My friend used to play a deck of 99 basic lands with Kenrith as the commander and an Obosh companion. The plan was basically to make deals and group hug your opponents to stay alive until it was a 1v1 then put a bunch of counter and Kenrith and go for a commander damage with with Obosh there to help push damage. That deck picked up wins more often than it probably should have just by being completely transparent with what it was doing.
Thats genius, it puts the social aspect of EDH on display and how absurd it can be as a "competitive" game. Even tho he build his deck like dogshit and openly admits that to his opponents, he can essentially gaslight his way to victory just by whining and being annoying at the table. I used to do something similar with ashling the prilgrim or ragavan, build 99 basic lands.dec and then complain every time someone attacks me that im "just the lands meme guy".
@@ich3730 yes it is genius but mostly because a lot of edh players are fucking retarded. just turn your creatures sideways and if there's free damage to be dealt deal it. that really helps against such decks. also also: if such deck was in my meta all my decks would run cards like darksteel mutation and alike. and I'd just wait until it's a 1v1 and just cuck their commander. maybe remove it first if it already got counters on it.
smol bean syndrome is my pet peeve, its like people forget that this is a game where you summon monsters to bonk eachother, im gonna bonk you, dont take it personally, this is just a bonking game
Bonk at the people who are actually scary force them to use resources so when it matters they don't have those resources to protect themselves or deal with you
I mean it depends, ive routinely been bonked whilst one other person at the table is being ignored. I have had bad luck where I have openly admitted to getting mana screwed and they still focus me
My friend group use to unintentionally deploy the smol bean strategy but we’ve made a decision last year that if it’s like turn 5 and a person hasn’t played a creature yet, then sure swing at them, atleast then it’ll incentivise them to fix their decks. Theres this stigma that you shouldn’t take someone out early because then they can’t play for the rest of the game, but by being ruthless and killing whenever you can, it’s resulted in us being able to actually play more than 1 game
I have only played commander once and my deck was just random jank I had put together from drafts over the years. My friend told me I would stand no chance against his deck which he had been building for a few years and had roughly 1.5k worth of cards. I went through with playing and while I only managed to play like 4 cards before he fucking slaughtered me, I had a lot of fun
"Fight the Table" is such a great way of viewing the format. A few years ago I had this Yeva, Nature's Herald deck I was never really happy when playing, and I couldn't figure out why. It scratched all my itches -- it played aggressively, it used an unusual commander to frequently surprising effect (slamming Green Dragon or Spore Frog during combat, etc.) and it did all the ramping, drawing, and attacking I needed it to do to win. On reflection and seeing this video, it seems clear to me now that it was all about how it played to my opponents. They were vastly overestimating the deck's power because flash SEEMS like a scary keyword to have on creatures, and to them my empty or lackluster board state could always become their worst nightmares, instead of the reality which was the deck did a little ramping, played some creatures, and attacked. In essence, my deck was lying to my opponents about how scary it really was. I rebuilt it as Toski and it's been all the better for it.
If your opponents think a monogreen deck has some kind of hidden plan to win out of nowhere that doesn't include putting big dudes in play and turning sideways, you need better opponents.
@@garak55 I dunno, I thought it was funny to run G/W (rhys), make a ton of mana dorks, and then just nuke the entire board state with Nullmage shepard and aura-shards combined with Lattice/Liquimetal, mill them out with a ton of mana, or sacrifice my tokens I just made to make everyone mill out. It was a green deck for the ramp, mana, and creature tutoring, but it was mainly meant to stax, mill, and nuke. Jank as hell but funny when it executed.
There's a guy in my playgroup who is generally the threat with explosive combos but he adopts a "you die first" anti-threat argument. Which works surprisingly well.
The funny thing is, most of the time I have ever done the "I'm a smol bean" is when there is clearly a bigger threat on the table and someone decides to target me. Even I will be like "hey, I get that said card can become a problem... but there is a 15/15 with infect on the field and he can give it unblockable... so wtf are you coming at me so hard right now?!".
Yup, whenever I’m asking somebody not to attack me it’s usually because I want somebody else’s life total to go down, not because I’m trying to preserve my own.
The number of games I've seen where the player removing my stuff or wiping the board loses on the next turn to the threat I was trying to warn them about is too high. Yes, I have 40 power on board but that's just about lethal on him and I need to kill him on my turn or he's winning the game.
@@adamrobinson6951 same with me. I have said many times "guys, he's about to win... I'm trying to stop him. So why have you all aimed your stuff at me? I can't win yet... we should work together if you want to have a chance to even win". And then we all lose and they all have the shocked pickachu face on and are like "we didn't know...".
@@adamrobinson6951 that reminded me about one of the two or three games that the maelstrom wanderer won alone (not on a team and that guy play it a lot) was when a guy casted blasphemous act to destroy my ancient forgotten (he was at 12 toughness) and other things, so we wasn't able to focus on him quick enough (which happens most of the time when he plays that commander)
This channel has put into words issues I've had with my decks, deckbuilding, and across different playgroups, in a perspective I never saw but that feels logical and makes sense. Thank you for your work!
My friend uses smol bean syndrome all the time which is hilarious in its own way because we all know his strongest deck is an Earthcraft/Squirrel Nest/Parallel Lives/Goblin Bombardment combo and the deck's whole purpose is to stall out until he assembles the pieces or dies trying. No wonder we all hit him for damage before his shields go up! I really appreciate the videos you've made, they make me rethink a number of my own deck-building decisions, and I'm probably going to adjust a couple of them as a result. I definitely need better focus in my decks.
My Child of Alara reanimator deck is all about 'fight the table'. I realised a decade ago that it was more fun to win while openly telling people that I was trying to crush them all. No politics, no combo out of nowhere, but pure synergy and value.
Yeah me too, specially because i have a lot of scary commanders like Zacama, Tiamat, Korvold, wich put a target in my back as soon as the game starts and usually when the table kills me im 1 turn away from a win
I once played not a commander, but a multi-player casual deck, and it was a blast fighting the table with a bastardy Dimir Cipher/Mill deck. Out of five players, it came down to me and a dude piloting a nasty Grixis deck. I eventually lost, cuz it turns out milling 3 people's decks into uselessness with land-based mill isn't quite enough to beat four, if your Consuming Aberration gets Terminated.
That's not always the case in my experience sometimes the person getting attacked is it's only being attacked because they're open and attacking them will allow the deck to do things like combat damage/attack triggers or life gain
@@zombieslayer2016 oh that's just playing the game and trying to bump value. I'm more or less talking about "shooting to kill" as if trying to bump someone out.
Yeah my experience is that a lot of times though people just want to hit *somebody* to get some kind of value for themselves. My Rakdos, Lord of Riots deck needs to deal damage to someone just to be able to play the commander. My friend's Gishath deck needs to hit somebody to cheat out dinosaurs. The same friend's Isshin deck needs to attack to get value off its double triggers. Interactions like these are really common in my pod, someone is looking to attack and it doesn't really matter who it is. So they're going to hit whoever is open. A really common question at our table is "Who's got blockers?" or "Who's got flying?". For that reason I started running a lot of flying deathtouch creatures like Baleful Strix and Stinkweed Imp. So not only can I say "I have a flying blocker" but "You will lose something if you attack me."
Nice video, my playgroup are kind of wierd in that we encourage each other to attack since noone is particularly aggressive as a person, we also acknowledge the archenemy title when it is given to us, even when it usually means last place. I only play commander with friends and it's a lot easier to be as open as possible.
The Smol Bean and transparent gameplan hit the nail on the head for me. My decks are always exclusively built around one aspect of the commander. So an anikthea deck with 35 lands and 64 other enchantments. Preferably big ones and ways to get extra token copies. The plan couldn't be more obvious, as the other player can always see which enchantments go to my graveyard before I resummon them. Then I tend to pull the Smol bean card - because I just got my last 6 enchantments I played blown up immediately so I don't get hit by every creature my opponents have available. And then the removal runs out, I play her for the 7th time and suddenly I have 6 copies of "Song of the worldsoul" and lethal damage on board. I'm always playing with the same friend group and they apparently aren't that tired of my shit that they would kill me before I do my crazy turns. Even though I'm probably sitting around a 50% winrate on our table.
Arixmathese is a commander that has stuck with me and probably been the most consistent fun I've had with the format, and I'd say transparency and fighting the table are both why. What it says in the tin is what you get. Major ramp, big sea creatures, and a handful of blue shenanigans like bounce and card draw. It has tools needed to deal with the situation should I suddenly find myself as the target, and can generally be read by everyone at the table based on the boardstate. What a well worded, informative video.
Green or black are both really solid for consistent threats. But white can also be really effective at fighting the board with stacks but it’s harder to push early without abusing parallel effects like a harmonious archon combined with anthems.
Green or black are both really solid for consistent threats. But white can also be really effective at fighting the board with stacks but it’s harder to push early without abusing parallel effects like a harmonious archon combined with anthems.
I think another important element of deck consistency is cardpool? As weird as that may sound, it's actually a fairly narrow slice of mechanics that are benefited most by Magic's immense cardpool, and trying to build around mill is inherently more likely to be consistent than a "splice onto arcane" deck. Proliferation of one-size-fits-all mechanics like Morophon can mitigate these on some simpler levels, but especially when exploring novel mechanical spaces like Mutate, Splice, Power/Toughness Inversion, Moving Counters, and double especially when exploring those mechanics in a limited color identity in a singleton format, that's often either nowhere near enough, or just simply eclipses the intent of the original mechanic. I've built hundreds of decks in my time playing magic, and left hundreds more on the cutting room floor, and a problem I often run into is 'does this archetype even exist yet?' - sometimes only finding 10 or 15 cards that actually support my main synergy. When the team at WotC is exploring design space, this problem compounds upon itself, as overlooked and underutilized mechanics have a tendency to remain so, while popular mechanics will see "a new twist" or simply power-crept versions, new lords for particular subtypes, and, well, a lot of the stuff mentioned in the Cycling video on this channel. This is further exacerbated by the shift away from the block structure, which has resulted in a lot of one-off mechanics that never get the time or support to shine, and are then promptly abandoned in favor of bringing back the same rotating cast of a dozen near-evergreen archetypes. Holes are dug deeper and deeper, in some cases, new mechanics are even stapled onto existing archetypes rather than being given their own room to thrive, creating a design space less akin to a developed landscape and more akin to a series of cavernous pits, all labeled and reinforced courtesy of EDHrec.
You don't have to have 30+ playable cards in an archetype to make a deck that seems consistent, but you'll probably have to add a sub-theme or two to fill it out, unless you're willing to go a little heavy on cards selection or removal/interaction. 10-15 playable cards or so is already a quarter of your non-Lands, you can expect to see a couple every game. Just don't fill your blank spots with Sanguine Bond or Exquisite Blood, just because you've got a vampire/lifelink sub-theme and have a copy of each from opening random prize packs. It's such an easy trap to fall into. I slotted them right into my garbage-tier Anowon deck.
I've been to about 20 different LGSs over the past year and let me tell you that these logical, analytical people you're playing with are not the norm. I've spent more time explaining to the other aggro deck that we can't be wasting resources on each other while the other two ramp decks do nothing than I'd like to admit.
I don't think this really matches my experience of the format. My favorite comparison point was when I had made 2 decks, Atraxa infect, and a Raff, Weatherlight Stalwart deck based on twiddling lands. Of the two, Raff is just the better deck. Better strategy, better commander, and also.. people think its worse. Atraxa shows exactly what she's doing, and tries to work directly toward a win condition. There's very little hidden there. Every game was a huge slog where people wanted to stop me at all costs. The raff deck? Spellslinging token payoffs + weird white land ramp and lands that tap for more than 1 + twiddle effects. Very weird and techy, way better than the atraxa deck, was almost never the focus of the table. Which mostly meant free wins because nobody tried to stop anything I did. And I know the obvious thing here is "people hate infect", but I think this comparison is just as true for any of my decks that were trying to hit people with creatures, vs. ones that aren't. I definitely think that keeping your threat from being visible makes it easier to play the game.
Same for me. The argument that when people dont get what or why you are playing spells they get scared and thus attack you has never happened to me. When people dont get it they will just ignore it but if you have obvious strong board state that will make you the target
Maybe it depends on the experience level of the table? If someone's not building resources on the battlefield (creatures, stax pieces, value pieces and draw enchantments, etc) then I have to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they're chugging towards some other win condition. Maybe they're digging/tutoring/drawing for combo pieces, I can't know exactly. If my deck isn't set up (or my hand isn't) to interact with combos at instant speed on the stack then turning creatures sideways proactively is all I can do.
@@51gunner In my opinion the only real indicator that a deck is incapable of being a threat is if it is missing land drops and discarding down to 7 on each of their turns. If a player does nothing but make land drops and hold onto cards, you are stacking the game in their favor if you don't attack. The reason they aren't playing their cards, is because they are waiting for the right stage of the game. If your deck averages at 3 CMC and theirs averages at 6, or you are playing a few threats and their hand has 1 resilient threat and ways to protect it, you need to pressure their life total and limit their options when they get into late game or you will lose.
I Play Magic since 16 years and watch yt videos for mtg the same amount of time and I really like the depth of your videos and the slow paced way you talk.
But also if you like those kind of decks that’s ok those kind of decks can be really fun. Just make sure the people you’re playing against our aware and OK with that kind of game.
All my casual decks deliberately can’t do the sudden synergistic/infinite wins out of nowhere. Instead I have opponents trying to figure out what I could possibly be hiding because removing their cards and deploying beaters each turn makes them paranoid. TL;DR great video!
and then after many turns, theyre going crazy trying to figure out your strategy and you point out theyre at 12 life from all the nickel and dimes over the game. "What? you can win over time?"
This explains how I like to play commander very well. Good job with the video. I realized awhile ago that a big part of what makes turn-based games fun, is being presented with a problem and then being given a chance to figure out a solution to it. A deck which combos off out of nowhere, at a table which isn't ready with interaction to deal with it, violates that. The other players had no chance, they just suddenly lost. This is why I've been making decks which have to build up some kind of obvious board state to win or which give the other players at least one turn before winning. Even having a game ending combo being playing out infinite creatures without haste is a much better win con, since it at least gives your opponents each a turn to try and find a board wipe or other way to stop your attack. I for one really enjoy those final turns where I know how my opponent is going to win next turn and am desperately trying to figure out and assemble my deck's answer to it. I also like building consistent and transparent decks which have to build towards a win, since it means I can play to win and have fun without completely crushing my opponents and actually give them a fun experience. I enjoy understanding the threat my opponent's decks present and trying to combat them, so I want to give others the same experience.
I have been in several pods where I am looked at poorly for playing the game. They cry foul when I attack or when I aggressively try to control a known powerful deck.
Its problem when you only pull out your control deck because you heard that another deck is at the table. Thats called meta gaming, And you’re targeting another player specifically to ruin their chances if you do that, which is uncool. Don’t be “that guy”
No, it's a problem when a known deck goes unchecked. If I pull out a deck specifically because I know what commander someone is playing...it's warranted
@@nicks4802 oh no, you misunderstood. I don't meta game. we only reveal our commanders once we have already picked what we are playing. Most of my decks run a healthy amount of interaction because most of the people i play with use infinite combos.
@@misterfox6094Yeah I can't wait to sit down at a table after driving 35+ mins to get there to see a guy sitting across from me pick the deck specifically made to keep mine from playing at all.
@@danielharrison2383 yeah that’s the thing that kills me if you have an infinite combo in your deck and you play the smol bean It’s just being manipulative and praying on the social convention to help you win On the other hand a lot of times people thread assessment is terrible and they want to blow up your thing because you did something to them last game or they just paying attention and don’t understand what kind of position somebody is in that case I think pointing out other peoples board states and positions is valid
I only Smol Bean when: 1) My opponent is choosing who wins or loses the game (so I gotta convincing him to let me win so I can stomp him later) 2) My opponent is casting removal on my shit when someone else is popping off way crazier. Like I'm trying to deal with this guy's shit over here and you're gonna do that to me? >:(
I have never had somebody explain this theory/ gameplay style back to me before: Enjoy your GD sub. Well done. An upside that you touched upon: I play a lot of pickup games at my FLGS and that includes a lot of new players and a lot of fellow regulars. Playing like this is just, straight up, pro-social and encourages fruitful tabletalk. It's the same kind of gameplay mechanism that open politicing encourages and builds a reputation for honesty and good advice. It's fucking lovely social output sometimes.
This is some great advice for deckbuilding ideology! I Always make sure to ask what everybody is playing, what their decks are trying to accomplish, and general power level when sitting down at a table. Helps avoid blowout games where you are playing something goofy and your opponent is trying to combo off asap IMO.
2:06 I still have to see the rest of the video, but this is why I don't ever think about threat assessment, I think about what's going to happen if that player is left alone.
Excellent video on commander theory and praxis. 100% agree that this is a great way to play agains newer player but would also like to say that it's a lot of fun to get to figure out what your opponents are doing once you get a couple of years under your belt
@@nonsuperimposableletting newer players know about obscure instant win combos is not the same as being completely transparent! I feel like you misinterpreted the video. You dont need to pull a fast one on people who didnt even know what to play against. How is that fun? You don't telegraph every play, you still can bluff/lie/politic without being obtuse about how your deck plans to win in an average game. I was once a newer player and KNOWING that my opponent has half of their combo on board and figuring out what i can do to win around it or stop them is fun. Random wins out of nowhere are not fun, as a player who has been on both ends of that interaction. You can still play however you'd like, no one is stopping you.
Thanks for the advice. I've noticed I've been getting frustrated playing jank, even while acknowledging it's jank, because I frequently enjoy ridiculous synergies that basically ask for no interaction from the opponent. But I realize now I might as well try some more down to earth strategies for a change, so that I can feel like I'm not just getting disruption after disruption to my game plans with few ways to comeback.
I recently got into Magic after 3 years of interest, and I've been enjoying going through your videos and learning some good tip for deck-building and how to play the game. I originally was more interested in Standard, but commander has caught me in its allure and I've had some fun with it. I made my first homebrew recently using Kambal, Profiteering Mayor that's very clear in what it wants to do. I call it the "Silly Straw" deck because it sticks a silly straw into your vein on turn 3 and asks you how long until you remove that straw and it becomes the Serious Straw. It's a massive token-gen and drain style deck. It's been a blast to play and see how some people are getting progressively more worried that they've been drained for 20 life before they have done anything significant with their commander and I'm sitting pretty at 54 life tanking a 12/12 hydra.
When I watched your EDH red video I did not realize that this was the beginning of regular videos talking about the difficult, less obvious, and/or controversial topics in my favorite format. I will gladly get on the patreon train for more MS Paint EDH soap box content 👌
I'm going to preface this with I wholeheartedly agree with the fight the table ideology, and for the most part have already been doing your suggestions in playing transparently. But you've just made me realize how much I favor decks which are opaque about when they are in pole position. A few of my decks have more moving pieces across multiple zones for most players to keep track of, some of them are just avoiding dying until it hits critical mass for ultra late game control without ever building a scary board, or suddenly go from second place incremental synergy pieces to very far in the lead.
@@xaropevic7918 Sort of. Though I realize that I consider very few nonland permanents to be boardless, and that might not be how others would classify it. But the core is draw go control with a short interaction window combo finish. (I loop turns when I hit 13 mana.) The biggest difference between 60 card and commander is that it needs mass bounce, tap down, or fog once or twice every game. How many cards slots that is entirely depends on the card velocity. These are my priorities for playing this sort of a deck: -As long as you're alive you're still in it -Land drops are the priority -Don't counter more than nessasary -Wait as long as possible to attempt the combo The deck is redundant, but I find navigating the puzzle of commander games to be unique and exciting every time.
I think I generally use fight the table ideology nowadays. Years ago I tried to angle shoot and act weak to sneak in a win, but I find it much more satisfying to just announce "Unless someone stops me, I probably win next turn." I feel it's necessary to be open with how well I'm doing, or can do shortly, since I tend to play higher power level decks than the rest of the table
“Your deck should be visible and you should hold everyone’s hand” not in love with this sentiments it’s limiting to deck building, I mean to a degree ur right people don’t like what they don’t know and I will say a lot of newer players make bad calls because they can’t figure things out. I also def see a bunch of sbs at my table where I know people are bluffing and are full of shit and it’s annoying. Cant pretend I’m completely innocent I know I’ve def complained myself but only when it seems like they just have bad threat assessment, the only time I get annoyed w plays that target me is when the player making them is doing so to everyone’s detriment.
love hearing your thoughts on edh while i plan on building my very 1st commander deck!! great points and explanations, plus i love learning new cards (new to me) that you mention in each of ur vids :D
My favorite line to use is “I am but a simple Muldrotha player, I haven’t done anything to you yet” As I rapidly fill my graveyard with over half my deck.
Just came across your videos and I'm really impressed. I was playing for a lot of years before I started deliberately removing combos and staples like sol rings from most my decks. it really does lead to overall better games. One thing that might make a good video that I haven't seen people talk about is people with too many decks. I've seen people run into lots of problems: 1. they don't really understand how their own decks work or how their cards interact. 2. they don't have good opportunity to playtest and tune their decks. 3. the rest of the table can't keep track what their decks do and relative power levels
Embrace the 3 C's. Colors, Cards, Creatures. Do their deck's colors suggest you need to put pressure on them? Do they have enough cards in their hand or a good card advantage engine? How many creatures can they block with and would you benefit from trading with some of those blockers?
Me: dont attack me. Them swings their lethal commander. Me: kills their commander. Them: I wouldn't have attacked you if i knew you were gonna kill my commander! Me: I told you not to attack me.
A game I remember, not magic but a board game, that ended hilariously because people did the "some else will deal with this". The game is about murdering an old man to get his assets, at any time there are no witnesses of your attempt and you can actually attack him you can try it. Though when you do other players can play cards to go nope and have to build up enough to prevent it. Different weapons in different locations need more or less nope to prevent the attempt, like kicking him off the balcony with a noose requires 20 and "poking him in the eye" (which can be done when you don't have a weapon) requires 1. someone tries the "poke him in the eye" just due to random chance setting up an attempt and they didn't have a weapon. Three other players who declare in turn order if they will interfere. Player 1 big hand of nopes doesn't interfere. Player 2 big hand of nopes doesn't interfere. Player 3 had no nopes so can't interfere. Game that usually takes a couple of hours ended in 10 minutes.
Good to know I do very well in making my decks transparent. Almost all my decks are synergy focused with the commander and aren’t “bursty” as you called it. Maybe not battle cruiser style decks as your Glisa deck is but still cards in hand, untapped lands, and creatures in play are a great indicator of how well the deck is doing. I think it’s due to how I heavily play into synergy so if my commander’s in play, they’re the threat. My best example is my Darien, king of Kjeldor deck and my Karn, Legacy reforged deck. Darien is “I take damage, make tokens, and gain that life back” so most pieces will follow that suit, pump those tokens, or protect my stuff. Karn is even more straightforward, I get tons of mana and play big artifacts, the more artifacts in play the better the deck is doing. My Oloro, ageless acetic deck though wins at “fight the table” it is minor stax, control, and voting, designed to be a slow burn nightmare. It excels at making everyone at the table want to kill you and that is fun since you can also give back to them in a group hug style if they play your game, no silly combos, just good cards.
Henzie is such an easy deck to run it you wanna use this to your advantage. "hey, my board is empty except Henzie. I'm not doing much right now" *blitzes an Ancient Copper Dragon*
I totally agree with you about building and playing with transparency, playing towards your goal every turn isn't something suspicious to your opponents, and while they take it seriously you aren't likely to make anyone angry if you aren't an immediate threat I have a very pertinent funny story of an old commander buddy We had a dedicated group at that point and would regularly have 4 or 5 player games of commander, and this guy wanted in, but he had no idea how. So, my friend looked through his cards, and helped him built himself a deck. Dragonlord Ojutai. We used to call it the "completely nonthreatening rise of ojutai", it would take games outta nowhere just by playing fair magic - stick ojutai, save up counterspells, strap him with enchantments, profit? But it wasn't flashy enough for him, so he saves up and buys a budget infinite combo commander list - Mikaeus, the Unhallowed. Just Mikaeus and combo pieces - nothing else. Totally arbitrary and abstruse - and every time his commander hit the table, he would be surprised when we'd group up to keep him in check. The conversation in the game is just too scary, like "Oh, so Mikaeus is out so if we let this turn go around and he has *X* and *Y* or on a rare chance just *Z* alone he could kill all of us like *THAT* " Instead of refining his ojutai deck he stubbornly played the mikaeus deck every time, to the point where he started to just play Destiny when he got knocked out first....
Loving your insights. Do you have any thoughts on how to build a transparent Spellslinger? It's one of my favourite archetypes to play, but it feels impossible to build one that doesn't end up storming off when it performs. I just wanna draw cards and have some fun triggers..
I agree that this is great advice. I also believe there is a lot of joy to be had in playing decks that feel completely different to play each game: my ideal deck to play is one that rotates between being a midrange, control, and or combo deck depending on my draws and my opponents.
I've recently come back to commander and magic in general after 3-4 years (I played at university with my friends but now we can only meet once a year or so, so I had an old deck for special occasions, but nothing more). I've recently found a new group which is pretty chill in my town and I've made very clear every new deck I'm going to build will make the matches fast, because a big problem I had with commander in the past is described in this videos. Lots of times when friends just whined about how they were getting hit with nothing on the table (and sometimes they became very angry/annoying), but then suddenly played an emrakul or something similar and ended up winning. This videos sums up those matches very well.
This video makes me want to build more decks around Sarevok, Deathbringer. Not only do more background decks need to exist because they're just cool but underplayed, but Sarevok is usually not trying to trick you about what's happening. It works as a pseudo-Voltron deck where buffing your commander is a big deal, but also incentivizes a little mini-game that different decks play differently. My first Sarevok deck was with Clan Crafter, so i could sacrifice artifacts for card draw and commander buffs while using blue spells to protect my commander.
I like this, it's just talking about deck construction and playsyles in a generally intelligent way. I feel like I'm usually the bad gal at my EDH table because my decks are consistent, and even though I tell people straight up what I'm doing they don't always have the game pieces to stop me. I like building my decks this way, where they're focused and clear, and I think this is good advice as to how my friends can understand what I'm doing
While I get why being transparent with what your game plan is can make it less frustrating for the rest at the table, I feel like a lot of commanders themselves are pretty transparent on what they do. For example Brudiclad (which is one of my pet decks tbh) pretty clearly is about copying tokens and swinging for lethal in a turn. Izzet does not have a lot of mass token generating effects so a lot of it is down to creating clones and generic tokens like treasure or food. So when I play Decent into Avernus or Brass's Bounty it should be pretty obvious what I'm trying to do. Even if I don't have a lot of creatures on the board, by seeing all the setup it should be pretty easy to guess that unless you deal with the setup pieces you will have a threat on your hands. So I don't get too salty when I get swung into or targeted even though I don't have a ton of creatures on the board.
It's fairly common practice for people to sneak in 1 or 2 card combos / synergy that don't fit the overall game plan of the deck. Splinter-Twin or Kikki-Jikki both seem to fit into this shell as they let you make token copies for Brudiclad.... why not add Zealous Conscripts and Intruder Alarm too? Many people hone in on the synergies and the synergies of their synergies making decks like Brudiclad with a simple game plan into a less consistent deck that threaten sudden wins.
I experience this between my Animar and Hinata decks where despite Animar being objectively an stronger deck he tends to get left alone more because when he isn't doing well they are more certain of it, whereas Hinata keeps all of her war crimes in your hand. They never know when that Comet Storm is coming, but watching Animar's counters go up is a more visible and easier to understand threat. One is a straightforward beater and the other is a spooky magical goat.
Ovika is a commander I love, but it's kind of a hard read if you don't understand synergy pieces in the deck. For example- Pashilik Mons, Impact Tremors, Raid Bombardment, and Goblin Bombardment are all in the deck I made. The reason being how Ovika works is she makes 1/1 Phyrexian Goblins equal to a noncreature spell's mana value that you cast I would keep going on and on about the deck (synergies, weaknesses, strengths, and ways to win) but it'd be as complex as Rocket Science to do so. If asked I can explain them
I used to unintentianally do the "im just a small bean" thing with my Dino tribal Gishath deck, it had a lot of wincons and crazy cards but was inconsistant and easily stopable as is the nature of Gishath. I since then turned said deck into a really consistent beatdown deck, Pantlaza is now my commander and he enshures the early value i need. I build the deck in a way that all my ramp, carddraw and interaction is 4 mana or less, this way pantlaza will allways discover something usefull when he etbs, he dosnt need to stick arround after that but often does because people dont see him as an obvious threat. It has taken my table quite a while untill they realized that Pantlaza kills them just as fast as Gishath just by enabling other Dinosaurs... I love how consistent i made that deck and now try to build every deck with this kind of consistency in mind.
So how do I play with a table that I get bullied at? I tried the advice here and they still bully me. Even when I play underpowered decks, even when I play group hug, I still get bullied. I've had conversations about this and the usual response is, "You're thinking too deeply about this" or "We don't go after you alone, we just prioritize threats as they hit the table"
My last game, I was playing etali: primal conqueror, and I had him flipped to the instant kill poison counter side. I decided I would roll to see who I attacked, and after that, I kept the dice to give everyone a sense of dread. If someone attacked me, I would take the dice off the table as a threat, meaning “if you do this, I won’t leave it up to chance who will die” it’s absolutely the funnest thing being absolutely feared by everyone.
my main deck is a blue artifact deck. I use a lot of counters and fodder to survive the early rounds, before doing massive bursts of damage. I have tezzeret's gatebreaker as well, and no one I play with has any board wipes and the few artifact destruction spells are usually used to try and destroy my mana ramp or my staff of the mind magus so they can try and kill me before I am in a position to sacrifice tezzeret's gatebreaker. my favorite way to play is to wat too attack until I have enough on my board to take people out in one swing. I'm sure I could end games faster if I didn't do this, but it results in this small bean effect most of the time where everyone is focused on each other because the most I'm doing to harm anyone is bouncing their creature back if they target me while everyone else is slapping them down. At a certain point though, my deck snowballs and by the time people realize that I have quietly filled my battlefield to the brim and am very obviously about to play my biggest wincon, it's pretty much too late. I'm never deceptive about it either, everyone knows how my deck works and it's hard to ignore the guy who has chewed through half of his deck in 6 turns, but because I don't attack I'm almost always the smallest threat until it's too late.
I think this is why i like mono black devotion in pauper in terms of "fighting the table" Its win con is removal, and cycling Gary triggering by playing 2-3 of him, and if needed, getting him back from the yard to get more triggers. It's very very open and honest, i want black pips, and when i get them the pools go down and mine goes up. Nothing sneaky, jusst devotion
Definitely no video uploaded before this one, and this definitely wouldn't have been my comment on that video Most of my decks fall under the very fair and straightforward category, with a sort of escalating and obvious threat on the board. I generally turn into the main villain of the table, which is good because my deck is also probably the best constructed in terms of power and ability to win the game. Being the villain is actually quite the fun experience, since, even if you don't win, you still significantly impact the game every time. I do have a deck I'm working on for Slimefoot, the Stowaway that sort of breaks my rule but not really. It's a sort of hyper land-ramp deck using untapping abilities and auras that let lands tap for extra mana to just make a shit load of saproling tokens. Basically I want to reach 160 mana sunk into the ability as fast as possible, which will generally not be that fast. I think it's a lot more fun to play a deck like that.
Me watching a video about mtg theories Also me knowing damm well Im going to be screaming ''dont kill me I can do something funny next turn'' when im at 1 hitpoint
I'm kinda reminded of a maldhound video. Specifically in how it mentions that every color in the game gets to cheat at Magic, but Green Specifically always seems to get away with it without getting anywhere near as much flak as other colors do. Fight The Table Ideology kinda shows some of why, Especially in regards to your example of a Ramp deck being transparent enough that people dont' get as paranoid about you until you have like 87 lands and you kill everyone with bears.
My Progenitus spellslinger deck has no nonland permanents in the 99. In the early game, all I do is ramp and draw. My opponents might think that I'm just having a bad draw, so they tend to leave me alone. When they do attack me, I wipe the board. I also communicate this to them, and I make good on the threat. What tends to happen is my opponents will attack each other or use their removal on each other, with me using my interaction primarily to prevent one player from running away with the game or just outright winning. I have a couple of spells in the deck that might be game winning, but I don't always rely on them. When it goes to 1v1, that's when I bring out Progenitus, usually with a +1/+1 counter from Opal Palace or it gets a bonus from Cathedral of War. The deck is pretty consistent in what it does, is usually not threatening, and allows my opponents enough game actions that they don't feel just locked out while forcing me to play tactically with my interaction.
I’m a volunteer at a local high school and one of the kids there has a “mono-Green Morophon deck” where the deck only has basic forests for lands….and it’s actually Sliver combo
Your fight the table style decks makes me think of my Henzi Deck. It’s just big ramp, into bigger creatures, sacrifice big creatures into smaller big creatures and finally try to reanimate the biggest ones.
really enjoyed the video and I can say without a doubt that because of my great skills in lying and deception my pod is always on their toes when negotiating with me. Look just because I almost hit a guy for lethal commander in one turn even through I agreeded to help him does not make me untrust worthy.
This is a good concept. My trouble is with my Kadena Morph Combo deck. I do my best to be transparent without just revealing my hand and saying what my face down cards do, but naturally, being a resilient deck that has lots of interaction and hidden information, people aren’t the hugest fan of the deck. I am transparent with my combo pieces and how strong my synergy cards are, but people still tend to underestimate her until they get locked out of the game.
Great points! I played some very frustrating games recently with random people because they either played deceptively, or didn't know how to talk about their deck. One guy seemed to have 5-6 decks that were most likely all very optimized, because he said pick a number 1-6. The thing I said I really didn't want to see was board wipes all the time. He eliminated his Child of Alara deck, but still, the table was very mismatched. I tried not to outplay the precon player in the pod, but this new guy was clearly trying to hyper optimize every deck.
I have a deck that USED to be just a g/b deck with the joke being it only has ONE swamp to work with and somehow win, but it was designed for 100-card singleton 1v1, not EDH, so I took the Sapling of Colfenor I had in it and made it my commander, and all of a sudden people were getting upset that they couldn’t tell what my deck’s end goal was as they were losing to it, just because it was meant to have many wincons that could show up at any time. Needless to say, it made for an interesting table any time I brought it out.
I’d say my greatest fight the table deck is my Voltron deck it’s very much telling on itself when I revolve my equipment and my commanders have abilities that deal with equipment. You can look directly at my board and see how well I’m doing a lot of the time. And I’ll let you know well my sunforger is out so I’m always holding up more interaction then you expect.
My play style is often the complete opposite: "Come at me bro" with a full grip and open mana. Ironically, this actually works better than downplaying my board state since most players don't want the smoke.
My main deck is something I think is sort of in between, because I play Kadena because I love morphs. I basically just start playing yugioh, playing cards face down for free, then I give them flash so I can do it on every turn, drawing a card for each one used. I just keep doing this, along with manifesting cards and a few more supportive things to draw through my deck until I hit overwhelming stampede or end-raze forerunners, or even beastmaster ascension [which is super fun if I get it early because then I start getting scrappy with 7/7s] and win because the deck lacks finishing power. until I get it, I just start messing with my opponents using my morphs' abilities and protecting my engine as best I can.
My usual response to someone with good attacks/potential to kill me is just "I will not beg for mercy." It rarely works but I like to think it's a little more dignified.
Great video! It really hits on a point that I have felt for a long time. EDH is a more social format but that that social aspect has its limits. Its really frustrating playing against someone who protests at every piece of interaction or attack, who thinks they can politic their way out of any situation. there should be an understood baseline that EDH is a game and the objective of the game is to win, so don't get upset when people try to win. That doesnt mean deliberately stomping on noobs but being open and honest goes a long way to create a fun game space.
me and you have very different ideas about commander sadly. Yet you are spot on with your analysis of why people react they way the do. The problem is I want to play big janky things that is fun to me and it is frustrating when you I get over targeted because that one time I popped off. You give a solution to this but the solution is antithetical to what i consider fun decks. I am currently on a small break from edh because of my recent experiences of being over targeted. A player had previously saw the "full might" of my deck and then proceeded to consistently remove any possible threat I could have even when I was the least threatening on the board and even made a misplay that further messed with my board state and I ended up scooping as I wasn't being allowed to play the game. This is the same game where that person was berating another player for playing multi land destruction when they were being oppressive to the whole board just through other means. I was fully transparent what my deck was capable of it was a combo deck that requires several pieces to work and have a few really powerful pieces that can win the game but not out of hand. Yes you can work it from the angle you suggest and I think that makes fore a well streamlined experience but another would be better threat assessments by opponents. I'd love to see a video about that as well (you probably have and I haven't seen it . . .) After all that I do take a lot of what you say to heart but it still frustrates me because I have been playing mtg on and off since 1994 and I want to play all this lovely jank I have collected over the years and the best place to do that is in EDH yet over the years it seams less and less likely that I can do so. I am just coming off of a large hiatus because A) EDH was getting way to cutthroat in my area circa 2018 B) the pandemic. Now i come back and it is still bad yet it felt more tolerable in spite of power creep because not everyone seems to have mana crypt etc. from sets like eternal masters. If anyone reads through this entire mess ty and love to hear your constructive feedback.
Im gonna need that Glissa decklist. My decks have always been kind of gimmicky and so have the decks in my playgroup. I'd love to see a transparent decklist and learn from it!
I'm definitely guilty of having very explosive decks that sometimes just don't get started, and perhaps even small beaning. I think if you play that kind of high potential, high brick kinda deck, you'll need to accept that a lot of games will just suck. But if you get knocked out early when it happens, it's because you're chasing the high of that explosion - and you'll hit it eventually, and it'll feel _so_ sweet when you do. I don't mind finishing 4th out of 4 so long as I can say to myself I survived for as long as I could reasonably be expected to, the way my draws turned out. Nobody wants to lose first, nobody wants to be attacked, but _someone's_ gotta.
My favorite deck, Shirei Black Weenies, is totally open. I show up, I say it's not Stax, it's just little creatures, sac outlets, and a way to get it all back. Sometimes it verges on SBS, in a way, but I'll just say it straight up. "If you really feel like your best play is killing a 2 mana 1/2 that draws a card, go ahead." It makes it a lot more satisfying when I start drawing 5 cards, and draining everyone for 4 at the end of everyone's turn.
My transparent decks perform so much better than they have any right to. My Balan deck where I just slap down another piece of equipment each turn and basically say “just you wait until I get to 6 mana” basically gets ignored until turn 6 because everyone knows the deck does basically nothing until it gets to 6 mana. My Kellan, removal deck tends to generate remarkably little hate for removing things (although it definitely still generates some) because everyone knows I’m running 40 pieces of targeted removal and half a dozen board wipes. Yet my Magar of the Magic strings deck with its confusing weak janky reanimator gameplan usually gets rushed down because no one knows that I was a whole turns away from actually doing anything.
My friend used to play a deck of 99 basic lands with Kenrith as the commander and an Obosh companion. The plan was basically to make deals and group hug your opponents to stay alive until it was a 1v1 then put a bunch of counter and Kenrith and go for a commander damage with with Obosh there to help push damage. That deck picked up wins more often than it probably should have just by being completely transparent with what it was doing.
Thats genius, it puts the social aspect of EDH on display and how absurd it can be as a "competitive" game. Even tho he build his deck like dogshit and openly admits that to his opponents, he can essentially gaslight his way to victory just by whining and being annoying at the table. I used to do something similar with ashling the prilgrim or ragavan, build 99 basic lands.dec and then complain every time someone attacks me that im "just the lands meme guy".
That’s a diabolical idea for a deck and I adore it!
100% your deck design and politics need to be consistent.
a real "you wouldn't punch a guy with glasses" moment
@@ich3730 yes it is genius but mostly because a lot of edh players are fucking retarded. just turn your creatures sideways and if there's free damage to be dealt deal it. that really helps against such decks.
also also: if such deck was in my meta all my decks would run cards like darksteel mutation and alike. and I'd just wait until it's a 1v1 and just cuck their commander. maybe remove it first if it already got counters on it.
smol bean syndrome is my pet peeve, its like people forget that this is a game where you summon monsters to bonk eachother, im gonna bonk you, dont take it personally, this is just a bonking game
It's just a bonk away. Just a bonk away. Bonk away. Bonk away. Yay-a-a-a.
Bonk at the people who are actually scary force them to use resources so when it matters they don't have those resources to protect themselves or deal with you
I mean it depends, ive routinely been bonked whilst one other person at the table is being ignored. I have had bad luck where I have openly admitted to getting mana screwed and they still focus me
I know he’s saying words, but all I’m hearing is “this is how bottoms play, and this is how tops play”
More like Low T vs High T
Oh so this is like a gay thing? Pass
not necessarily, topping and bottoming can be for everyone :D
yeah, girls are bottoms if they take it and they are tops if they femdom
How do I play like a switch? 😂
My friend group use to unintentionally deploy the smol bean strategy but we’ve made a decision last year that if it’s like turn 5 and a person hasn’t played a creature yet, then sure swing at them, atleast then it’ll incentivise them to fix their decks. Theres this stigma that you shouldn’t take someone out early because then they can’t play for the rest of the game, but by being ruthless and killing whenever you can, it’s resulted in us being able to actually play more than 1 game
I have only played commander once and my deck was just random jank I had put together from drafts over the years.
My friend told me I would stand no chance against his deck which he had been building for a few years and had roughly 1.5k worth of cards.
I went through with playing and while I only managed to play like 4 cards before he fucking slaughtered me, I had a lot of fun
"Fight the Table" is such a great way of viewing the format. A few years ago I had this Yeva, Nature's Herald deck I was never really happy when playing, and I couldn't figure out why. It scratched all my itches -- it played aggressively, it used an unusual commander to frequently surprising effect (slamming Green Dragon or Spore Frog during combat, etc.) and it did all the ramping, drawing, and attacking I needed it to do to win. On reflection and seeing this video, it seems clear to me now that it was all about how it played to my opponents. They were vastly overestimating the deck's power because flash SEEMS like a scary keyword to have on creatures, and to them my empty or lackluster board state could always become their worst nightmares, instead of the reality which was the deck did a little ramping, played some creatures, and attacked. In essence, my deck was lying to my opponents about how scary it really was. I rebuilt it as Toski and it's been all the better for it.
If your opponents think a monogreen deck has some kind of hidden plan to win out of nowhere that doesn't include putting big dudes in play and turning sideways, you need better opponents.
@@garak55 I dunno, I thought it was funny to run G/W (rhys), make a ton of mana dorks, and then just nuke the entire board state with Nullmage shepard and aura-shards combined with Lattice/Liquimetal, mill them out with a ton of mana, or sacrifice my tokens I just made to make everyone mill out. It was a green deck for the ramp, mana, and creature tutoring, but it was mainly meant to stax, mill, and nuke. Jank as hell but funny when it executed.
There's a guy in my playgroup who is generally the threat with explosive combos but he adopts a "you die first" anti-threat argument. Which works surprisingly well.
"Playgroup" just sounds soft, like you guys are going to go get manicures after you're done losing to combo boy
Ah the old "I have Aetherflux and 60 life, try anything and I'll nuke you in response" setup
@@Grombrindalso you’re triggered over a common phrase, and expect us to believe that you aren’t the soft one?
@@jonasharp3lol and he’s cosplaying as a character from warhammer on his public profile 😅
@@Grombrindal if you’re so worried about seeming “soft” that you’re too scared to use a word, then you’ve already failed
The funny thing is, most of the time I have ever done the "I'm a smol bean" is when there is clearly a bigger threat on the table and someone decides to target me.
Even I will be like "hey, I get that said card can become a problem... but there is a 15/15 with infect on the field and he can give it unblockable... so wtf are you coming at me so hard right now?!".
Yup, whenever I’m asking somebody not to attack me it’s usually because I want somebody else’s life total to go down, not because I’m trying to preserve my own.
The number of games I've seen where the player removing my stuff or wiping the board loses on the next turn to the threat I was trying to warn them about is too high. Yes, I have 40 power on board but that's just about lethal on him and I need to kill him on my turn or he's winning the game.
@@adamrobinson6951 same with me.
I have said many times "guys, he's about to win... I'm trying to stop him. So why have you all aimed your stuff at me? I can't win yet... we should work together if you want to have a chance to even win".
And then we all lose and they all have the shocked pickachu face on and are like "we didn't know...".
@@adamrobinson6951 that reminded me about one of the two or three games that the maelstrom wanderer won alone (not on a team and that guy play it a lot) was when a guy casted blasphemous act to destroy my ancient forgotten (he was at 12 toughness) and other things, so we wasn't able to focus on him quick enough (which happens most of the time when he plays that commander)
Lmao the funny thing i had recently was where the guy running the 15/15 infect was trying to small bean himself.
This channel has put into words issues I've had with my decks, deckbuilding, and across different playgroups, in a perspective I never saw but that feels logical and makes sense. Thank you for your work!
My friend uses smol bean syndrome all the time which is hilarious in its own way because we all know his strongest deck is an Earthcraft/Squirrel Nest/Parallel Lives/Goblin Bombardment combo and the deck's whole purpose is to stall out until he assembles the pieces or dies trying. No wonder we all hit him for damage before his shields go up!
I really appreciate the videos you've made, they make me rethink a number of my own deck-building decisions, and I'm probably going to adjust a couple of them as a result. I definitely need better focus in my decks.
My Child of Alara reanimator deck is all about 'fight the table'. I realised a decade ago that it was more fun to win while openly telling people that I was trying to crush them all. No politics, no combo out of nowhere, but pure synergy and value.
the archenemy, nice
Yeah me too, specially because i have a lot of scary commanders like Zacama, Tiamat, Korvold, wich put a target in my back as soon as the game starts and usually when the table kills me im 1 turn away from a win
Embrace the archenemy my friend ! I dig it 😊
The raid boss technique is very fun.
I once played not a commander, but a multi-player casual deck, and it was a blast fighting the table with a bastardy Dimir Cipher/Mill deck. Out of five players, it came down to me and a dude piloting a nasty Grixis deck. I eventually lost, cuz it turns out milling 3 people's decks into uselessness with land-based mill isn't quite enough to beat four, if your Consuming Aberration gets Terminated.
My response to being attacked is always, "You mean _I'm_ thd biggest threat here? Sweet!".
That's not always the case in my experience sometimes the person getting attacked is it's only being attacked because they're open and attacking them will allow the deck to do things like combat damage/attack triggers or life gain
@@zombieslayer2016
oh that's just playing the game and trying to bump value.
I'm more or less talking about "shooting to kill" as if trying to bump someone out.
Yeah my experience is that a lot of times though people just want to hit *somebody* to get some kind of value for themselves. My Rakdos, Lord of Riots deck needs to deal damage to someone just to be able to play the commander. My friend's Gishath deck needs to hit somebody to cheat out dinosaurs. The same friend's Isshin deck needs to attack to get value off its double triggers. Interactions like these are really common in my pod, someone is looking to attack and it doesn't really matter who it is. So they're going to hit whoever is open.
A really common question at our table is "Who's got blockers?" or "Who's got flying?". For that reason I started running a lot of flying deathtouch creatures like Baleful Strix and Stinkweed Imp. So not only can I say "I have a flying blocker" but "You will lose something if you attack me."
I do love respect damage.
being taken out early is a testament to what you can achieve, never believe anything else
Nice video, my playgroup are kind of wierd in that we encourage each other to attack since noone is particularly aggressive as a person, we also acknowledge the archenemy title when it is given to us, even when it usually means last place. I only play commander with friends and it's a lot easier to be as open as possible.
The Smol Bean and transparent gameplan hit the nail on the head for me.
My decks are always exclusively built around one aspect of the commander. So an anikthea deck with 35 lands and 64 other enchantments. Preferably big ones and ways to get extra token copies.
The plan couldn't be more obvious, as the other player can always see which enchantments go to my graveyard before I resummon them. Then I tend to pull the Smol bean card - because I just got my last 6 enchantments I played blown up immediately so I don't get hit by every creature my opponents have available.
And then the removal runs out, I play her for the 7th time and suddenly I have 6 copies of "Song of the worldsoul" and lethal damage on board.
I'm always playing with the same friend group and they apparently aren't that tired of my shit that they would kill me before I do my crazy turns. Even though I'm probably sitting around a 50% winrate on our table.
3 v 1 when one person has a big scary deck is actually my favorite pod dynamic.
At least of you guys should should get a duskmourn precon and try arch enemy
Arixmathese is a commander that has stuck with me and probably been the most consistent fun I've had with the format, and I'd say transparency and fighting the table are both why. What it says in the tin is what you get. Major ramp, big sea creatures, and a handful of blue shenanigans like bounce and card draw. It has tools needed to deal with the situation should I suddenly find myself as the target, and can generally be read by everyone at the table based on the boardstate.
What a well worded, informative video.
Me asking for mercy because I'm 1 turn away from locking the board into eternal war with my slow af Kardur Doomscourge starter deck:
AKA "Play green"
Green or black are both really solid for consistent threats. But white can also be really effective at fighting the board with stacks but it’s harder to push early without abusing parallel effects like a harmonious archon combined with anthems.
Green or black are both really solid for consistent threats. But white can also be really effective at fighting the board with stacks but it’s harder to push early without abusing parallel effects like a harmonious archon combined with anthems.
100% man. Absolute battle cruiser crybabies.
I think another important element of deck consistency is cardpool? As weird as that may sound, it's actually a fairly narrow slice of mechanics that are benefited most by Magic's immense cardpool, and trying to build around mill is inherently more likely to be consistent than a "splice onto arcane" deck. Proliferation of one-size-fits-all mechanics like Morophon can mitigate these on some simpler levels, but especially when exploring novel mechanical spaces like Mutate, Splice, Power/Toughness Inversion, Moving Counters, and double especially when exploring those mechanics in a limited color identity in a singleton format, that's often either nowhere near enough, or just simply eclipses the intent of the original mechanic. I've built hundreds of decks in my time playing magic, and left hundreds more on the cutting room floor, and a problem I often run into is 'does this archetype even exist yet?' - sometimes only finding 10 or 15 cards that actually support my main synergy.
When the team at WotC is exploring design space, this problem compounds upon itself, as overlooked and underutilized mechanics have a tendency to remain so, while popular mechanics will see "a new twist" or simply power-crept versions, new lords for particular subtypes, and, well, a lot of the stuff mentioned in the Cycling video on this channel. This is further exacerbated by the shift away from the block structure, which has resulted in a lot of one-off mechanics that never get the time or support to shine, and are then promptly abandoned in favor of bringing back the same rotating cast of a dozen near-evergreen archetypes. Holes are dug deeper and deeper, in some cases, new mechanics are even stapled onto existing archetypes rather than being given their own room to thrive, creating a design space less akin to a developed landscape and more akin to a series of cavernous pits, all labeled and reinforced courtesy of EDHrec.
You don't have to have 30+ playable cards in an archetype to make a deck that seems consistent, but you'll probably have to add a sub-theme or two to fill it out, unless you're willing to go a little heavy on cards selection or removal/interaction. 10-15 playable cards or so is already a quarter of your non-Lands, you can expect to see a couple every game.
Just don't fill your blank spots with Sanguine Bond or Exquisite Blood, just because you've got a vampire/lifelink sub-theme and have a copy of each from opening random prize packs. It's such an easy trap to fall into. I slotted them right into my garbage-tier Anowon deck.
I've been to about 20 different LGSs over the past year and let me tell you that these logical, analytical people you're playing with are not the norm.
I've spent more time explaining to the other aggro deck that we can't be wasting resources on each other while the other two ramp decks do nothing than I'd like to admit.
I don't think this really matches my experience of the format. My favorite comparison point was when I had made 2 decks, Atraxa infect, and a Raff, Weatherlight Stalwart deck based on twiddling lands. Of the two, Raff is just the better deck. Better strategy, better commander, and also.. people think its worse.
Atraxa shows exactly what she's doing, and tries to work directly toward a win condition. There's very little hidden there. Every game was a huge slog where people wanted to stop me at all costs.
The raff deck? Spellslinging token payoffs + weird white land ramp and lands that tap for more than 1 + twiddle effects. Very weird and techy, way better than the atraxa deck, was almost never the focus of the table. Which mostly meant free wins because nobody tried to stop anything I did.
And I know the obvious thing here is "people hate infect", but I think this comparison is just as true for any of my decks that were trying to hit people with creatures, vs. ones that aren't. I definitely think that keeping your threat from being visible makes it easier to play the game.
The average casual player is absolutely ass at threat assessment
Same for me. The argument that when people dont get what or why you are playing spells they get scared and thus attack you has never happened to me. When people dont get it they will just ignore it but if you have obvious strong board state that will make you the target
Maybe it depends on the experience level of the table?
If someone's not building resources on the battlefield (creatures, stax pieces, value pieces and draw enchantments, etc) then I have to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they're chugging towards some other win condition. Maybe they're digging/tutoring/drawing for combo pieces, I can't know exactly. If my deck isn't set up (or my hand isn't) to interact with combos at instant speed on the stack then turning creatures sideways proactively is all I can do.
@@51gunner In my opinion the only real indicator that a deck is incapable of being a threat is if it is missing land drops and discarding down to 7 on each of their turns. If a player does nothing but make land drops and hold onto cards, you are stacking the game in their favor if you don't attack. The reason they aren't playing their cards, is because they are waiting for the right stage of the game.
If your deck averages at 3 CMC and theirs averages at 6, or you are playing a few threats and their hand has 1 resilient threat and ways to protect it, you need to pressure their life total and limit their options when they get into late game or you will lose.
I Play Magic since 16 years and watch yt videos for mtg the same amount of time and I really like the depth of your videos and the slow paced way you talk.
I really like your magic philosophy. This has heavily inspired me to rework a few decks i have that "basically do nothing until they pop off"
But also if you like those kind of decks that’s ok those kind of decks can be really fun. Just make sure the people you’re playing against our aware and OK with that kind of game.
All my casual decks deliberately can’t do the sudden synergistic/infinite wins out of nowhere. Instead I have opponents trying to figure out what I could possibly be hiding because removing their cards and deploying beaters each turn makes them paranoid.
TL;DR great video!
and then after many turns, theyre going crazy trying to figure out your strategy and you point out theyre at 12 life from all the nickel and dimes over the game. "What? you can win over time?"
This explains how I like to play commander very well. Good job with the video.
I realized awhile ago that a big part of what makes turn-based games fun, is being presented with a problem and then being given a chance to figure out a solution to it. A deck which combos off out of nowhere, at a table which isn't ready with interaction to deal with it, violates that. The other players had no chance, they just suddenly lost. This is why I've been making decks which have to build up some kind of obvious board state to win or which give the other players at least one turn before winning. Even having a game ending combo being playing out infinite creatures without haste is a much better win con, since it at least gives your opponents each a turn to try and find a board wipe or other way to stop your attack. I for one really enjoy those final turns where I know how my opponent is going to win next turn and am desperately trying to figure out and assemble my deck's answer to it.
I also like building consistent and transparent decks which have to build towards a win, since it means I can play to win and have fun without completely crushing my opponents and actually give them a fun experience. I enjoy understanding the threat my opponent's decks present and trying to combat them, so I want to give others the same experience.
I have been in several pods where I am looked at poorly for playing the game. They cry foul when I attack or when I aggressively try to control a known powerful deck.
Its problem when you only pull out your control deck because you heard that another deck is at the table.
Thats called meta gaming,
And you’re targeting another player specifically to ruin their chances if you do that, which is uncool.
Don’t be “that guy”
No, it's a problem when a known deck goes unchecked.
If I pull out a deck specifically because I know what commander someone is playing...it's warranted
@@nicks4802 oh no, you misunderstood. I don't meta game. we only reveal our commanders once we have already picked what we are playing. Most of my decks run a healthy amount of interaction because most of the people i play with use infinite combos.
@@misterfox6094Yeah I can't wait to sit down at a table after driving 35+ mins to get there to see a guy sitting across from me pick the deck specifically made to keep mine from playing at all.
@@danielharrison2383 yeah that’s the thing that kills me if you have an infinite combo in your deck and you play the smol bean It’s just being manipulative and praying on the social convention to help you win
On the other hand a lot of times people thread assessment is terrible and they want to blow up your thing because you did something to them last game or they just paying attention and don’t understand what kind of position somebody is in that case I think pointing out other peoples board states and positions is valid
I only Smol Bean when:
1) My opponent is choosing who wins or loses the game (so I gotta convincing him to let me win so I can stomp him later)
2) My opponent is casting removal on my shit when someone else is popping off way crazier. Like I'm trying to deal with this guy's shit over here and you're gonna do that to me? >:(
I learned from my great grandfather. I just point towards however is causing trouble and say I will help 😂😂😂
Correcting somebody’s thread assessment is totally valid, especially if they’re just trying to get revenge
I have never had somebody explain this theory/ gameplay style back to me before: Enjoy your GD sub. Well done.
An upside that you touched upon: I play a lot of pickup games at my FLGS and that includes a lot of new players and a lot of fellow regulars. Playing like this is just, straight up, pro-social and encourages fruitful tabletalk. It's the same kind of gameplay mechanism that open politicing encourages and builds a reputation for honesty and good advice. It's fucking lovely social output sometimes.
I'm convinced this channel purely exists for him to talk about his Glissa deck
Your channel has made my EDH decks way better. Ive been able to filter out a lot of cards for "boring cards" and be way more consistent.
This is some great advice for deckbuilding ideology! I Always make sure to ask what everybody is playing, what their decks are trying to accomplish, and general power level when sitting down at a table. Helps avoid blowout games where you are playing something goofy and your opponent is trying to combo off asap IMO.
2:06 I still have to see the rest of the video, but this is why I don't ever think about threat assessment, I think about what's going to happen if that player is left alone.
Excellent video on commander theory and praxis. 100% agree that this is a great way to play agains newer player but would also like to say that it's a lot of fun to get to figure out what your opponents are doing once you get a couple of years under your belt
yeah id rather not be completely transparent about everything im doing, otherwise whats the point in even having hidden information?
@@nonsuperimposableletting newer players know about obscure instant win combos is not the same as being completely transparent! I feel like you misinterpreted the video. You dont need to pull a fast one on people who didnt even know what to play against. How is that fun? You don't telegraph every play, you still can bluff/lie/politic without being obtuse about how your deck plans to win in an average game. I was once a newer player and KNOWING that my opponent has half of their combo on board and figuring out what i can do to win around it or stop them is fun. Random wins out of nowhere are not fun, as a player who has been on both ends of that interaction. You can still play however you'd like, no one is stopping you.
Thanks for the advice. I've noticed I've been getting frustrated playing jank, even while acknowledging it's jank, because I frequently enjoy ridiculous synergies that basically ask for no interaction from the opponent. But I realize now I might as well try some more down to earth strategies for a change, so that I can feel like I'm not just getting disruption after disruption to my game plans with few ways to comeback.
"Aww come on, I'm not doing well this game!"
"Well... let me help you on to your next game.."
I recently got into Magic after 3 years of interest, and I've been enjoying going through your videos and learning some good tip for deck-building and how to play the game. I originally was more interested in Standard, but commander has caught me in its allure and I've had some fun with it. I made my first homebrew recently using Kambal, Profiteering Mayor that's very clear in what it wants to do. I call it the "Silly Straw" deck because it sticks a silly straw into your vein on turn 3 and asks you how long until you remove that straw and it becomes the Serious Straw. It's a massive token-gen and drain style deck. It's been a blast to play and see how some people are getting progressively more worried that they've been drained for 20 life before they have done anything significant with their commander and I'm sitting pretty at 54 life tanking a 12/12 hydra.
When I watched your EDH red video I did not realize that this was the beginning of regular videos talking about the difficult, less obvious, and/or controversial topics in my favorite format. I will gladly get on the patreon train for more MS Paint EDH soap box content 👌
hillarious how much of this video applies to teamfortress 2 "friendlies"
I'm going to preface this with I wholeheartedly agree with the fight the table ideology, and for the most part have already been doing your suggestions in playing transparently. But you've just made me realize how much I favor decks which are opaque about when they are in pole position. A few of my decks have more moving pieces across multiple zones for most players to keep track of, some of them are just avoiding dying until it hits critical mass for ultra late game control without ever building a scary board, or suddenly go from second place incremental synergy pieces to very far in the lead.
Do you have suggestions for "avoid dying until you get to ultra late game control" without even building a board?
@@xaropevic7918 Sort of. Though I realize that I consider very few nonland permanents to be boardless, and that might not be how others would classify it. But the core is draw go control with a short interaction window combo finish. (I loop turns when I hit 13 mana.) The biggest difference between 60 card and commander is that it needs mass bounce, tap down, or fog once or twice every game. How many cards slots that is entirely depends on the card velocity.
These are my priorities for playing this sort of a deck:
-As long as you're alive you're still in it
-Land drops are the priority
-Don't counter more than nessasary
-Wait as long as possible to attempt the combo
The deck is redundant, but I find navigating the puzzle of commander games to be unique and exciting every time.
@@wazzledog1007 Thank you
Your channel is fantastic, keep it up.
Bold of you to assume my rishkars expertise on turn 7 wont always draw 4 lands, 2 ramps and a mana rock, no matter the deck
I think I generally use fight the table ideology nowadays. Years ago I tried to angle shoot and act weak to sneak in a win, but I find it much more satisfying to just announce "Unless someone stops me, I probably win next turn." I feel it's necessary to be open with how well I'm doing, or can do shortly, since I tend to play higher power level decks than the rest of the table
“Your deck should be visible and you should hold everyone’s hand” not in love with this sentiments it’s limiting to deck building, I mean to a degree ur right people don’t like what they don’t know and I will say a lot of newer players make bad calls because they can’t figure things out.
I also def see a bunch of sbs at my table where I know people are bluffing and are full of shit and it’s annoying. Cant pretend I’m completely innocent I know I’ve def complained myself but only when it seems like they just have bad threat assessment, the only time I get annoyed w plays that target me is when the player making them is doing so to everyone’s detriment.
love hearing your thoughts on edh while i plan on building my very 1st commander deck!! great points and explanations, plus i love learning new cards (new to me) that you mention in each of ur vids :D
My opponents after I search my library for 24 basic lands: "should we be worried?"
Really put into words what makes a fun multiplayer commander game! Knowing what’s going on and having a back and forth struggle as it develops
My favorite line to use is “I am but a simple Muldrotha player, I haven’t done anything to you yet”
As I rapidly fill my graveyard with over half my deck.
Just came across your videos and I'm really impressed. I was playing for a lot of years before I started deliberately removing combos and staples like sol rings from most my decks. it really does lead to overall better games.
One thing that might make a good video that I haven't seen people talk about is people with too many decks. I've seen people run into lots of problems: 1. they don't really understand how their own decks work or how their cards interact. 2. they don't have good opportunity to playtest and tune their decks. 3. the rest of the table can't keep track what their decks do and relative power levels
Embrace the 3 C's. Colors, Cards, Creatures. Do their deck's colors suggest you need to put pressure on them? Do they have enough cards in their hand or a good card advantage engine? How many creatures can they block with and would you benefit from trading with some of those blockers?
Me: dont attack me.
Them swings their lethal commander.
Me: kills their commander.
Them: I wouldn't have attacked you if i knew you were gonna kill my commander!
Me: I told you not to attack me.
THANK YOU FOR TALKING ABOUT THIS
A game I remember, not magic but a board game, that ended hilariously because people did the "some else will deal with this". The game is about murdering an old man to get his assets, at any time there are no witnesses of your attempt and you can actually attack him you can try it. Though when you do other players can play cards to go nope and have to build up enough to prevent it. Different weapons in different locations need more or less nope to prevent the attempt, like kicking him off the balcony with a noose requires 20 and "poking him in the eye" (which can be done when you don't have a weapon) requires 1. someone tries the "poke him in the eye" just due to random chance setting up an attempt and they didn't have a weapon. Three other players who declare in turn order if they will interfere. Player 1 big hand of nopes doesn't interfere. Player 2 big hand of nopes doesn't interfere. Player 3 had no nopes so can't interfere. Game that usually takes a couple of hours ended in 10 minutes.
Good to know I do very well in making my decks transparent. Almost all my decks are synergy focused with the commander and aren’t “bursty” as you called it. Maybe not battle cruiser style decks as your Glisa deck is but still cards in hand, untapped lands, and creatures in play are a great indicator of how well the deck is doing. I think it’s due to how I heavily play into synergy so if my commander’s in play, they’re the threat.
My best example is my Darien, king of Kjeldor deck and my Karn, Legacy reforged deck.
Darien is “I take damage, make tokens, and gain that life back” so most pieces will follow that suit, pump those tokens, or protect my stuff.
Karn is even more straightforward, I get tons of mana and play big artifacts, the more artifacts in play the better the deck is doing.
My Oloro, ageless acetic deck though wins at “fight the table” it is minor stax, control, and voting, designed to be a slow burn nightmare. It excels at making everyone at the table want to kill you and that is fun since you can also give back to them in a group hug style if they play your game, no silly combos, just good cards.
Henzie is such an easy deck to run it you wanna use this to your advantage. "hey, my board is empty except Henzie. I'm not doing much right now" *blitzes an Ancient Copper Dragon*
I totally agree with you about building and playing with transparency, playing towards your goal every turn isn't something suspicious to your opponents, and while they take it seriously you aren't likely to make anyone angry if you aren't an immediate threat
I have a very pertinent funny story of an old commander buddy
We had a dedicated group at that point and would regularly have 4 or 5 player games of commander, and this guy wanted in, but he had no idea how.
So, my friend looked through his cards, and helped him built himself a deck. Dragonlord Ojutai. We used to call it the "completely nonthreatening rise of ojutai", it would take games outta nowhere just by playing fair magic - stick ojutai, save up counterspells, strap him with enchantments, profit?
But it wasn't flashy enough for him, so he saves up and buys a budget infinite combo commander list - Mikaeus, the Unhallowed. Just Mikaeus and combo pieces - nothing else. Totally arbitrary and abstruse - and every time his commander hit the table, he would be surprised when we'd group up to keep him in check. The conversation in the game is just too scary, like "Oh, so Mikaeus is out so if we let this turn go around and he has *X* and *Y* or on a rare chance just *Z* alone he could kill all of us like *THAT* "
Instead of refining his ojutai deck he stubbornly played the mikaeus deck every time, to the point where he started to just play Destiny when he got knocked out first....
You gotta drop the lists for the decks you talk about!
Loving your insights. Do you have any thoughts on how to build a transparent Spellslinger? It's one of my favourite archetypes to play, but it feels impossible to build one that doesn't end up storming off when it performs. I just wanna draw cards and have some fun triggers..
I guess... focus on cantrips without rituals? You'll get triggers, but you can't appropriately storm off
I agree that this is great advice. I also believe there is a lot of joy to be had in playing decks that feel completely different to play each game: my ideal deck to play is one that rotates between being a midrange, control, and or combo deck depending on my draws and my opponents.
What deck would that be if i may ask? :)
Golgari is such a great battlecruiser color combination.
I play Tevesh szat with Kodama of the East Tree. I love it! Just big beefy guys.
I've recently come back to commander and magic in general after 3-4 years (I played at university with my friends but now we can only meet once a year or so, so I had an old deck for special occasions, but nothing more). I've recently found a new group which is pretty chill in my town and I've made very clear every new deck I'm going to build will make the matches fast, because a big problem I had with commander in the past is described in this videos. Lots of times when friends just whined about how they were getting hit with nothing on the table (and sometimes they became very angry/annoying), but then suddenly played an emrakul or something similar and ended up winning. This videos sums up those matches very well.
This video makes me want to build more decks around Sarevok, Deathbringer. Not only do more background decks need to exist because they're just cool but underplayed, but Sarevok is usually not trying to trick you about what's happening. It works as a pseudo-Voltron deck where buffing your commander is a big deal, but also incentivizes a little mini-game that different decks play differently. My first Sarevok deck was with Clan Crafter, so i could sacrifice artifacts for card draw and commander buffs while using blue spells to protect my commander.
I like this, it's just talking about deck construction and playsyles in a generally intelligent way. I feel like I'm usually the bad gal at my EDH table because my decks are consistent, and even though I tell people straight up what I'm doing they don't always have the game pieces to stop me. I like building my decks this way, where they're focused and clear, and I think this is good advice as to how my friends can understand what I'm doing
While I get why being transparent with what your game plan is can make it less frustrating for the rest at the table, I feel like a lot of commanders themselves are pretty transparent on what they do.
For example Brudiclad (which is one of my pet decks tbh) pretty clearly is about copying tokens and swinging for lethal in a turn. Izzet does not have a lot of mass token generating effects so a lot of it is down to creating clones and generic tokens like treasure or food. So when I play Decent into Avernus or Brass's Bounty it should be pretty obvious what I'm trying to do. Even if I don't have a lot of creatures on the board, by seeing all the setup it should be pretty easy to guess that unless you deal with the setup pieces you will have a threat on your hands. So I don't get too salty when I get swung into or targeted even though I don't have a ton of creatures on the board.
Just doing a thing isn't a threat though, and identifying the potential threats changes based on how much an opponent knows about existing cards.
It's fairly common practice for people to sneak in 1 or 2 card combos / synergy that don't fit the overall game plan of the deck. Splinter-Twin or Kikki-Jikki both seem to fit into this shell as they let you make token copies for Brudiclad.... why not add Zealous Conscripts and Intruder Alarm too? Many people hone in on the synergies and the synergies of their synergies making decks like Brudiclad with a simple game plan into a less consistent deck that threaten sudden wins.
I experience this between my Animar and Hinata decks where despite Animar being objectively an stronger deck he tends to get left alone more because when he isn't doing well they are more certain of it, whereas Hinata keeps all of her war crimes in your hand. They never know when that Comet Storm is coming, but watching Animar's counters go up is a more visible and easier to understand threat. One is a straightforward beater and the other is a spooky magical goat.
Ovika is a commander I love, but it's kind of a hard read if you don't understand synergy pieces in the deck.
For example- Pashilik Mons, Impact Tremors, Raid Bombardment, and Goblin Bombardment are all in the deck I made. The reason being how Ovika works is she makes 1/1 Phyrexian Goblins equal to a noncreature spell's mana value that you cast
I would keep going on and on about the deck (synergies, weaknesses, strengths, and ways to win) but it'd be as complex as Rocket Science to do so. If asked I can explain them
Dude this is literally most of my decks lmao! Thanks for the advice
I used to unintentianally do the "im just a small bean" thing with my Dino tribal Gishath deck, it had a lot of wincons and crazy cards but was inconsistant and easily stopable as is the nature of Gishath.
I since then turned said deck into a really consistent beatdown deck, Pantlaza is now my commander and he enshures the early value i need.
I build the deck in a way that all my ramp, carddraw and interaction is 4 mana or less, this way pantlaza will allways discover something usefull when he etbs, he dosnt need to stick arround after that but often does because people dont see him as an obvious threat.
It has taken my table quite a while untill they realized that Pantlaza kills them just as fast as Gishath just by enabling other Dinosaurs...
I love how consistent i made that deck and now try to build every deck with this kind of consistency in mind.
So how do I play with a table that I get bullied at? I tried the advice here and they still bully me. Even when I play underpowered decks, even when I play group hug, I still get bullied. I've had conversations about this and the usual response is, "You're thinking too deeply about this" or "We don't go after you alone, we just prioritize threats as they hit the table"
Great info. I've always kinda built transparent decks without even thinking about it. And I usually tell whoever I'm playing with that
My last game, I was playing etali: primal conqueror, and I had him flipped to the instant kill poison counter side. I decided I would roll to see who I attacked, and after that, I kept the dice to give everyone a sense of dread. If someone attacked me, I would take the dice off the table as a threat, meaning “if you do this, I won’t leave it up to chance who will die” it’s absolutely the funnest thing being absolutely feared by everyone.
I always respond with "I wasn't gonna attack you, but now that you complained I will."
I love "fight the table" ideology. Sometimes I win and it's a great story, or I lose and it's a great story.
Heard you on a Facebook olshort and wanted to go to the source. Beautiful! Especially the drop!
10:12 how is this different than smol beans?
my main deck is a blue artifact deck. I use a lot of counters and fodder to survive the early rounds, before doing massive bursts of damage. I have tezzeret's gatebreaker as well, and no one I play with has any board wipes and the few artifact destruction spells are usually used to try and destroy my mana ramp or my staff of the mind magus so they can try and kill me before I am in a position to sacrifice tezzeret's gatebreaker. my favorite way to play is to wat too attack until I have enough on my board to take people out in one swing. I'm sure I could end games faster if I didn't do this, but it results in this small bean effect most of the time where everyone is focused on each other because the most I'm doing to harm anyone is bouncing their creature back if they target me while everyone else is slapping them down. At a certain point though, my deck snowballs and by the time people realize that I have quietly filled my battlefield to the brim and am very obviously about to play my biggest wincon, it's pretty much too late. I'm never deceptive about it either, everyone knows how my deck works and it's hard to ignore the guy who has chewed through half of his deck in 6 turns, but because I don't attack I'm almost always the smallest threat until it's too late.
I think this is why i like mono black devotion in pauper in terms of "fighting the table"
Its win con is removal, and cycling Gary triggering by playing 2-3 of him, and if needed, getting him back from the yard to get more triggers. It's very very open and honest, i want black pips, and when i get them the pools go down and mine goes up. Nothing sneaky, jusst devotion
Definitely no video uploaded before this one, and this definitely wouldn't have been my comment on that video
Most of my decks fall under the very fair and straightforward category, with a sort of escalating and obvious threat on the board. I generally turn into the main villain of the table, which is good because my deck is also probably the best constructed in terms of power and ability to win the game. Being the villain is actually quite the fun experience, since, even if you don't win, you still significantly impact the game every time. I do have a deck I'm working on for Slimefoot, the Stowaway that sort of breaks my rule but not really. It's a sort of hyper land-ramp deck using untapping abilities and auras that let lands tap for extra mana to just make a shit load of saproling tokens. Basically I want to reach 160 mana sunk into the ability as fast as possible, which will generally not be that fast. I think it's a lot more fun to play a deck like that.
Me watching a video about mtg theories
Also me knowing damm well Im going to be screaming ''dont kill me I can do something funny next turn'' when im at 1 hitpoint
I'm kinda reminded of a maldhound video. Specifically in how it mentions that every color in the game gets to cheat at Magic, but Green Specifically always seems to get away with it without getting anywhere near as much flak as other colors do.
Fight The Table Ideology kinda shows some of why, Especially in regards to your example of a Ramp deck being transparent enough that people dont' get as paranoid about you until you have like 87 lands and you kill everyone with bears.
I love the inclusion of the Great Aurora in your one combo example
My Progenitus spellslinger deck has no nonland permanents in the 99. In the early game, all I do is ramp and draw. My opponents might think that I'm just having a bad draw, so they tend to leave me alone. When they do attack me, I wipe the board. I also communicate this to them, and I make good on the threat. What tends to happen is my opponents will attack each other or use their removal on each other, with me using my interaction primarily to prevent one player from running away with the game or just outright winning. I have a couple of spells in the deck that might be game winning, but I don't always rely on them. When it goes to 1v1, that's when I bring out Progenitus, usually with a +1/+1 counter from Opal Palace or it gets a bonus from Cathedral of War.
The deck is pretty consistent in what it does, is usually not threatening, and allows my opponents enough game actions that they don't feel just locked out while forcing me to play tactically with my interaction.
I’m a volunteer at a local high school and one of the kids there has a “mono-Green Morophon deck” where the deck only has basic forests for lands….and it’s actually Sliver combo
Your fight the table style decks makes me think of my Henzi Deck. It’s just big ramp, into bigger creatures, sacrifice big creatures into smaller big creatures and finally try to reanimate the biggest ones.
really enjoyed the video and I can say without a doubt that because of my great skills in lying and deception my pod is always on their toes when negotiating with me. Look just because I almost hit a guy for lethal commander in one turn even through I agreeded to help him does not make me untrust worthy.
This is a good concept. My trouble is with my Kadena Morph Combo deck. I do my best to be transparent without just revealing my hand and saying what my face down cards do, but naturally, being a resilient deck that has lots of interaction and hidden information, people aren’t the hugest fan of the deck. I am transparent with my combo pieces and how strong my synergy cards are, but people still tend to underestimate her until they get locked out of the game.
Great points! I played some very frustrating games recently with random people because they either played deceptively, or didn't know how to talk about their deck. One guy seemed to have 5-6 decks that were most likely all very optimized, because he said pick a number 1-6. The thing I said I really didn't want to see was board wipes all the time. He eliminated his Child of Alara deck, but still, the table was very mismatched. I tried not to outplay the precon player in the pod, but this new guy was clearly trying to hyper optimize every deck.
Krenko mob boss deck is my favorite example of a visible treat, even more so if the whole deck is built around him
I have a Glunch deck without a win condition that focuses on helping everyone at the table but me. Naturally I’m the first to die.
I have a deck that USED to be just a g/b deck with the joke being it only has ONE swamp to work with and somehow win, but it was designed for 100-card singleton 1v1, not EDH, so I took the Sapling of Colfenor I had in it and made it my commander, and all of a sudden people were getting upset that they couldn’t tell what my deck’s end goal was as they were losing to it, just because it was meant to have many wincons that could show up at any time. Needless to say, it made for an interesting table any time I brought it out.
I’d say my greatest fight the table deck is my Voltron deck it’s very much telling on itself when I revolve my equipment and my commanders have abilities that deal with equipment. You can look directly at my board and see how well I’m doing a lot of the time. And I’ll let you know well my sunforger is out so I’m always holding up more interaction then you expect.
My play style is often the complete opposite: "Come at me bro" with a full grip and open mana. Ironically, this actually works better than downplaying my board state since most players don't want the smoke.
My main deck is something I think is sort of in between, because I play Kadena because I love morphs. I basically just start playing yugioh, playing cards face down for free, then I give them flash so I can do it on every turn, drawing a card for each one used. I just keep doing this, along with manifesting cards and a few more supportive things to draw through my deck until I hit overwhelming stampede or end-raze forerunners, or even beastmaster ascension [which is super fun if I get it early because then I start getting scrappy with 7/7s] and win because the deck lacks finishing power. until I get it, I just start messing with my opponents using my morphs' abilities and protecting my engine as best I can.
My usual response to someone with good attacks/potential to kill me is just "I will not beg for mercy." It rarely works but I like to think it's a little more dignified.
Great video! It really hits on a point that I have felt for a long time. EDH is a more social format but that that social aspect has its limits. Its really frustrating playing against someone who protests at every piece of interaction or attack, who thinks they can politic their way out of any situation. there should be an understood baseline that EDH is a game and the objective of the game is to win, so don't get upset when people try to win. That doesnt mean deliberately stomping on noobs but being open and honest goes a long way to create a fun game space.
me and you have very different ideas about commander sadly. Yet you are spot on with your analysis of why people react they way the do. The problem is I want to play big janky things that is fun to me and it is frustrating when you I get over targeted because that one time I popped off. You give a solution to this but the solution is antithetical to what i consider fun decks. I am currently on a small break from edh because of my recent experiences of being over targeted. A player had previously saw the "full might" of my deck and then proceeded to consistently remove any possible threat I could have even when I was the least threatening on the board and even made a misplay that further messed with my board state and I ended up scooping as I wasn't being allowed to play the game. This is the same game where that person was berating another player for playing multi land destruction when they were being oppressive to the whole board just through other means. I was fully transparent what my deck was capable of it was a combo deck that requires several pieces to work and have a few really powerful pieces that can win the game but not out of hand.
Yes you can work it from the angle you suggest and I think that makes fore a well streamlined experience but another would be better threat assessments by opponents. I'd love to see a video about that as well (you probably have and I haven't seen it . . .) After all that I do take a lot of what you say to heart but it still frustrates me because I have been playing mtg on and off since 1994 and I want to play all this lovely jank I have collected over the years and the best place to do that is in EDH yet over the years it seams less and less likely that I can do so. I am just coming off of a large hiatus because A) EDH was getting way to cutthroat in my area circa 2018 B) the pandemic. Now i come back and it is still bad yet it felt more tolerable in spite of power creep because not everyone seems to have mana crypt etc. from sets like eternal masters. If anyone reads through this entire mess ty and love to hear your constructive feedback.
Great video, I'm glad I found your channel!
Im gonna need that Glissa decklist. My decks have always been kind of gimmicky and so have the decks in my playgroup. I'd love to see a transparent decklist and learn from it!
archidekt.com/decks/5035210/glissacruiser
I'm definitely guilty of having very explosive decks that sometimes just don't get started, and perhaps even small beaning.
I think if you play that kind of high potential, high brick kinda deck, you'll need to accept that a lot of games will just suck. But if you get knocked out early when it happens, it's because you're chasing the high of that explosion - and you'll hit it eventually, and it'll feel _so_ sweet when you do.
I don't mind finishing 4th out of 4 so long as I can say to myself I survived for as long as I could reasonably be expected to, the way my draws turned out. Nobody wants to lose first, nobody wants to be attacked, but _someone's_ gotta.
My favorite deck, Shirei Black Weenies, is totally open. I show up, I say it's not Stax, it's just little creatures, sac outlets, and a way to get it all back. Sometimes it verges on SBS, in a way, but I'll just say it straight up. "If you really feel like your best play is killing a 2 mana 1/2 that draws a card, go ahead."
It makes it a lot more satisfying when I start drawing 5 cards, and draining everyone for 4 at the end of everyone's turn.
My transparent decks perform so much better than they have any right to. My Balan deck where I just slap down another piece of equipment each turn and basically say “just you wait until I get to 6 mana” basically gets ignored until turn 6 because everyone knows the deck does basically nothing until it gets to 6 mana.
My Kellan, removal deck tends to generate remarkably little hate for removing things (although it definitely still generates some) because everyone knows I’m running 40 pieces of targeted removal and half a dozen board wipes.
Yet my Magar of the Magic strings deck with its confusing weak janky reanimator gameplan usually gets rushed down because no one knows that I was a whole turns away from actually doing anything.
The classic I do is put down something I don't need to keep and then say "this is one of my combo pieces" and watch the removal fly