.
I love my commander pod and we sharpen each other all the time, tinkering with our decks to make for lots of fun games.
But in Arena its admittedly a little harder to get that creativity but instead you have to make play patterns that win you games. But even then I argue that if you're not going for rankings Arena does a good (not great) of putting you against decks that are your skill level so you can bag out a quick 1 of 1 game here and there. So a standard deck with a play pattern out of the meta doesn't have to just get blown out of the water all the time.
Like any other hobbiest style game, you get out of it what you put into it and for MtG you have to tailor your play to fit. That's just how it goes.
I agree with some aspects of the "commander is meant to be fun" attitude in that you can build a deck that does fun things, but if everyone brings a "fun" deck that doesn't do anything to actually finish the game makes for drawn out games that get dull
To preface my POV here; it's coming from someone who's been playing since I was 11 in 1998. I have played casually (60 card casual, EDH, about every variant that has been thought up by MTG casual players (e.g. Color Star, Emperor, Chaos rules, Vanguard, Secret Allies, etc) and in most ways to play in sanctioned competitive play (Standard, Legacy, Modern, Sealed, Draft, 1v1, 2-headed giant, etc). I'm not some newbie and I'm not song long time never-got-gud shallow part of the kiddy pool casual player that just whines instead of getting better at the game.
I specifically appreciate that there are different modalities of ways to play MTG that are *by design* better suited for certain kinds of game experiences vs others and which the current MTG player community as a whole would lean back into that instead of continuing to force EDH, a format with a specific vision and intent, to be all those to all people and in doing so forcing it to be many things that it is not designed for or good at delivering game experience-wise. I think when we lean into playing formats/modalities for their strengths and intended uses we get to really experience what they are good at, what makes them fun in a special and unique way that is different from other formats. Playing MTG formats for what they offer that other formats or modes of playing don't rather than wholesale flattening all of magic down to one format and then forcing it to do everything for us whether it will only ever do many of those things poorly or be fundamentally/structurally incapable of doing some things. Which is what it feels like has happened for a large swatch of MTG players.
For may part, I don't really have a problem with people wanting to win games. I don't even have problems with the vast majority of win-cons outside of boring, broken and tired super compact 2 card wins at the core of nearly identical combo/control shells because why are we purposely missing the point of casual by trying to turn it into Legacy/Vintage? Really feels like people that want to *cosplay* as competitive players so they can feel like big brain smart bois because *actually* playing in 1v1 competitive formats is to scary and if they played a bunch of Legacy or Modern they wouldn't be so eager to just play more of the same type of games with the same type of decks with the same types of cards, just devoid of player skill being anywhere near as important to who wins.
Other than that? I just don't want to see the same fucking wincons in every single deck of a certain color regardless of the commander or theme or w/e. It's just fucking tiring, and that's before the fact that it's disappointing to see EDH start as a format focus on variance, identity, theme, uniqueness and a showcase for interesting ideas.... devolve in a format where the average card selection among decks is *more* homogenous and same-same that it ever was in 60 card casual days. It's very "you were suppose to destroy the Sith, not become one".
Like, IDK, I don't hate Lab Man or Craterhoof or w/e. I *do* hate it feeling like the vast majority of players can't do anything better or more original that just default to one of the same handful of generically good wincons in a given color as every other player to the point where the majority of decks that have blue and draw a lot of cards just win with Lab Man regardless of what they decks are suppose to be about. LIke, does every deck with green and creatures need to have a Craterhoof in it just in case or could people just please put a tiny bit more effort or thematic weight to their choice of win-con button card because there are so, so, so, *so* many of them and I would like to see more unique win-cons rather than the same ones over and over across most decks and most players.
The poster mentions towards the end that they found themselves looking into meta options for Brawl and didn't like that they had to do that. When a format is dominated by a handful of highly optimized decks it gets boring when that's all you face. It's like invading in Elden Ring and just seeing a bunch of rivers of blood and moonveil spam, regardless of whether you can beat it or not it just gets old.
Granted commander pods can also have metas but I do tend to find that commander players are often a lot more open to having a lot of decks they use regularly and try to vary their play patterns. This leads to a softer meta a lot of the time.
Meta also isn't objectively bad but having to build around it isn't always for everyone and I tend to believe that that's where a lot of the "I don't like people who play to win" comes from.
I just recently started playing again after forever, like 1999. Arena is awesome. TCGplayer is awesome. Being able to get the exact card I want and variant is awesome. What is not awesome is how people seem to think trying to win is mean or rude. Nobody thought that way when I was playing back then, all my friends and locals at the comic shop played to win even in casual games. That made it fun for us.
I am an old player who returned to the hobby, and I love my dumb decks, but I also have a few that I have keyed up to win. This goes for Modern Decks, Standard Decks, and my Commander decks. I take some of each with me and if I get into a randoms table I tend to play a dumb deck, and If I am playing with some folks I have played with before or who have some more powerful decks, I use my tuned to win decks.
I am not against winning, the goal IS to win, but it is also to have fun, and have a positive social experience.
THAT BEING SAID!.....
I hate getting spanked by a completely outmatched Power Deck. Don't show up at a table full of teenagers or 20 somethings with a $20,000.00 deck, even if it is Proxied. I Love getting beaten by somebody who is skilled player or an excellent deck builder.
I also like to hand people my Modern and Standard decks and let them play them against me so I get a different perspective on the deck.
So, in short. MTG can be much better with its social element (not mentioning format as this can also be true for 1v1 formats). Where you can better set expectations both for your play group and yourself. Something that, the online clients like Arena mainly lack, causing the primary expectation of "win" to be the focus, which should be the expectation anyway, regardless of "Unranked" or "Ranked" pool.
In the end, your expectations of what you do are gonna be what set your overall experience. If you play "casually" in any game, your expectations should be ok with losing, but if you're playing at all, there is some "want" to win, whether that be through your planned "play" going off, disrupting the table at least 6 times, etc. you have a "win condition" that makes your brain happy, even if you lose the primary point of the game.
as a league of legends player i can solidly vouch that teammates do in fact get angry if you try to win ranked games, and they will do everything in their power to not let you do that.
I do agree with you, that the mentality is hurting the game a little bit. However, I think that you are missing that the reason behind this change, and I know you are aware because you've talked about it before, is that the company has promoted commander above the other formats to an extreme. Standard is almost dead because of Arena. If you step away from it for even a second you lose perspective of the meta game. Modern is now a rotating format because of power creep and Modern Horizons, so the money involved in keeping up with that format is gotten out of hand as well. So commander is the format where you play the most fun and sometimes most expensive cards, but it's cheaper overall because those cards stay useful a lot longer. And, to your point about time spent investing in the creative aspect of the game, that's where deck building comes in. For me, I love spending hours going through all the cards I've amassed and updating my decks or brewing whole new ones with the new cool commanders that have come out.
And maybe the biggest reason of all for this change, is simply the fact that we live in a world where people want to play games from a more casual point of view. Sure, plenty of competitive games still do well, but casual gaming has really grown because it tends to be cheaper and doesn't require the hours of devotion to get good at them, hours many people need to spend working because of real-world problems. I play commander because I can sit around the table with my friends and have fun playing magic. I can't go to the stores and play in their tournaments on their schedules very often, I just have too many other responsibilities. I love watching LSV play Vintage Cube online, but I simply don't have the time to spend getting good enough at that format, so I live vicariously through him, and when I play it's casual. If I do want competitive, I draft the newest set until I get bored or run out of money/gems.
I think that the "face-to-face" aspect of in-person commander does shape the game experience, and that the anonymous aspect of Arena masks not only identities, but also that social ethic.
I dont play commander so my deck can "do the thing". I play to win.
Now, i dont need to win to have fun, but it helps 😂
Personally I think edhrec and such tools that let you just look at whats the most popular cards in X commander colours/deck have done more damage than someone who realized that casual commander with their friends isnt the same as a inherently competitive format.
I do feel like even in standard, playing IRL is about winning, but there is also a great amount of sportsmanship, and people are generally friendly, and happy to provide advice and all that.
Arena and such, tends to be sterile, very clinically focused on winning, lacking the rest of the experience one can enjoy at your LGS
I'm a pretty competitive person so playing to win is something I do quite naturally. Arena is good for scratching that itch even though I lose quite often bc I can't be bothered to grind and update my 2 brawl decks. But that's OK :)
In paper, I have only played commander once due to lack of playgroup. So I mostly play kitchen table magic and draft from every 4 months or so.
I enjoy deckbuilding with the cards from my "collection", resulting in just fun (imo), janky decks.
I think if 60 card formats want to gain players, making "kitchen table magic" an "official" casual "format" like commander that can be played at LGS would actually be a good move. That way new players can try deckbuilding for 60 cards and get used to playing 1v1 in the lgs environment. Then it's probably easier to update your janky deck by swapping out the 7 cards that are randomly not legal in standard.
Even competitive people can be shy and intimidated by unknown environments so having that casual entry would be nice (at least for me).
Competitive Magic is like poker. There are lots of versions of it, but at the core there is a common set of rules with the odd variation that everyone knows. Then along comes Commander which is basically Crazy 8s, with every group making up their own niche rules to suit the game they want to play. Yes they use the same cards, but the games are completely different. The problem is now every time you show up to the dealers table, all everyone wants to play is Crazy 8s, decks are being printing with pips to cater to Crazy 8 players, and they get mad when you play to win the game because thats how YOU have fun.
Commander is a format of house rules, and house rules belong in your house, not the LGS.
that intro was hilarious and the punchline was just spot on.
This player would complain if someone with a super tuned PEDH deck showed up and beat them. "Your deck is too strong and costs $1000!" No it cost $50 and its all commons. It's the decks build (game plan) that matters not the price. There is also a lot of premium removal at common, If I remove enough of your stuff and you have no recursion/protection; People quit.
For many years "the gathering" side of magic was largely reserved for the sweaty spikes, and it seems to still be a shock to many of them that for every one of them there are at least two casual players who just want to hang out while their pet deck does it's thing. Meanwhile the casual players are shocked to discover that after decades of playing with friends and family that strangers aren't nearly so inclined to give them a good time.
Recently attended a standard showdown. Made sure the store owner knew we were coming. Had 7 friends coming with me . (4 of which had been tuning their decks to beat mine as they expected that to be their biggest threat.). Got to the event to find there was 1 other player. So 9 players. Got the bye in round 1 so tried to interact with the commander players. They told me that standard rotates too quickly. I pointed out that modern rotates quicker thanks to MH3/2. They then turned to "commander's more fun because i don't want my opponents to do stuff to me, i just want to play my cards and hit them with the big dude."
It was a really solitaire-goal, everyone plays with themselves until someone wins all over the table.
We lost this battle when we decided that the C in cEDH stood for Competetive, not Casual - as if it was assumed that the game is casual and that we had to make it very clear when we were playing the game to win.
I can’t play commander with most casuals. They’re just always so whiny and the fact that I have to sit down at a table and ask if my deck is okay first or the fact that my local LGS stop competitive tournaments entirely and only host commander now, but hold on they also do commander tournaments, BUT you’re not allowed to play infinite combos, or cedh decks, or anything “too good” for commander. My LGS ruined most in person game play for me. If you’re in the El Paso area, do not play at Game Vault. Not worth your time and they cater to casual commander players instead of have magic open to all types of players
It is a problem of player psychographics.
There re essentially 3 types of players; The Timmy, Jonny and Spike
Timmy wants to have fun, they are focused more on the social aspects of the game, like to play big creatures or stupid effects and want to come out with story or something exciting and are less interested in the minutia of things.
Jonny wants to do something cool and view the game as a matter of self expression. This is often seen in deck-building and playing in a way that is more expressive.
Spikes want to win.
Commander appeals more to Timmys and Jonnys since the more casual nature of the format means that they have more room for "fun" and self expression and the multiplayer structure and political nature of the format mean that a Spike is quickly going to draw the attention /ire of the table and get ganged up on.
1v1 is always going to be more Spike heavy. That doesn't make it wrong it just means that if you are a Timmy or Jonny you are going to need to find other aspects of 1v1 to enjoy.
I'm not very competitive and my poor Kudo deck tends to get bodied by aggro decks in Brawl but I enjoy it anyway. I like to look at the 1v1 formats as a way to improve my general play, decision making and deck building so even when I am not inning I am at least getting better.
Commander is fun precisely because it becomes with an expectation that you don't try so hard. It means you can play the decks you want to play and have fun. If you try to do that in sweatlord environments then you get crushed into the ground. So you either lose every game with your fun original deck against people playing the same cookie cutter decks or you're forced to play the exact same meta decks as everyone else. Before you say "but you can make your own decks that are competitive" yes and eventually they will morph into the same meta decks because that's ultimately what happens in a competitive meta. You might be one of the rare individuals who can break the meta and innovate, in which case that's a lot of fun. Even then, you're not playing what you want to play, you're playing what you think can beat the meta.
For some people, this meta competition is their version of fun. For some people, playing the decks they want to play is fun. Neither party is wrong. In this case, the poster has realised that they are in the second group and Arena is in the first group.
The "kid glove", "don't try to win" players have honestly stopped me from trying new places to play. I've only run in to issues a COUPLE times, but I am just so short on time, it's not worth the risk to bother. I don't care about winning, I'm not playing cEDH, I genuinely do not care what the outcome of the game is... but that doesn't mean I'm not gonna TRY. And I DO run powerful cards, because part of the fun for me is having my deck actually run really well. I run some goofy cards that are only in the deck because of the theme, or because I love the art, but I ALSO run Crypts and Cradles because, yeah man, I want to pop off! If I lose, that's fine, but I still want to use powerful things to do some wild stuff! Back when I started playing this format over a decade ago that was the most appealing aspect of it! You got to play all this absolutely wild stuff that wasn't legal in most other formats, and you could be so creative with all the OTHER parts of the deck as well!
idk... it just sucks. Wanting to play strong cards and wanting to actually play the game should not be such a potential landmine when approaching new tables. It's sad to me that the format has come to this. I will always remember one of the weirdos I ran in to who said he didn't play ANY interaction at all, because he thought it was mean to remove peoples' things. Naturally, I removed a bunch of his threats, because that's what you do when something is threatening, and it lead to him just scooping and leaving. Such a poor experience. I know guys like that aren't the NORM, but that it exists at all is such a mood killer.
I also feel there's a distinction to be made here between "trying to win" and "trying to make someone else lose" which has a level of nuance in and of itself when talking about social aspects of the game. Like I feel there's a discernable difference between knocking someone out of the game *just because you can* in a game that's probably going to go another hour or two vs. doing so because you have an exit strategy and can clean up the rest of the table in the next couple turns once they're gone. Or doing so because they have something on board you need gone and player removal is your only real option to get rid of it.
The way that I view it is that in a competitive environment there's reasons to play to win, you play to win because winning gets you something. in a casual environment there's no reason to play to win, you are playing to have fun, winning is just a byproduct if you build your deck right and you make good choices, but you shouldn't focus your deck on "I'm winning at all costs" unlike competitive versions because there is no reason to win. people want to play the game, people want to meaningfully do stuff you know they want to interact with each other in a social game, so if you build your deck to win at all costs then like half the people at the table aren't going to get to really play if you thassas Oracle turn one with three counter spells that are free back up against a bunch of people who play precons or modified versions, but that doesn't mean you play decks that have no wincons, you just make your decks not the most hyper consistent thing ever
Please allow me to share my thoughts. People who complain about this kind of thing usually complain about how a person tries to win, not that they want to.
Someone who plays to win usually engages in "evil" behavior. Weaseling their way out of damage or removal by politicking the table instead of accepting that they are a threat to the table at the moment. Picking on the player with the weakest start at the table or getting rid of a player's setup before they can become a real threat. Basically, any behavior that hurts the table instead of helping themselves or the table, especially early on, is probably an "evil" action. Im not saying that we should let others do whatever they want. Im saying that if Commander is a social game, every player should consider the overall enjoyment of not just themselves but the entire table.
We should try to win, yes, but we should attempt to win in ways that make it so everyone can enjoy the journey to victory together, win or lose. 1v1 is only different from this online because we can not see each other. People like this have very valid concerns, and yet, we push them away by calling them bad or soft when we know we wouldn't like it if it was done to us. We have stopped communicating and become individualistic in how we define fun. Think of a game as a discussion. Wouldn't you be mad if you never got to speak or your points were ignored?
Oh when I started playing back in 1994/5 you better believe at the LGS we all made our decks to win. Sometimes we'd put together a silly gimmick that wasn't meant to and we understood what would happen if we played it. There is nothing at all wrong with wanting to play to win. Nowadays I like to tailor my play style to match a mood. But I still like playing to win.
I agree so much with this video omg. Thank you. As a player that comes from Starcraft, I realize that personal growth is all about reflecting on one's own mistakes and looking to improve. People who bitch about people "trying to win" is crazy to me.
Any format where players raise an eyebrow to you if you cast Stone Rain can’t be taken seriously 😂
that intro is pure cinematic genius
MTG Archetypes
Spike: Only cares about winning. Ex. (Demonic Consultation + Thassa's Oracle // *STORM CROW*)
Johnny: Winning without "doing the thing" isn't enjoyable. Ex. (Reiterate + Mana Geyser + (Gemstone Array) + Thought Hemorrhage (naming every card in the game))
Timmy: NUMBERS GO BRRRR! Ex. (Ghave + any token or counter doubler -> _infinity_ // Brion Stoutarm fastballing Serra Avatar // A dinosaur)
Most players have a little bit of all 3 to varying degrees. It's pretty damn accurate if you look at players through this lens. Note, only one of these is only satisfied if they're winning. I've met many players where this is true to a superficial degree--that they're only having a good time if they're winning. Because of the imbalance of effectiveness in unique strategies (which is why EDH is necessarily so social) Spike players have such a big advantage (in general) that Johnnies and Timmies intrinsically handicap themselves. And despite Spike being the win-or-die archetype, knowing or feeling like you're going to lose most, if not all of your games, is not a fun experience no matter how Johnny or Timmy you are. The chance is what makes it engaging. You **could** win with your Rube Goldberg Machine. You **could** win with your BFM with a BFG attached. There's a point where challenge becomes demoralizing and Spikes kill a mood whether they're the strongest player(s) at the table or not. This is an issue in every game ever from Uno and Monopoly to Among Us and Halo.
So, imagine jumping into a player pool where Spike takes up more of the psychological real-estate. Commander offers freedom (was made for Timmy and grew with Johnny). Every other format inherently narrows that freedom. In standard, you're seeing a more focused experience with less variety, more consistency, and generally much faster games on average. A guy who jumps into Arena from commander and realizes he doesn't like that environment isn't short a chromosome. It's a different game. It's clear there was too much Spike in the Arena system for him and that he doesn't like being in the Spike mentality to keep up. There's nothing wrong with that. This isn't the guy to make an example of when the tone is "This Is Your Brain on Commander."
Maybe, it's the case that Modern and Commander sucked up more Johnny and Timmy players and left Standard with more Spikes as a result. There's an issue to talk about--and is it even an issue?
Now are the bitches and whiners a thing? Yes. That's always been a thing. But speaking as a primarily EDH player with a stat spread of 5 Johnny 3 Spike and 2 Timmy I can say the most vile competitive decks and playgroups I've ever seen are in EDH (ignore Vintage for practicality here), to the point where games aren't even games, they're just coinflips to decide whether you win turn 3 or 4 and who goes first. I've played with sweats. I've played with bitches. I've played with whining noobs who do nothing but complain. This comes standard with any game with a sizeable audience.
What *doesn't* change is that when I "want to do the thing," it doesn't fucking matter if I win. I doesn't matter if I beat my friends' monstrous cedh decks or clutch a miracle from the jaws of defeat. If I don't do it in the expressive manner I built the deck to do, it feels hollow and I might as well have played Checkers. Is this always the case? No. I won a game with Homeward Path once. That was cool. Do I ragequit against Stax decks? No. Sometimes it's nice to chill with a whisky and see if I can dismantle them. But I have a friend who uses almost entirely cedh decks. I can't play against the vast majority of the decks he makes despite optimizing mine to the point I've been called a bully (see Thought Hemorrhage combo at the top (says more about the bitch I was playing imo)). If I played with his playgroups regularly, I would have to create a cedh deck and I fundamentally don't like how those games go. I don't like knowing how every game is going to go. If I know, what's the point in playing it? To see who draws their wincon first? Then flip a damn coin. The magic of Magic, or any other game, is that there's more to it than a coinflip, but optimization actively pares down this fluff as much as possible. Different levels of optimization always remove aspects of the game that are the only thing holding a given player's attention.
Maturity matters. Reflection matters. Commander players shriveling in Standard or Modern like salted slugs is not an example of a lack of this. This Redditor actually reflected. Ergo, the Reddit post. He's probably not the type to go bitching in every Arena game he plays now (if he's even still playing it). This *is* the maturation we want to see as a community. The rub about his post is that he's voicing internal conflict on Reddit like it's early 2000's MySpace. But one doesn't necessarily negate the other.
Vorthos being left out as always :(
@@Kisthenewp XD Sorry I'm an oldhead.
Since edh is supposed to be about self expression in deck building, I think the problem isn't winning but winning because another player's art piece happened to be more meta relevant than your art piece. I try to build my commander decks so that they're slow enough that the power of my turn is predictable when I untap and also with lots of interaction. Having a pod of slow interactive decks means that each deck is mostly interacted with proportional to how powerful it is. This means that the winner is determined based on their politicking and threat assessment skills as opposed to whose art piece is the most meta relevant.
Only playing legacy, I am absolutely thrilled and excited when my opponent bags a win. Of course is a feel bad, but I thoroughly enjoy the collective experience of a competitive event, it’s ups and downs and sometimes we find the space for jokes and banters even at competitive level. I had good laughs even at eternal weekend or at the axion events. ❤
I am so glad I have a group to play with and we all play to win and have interaction. Now that is real fun.