@thetrinketmage you said it was on cast of the etali. The etali triggers on etb. Casting the silence in response to the cast would blank etali's etb, well, youd still do exile but you can't cast them.
weirdly enough I’ve had mostly positive experiences-most of the time we’ve agreed that spelltable needs more social features (but it probably won’t get any)
I play a lot of spelltaboo, but I really haven't seen any difference in behavior between spell table players and local public groups. The MTG community just has a lot of salty players. @@thetrinketmage
I hate when people play "steal your cards" decks over webcam like etali or gonti, and dont have preperation like the whiteboard cards and use a million random things to indicate card's. You think its confusing to see peoples boards now, wait till hes using 4 different reversed cards, a button, 3 dice, and a pencil to signify different cards.
Yes, the “no infinite” descriptor does imply that you shouldn’t have the ability to mindslaver lock the table. Also yes, that level of mana investment is probably appropriate for that power level. If I was playing and you pulled it off, I’d be impressed, but I’d also understand if the some of the table was disgruntled.
I agree but I take serious issue with the "no infinites" clause in the first place. Yeah, it's in the name of a lobby so you can't really spell out exactly what you want but it's *so* reductive.
There's too many stupid cards now for people to accidentally pull off infinite combos. Sometimes, your opponents cards, not even your own, is what allows you to win. Mindslaver just might arise some salt from old timers, but there's so much worse out there that isn't a combo. Stay and storm to be frank
@@andrewb378the thing is, you can just not play games with rules like that that you don't like. You don't get to play anyways and then take issue with a rule stated up front to a game no one forced you to play.
I've had some great experiences with playing on Spelltable. Its nice to meet kindred spirits that you may never talk to again, but you share the love for this silly game that unites us all. Its really been mostly positive for me. And sure there issues with seeing the boards, and some people take it way too seriously. But, we've had some great conversations and some really fun games. Anecdote time: Long story short, if you want to make people laugh, do an impression of Bruce from Family Guy playing Magic and use the phrases "Oooh...but thats only gonna leave me two mana." Or " A Sheoldred! Oh nooooo!"
Spelltable has a neat feature where you can click on cards and it tries to discern what the card is and shows you a larger image of it. It's not perfect and will sometimes get the card completely wrong, but it is a pretty cool feature nonetheless.
i remember i was playing at a casual level lobby and there was this guy who busted out his funny monke tribal kogla deck. well, it was basically a top of the line fully fleshed out cedh deck with all the best artifact ramp etc., that just happened to run a couple monkes, one of which was a vanilla 3 mana 3/3. rest of the table was pretty pissed cause this dude was smug about winning with his funny monkes, even though they were largely irrelevant because the shell of his deck was just at such an overblown power imbalance
People who say "no infinites" tend to actually mean "nothing that feels to me like it wins out of nowhere". Of course, combo wins are rarely ever truly "out of nowhere", but this isn't about whether or not that's technically true, it's really just about that person feels bad when losing to combo wincons and doesn't want to play against them, period.
Exactly. In my enchantment deck im building, cheating out Omniscience is way easier than assembling an infinite mana engine, even with tutors. Omniscience is perfectly fine with my playgroup, but infinites are house rule banned. Normally agree, but ive never understood for mana. In my goreclaw deck I tend to make more mana than I know what to do with. I feel like having infinite mana is literally just that. Im thinking I can maybe sway them on this particular thing.
Yeah, already made a comment about this, but I've had some players get salty with me for playing Plague of Vermin with Ayara and draining the board for lethal, with someone literally saying it's 'basically an infinite combo''.
Wild Spelltable games tends to be toxic. I prefer discord games through spelltable more and irl games I prefer to them. But yes all your points are so true
Locks really are the same as infinites, especially the one you were describing. When your lock resolves, that's it. Everyone else just has to lose. Its the same as an infinite combo since both win the game on the spot. I think that if I were in your situation, I would've just tried to win the game the way you described without the lock. Even though in both scenarios you win, one just feels better to play against, since losing your agency to a lock/combo just feels worse than losing to a well-timed draw. Edit: I will say I get what you mean about not allowing infinites. A lot of decks just have infinites just from their cards working well together and then boom its an infinite. For me personally, when I come across something like that in my decks, I just don't do the combo, or maybe I stop myself after one or two loops. But that's just the way I like to play the game, or moreso how I don't like to win with combos. One of my friends has a mazirek deck that just naturally has a bunch of combos bc the commander is so crazy and I love playing against it and seeing what fun stuff he pulls out.
@@thetrinketmage I didn't mean specifically on spelltable. If I'm using a friend's deck, and they happen to have an infinite combo in there that's supposed to be there, I will avoid playing it / looping it
In my pod we have a rule that every infinite combo triggers only once per turn. That solves a lot of problems without having to check beforehand if the deck is capable of comboing, and we normally use the house rules less as hard rules and more as a general guide of what we expect from a game. I mean, the combo rule is a rule, our personal ban list is a ban list, but it does not address every possible case that could create some salt, it is just a guide for those who start playing with us to have an idea of how we play and what type of games we expect... It has the same purpose that the official commander ban list has, a suggestion of what the format should look like. I think the problem people see with house rules is that they don't go the extra mile of thinking "hey, if infinites are banned i don't think they'd be fine with locks or storm, they don't want the game to end out of nowhere"... Magic players complain about casual because they lack social skills to extrapolate stuff, or simply don't ask enough questions before playing, don't say enough about their decks... It is easy, you just have to put yourself in the perspective of others, I even started running less interaction because every time I played, people got salty that I was controlling the game too much. Even tho I think it is fine to play interaction and removal. In the end, it is all about getting joy out of playing magic, I don't care if I lose a lot more games because I run more interaction, everybody seems to be having much more fun overall. I care a lot more about the overall experience of the table, not just my own(of course my own experience is important, but the table experience is just as important) Commander players just have to be a little less self centered and egotistical.
I think I would consider a lock an infinite combo as it effectivley wins the game in a similar way. I consider an infinite combo win perfectly fair to be clear, but I think there is just some anger from decks with no interaction when a person just happens to win.
I prefer digital formats since I can examine people's cards without interrupting game flow. For EDH, I believe the closest we can get is Tabletop Sim. I know a few people who use it and seem to have good experiences.
I played a few games on ST when I wanted to play MTG commander online, and I instantly came to a realization. Spelltable are only for 3 kinds of people, people that play in custom lobbies with friends, people that are far from any gaming locations, and people that are likely banned from gaming locations. One day I might set my camera back up to play on it again, but my last few experiences were just annoying.
I feel like a better way to explain what people want when they say "no infinites" is to say "sorcery speed interaction plus blocking should be sufficient."
I’ve never had worse games than on spelltable. That platform has some sort of nightmare hex on it that makes every game of commander with people you don’t know a hellgame. It’s weird because when i play with randoms irl i never get a fraction of a percentage of the verbal abuse, cheating, etc you find on spelltable LOL. Must be something about the anonymity.
I would guess it's because it's one of the only places players who've been kicked out of their IRL play groups can play. Add on the fact that it's hard/impossible to remove someone from a game and it's the ideal spot for awful players to hang out.
In my playgroup we specifically banned infinites with 2 or fewer cards. 3+ combos are more difficult to assemble in commander, especially since we don't play tutors (or not many), and are usually telegraphed enough, that the table has enough time to react to or interact with them. If they can't, it's usually a testament to not playing enough removal or interaction, or making sub-optimal decisions along the game (I don't mean to throw shade at the player in the video, I am talking about my own playgroup). Still, we prefer combos going "large" instead of infinite, but that's maybe another topic. Still, I to a degree understand the frustration of the player in the video and Mindslaver isn't a card I would personally bring to game with strangers, despite its steep mana investment. I think it comes back to your point of "Power Levels" and House Rules being interpreted differently by everyone. But then again, I maybe ain't the best person to comment since I only play with my playgroup. Btw, do you have link to your Tawnos list? I would like to draw some inspiration for my own deck 😬 Edit: Nvm, I found it!
I think the problem with 2 card infinites is pretty fair. You don't typically get a 2 card infinite on accident. But I am sure if you looked through someones supposedly low powered deck you could find an inifinite like the lock; requiring 24 mana and 6 pieces
I think the sentiment behind “no infinites” is “no ending the game from a state where I didn’t see it coming”. It’s kind of jarring when you thought you were gonna have a few more turns and the game suddenly ends. It gives me the same feeling as something like Craterhoof - an “I win right now” card (most of the time). An infinite combo does the same thing, you play a card or two and you win the game on the spot (or if you don’t then why would anyone be mad). To me, something like this multi-piece 20+ mana loop is so much harder to pull off that theoretically I had a chance to stop it somewhere in there, and so it doesn’t fit with the sudden “I win” than a typical “infinite combo” represents. Evidently not everybody shares this point of view, taking “infinite” more literally, but I thought I’d throw in my two cents
Really appreciate you making this video man. Found your channel a couple weeks ago and I'm a fan of a lot of your takes. Spelltable is an excellent resource, though in practice it's not always sunshine and rainbows as your video makes clear. A few points: -I have friends in other states that play Commander, thus Spelltable is one of the only ways for us to get games in aside from a trip to visit. -This year I started using Moxfield to play decks digitally on ST, and not only does this makes things like mulligans, tutors and board wipes much faster, but it also allows me to playtest new decks before committing them to paper. -More than the use of any particular card or strategy, my experience is most directly affected by the attitude and behaviors of the other players. I've tolerated and even enjoyed some pretty degenerate decks when their pilots were chill and friendly, and I've also faced some very fair decks with the most unsavory/bitter/salty pilots. -Similarly to your experience, cEDH pods have been by far the most consistently chill. -Like you, I too think the 1-10 powerscale is near useless. That's why I tend to give my lobbies a welcoming or even funny title to attract players, then give them a friendly hello before starting the pregame discussion. Even decks around the same power level can make for a rough game if one deck has cards that completely hose the other. An example was when I played my Henzie blitz deck and an opponent had several cards that replace dying with exile or cause creatures to enter tapped. Keep up the good work bro, and I'd be happy to run into you on Spelltable someday!
As I see it, a combo is a combo insofar as it can win from any boardstate. So in the colloquial sense, you are violating the terms of the table, as it is extraordinarily difficult to not win after resolving an infinite double mindslaver loop. On the other hand, synergistic artifact decks tend to go infinite whether you want them to or not, and their complaints that a 20 mana generated an unconditionally winning boardstate might have been more about salt than principle.
Mindslaver lock is an infinite turns combo. (Activate Mindslaver, recover Mindslaver) N times, then skip to your next turn, repeat. Once you demonstrate the loop, and that you can repeat the loop infinitely, it is an infinite combo. However not all locks are infinite combos. Most locks are stax "Nobody can do XYZ. Does anyone have an out or does my wincon end the game before someone removes the lock that protects the wincon?" As for that no-infinites pod: Mindslaver lock was an infinite turns combo. You accidentally mislead the group by saying your deck had no infinites. They played the game with the expectation to deal with finite threats. It didn't matter that your infinite cost 20 mana. Their meta expects they only need to have outs to finite threats (like Time Stretch + Expropriate?) rather than infinite threats. Ultimately it did not matter to the outcome of the game, but it did matter to the pregame conversation and could have mattered to the game.
Being new to commander, I'd love to see a breakdown of how to judge the power level of a deck. I know it can be complicated, but that's why I'm asking :)
I think, when people say, “no infinites” a mindslaver combo is included in what they call an infinite. And if they said they want to play without infinites, and then lose to that mindslaver combo, regardless of how hard it is to pull off, they’re rightful in being upset. If you could’ve won without the combo, you should have.
Even if different on a technicality level, I feel that stuff like yout lock kinda does the same Especially since the lazy case is you have your opponents tap out during their turn, and have infinite of your own turns That said a 20 mana 4 card combo is fine in my books, one of my decks centers around a handful of combos that take 9-14 mana and 3-5 cards aside from the commander and it has won twice in total
Great video. I'm about to start playing on Spelltable and this video gave me a good idea of what I can expect (and my fears). I think it might help conciliate with a good discord server for MTG.
I love this video! I can't really give my opinion on that though because i only use spelltable with friends because they still study in the same city i am already working/living in another city and also atm i am not so familiar with lgs to go there alone. But for that use especially its amazing! I also made a setup so i can play/test my decks over Archidekt the same you explained with moxfield and i love it, you can read the cards way better or spelltable can recognize them better and so i can finally get to test some of my decks without printing them out, sleeving them and wait until my friends visit me for some magic!
I think it would be a great idea to stream or tell on a discord when your online so viewers can play with you and overall more people come to play at that time
I’ve played some spelltable games with patrons on my patreon discord server. But I do plan to try out some live streaming on TH-cam and will probably play some spelltable soon
I played spelltable with strangers during the pandemic and had a lot of salty people just bc I used a removal on them. I actually stopped playing on spelltable when a guy claimed he was using a 7-power level deck and proceeded to play mana crypt into mana vault into It that Betrays turn 4, I think. The whole table ganged up on him and killed him first. Then, he started slurring, saying that it was unfair... it sucked. Fun fact: I think there was a "Play with a Celebtrity" event going on and my table randomly consisted of Dana Roach (Edhrecast), Bennie Smith (SCG writer) and that guy who got salty. After he left defeated, we had a really cool and intense commander game. Fun fact #2: I won with my Talrand (no rares nor mythics) deck :)
I got to the Lock section in the end and I use my Room of the Hidden Realm deck like this. I usually perform a lock, but I will do it in a way where the others don't notice it until it's too late. That way I give them the chance to solve the "puzzle". It usually involves me bouncing specific cards and always having an answer to all their stuff and it looks like I'm defending, but in actuality I'm getting rid of their resources to deliver the final blow
Got my brother on spelltable due to wanting to play cedh but no one at our local being able to hang. First game he got was against a dude whos sole purpose was to steal cards. They told him to play something else because that would be too hard to keep track of. Dude. Went. Off. And that was his only bad game on spelltable the rest were just fine.
@@thetrinketmage Well me and my pod of 3, meet up on Spell Table on Saturdays around 6:30pm est, and one of us streams our games. We usually stick to around 6 - 7 in terms of scale, but we really just play fun, casual magic.
13:22 depends on the lock While needing 20+ mana to pull off, it's a constant loop, an infinite, to "lock" the table. Making infinite mana? Have to use it on something, it's powerfull but you can brick with it. But see how can close these 2 could be or how they can interact with each other. People immediatly assume you will have both, so it's common to see "no infinite" in rooms both on Spelltable & MTGO
Just a theory, so take a grain of salt with this: but I think that maybe in concept that all infinites are locks but not all locks are infinites. That infinites are allowing yourself to take as many actions as possible, effectively meaning that if you dont shortcut the process of a non game winning infinite, you can just lock out the board forever if you wish by performing each action over and over again. Locks just don't allow your opponents to do things by preventing their actions instead, and although some strats aren't infinite, I would say the mindslaver combo is somewhat of an infinite as it is reliant of you taking seemingly a huge amount of game actions in relation to the rest of the table. In the end I don't blame you for winning a long game with the mindslaver, I mean games need to end. I would probably be salty as well depending on how close I could have been to victory. But in the end it's not as of you just whipped that up out of nowhere like a random thoracle combo in casual, that would feel very awful.
The Mindslaver infinite combo's loop would be: Activate & regain Mindslaver N times Pass through each player's turn by wasting their mana. Discard any instant speed free spells. Untap and repeat One you demonstrate the loop, and the ability to repeat the loop, it is an infinite combo.
Also there are infinite combos (most even) that are not locks. Exquisite Blood + Sanguine Bond for example will cause infinite life loss, but nothing is being locked down. A Krosan Grip for example will sever the combo. Mindslaver lock is a bit weird in that it is using a lock to skip the opponent's turn rather than cast Time Warp as a more direct way to get another untap step. Also you are right, not all locks are infinite combos: Karn the great creator + Mycosynth lattice is a lock, but not an infinite combo.
I love playing a deck on spelltable and hearing people, upon seeing my commander, ask "do you have x combo in there????" And immediately telling the whole table that I cannot be allowed to play the game "just in case" I draw into that combo.
Someone criticizing your deck having an infinite of sorts despite it not being actually relevant to you winning isn't invalid. It's no different than if you actually *did* try to infinite and someone interrupted it and you just go "well I didn't win the game with it so what's the problem?" The fact is it was there and they're letting you know you shouldn't join if you're running that kind of thing. If you really dislike the "no infinite" way of playing the game, you don't have to go into that kind of lobby.
I had a game recently where 2 of my opponents couldn't understand the sanguine bond exquisite blood combo, saying it ended on a draw because of "infinite triggers" even though the triggers need to resolve one at a time to kill the table. Extremely annoying game with people who didn't understand card interactions after explaining it several times
One time I had someone argue that dauthi voidwalker doesn’t stop death triggers… took some time to get them to realize how it worked. It can be frustrating but remember it’s always better to teach a new player how the game works!
The "problem" with infinite combos is some players who are more casual are at a severe disadvantage by not having memorized the metagame of all the possible combinations that exist, and thus don't have the knowledge of what is or isn't appropriate to remove or counter. That said, my Orvar deck can go infinite rather easily. I actually created a sideboard for it to minimize the possibility of going infinite. The result is very long, non-deterministic turns that are actually less fun (for everyone) than popping off an infinite. Most recently, my Jan Jensen deck went infinite. I chose to only do the cycle a few times, but could go infinite whenever, so I had infinite answers to various things regardless. I'm still trying to find a friendly way to roll with such combos without ending games prematurely, and right now I'm leaning toward only doing X iterations of a loop where X is the number of (non-extra) turns I've taken. Ideas?
Can we tackle the real problem in EDH? It's not SpellTable or the "saltiness" of the player online Playing a lot in spelltable, not by choice, but because i live in a very remote part of France, and the first LGS is litteraly more than 1h drive away Powerlevel means nothing, it's an auto evaluation that should work, if the scale was properly constructed, it is just not the case. Under PL 5 is not even consider a deck, but, a pile of card(wtf does that mean in reality) How in the world people can evaluate low power deck, because, if you have any correct card/ wincon you are almost instanniously in over 6 PL. And in the opposite spectrum, it's really easy to build a deck that's clunky on purpose to make "less" powerful, the fact is, since the scale of PowerLevel is so important to player, that, we all have "house rules" or "rules 0" conversation. People are not evil for trying to win, but, they are , sometimes, people that ABUSE low level table I use often in French a comparison i don't know if it will relate in English but i'll try: "Powerlevel is like driving a car that can only go at a snail pace or at the maximum speed authorized" That's what i see a lot in SpellTable, people wanting to play funny/meme decks, or, people like me, that are just here to also share a passion with people, and not really care about winning. There is lots of people that put (no mox/no inf) espacialy to avoid long turn, or broken deck that will take advantage of unsuspecting player ( we see you MF that says i'm a 7 but stax out the table, and, i hope you'll walk of lego bricks) And, the proxy conversation should happen also.... Ok card are not cheap, but, there is probably a less than a dollar version of your staple
I once had a player go ballistic because I had a sensei’s top and bolas’s citadel. it was power 8 & turn 16. I had like 20 life and no way to get more. If you do play on spelltable it’s important to know when to leave because why would you play with that guy (same for most online games tbh)
I think Spelltable is best when you are part of a Discord or something where it is easier to discuss what power levels everyone wants to play and if everyone wants a more casual game or fast-paced. I've been part of the Tolarian Community College Discord for a few months and I've played 100s of games and have only had 4-5 bad games.
In my house games, I usually say no infinite combos that will either break the game into a draw, a two card insta win combo, or something that puts the game state to such a crawl you might as well scoop. I'm okay with staxs since you can deal with it via spot removal, though it can get pretty salty quick.
I’ve had great luck with Tabletop Simulator. There’s a great community there that all basically knows each other, and we have a blacklist of toxic players that’s always being added to. The use of the block button has been huge for me for sure.
I found a group of guys out of Texas during the pandemic randomly. We played over SpellTable. Super fun, but that was certainly the exception, not the rule.
There are a lot of weirdos on spell table but I have had much more positive experiences than negative ones. Most of the time it can be solved if your rule zero conversations are in the lobby title or gone over before the game starts
The problem is one of terminology- your Mindslaver recursion loop is an infinite combo AND a lock. As in it's a lock that you create by repeating actions infinitely that also enables you to do those actions. A lock that _isn't_ also an infinite combo would be Mycosynth Lattice + Collector Ouphe. Not that the distinction matters much in your case. I'd have been pissed too, but only because I dislike Mindslaver on a conceptual level.
The whole house rules thing is just a power level issue - no combos, no unrestricted tutors, no stax, and no locks is what I would generally consider the baseline for low-mid power casual. Varying degrees of those more powerful strategic elements are what I would use to describe mid-high power decks. I have some really strong "low power" decks that don't combo or anything but do flood the board fast and overwhelm my opponents quickly. Low power decks aren't just inefficient meme decks. They're generally leaning into what most people would consider "honest magic" and operating in a way that while efficient is likely more susceptible to interaction. My high power decks might not win as fast as my low power decks, but they're more resilient to interaction and they're able to powerfully interact in a number of meaningful ways.
i wanted to start playing Magic via Spelltable with family and friends and funny enough i got this video recommended a day after we talked about it. Very happy about the fact that its only about random lobbys. Ofc its bad, everything with random lobbys can become the most extreme shitshow, but not always in general its fine most of the time
I've had some fun games on webcam magic sites. Only issue I ever ran into was a guy running a polymorph deck with only a foil Progenitus as the creature that was folding so hard you could tell over the camera. I hit it with a choas warp, which now that I'm re-reading progenitus probably it has protection from lol, but the guy shuffles it back in, cuts and reveals the progenitus again on the top. Which he was clearly able to do, possibly even by accident, due to the poor quality of his card. Other than that yeah I've had people complain about combo's even when you tutor for what is clearly most likely a combo piece, people just don't run enough interaction for combos which is why they get so much hate.
I can only reccommend playing via some discord (for example TCC) you have a much better selection of people to play against because they will have made the effort to join as well. Also there are mods and stuff so certain behavior can be regulated.
Ive never used a random lobby but did use the looking for group feature on TCC's discord. I work nights so finding games was hard (I now have a local group) but I think its a positive overall. That said bringing mindslaver to a game over spell table at all seems like a nightmare if you actually use it, the same with theft as you can't just move around the table or hand cards around
I'm brazilian and often i play only on portuguese language lobbies. I think that my experience is very particular because of those conditions but i did not play with a toxic player yet. I use the card guess feature a lot and the downsite of spelltable for me is that i'm a relatively new player and i need often to read the cards to understand what they do, but often we are not able to scan the enemy cards and i'm.not able to understand my opponents board without asking about each card a few times. Things said, its nice to have a option to play with my physical cards in the moments i could not join a physical commander match.
Bruf, I started also playing online just recently, and I had tried to avoid spelltable to be honest, specifically because everyone's rating for decks is all over the place, man, I'd love to share some crazy stories from spell table, one of them, had a lobby of 3 people, waiting for a game, and then all sudden a guy half naked pops up on camera, says nothing, then leaves. Just some wild stuff.
in my experience, making a lobby and being specific in the title: like power 7-8, no infinites, proxies allowed, etc-has netted a positive experience for me
If you can do the lock forever to everyone and it can literally be done forever. How is that not infinite? Yeah you’re doing it over several turns but the point is you’re splitting hairs. Clearly these guys didn’t want to play against anything that can be done repeatedly forever. And controlling someone, whether you tutored for the pieces or not, is probably some of the saltiest things you can do to them. Not to mention “forever”. Should they have interaction? Yes. Definitely. Should you play something you KNOW is gonna make them salty and you’re nitpicking bc they weren’t specific enough to say in their lobby title “plz don’t forever lock the table out of the game”? No, you shouldn’t. Yeah, any deck should be able to win with 20+ mana and cards in hand. Or at least knock a player out. Is the combo multiple pieces and tons of mana? Yes, it’s inefficient and janky. That doesn’t mean they weren’t for it. Aka they weren’t and would never be ready for that especially if they’re expecting no types of infinites. Im not saying players should or shouldn’t have infinities in their deck. Im saying that the rule 0 of naming their lobby a certain way to ideally play a kind of game they want should at least be considered before throwing down this kind of combo at THEM. Im specifically mentioning THEM as a whole bc they seemed to agree on what kind of decks they’d play against just like cEDH decks knew about what kind of decks they’re playing against and advised the 8-9 level deck player to not join but he did anyway. You KNEW that it’d make the table salty, you KNEW that “lock” although interactable was not something they were ready to deal with, 5-7 is pretty low power. Just like cEDH is high asf power. The 5-7 lobby knew where they belonged. The cEDH lobby knew where they belonged. Pretending you didn’t know is at least a little scummy. Im not saying you didn’t deserve to win, you did. Im saying that it’s an obvious mismatch to play that into that table.
Coming to this video in the past from the future - I recently moved for work and have been using spell table a TON and I want to say you can have some bad lobbies yes but more often than not I get either really friendly/cool lobbies or lobbies where everyone is just quietly sitting and playing not a lot of joking going around(more so the first one) Something Ive gotten in the habit of doing as Ive been trying to track the mannerisms of people so not only I have the most fun but everyone at the table does is Rule0 the shit out of the tables: - Ask what the lobby is for and be 100% open in what Im trying to do. "Hey guys anyone here playing new decks? No? Awesome! Y'all mind if I limit test a new deck or are we just wanting to run through a game?" This allows me to know if people just want to shuffle and play or are cool with turns being slightly slower - if any table has a level disparity of 2+ levels (for example the table you sat at which said 5-7) if I even have some sort of cheese in the deck I wanted to play Im very open with it. "Hey look it's not infinite but I do have a very high cost stunt combo in the deck. It takes 5 cards and 30 mana to do but it is something I CAN do" Surprise value is the number 1 killer of moods Ive come to find out in tables with rules cause those people are looking for a VERY specific experience Ive only had 1 time where I joined a lobby that said 6-8 which I thought would be a perfect lobby as I was trying to test out some crazy changes I did to my Brimaz to bump the speed of the deck. With numbers like that I figured okay cool so 1 player might be on a 6 so I can see how fast I am compared to that deck, one on a 7 which Ill mainly go toe to toe with, and an 8 which I could mark as my "goal" to keep up with or overpower. Well game starts off with a Ulamog Defiler player ramping out crazy to get Ulamog out like turn 4, and swing Ani12 at me so I lose all my lands and I can't do anything. Next turn the guy plays Plat Angel and swings at the other guy at the board that wasn't a problem at all as he was mana screwed(it was easy to tell the guy the was there only to be an ass). - That's the only time I've had a bad experience on ST but I instantly blocked that guy so I can never play with him again Spelltable also has the "set game to private" option so you can kick someone being an ass then lock the door on him
Spelltabling for a week or two now has been fun most people are chill and when the salty player leaves you have a fun story. See you all online -SighingSpook
Considering how hard it is to make true no combo mtg decks that are actually fun I've always seen "no infinite combos" to mean "if you can infinite combo, don't" I've also seen some groups that rule that infinite combos can only loop 5 times in a turn which also helps
I usually use SpellTable via the TCC discord's matchmaking, or with friends. But I find the "low power, high salt" thing to be true outside of SpellTable too
As a beginner player, I really wanted to try out Spelltable for myself. I dont have to drive to the next city just to play some EDH and I really like Remote duels from several years ago when we couldnt get out to play another "Big 3 TCG". That sounds overall nice to me, but I think this video is kind of a dealbreaker for me then. I may try it out, but if I encounter salty players and dead lobbies to often, I have to bite the bullet and drive to the next city nontheless.
I only use spelltable as a tool to play with ppl from the discord group I’m at, and honestly, being in a moderated discord server makes the experience so much more enjoyable. No crazy ppl, we are all at the same page on the power lvl thingy so there is no issues there too… I think it’s the optimal way of using spelltable and it’s a marevous tool at what it does, but it’s not a good way to search for games or pods, only to host them when already assembled
I think a lock can be a infinite under certain conditions as in my mind a infinite is something you can do consistently over and over by repeating a specific process some locks could fall under this but ultimately it's very dependent on situations and whether it truly is infinite
I played my first game over spelltable but it was in the TCC discord - it was fine, but I wonder if that's cos it's linked to a community with mods etc
I mean I feel infinite combo is pretty easy to understand if you can do an action infinitely through the interaction of 2 or more cards it’s an infinite combo. Regardless if it’s making mana, doing damage, drawing cards, locking the table or just going “I win”
I play cedh on spelltable semi frequently. I see this in casual on cockatrice back when I played there. The problem was that whole power level issue. Players usually don't complain. And like he described, some people play a significantly low power game while, but generally people play cedh and have a good time. Very low salt.
i find it hard to be mad at that mindslaver combo, considering that deck probably wants all of the requisite cards in the combo anyways. it is a little bit of a buzzkill, but so are a lot of ways to end the game also, highly anticipating that power scale video.
The random experience can be a little bit toxic sometimes. Just depends on the day you play, you can easily set a game to private at its creation and just give out the link to the people you want to play with. That's a lot of work so I usually just Play with randos! And I have a fairly good experience. I don't run the strongest decks in the world, but I do run some silly interaction and I usually get some commentary
at 9:50, the swan song was a mistake right? because if the silence resolves the previous casts wouldve still gone through? in my understanding, once you pass priority for silence to resolve you cant then add to the stack to remove the previous spells unless they respond to the silence.
I play on spelltable all the time but games are made over TCC discord. People are mostly nice and if not, those horror stories that happen are fun to talk about with your friends.
I live in a rural area and know only 1 dude that plays with me (and my wife plays occasionally to indulge me), maybe I'm destined to just play online, thanks for bringing this option to me, probably going to try it
I've had people complain about my solemnity + decree of silence lock while being fine with the infinite combos in the same deck. Also, i play a deck with about 4 nondeterministic "combos" in it and it's arguably more tedious to resolve and work through. yet people seem more okay with that than infinites.
fun story was playing a new deck and stated that I wanted a 5-6 game with new decks so we can all figure them out together. I see someone join with a tivat deck thinking ooo a vote deck that should be cool... oh boy was I mistaken. He wont turn 2 ;c
Few things regarding infinite combos discussion: - Nobody cares about "technically", the rule is because of sudden wins after somebody just pulls correct combination of 3 cards - those are just anticlimactic and not fun. If something is not "technically" infinite, but still feels the same way, then it probably should be treated as infinite combo. - 20 mana is not that much in commander to be honest. - 14:00 - but the rule isn't about some edge cases, where somebody plays a meme deck to prove the point, but for the other 99.9% games where people actually try to play. Also, "infinite combo" rule is obviously about infinite combos not stax decks, so it's no wonder that stax deck without a combo will be ok in that scenario. You know, you can still have other rules, like not playing stax decks which makes the game not fun for anyone.
12:45 This is my experience with lower power tables as well. If you don't win through pure combat damage, a lot of them will complain. If you are in the running the whole time and win, you sometimes get complaints that your deck is too strong etc. Higher level tables rarely complain about much unless it is something wildly out of pocket.
Bro that Silence mindbreak trap play was such a raw play. That's so sick.
There are some good players out there on spelltable
@@thetrinketmage really wish I had a computer to play on there
Does the silence play not also prevent the free casts from etali?
@@conradbell no cause the spells are already in the stack. Silence doesn’t work as a counterspell
@thetrinketmage you said it was on cast of the etali. The etali triggers on etb. Casting the silence in response to the cast would blank etali's etb, well, youd still do exile but you can't cast them.
"No infinite combo" mfs when you take a manual, nondeterministic, 40 minute storm turn
That sounds like something I'd do to prove a point lol 😂
Spell table games take twice as long as an lgs game. I played 5 in 4 hours in an lgs and 2 in 4 hours on spell table cus of all the clunky waiting
😂😂😂😂😂😂
Both are bad.
I'd rather lose turn 1 to an inf combo than sit there for a storm player who is unprepared to play their own deck
playing spelltable with strangers is like playing commander in a 2009 COD lobby
That’s an apt analogy I should’ve used in the video
man fr it be the wild West out thier
weirdly enough I’ve had mostly positive experiences-most of the time we’ve agreed that spelltable needs more social features (but it probably won’t get any)
I play a lot of spelltaboo, but I really haven't seen any difference in behavior between spell table players and local public groups. The MTG community just has a lot of salty players. @@thetrinketmage
That actually sounds pretty fun then, ngl
I hate when people play "steal your cards" decks over webcam like etali or gonti, and dont have preperation like the whiteboard cards and use a million random things to indicate card's. You think its confusing to see peoples boards now, wait till hes using 4 different reversed cards, a button, 3 dice, and a pencil to signify different cards.
Is why when I played over webcam, all my stuff was very straightforward, aggressive family-friendly MLD. (:
i always have a beard comb ready for such things. =)
Ohhhh the whiteboard card is a good idea. I've totally avoided steal cards because I didn't know how to make it work remotely.
Yes, the “no infinite” descriptor does imply that you shouldn’t have the ability to mindslaver lock the table. Also yes, that level of mana investment is probably appropriate for that power level. If I was playing and you pulled it off, I’d be impressed, but I’d also understand if the some of the table was disgruntled.
I agree but I take serious issue with the "no infinites" clause in the first place. Yeah, it's in the name of a lobby so you can't really spell out exactly what you want but it's *so* reductive.
My buddy went infinite on accident playing a blue braids artifact deck😂
There's too many stupid cards now for people to accidentally pull off infinite combos. Sometimes, your opponents cards, not even your own, is what allows you to win. Mindslaver just might arise some salt from old timers, but there's so much worse out there that isn't a combo. Stay and storm to be frank
@@andrewb378the thing is, you can just not play games with rules like that that you don't like. You don't get to play anyways and then take issue with a rule stated up front to a game no one forced you to play.
24 mana, 6 pieces on the board. If the table let it unchecked and lost to it, is simple because poorly understanding of the game.
[Replace Text With Slurs]
Yea a lot of slurs in these reddit posts
Hmm, very based
I've always had pretty positive experiences with spell table. Honestly love getting a game in before bed on any given day.
That’s good to hear! I think overall it’s pretty good!
I am going to try it.
I've had some great experiences with playing on Spelltable. Its nice to meet kindred spirits that you may never talk to again, but you share the love for this silly game that unites us all. Its really been mostly positive for me. And sure there issues with seeing the boards, and some people take it way too seriously. But, we've had some great conversations and some really fun games.
Anecdote time: Long story short, if you want to make people laugh, do an impression of Bruce from Family Guy playing Magic and use the phrases "Oooh...but thats only gonna leave me two mana."
Or " A Sheoldred! Oh nooooo!"
Spelltable has a neat feature where you can click on cards and it tries to discern what the card is and shows you a larger image of it. It's not perfect and will sometimes get the card completely wrong, but it is a pretty cool feature nonetheless.
That is something I didn’t mention since I don’t use it much, but the feature is very cool
My one spelltable game it kept on telling me an opponents creatures were lands in the wrong colors
@@TheLuckySpades did you try tapping them for mana? 😂
For me I've had it get the card wrong 9 times out of 10, but that has more to do with my camera quality than the app lol
i remember i was playing at a casual level lobby and there was this guy who busted out his funny monke tribal kogla deck. well, it was basically a top of the line fully fleshed out cedh deck with all the best artifact ramp etc., that just happened to run a couple monkes, one of which was a vanilla 3 mana 3/3. rest of the table was pretty pissed cause this dude was smug about winning with his funny monkes, even though they were largely irrelevant because the shell of his deck was just at such an overblown power imbalance
For the sake of principal, that wasn't cedh.
However, I definitely agree that playing mana crypt in casual is a sin most of the time.
That's what we call a " liar" In the pro gamer business
You play a dockside and a mana crypt in a 5-7 game gg. But apart from that i agree with Most of the points in the Video.
My buddies and I refer to "spelltable" as "salttable"
The, "How am I still bad at this game" bit was a good bit, very funny XD
People who say "no infinites" tend to actually mean "nothing that feels to me like it wins out of nowhere". Of course, combo wins are rarely ever truly "out of nowhere", but this isn't about whether or not that's technically true, it's really just about that person feels bad when losing to combo wincons and doesn't want to play against them, period.
Exactly. In my enchantment deck im building, cheating out Omniscience is way easier than assembling an infinite mana engine, even with tutors. Omniscience is perfectly fine with my playgroup, but infinites are house rule banned. Normally agree, but ive never understood for mana. In my goreclaw deck I tend to make more mana than I know what to do with. I feel like having infinite mana is literally just that. Im thinking I can maybe sway them on this particular thing.
Yeah, already made a comment about this, but I've had some players get salty with me for playing Plague of Vermin with Ayara and draining the board for lethal, with someone literally saying it's 'basically an infinite combo''.
@@LiamAnthony_ Very big "Burn is a 7 card combo deck" energy lmao
Wild Spelltable games tends to be toxic. I prefer discord games through spelltable more and irl games I prefer to them. But yes all your points are so true
This is the way
Locks really are the same as infinites, especially the one you were describing. When your lock resolves, that's it. Everyone else just has to lose. Its the same as an infinite combo since both win the game on the spot. I think that if I were in your situation, I would've just tried to win the game the way you described without the lock. Even though in both scenarios you win, one just feels better to play against, since losing your agency to a lock/combo just feels worse than losing to a well-timed draw.
Edit: I will say I get what you mean about not allowing infinites. A lot of decks just have infinites just from their cards working well together and then boom its an infinite. For me personally, when I come across something like that in my decks, I just don't do the combo, or maybe I stop myself after one or two loops. But that's just the way I like to play the game, or moreso how I don't like to win with combos. One of my friends has a mazirek deck that just naturally has a bunch of combos bc the commander is so crazy and I love playing against it and seeing what fun stuff he pulls out.
Same here. I actively avoid infinite combos, even if they're already in the deck
Yea and if I had found the dockside infinite in my deck that was left there by mistake I wouldn’t have gone for it
@@thetrinketmage I didn't mean specifically on spelltable. If I'm using a friend's deck, and they happen to have an infinite combo in there that's supposed to be there, I will avoid playing it / looping it
In my pod we have a rule that every infinite combo triggers only once per turn. That solves a lot of problems without having to check beforehand if the deck is capable of comboing, and we normally use the house rules less as hard rules and more as a general guide of what we expect from a game. I mean, the combo rule is a rule, our personal ban list is a ban list, but it does not address every possible case that could create some salt, it is just a guide for those who start playing with us to have an idea of how we play and what type of games we expect... It has the same purpose that the official commander ban list has, a suggestion of what the format should look like.
I think the problem people see with house rules is that they don't go the extra mile of thinking "hey, if infinites are banned i don't think they'd be fine with locks or storm, they don't want the game to end out of nowhere"... Magic players complain about casual because they lack social skills to extrapolate stuff, or simply don't ask enough questions before playing, don't say enough about their decks... It is easy, you just have to put yourself in the perspective of others, I even started running less interaction because every time I played, people got salty that I was controlling the game too much. Even tho I think it is fine to play interaction and removal. In the end, it is all about getting joy out of playing magic, I don't care if I lose a lot more games because I run more interaction, everybody seems to be having much more fun overall. I care a lot more about the overall experience of the table, not just my own(of course my own experience is important, but the table experience is just as important)
Commander players just have to be a little less self centered and egotistical.
The things you see an issue with don't fit the description "no infinites" though. You seem to take issue with combos in general😅
I think I would consider a lock an infinite combo as it effectivley wins the game in a similar way. I consider an infinite combo win perfectly fair to be clear, but I think there is just some anger from decks with no interaction when a person just happens to win.
I think you are right, the problem is in a other topic. Some player dont play engouh interaktion.
It does often come from a place of not having interaction and thus not feeling like you can beat a combo
"How am I still bad at this game" remarks were golden
"anyway i was playing Sheoldred..." hahahahaha
I prefer digital formats since I can examine people's cards without interrupting game flow. For EDH, I believe the closest we can get is Tabletop Sim. I know a few people who use it and seem to have good experiences.
I have a ton of friends who use tabletop sim for mtg and they like it
I played a few games on ST when I wanted to play MTG commander online, and I instantly came to a realization.
Spelltable are only for 3 kinds of people, people that play in custom lobbies with friends, people that are far from any gaming locations, and people that are likely banned from gaming locations. One day I might set my camera back up to play on it again, but my last few experiences were just annoying.
100%
I feel like a better way to explain what people want when they say "no infinites" is to say "sorcery speed interaction plus blocking should be sufficient."
I’ve never had worse games than on spelltable. That platform has some sort of nightmare hex on it that makes every game of commander with people you don’t know a hellgame.
It’s weird because when i play with randoms irl i never get a fraction of a percentage of the verbal abuse, cheating, etc you find on spelltable LOL. Must be something about the anonymity.
haha almost like there's a stereotype about how anonymity brings out the worst in people, you indescribable slur word.
I would guess it's because it's one of the only places players who've been kicked out of their IRL play groups can play. Add on the fact that it's hard/impossible to remove someone from a game and it's the ideal spot for awful players to hang out.
In my playgroup we specifically banned infinites with 2 or fewer cards. 3+ combos are more difficult to assemble in commander, especially since we don't play tutors (or not many), and are usually telegraphed enough, that the table has enough time to react to or interact with them. If they can't, it's usually a testament to not playing enough removal or interaction, or making sub-optimal decisions along the game (I don't mean to throw shade at the player in the video, I am talking about my own playgroup). Still, we prefer combos going "large" instead of infinite, but that's maybe another topic.
Still, I to a degree understand the frustration of the player in the video and Mindslaver isn't a card I would personally bring to game with strangers, despite its steep mana investment. I think it comes back to your point of "Power Levels" and House Rules being interpreted differently by everyone. But then again, I maybe ain't the best person to comment since I only play with my playgroup.
Btw, do you have link to your Tawnos list? I would like to draw some inspiration for my own deck 😬
Edit: Nvm, I found it!
I think the problem with 2 card infinites is pretty fair. You don't typically get a 2 card infinite on accident. But I am sure if you looked through someones supposedly low powered deck you could find an inifinite like the lock; requiring 24 mana and 6 pieces
I think the sentiment behind “no infinites” is “no ending the game from a state where I didn’t see it coming”. It’s kind of jarring when you thought you were gonna have a few more turns and the game suddenly ends. It gives me the same feeling as something like Craterhoof - an “I win right now” card (most of the time). An infinite combo does the same thing, you play a card or two and you win the game on the spot (or if you don’t then why would anyone be mad). To me, something like this multi-piece 20+ mana loop is so much harder to pull off that theoretically I had a chance to stop it somewhere in there, and so it doesn’t fit with the sudden “I win” than a typical “infinite combo” represents. Evidently not everybody shares this point of view, taking “infinite” more literally, but I thought I’d throw in my two cents
Really appreciate you making this video man. Found your channel a couple weeks ago and I'm a fan of a lot of your takes.
Spelltable is an excellent resource, though in practice it's not always sunshine and rainbows as your video makes clear. A few points:
-I have friends in other states that play Commander, thus Spelltable is one of the only ways for us to get games in aside from a trip to visit.
-This year I started using Moxfield to play decks digitally on ST, and not only does this makes things like mulligans, tutors and board wipes much faster, but it also allows me to playtest new decks before committing them to paper.
-More than the use of any particular card or strategy, my experience is most directly affected by the attitude and behaviors of the other players. I've tolerated and even enjoyed some pretty degenerate decks when their pilots were chill and friendly, and I've also faced some very fair decks with the most unsavory/bitter/salty pilots.
-Similarly to your experience, cEDH pods have been by far the most consistently chill.
-Like you, I too think the 1-10 powerscale is near useless. That's why I tend to give my lobbies a welcoming or even funny title to attract players, then give them a friendly hello before starting the pregame discussion. Even decks around the same power level can make for a rough game if one deck has cards that completely hose the other. An example was when I played my Henzie blitz deck and an opponent had several cards that replace dying with exile or cause creatures to enter tapped.
Keep up the good work bro, and I'd be happy to run into you on Spelltable someday!
As I see it, a combo is a combo insofar as it can win from any boardstate. So in the colloquial sense, you are violating the terms of the table, as it is extraordinarily difficult to not win after resolving an infinite double mindslaver loop. On the other hand, synergistic artifact decks tend to go infinite whether you want them to or not, and their complaints that a 20 mana generated an unconditionally winning boardstate might have been more about salt than principle.
Mindslaver lock is an infinite turns combo. (Activate Mindslaver, recover Mindslaver) N times, then skip to your next turn, repeat. Once you demonstrate the loop, and that you can repeat the loop infinitely, it is an infinite combo.
However not all locks are infinite combos. Most locks are stax "Nobody can do XYZ. Does anyone have an out or does my wincon end the game before someone removes the lock that protects the wincon?"
As for that no-infinites pod: Mindslaver lock was an infinite turns combo. You accidentally mislead the group by saying your deck had no infinites. They played the game with the expectation to deal with finite threats. It didn't matter that your infinite cost 20 mana. Their meta expects they only need to have outs to finite threats (like Time Stretch + Expropriate?) rather than infinite threats. Ultimately it did not matter to the outcome of the game, but it did matter to the pregame conversation and could have mattered to the game.
I wouldn't say it's accidental. People who do this are aware of what they're doing
Being new to commander, I'd love to see a breakdown of how to judge the power level of a deck. I know it can be complicated, but that's why I'm asking :)
It’s in the works! I’ll make a how to evaluate a deck vid soon
I think, when people say, “no infinites” a mindslaver combo is included in what they call an infinite. And if they said they want to play without infinites, and then lose to that mindslaver combo, regardless of how hard it is to pull off, they’re rightful in being upset. If you could’ve won without the combo, you should have.
It’s not really about how powerful it is, it’s about respecting people’s rule zero, which in that situation, was very easy to do
Its not easy to do
Is a symmetrical stasis lock an infinite?
It locks just as hard for less mana
@@V2ULTRAKill yes, I’d think that is obvious
@@navigator-4913 except its not
Stasis is 1, symmetrical, and two, a one card lock
You clearly dont understand how locks work, or how infinites work
That silence into mindbreak was so good
Even if different on a technicality level, I feel that stuff like yout lock kinda does the same
Especially since the lazy case is you have your opponents tap out during their turn, and have infinite of your own turns
That said a 20 mana 4 card combo is fine in my books, one of my decks centers around a handful of combos that take 9-14 mana and 3-5 cards aside from the commander and it has won twice in total
Mindslaver in a 5-7 I think is an issue as is.
Great video. I'm about to start playing on Spelltable and this video gave me a good idea of what I can expect (and my fears).
I think it might help conciliate with a good discord server for MTG.
I love this video! I can't really give my opinion on that though because i only use spelltable with friends because they still study in the same city i am already working/living in another city and also atm i am not so familiar with lgs to go there alone. But for that use especially its amazing! I also made a setup so i can play/test my decks over Archidekt the same you explained with moxfield and i love it, you can read the cards way better or spelltable can recognize them better and so i can finally get to test some of my decks without printing them out, sleeving them and wait until my friends visit me for some magic!
I think it would be a great idea to stream or tell on a discord when your online so viewers can play with you and overall more people come to play at that time
I’ve played some spelltable games with patrons on my patreon discord server. But I do plan to try out some live streaming on TH-cam and will probably play some spelltable soon
I played spelltable with strangers during the pandemic and had a lot of salty people just bc I used a removal on them.
I actually stopped playing on spelltable when a guy claimed he was using a 7-power level deck and proceeded to play mana crypt into mana vault into It that Betrays turn 4, I think. The whole table ganged up on him and killed him first. Then, he started slurring, saying that it was unfair... it sucked.
Fun fact: I think there was a "Play with a Celebtrity" event going on and my table randomly consisted of Dana Roach (Edhrecast), Bennie Smith (SCG writer) and that guy who got salty. After he left defeated, we had a really cool and intense commander game.
Fun fact #2: I won with my Talrand (no rares nor mythics) deck :)
I got to the Lock section in the end and I use my Room of the Hidden Realm deck like this. I usually perform a lock, but I will do it in a way where the others don't notice it until it's too late. That way I give them the chance to solve the "puzzle". It usually involves me bouncing specific cards and always having an answer to all their stuff and it looks like I'm defending, but in actuality I'm getting rid of their resources to deliver the final blow
Got my brother on spelltable due to wanting to play cedh but no one at our local being able to hang. First game he got was against a dude whos sole purpose was to steal cards. They told him to play something else because that would be too hard to keep track of. Dude. Went. Off. And that was his only bad game on spelltable the rest were just fine.
What you described in the beginning is how I figure rule zero pods tend to go once they see you playing good cards
I've had good luck on spelltable for cedh
I’m 100% gonna play more cEDH on spelltable
Are people cool with proxies in CEDH?
@@metalliholicdefinitely
Another goated Trinket upload
I do consider locks the same as infinite combos.
Interesting take on the topic!
I mainly play Spell Table with my pod, and maybe with a friend or two when we play in random rooms.
I haven’t tried that yet… but I might
@@thetrinketmage Well me and my pod of 3, meet up on Spell Table on Saturdays around 6:30pm est, and one of us streams our games. We usually stick to around 6 - 7 in terms of scale, but we really just play fun, casual magic.
13:22 depends on the lock
While needing 20+ mana to pull off, it's a constant loop, an infinite, to "lock" the table.
Making infinite mana? Have to use it on something, it's powerfull but you can brick with it.
But see how can close these 2 could be or how they can interact with each other. People immediatly assume you will have both, so it's common to see "no infinite" in rooms both on Spelltable & MTGO
Just a theory, so take a grain of salt with this: but I think that maybe in concept that all infinites are locks but not all locks are infinites. That infinites are allowing yourself to take as many actions as possible, effectively meaning that if you dont shortcut the process of a non game winning infinite, you can just lock out the board forever if you wish by performing each action over and over again.
Locks just don't allow your opponents to do things by preventing their actions instead, and although some strats aren't infinite, I would say the mindslaver combo is somewhat of an infinite as it is reliant of you taking seemingly a huge amount of game actions in relation to the rest of the table.
In the end I don't blame you for winning a long game with the mindslaver, I mean games need to end. I would probably be salty as well depending on how close I could have been to victory. But in the end it's not as of you just whipped that up out of nowhere like a random thoracle combo in casual, that would feel very awful.
I get what you mean. Kind of a square rectangle situation
The Mindslaver infinite combo's loop would be:
Activate & regain Mindslaver N times
Pass through each player's turn by wasting their mana. Discard any instant speed free spells.
Untap and repeat
One you demonstrate the loop, and the ability to repeat the loop, it is an infinite combo.
Also there are infinite combos (most even) that are not locks. Exquisite Blood + Sanguine Bond for example will cause infinite life loss, but nothing is being locked down. A Krosan Grip for example will sever the combo.
Mindslaver lock is a bit weird in that it is using a lock to skip the opponent's turn rather than cast Time Warp as a more direct way to get another untap step.
Also you are right, not all locks are infinite combos: Karn the great creator + Mycosynth lattice is a lock, but not an infinite combo.
I love playing a deck on spelltable and hearing people, upon seeing my commander, ask "do you have x combo in there????" And immediately telling the whole table that I cannot be allowed to play the game "just in case" I draw into that combo.
Someone criticizing your deck having an infinite of sorts despite it not being actually relevant to you winning isn't invalid.
It's no different than if you actually *did* try to infinite and someone interrupted it and you just go "well I didn't win the game with it so what's the problem?" The fact is it was there and they're letting you know you shouldn't join if you're running that kind of thing. If you really dislike the "no infinite" way of playing the game, you don't have to go into that kind of lobby.
Dota really makes you immune to toxicity. After 2k hours the slurs are like white noise to you
I had a game recently where 2 of my opponents couldn't understand the sanguine bond exquisite blood combo, saying it ended on a draw because of "infinite triggers" even though the triggers need to resolve one at a time to kill the table. Extremely annoying game with people who didn't understand card interactions after explaining it several times
One time I had someone argue that dauthi voidwalker doesn’t stop death triggers… took some time to get them to realize how it worked. It can be frustrating but remember it’s always better to teach a new player how the game works!
The "problem" with infinite combos is some players who are more casual are at a severe disadvantage by not having memorized the metagame of all the possible combinations that exist, and thus don't have the knowledge of what is or isn't appropriate to remove or counter.
That said, my Orvar deck can go infinite rather easily. I actually created a sideboard for it to minimize the possibility of going infinite. The result is very long, non-deterministic turns that are actually less fun (for everyone) than popping off an infinite.
Most recently, my Jan Jensen deck went infinite. I chose to only do the cycle a few times, but could go infinite whenever, so I had infinite answers to various things regardless. I'm still trying to find a friendly way to roll with such combos without ending games prematurely, and right now I'm leaning toward only doing X iterations of a loop where X is the number of (non-extra) turns I've taken. Ideas?
Can we tackle the real problem in EDH? It's not SpellTable or the "saltiness" of the player online
Playing a lot in spelltable, not by choice, but because i live in a very remote part of France, and the first LGS is litteraly more than 1h drive away
Powerlevel means nothing, it's an auto evaluation that should work, if the scale was properly constructed, it is just not the case. Under PL 5 is not even consider a deck, but, a pile of card(wtf does that mean in reality)
How in the world people can evaluate low power deck, because, if you have any correct card/ wincon you are almost instanniously in over 6 PL.
And in the opposite spectrum, it's really easy to build a deck that's clunky on purpose to make "less" powerful, the fact is, since the scale of PowerLevel is so important to player, that, we all have "house rules" or "rules 0" conversation. People are not evil for trying to win, but, they are , sometimes, people that ABUSE low level table
I use often in French a comparison i don't know if it will relate in English but i'll try:
"Powerlevel is like driving a car that can only go at a snail pace or at the maximum speed authorized"
That's what i see a lot in SpellTable, people wanting to play funny/meme decks, or, people like me, that are just here to also share a passion with people, and not really care about winning.
There is lots of people that put (no mox/no inf) espacialy to avoid long turn, or broken deck that will take advantage of unsuspecting player ( we see you MF that says i'm a 7 but stax out the table, and, i hope you'll walk of lego bricks)
And, the proxy conversation should happen also.... Ok card are not cheap, but, there is probably a less than a dollar version of your staple
I once had a player go ballistic because I had a sensei’s top and bolas’s citadel. it was power 8 & turn 16. I had like 20 life and no way to get more. If you do play on spelltable it’s important to know when to leave because why would you play with that guy (same for most online games tbh)
I’m always amazed when people get upset about winning past turn 10. How long did they expect the game to last?
I think Spelltable is best when you are part of a Discord or something where it is easier to discuss what power levels everyone wants to play and if everyone wants a more casual game or fast-paced. I've been part of the Tolarian Community College Discord for a few months and I've played 100s of games and have only had 4-5 bad games.
In my house games, I usually say no infinite combos that will either break the game into a draw, a two card insta win combo, or something that puts the game state to such a crawl you might as well scoop. I'm okay with staxs since you can deal with it via spot removal, though it can get pretty salty quick.
I’ve had great luck with Tabletop Simulator. There’s a great community there that all basically knows each other, and we have a blacklist of toxic players that’s always being added to.
The use of the block button has been huge for me for sure.
I found a group of guys out of Texas during the pandemic randomly. We played over SpellTable. Super fun, but that was certainly the exception, not the rule.
There are a lot of weirdos on spell table but I have had much more positive experiences than negative ones. Most of the time it can be solved if your rule zero conversations are in the lobby title or gone over before the game starts
The problem is one of terminology- your Mindslaver recursion loop is an infinite combo AND a lock. As in it's a lock that you create by repeating actions infinitely that also enables you to do those actions. A lock that _isn't_ also an infinite combo would be Mycosynth Lattice + Collector Ouphe. Not that the distinction matters much in your case. I'd have been pissed too, but only because I dislike Mindslaver on a conceptual level.
The whole house rules thing is just a power level issue - no combos, no unrestricted tutors, no stax, and no locks is what I would generally consider the baseline for low-mid power casual. Varying degrees of those more powerful strategic elements are what I would use to describe mid-high power decks. I have some really strong "low power" decks that don't combo or anything but do flood the board fast and overwhelm my opponents quickly. Low power decks aren't just inefficient meme decks. They're generally leaning into what most people would consider "honest magic" and operating in a way that while efficient is likely more susceptible to interaction. My high power decks might not win as fast as my low power decks, but they're more resilient to interaction and they're able to powerfully interact in a number of meaningful ways.
i wanted to start playing Magic via Spelltable with family and friends and funny enough i got this video recommended a day after we talked about it. Very happy about the fact that its only about random lobbys. Ofc its bad, everything with random lobbys can become the most extreme shitshow, but not always in general its fine most of the time
I've had some fun games on webcam magic sites. Only issue I ever ran into was a guy running a polymorph deck with only a foil Progenitus as the creature that was folding so hard you could tell over the camera. I hit it with a choas warp, which now that I'm re-reading progenitus probably it has protection from lol, but the guy shuffles it back in, cuts and reveals the progenitus again on the top. Which he was clearly able to do, possibly even by accident, due to the poor quality of his card. Other than that yeah I've had people complain about combo's even when you tutor for what is clearly most likely a combo piece, people just don't run enough interaction for combos which is why they get so much hate.
Ohhh like the card was curled so much they could tell where it was? That’s wild never seen anyone try that trick before
"House rules like no infinites are useless when I ignore them!"
Yeah, no shit.
I only use it to play with friends now that we live scattered across the country.
I can only reccommend playing via some discord (for example TCC) you have a much better selection of people to play against because they will have made the effort to join as well. Also there are mods and stuff so certain behavior can be regulated.
Ive never used a random lobby but did use the looking for group feature on TCC's discord. I work nights so finding games was hard (I now have a local group) but I think its a positive overall. That said bringing mindslaver to a game over spell table at all seems like a nightmare if you actually use it, the same with theft as you can't just move around the table or hand cards around
I'm brazilian and often i play only on portuguese language lobbies. I think that my experience is very particular because of those conditions but i did not play with a toxic player yet.
I use the card guess feature a lot and the downsite of spelltable for me is that i'm a relatively new player and i need often to read the cards to understand what they do, but often we are not able to scan the enemy cards and i'm.not able to understand my opponents board without asking about each card a few times.
Things said, its nice to have a option to play with my physical cards in the moments i could not join a physical commander match.
Bruf, I started also playing online just recently, and I had tried to avoid spelltable to be honest, specifically because everyone's rating for decks is all over the place, man, I'd love to share some crazy stories from spell table, one of them, had a lobby of 3 people, waiting for a game, and then all sudden a guy half naked pops up on camera, says nothing, then leaves.
Just some wild stuff.
in my experience, making a lobby and being specific in the title: like power 7-8, no infinites, proxies allowed, etc-has netted a positive experience for me
If you can do the lock forever to everyone and it can literally be done forever. How is that not infinite? Yeah you’re doing it over several turns but the point is you’re splitting hairs. Clearly these guys didn’t want to play against anything that can be done repeatedly forever. And controlling someone, whether you tutored for the pieces or not, is probably some of the saltiest things you can do to them. Not to mention “forever”. Should they have interaction? Yes. Definitely. Should you play something you KNOW is gonna make them salty and you’re nitpicking bc they weren’t specific enough to say in their lobby title “plz don’t forever lock the table out of the game”? No, you shouldn’t. Yeah, any deck should be able to win with 20+ mana and cards in hand. Or at least knock a player out. Is the combo multiple pieces and tons of mana? Yes, it’s inefficient and janky. That doesn’t mean they weren’t for it. Aka they weren’t and would never be ready for that especially if they’re expecting no types of infinites. Im not saying players should or shouldn’t have infinities in their deck. Im saying that the rule 0 of naming their lobby a certain way to ideally play a kind of game they want should at least be considered before throwing down this kind of combo at THEM. Im specifically mentioning THEM as a whole bc they seemed to agree on what kind of decks they’d play against just like cEDH decks knew about what kind of decks they’re playing against and advised the 8-9 level deck player to not join but he did anyway. You KNEW that it’d make the table salty, you KNEW that “lock” although interactable was not something they were ready to deal with, 5-7 is pretty low power. Just like cEDH is high asf power. The 5-7 lobby knew where they belonged. The cEDH lobby knew where they belonged. Pretending you didn’t know is at least a little scummy. Im not saying you didn’t deserve to win, you did. Im saying that it’s an obvious mismatch to play that into that table.
Me at the start of the video: "No way this guy can handle toxic players like this"
Trinket Mage: "I play dota"
Me: "nvm, right this way sir"
Dota is by far the worst as far as toxic players go… it’s almost funny how bad they are
Coming to this video in the past from the future - I recently moved for work and have been using spell table a TON and I want to say you can have some bad lobbies yes but more often than not I get either really friendly/cool lobbies or lobbies where everyone is just quietly sitting and playing not a lot of joking going around(more so the first one)
Something Ive gotten in the habit of doing as Ive been trying to track the mannerisms of people so not only I have the most fun but everyone at the table does is Rule0 the shit out of the tables:
- Ask what the lobby is for and be 100% open in what Im trying to do. "Hey guys anyone here playing new decks? No? Awesome! Y'all mind if I limit test a new deck or are we just wanting to run through a game?" This allows me to know if people just want to shuffle and play or are cool with turns being slightly slower
- if any table has a level disparity of 2+ levels (for example the table you sat at which said 5-7) if I even have some sort of cheese in the deck I wanted to play Im very open with it. "Hey look it's not infinite but I do have a very high cost stunt combo in the deck. It takes 5 cards and 30 mana to do but it is something I CAN do" Surprise value is the number 1 killer of moods Ive come to find out in tables with rules cause those people are looking for a VERY specific experience
Ive only had 1 time where I joined a lobby that said 6-8 which I thought would be a perfect lobby as I was trying to test out some crazy changes I did to my Brimaz to bump the speed of the deck. With numbers like that I figured okay cool so 1 player might be on a 6 so I can see how fast I am compared to that deck, one on a 7 which Ill mainly go toe to toe with, and an 8 which I could mark as my "goal" to keep up with or overpower. Well game starts off with a Ulamog Defiler player ramping out crazy to get Ulamog out like turn 4, and swing Ani12 at me so I lose all my lands and I can't do anything. Next turn the guy plays Plat Angel and swings at the other guy at the board that wasn't a problem at all as he was mana screwed(it was easy to tell the guy the was there only to be an ass). - That's the only time I've had a bad experience on ST but I instantly blocked that guy so I can never play with him again
Spelltable also has the "set game to private" option so you can kick someone being an ass then lock the door on him
Spelltabling for a week or two now has been fun most people are chill and when the salty player leaves you have a fun story. See you all online -SighingSpook
there IS a fetch for academy ruins. it's called expedition map.
Considering how hard it is to make true no combo mtg decks that are actually fun I've always seen "no infinite combos" to mean "if you can infinite combo, don't" I've also seen some groups that rule that infinite combos can only loop 5 times in a turn which also helps
I usually use SpellTable via the TCC discord's matchmaking, or with friends. But I find the "low power, high salt" thing to be true outside of SpellTable too
As a beginner player, I really wanted to try out Spelltable for myself. I dont have to drive to the next city just to play some EDH and I really like Remote duels from several years ago when we couldnt get out to play another "Big 3 TCG". That sounds overall nice to me, but I think this video is kind of a dealbreaker for me then. I may try it out, but if I encounter salty players and dead lobbies to often, I have to bite the bullet and drive to the next city nontheless.
I only use spelltable as a tool to play with ppl from the discord group I’m at, and honestly, being in a moderated discord server makes the experience so much more enjoyable. No crazy ppl, we are all at the same page on the power lvl thingy so there is no issues there too… I think it’s the optimal way of using spelltable and it’s a marevous tool at what it does, but it’s not a good way to search for games or pods, only to host them when already assembled
The lower the powerlevel, the lower the skill, the higher the salt
I think a lock can be a infinite under certain conditions as in my mind a infinite is something you can do consistently over and over by repeating a specific process some locks could fall under this but ultimately it's very dependent on situations and whether it truly is infinite
I played my first game over spelltable but it was in the TCC discord - it was fine, but I wonder if that's cos it's linked to a community with mods etc
I mean I feel infinite combo is pretty easy to understand if you can do an action infinitely through the interaction of 2 or more cards it’s an infinite combo. Regardless if it’s making mana, doing damage, drawing cards, locking the table or just going “I win”
I play cedh on spelltable semi frequently.
I see this in casual on cockatrice back when I played there.
The problem was that whole power level issue.
Players usually don't complain.
And like he described, some people play a significantly low power game while, but generally people play cedh and have a good time. Very low salt.
Do you have a patreon discord(kinda new to the channel)? Would be fun to crack some games with viewers
Yes the patreon link should be in the description and there is a server with it. I try to do games with patrons
i find it hard to be mad at that mindslaver combo, considering that deck probably wants all of the requisite cards in the combo anyways. it is a little bit of a buzzkill, but so are a lot of ways to end the game
also, highly anticipating that power scale video.
Working on it! Hopefully it will be done by Tuesday
The random experience can be a little bit toxic sometimes. Just depends on the day you play, you can easily set a game to private at its creation and just give out the link to the people you want to play with. That's a lot of work so I usually just Play with randos! And I have a fairly good experience. I don't run the strongest decks in the world, but I do run some silly interaction and I usually get some commentary
Def have met cool people there. But also realized any low power. No upgrade lobbies usually end up popping off more than level 7-8 lobbies 🤔
at 9:50, the swan song was a mistake right? because if the silence resolves the previous casts wouldve still gone through? in my understanding, once you pass priority for silence to resolve you cant then add to the stack to remove the previous spells unless they respond to the silence.
Mind slaver lock looped is not a 5-6, and looping a lock is an infinite.
3:00 that was totally you! 😂
I play on spelltable all the time but games are made over TCC discord. People are mostly nice and if not, those horror stories that happen are fun to talk about with your friends.
It’s always the no infinite tables that have the most complainers.
Probably cause people keep trying to play said infinites.
Just like all Internet games you allways can find "Internet persons"
I live in a rural area and know only 1 dude that plays with me (and my wife plays occasionally to indulge me), maybe I'm destined to just play online, thanks for bringing this option to me, probably going to try it
I've had people complain about my solemnity + decree of silence lock while being fine with the infinite combos in the same deck. Also, i play a deck with about 4 nondeterministic "combos" in it and it's arguably more tedious to resolve and work through. yet people seem more okay with that than infinites.
fun story was playing a new deck and stated that I wanted a 5-6 game with new decks so we can all figure them out together. I see someone join with a tivat deck thinking ooo a vote deck that should be cool... oh boy was I mistaken. He wont turn 2 ;c
S tier MTG journalism
Few things regarding infinite combos discussion:
- Nobody cares about "technically", the rule is because of sudden wins after somebody just pulls correct combination of 3 cards - those are just anticlimactic and not fun. If something is not "technically" infinite, but still feels the same way, then it probably should be treated as infinite combo.
- 20 mana is not that much in commander to be honest.
- 14:00 - but the rule isn't about some edge cases, where somebody plays a meme deck to prove the point, but for the other 99.9% games where people actually try to play. Also, "infinite combo" rule is obviously about infinite combos not stax decks, so it's no wonder that stax deck without a combo will be ok in that scenario. You know, you can still have other rules, like not playing stax decks which makes the game not fun for anyone.
12:45 This is my experience with lower power tables as well. If you don't win through pure combat damage, a lot of them will complain. If you are in the running the whole time and win, you sometimes get complaints that your deck is too strong etc.
Higher level tables rarely complain about much unless it is something wildly out of pocket.
There's free mods for Tabletop Simulator to play Commander and it's so useful.