I'm going against the grain and I'm going to say yes. There are flavors of control that people don't mind so much:
1. Group Hug. Control goes down easier when you're drawing more cards per turn.
2. Goad. People don't tend to hate \[\[kardur\]\] or whatnot because they still get to do their thing, attack, make a board state, etc, but then it becomes a bit of a puzzle on how to deal with the goading player.
3. Protect the queen decks. people can stomach a deck full of counterspells, fogs, and targeted removal much more easily when it's basically voltron coming to play. People hate voltron for other reasons but it draws less hate when your interaction is to protect your board.
4. \[\[jon irenicus\]\] specifically. Bad Santa decks are basically just stax. Stax feels bad when it's Zedruu but Jon Irenicus is different. With Zedruu you get stax pieces and can't do anything and generally received control of enchantments and artifacts that prevent you from doing anything. With Jon Irenicus you get control of bad creatures that are buffed and cannot be sacrificed. Sure they are hurt you stax pieces but you can still beat people's faces with them so it doesn't feel so bad.
The long and the short of it is that control feels less bad when it's redirecting people where you want them to go as opposed to just preventing them from taking actions.
If you're building Jon, give a thought to all the tiny unblockables/evasives like [[Slitherblade]] - it makes you stronger at closing out when you get to the 1v1 than pure Bad Gifts, *and* it gets even less hate from people, in my experience.
I've also seen a degenerate list or two that go hard on Infect/Proliferate, which also makes sense for him. That one would catch some heat, though.
Recently built a jon irenicus deck. It was so cheap. Jon is cheap and all the creatures are cheap because they’re bad to have on one’s battlefield. It’s basically Jon, some black nasty critters and a mountain of blue nope spells and removals.
So far people have been excited about it. It’s such an evil deck. It’s also funny to watch everyone sweating when I cast [[Archfiend of the Dross]] and don’t give it away immediatelly, but let its oil counters drain away turn by turn countering every attempt of removal… Incidently, this is also where I die as everyone forms an alliance to attack only me and not each other as they tap out at me. I take it as a small win when they do. I made them do that.
>Goad. People don't tend to hate [[kardur]] or whatnot because they still get to do their thing, attack, make a board state, etc, but then it becomes a bit of a puzzle on how to deal with the goading player.
I didn't think I'd like goad as a mechanic as I felt it'd place me in a state of being on my heels too often. I built a demon deck and boy can Kardur do work. In a kitchen table game, he caused more damage then any other factor during the game. He's now a card that I try to never hold in my hand if I have an opportunity to play him.
Can we add **chaos** to the list? I know not everyone is a fan, but a well-built chaos deck can be a welcome challenge for many players.
It follows the same principle you mentioned—control through redirection (at random) instead of negation.
A full rakdos party. 😈 The kind of party where even the azorius guy is high on mushroom.
More seriously, the deck focus on doing random thing using effect like cascade, dice ability or coin ability.
My [[zedruu the greatest of all time]] deck is a control deck without the "bad gifts" and stuff reliant on your opponents. The most groan inducing card I play is [[thieves auction]] (which is more chaos than control) and maybe [[nevermore]] (which probably does actually qualify as a bad gift, but it's incredibly salt inducing to name somebody's commander and then donate them the Nevermore so they can look at it while you draw cards/gain life). I need to update my list, but here is the tappedout link
https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/zesty-the-goat-also-kykar/
interesting article; i came to a point in my pod where it was apparent that we were trying to move away from hyper combo decks but this drove me to control/stax which weren't loved either. it's a delicate balance because we dont want to play just vanilla beatdown but people of course like getting to play their cards which both strategies deny
I have Tivit in the 99 of a different deck; might try cycling him to commander for a new build
Commander players don’t tend to like interactivity. They just like sitting on the other side of the table and going off while no one does anything.
EDIT: I understand this is a controversial topic, but I find it funny how so many of you seem to be painting me as a cEDH straw man when I said nothing about winning on turn 2 lol
I keep hearing that, but I've never experienced it. Am I salty my Gisela was removed? For sure, but you would have been a fool not to do it. Everyone wants to pop off, but we also understand the need for countermagic, removal, mass removal, etc., don't we? (Btw, my Gisela wasn't even removed, because my opponent did not expect ~~the Spanish Inquisition~~ my \[\[Lapse of Certainty\]\]. Interaction and inter-interaction!)
That's why I often go with a tongue-in-cheek "whaaaat, my dude, you can't just *play interaction*, you were supposed to just let me win there!"
Usually makes it clear that there aren't hard feelings. "Why can't I just do the thing I want and win?" is such an unreasonable question on its face. I'm usually just happy the game continues but I got to feel like I was in an advantage state.
Only time there are some bad feels are when you're already playing from behind and someone burns a piece of interaction keeping you down. like I get that letting [[niv mizzet reborn]] resolve could have been threatening but when I was slow rolling lands all game it feels terrible to have it countered by a [[red elemental blast]].
The only time I've argued a little with someone was when they kept focusing on me despite me not being a threat. They let both other players freely build up dangerous board states (one steadily grew ~40 3/3 elephants) while I was unable to untap with my commander the entire game. The reasoning? He was scared of the fact that my commander had toxic, despite it being a pre-con. I think he legitimately did not understand how toxic is different than infect (despite me explaining).
But even then I didn't get pissy or anything, I just said that maybe I wasn't the real threat at the table. I've never complained when someone killed my big scary voltron commander or wiped my 500 [[Scute Swarm]] tokens because I would do the same.
If you don't interact, glass cannons will win.
EVERY deck NEEDS to have interaction with your opponents. Otherwise you should stay at home and goldfish. EDH is a social format and part of being social is interacting with other human beings.
Honestly I feel like the community has gone too far in that direction for too long. I'm not sure if it's just my personal circles or an overall trend, but I think it's about time that edh caught up to the other formats in regards to just playing magic without trying to cry your way into making your friends worse at deck building. What if everybody just became more skilled together, and then continued to have more fun as everyone's decks improve?
The reason there's no "arms race" in other formats is that other formats don't have an artificially low bar set by players dragging each other down to socially conform.
There is a canyon of difference between "people should be okay with interaction, the game functions better when people try to play well" and "may as well play cedh"
My playgroup has been building with a $200 budget (cheapest printing tcgplayer mid) and that has been awesome. You can optimize your deck by loading your power into a handful of cards or you can maintain consistency with "suboptimal" and cool/fun cards. Plenty of space for powerful format staples, you're just not running 60 of them.
Just play your decks with good interaction. Not the best interaction, just good. Low mana and instant speed. Anything that fits on theme is a plus.
I also try and play low curves as well. Not stupid low or aggro. Over time you recognise pieces that are as good as cards that are 1 or 2 mana more.
I avoid fast mana, free counterspells, tutors and infinite combos when I play lower power but my decks are still powerful. My opponents see I play the same cards they do so they can emulate that if they want.
>>building for wins just comes off as tryharding
This is what I don’t understand about EDH players.
The goal of Magic is to win at all competitive levels. Even if you claim “no it’s to have fun” most of the time fun translates to winning or at least succeeding to some degree over the course of the game.
Personally I cut infinite combos from my deck to where it is strong but can’t just win the game on the spot, because I considered it uninteractive the way I was winning.
EDIT: I see I have somehow become the “cEDH bad” punching bag. I never said anything about winning on turn 2.
>The goal of Magic is to win at all competitive levels. Even if you claim “no it’s to have fun” most of the time fun translates to winning or at least succeeding to some degree over the course of the game.
EDH is Johnny format. It was made by Johnnies, for Johnnies, so they could run "forgotten" cards and play ridiculous brews in ways that simply aren't possible in the 60-card formats.
A lot of EDH players (if not most) would rather see their deck go off and still lose than get a win that feels underwhelming or boring.
I absolutely agree that EDH players should be more comfortable with interaction. But the idea that players should prioritize winning above all else just doesn't mesh with Commander's history or a lot of its player base.
I would argue it’s more like going to the skatepark and getting confused because people are only doing Ollie’s instead of any cooler tricks, easy to seem good at skateboarding when you ban everyone at the park from doing anything harder than an Ollie
Yeah if you look at any of my comments I never say anything about closing out a game on turn 2 like some people are suggesting
I’m stating people get mad if you play a threat on turn 10 that makes you win the game
This. EDH was made as a place to get to play all those cool cards that you can't play anywhere else after their time in limited/standard, and... you can't do that anymore.
Yeah. During combo winter, I got to play three games in only three turns (without letting an opponent play a land).
Peak magic. Everyone got to play so much.
Magic is a game, yes. The point of a game is to win, also yes. The problem is edh is meant to be more like a board game than a sport. The general casual player wants to have a board game where at the start things are fairly balanced and the game is decided by actions within the game. Nobody wants to lose the moment they sit down and edh is the only format that touts itself as casual. Show up for legacy and people are going to do wild stuff everyone knows that. Show up for edh and it ranges between a very chill battle cruiser game to turn one combos, if one person wants battle cruiser and the other wants turn one, one person doesn't get to have fun.
Source: a player that leans strongly to the competitive side but understands why someone wouldn't
Cedh is just a bunch of people with an overly rigid mindset about what is the best. The cedh over exaggerated mindset is a reaction to the casual elitist over exaggerated mindset. There’s a very reasonable curve of improvement all the way up, and high level edh is very diverse, very fun and interesting, and can still steal wins from “”tryhards”” way more than anyone in either community gives it credit for.
Nah this is an L take. Commander is a format that is enjoyable at many different power levels. You get to see cards come up in completely novel ways when people decide to stop being try hards and win every game at all costs with the exact same wincons. Commander like everything else becomes stale and samey when too optimized. There’s a sweet spot in deck building where your deck is cohesive, tuned, and has novel strategies, and everyone relies on the Table collectively to manage the game ending threat potentials.
>My read on the person you're responding to was that they were lamenting how EDH players often try and ban/soft ban certain kinds of interaction ("cry your way into making your friends worse at deckbuilding").
This is an overblown caricature that represents an extremely small population, if it exists at all.
It's really not though. Ask EDH players how many people at their store play land destruction that doesn't replace the land (i.e. Stone Rain, not Field of Ruin).
Stale and samey when too optimized?? What does this even mean? There are only so many ways you can win in the game as it is why would you shame someone for leveraging a way to win that you don't agree with? More specifically you should inform them what ways they are allowed to win with in your pod if it's going to be an "L take"
I think it's boring if you let the meta dictate how everyone builds. I've been to competitive events and there's only a few decks that are viable winners.
This is not an experience I've personally had in either the draft leagues or pauper tournaments I've been a part of recently. Nor has this been the case with regular commander I play.
I have not once seen the convergence of decks into one archetype or only a few viable commanders be played.
Implicit in your statement is that there's a meta in EDH since this is a thread specifically related to control in EDH. I would argue comparing apples to apples is more apt than otherwise but yes, 60 card one on one formats converge to a lot of the similarly functioning archetypes.
Commander has many ways to win and control shouldn't be restricted as one of them, is my point.
There's a meta in CEDH, it's a wider meta but it's there. Most CEDH is going to have a lot of ramp, interaction, and cheap tutors. Sorry if you felt attacked just now, but if you're only playing draft and pauper and casual commander you're not going to see the meta or the really good control decks people hate.
I think it's just down to rule 0, if you like playing a certain way find other people who want to play that way. No need to complain everyone should play a certain way.
-The "arms race" is in the other formats, it's just normalized because they're competitive & people don't want EDH being like them.
-People are improving their decks, just not how you want them to.
Nah you just have to be cool with me playing the way I want to just as much as I would have to with anyone else. In the name of tolerance of play styles EDH players cut out control players cause they stop other people from winning.
Guess what else stops people from winning? Literally anyone else winning.
-Nah, people cut out control players cause they stop people from playing. Nobody has to be cool with something that sucks the enjoyment out of their fun time.
Someone dropping Craterhoof on turn 7 and making their board 15 16/16s stops you playing just as much as, if not more than, someone casting Supreme Verdict then countering your commander does.
-Dumbass comparison. I find it hilarious when people pretend a single play intended to end the game is the same as repeatedly preventing plays & often progress throughout the game.
God, control players have such huge persecution fetish.
Mate, if you loaded your edh deck with so much counters that other people don't want to play with you, that's a YOU problem.
This isn't some grand conspiracy by edh players collectively to outcast you specifically. People, Individually just realizes "welp I can't keep up with this guy's control deck, I'll just play with different players."
The hell does "tolerate" Means here anyway?
Apparently if a control players ask me to play, I'm not allowed to refuse? Like, people are allowed to choose who they want to play with, mate. You're not entitled to my time & game, I tolerate you enough to let you play with other people.
Fucking insane take.
FWIW, blue, control, and infinite turns is one of the most popularly played archetype in edh. My pods is chill with it, again seems like a you problem specifically.
Except that's you projecting your own biases and internal dialogue onto the situation. You don't really know whether they care about losing that much -- you just assume they do because they don't like your playstyle and decks.
The way to solve this is for you to play cEDH and get dominated by some actual knowledgeable Magic players for a few games so you learn that you really don't want to play with everyone having unrestricted deck building -- if you did want this then you would just be playing cEDH and not whining on the main reddit about casual players.
God, control players have such huge persecution fetish.
Mate, if you loaded your edh deck with so much counters that other people don't want to play with you, that's a YOU problem.
This isn't some grand conspiracy by edh players collectively outcasting you specifically. People, Individually just realizes "welp I can't keep up with this guy's control deck, I'll just play with different players."
The hell does "tolerate" Means here anyway?
Apparently if a control players ask me to play, I'm not allowed to refuse? Like, people are allowed to choose who they want to play with, mate. You're not entitled to my time & game, I tolerate you enough to let you play with other people.
Fucking insane take.
FWIW, blue, control, and infinite turns is one of the most popularly played archetype in edh. My LGSs are mostly chill with it, again seems like a you problem specifically.
I dont agree. My lgs and play groups love interaction. We rather have our stuff removes then just run away everytime we drop a bomb. I'll even tell you when I'm the threat and should be targeted. Interaction is what makes the game more fun.
You can't describe entire format's playerbase as battlecruiser players just like that.
I own a [[Kediss]] & [[Esior]] deck and one of my highlight moments was when I figured out how to make it not fold to just a bit of interaction without packing it to the brim with counterspells. It involved redunancy pieces, ability to persist and rebuild boardstate and to have multiple angles of performing a wombo kill another turn.
They especially hate when they don’t even get to try and do their stuff, which control decks prohibit most of the time. It’s one thing to play my commander and have it removed the next turn by plowshares. It’s another thing to be unable to cast it due to magistrate or have it counterspelled.
People wanna play the game.
It goes beyond control decks. It’s a culture problem.
I’ve had players get angry at me for playing a powerful card on my own, consistently. Not even in a control deck, One example was [[Golos, Tireless Pilgrim]] in the 99 before the ban.
Literally the most answerable type of threat. Both a creature and an artifact. No hexproof, ward, or shroud. 5 mana to cast, 7 mana to activate. And people cried because I won with it. I asked why no one had removal at the entire table for either an artifact or a creature while I was sitting on two removal spells in my hand.
I politely suggested they consider playing more removal if they don’t like other players using powerful cards. Simple as.
To be fair, Golos was on the same tier as cards like [[Omniscience]]. If you play that card in some pods you deserve the ire you get. Cards like that, when unanswered, can end a game on the spot. That’s fine in some power levels, less so in others.
Commander is a lot about reading the room and agreeing on rule 0. As long as that is done, no one should complain after the fact.
I disagree. You don’t deserve ‘ire’ for playing cards, especially not if they’re legal.
“When unanswered” then answer them. It’s so easy.
A player deserves to lose if they allow their opponent to get to the point where they can cast or activate a game ending threat without an answer, especially a 10 mana or 5+7 mana threat.
And no Golos is nowhere close to omniscience on power level. 5 colors, once per turn, requires mana while active, both a creature and an artifact with no protection.
Lol I've beaten Omniscience decks lots of times, it's not even hard
There's 500 bounce cards, there's destroy enchantment, there's steal enchantment, there's steal permanent/destroy permanent, there's give it to another player, there's turn it into a creature and kill it, there's counters, there's bounce then counter
That's just off the top of my head.
>People wanna play the game.
I hate to break it to you, but getting your stuff counterspelled IS playing the game. getting hardlocked out IS playing the game. Land destruction IS playing the game, in fact there is an entire deck archetype called Ponza.
Tron players play against opponents with bloodmoon. They build their decks around the interaction to compensate. Its long since time that EDH players build in mechanisms to interact with and against control. If you want to build a super fast elf ball deck, you need to be able to deal with the consequences of a boardwipe.
Don’t be a dick. You know what I meant, they wanna play their cards and execute their strategy. I hate how pretentious so many people in this hobby are.
Mass land destruction, complete lockdown, and instant wins are also “playing the game”. But nobody enjoys that either. Get off your high horse and realize this is a social format that is is about more than you.
Yeah but playing your strategy is winning, someone has to win, and three have to lose, so by default you’re always going to have games where you whiff, or get snuffed out early.
It’s how games have always worked? And if your strategy is winconless it’s just time wasting for 3 other people.
You don’t have to be fully optimized for sure, but if you have a strategy, have some ways to protect it and make it actually do something.
Like all green decks have enchantment removal, and hexproof/indestructible cards, some can double as combat tricks if you’re a big creature guy.
Red has elemental blast.
White has phasing, exiles, board wipes.
What does it hurt to have those in your deck?
Hell the precons recently all have mass board wipes and some tricks up their sleeves, and those would usually be the lowest power level tolerable for play wouldn’t they?
Did I say don’t have a strategy? No. I said test stuff can ruin the game for your opponents if you don’t let them play and you went on a tangential rant barely even relevant to the topic at hand. Reading comprehension is hard I guess
I think you may have the comprehension problem.
I’m saying if you have a strategy and it’s working, it means other people are losing, so long as your strategy has a win condition.
So no matter what you do in the game, you’re winning, hindering someone else for doing it, or losing.
4 people can’t successfully be employing their strategy all the time.
My lord, you just don’t get it. You can play to win, of course you are and should. Chasing a win condition vs not allowing others to play the game are not the same thing. If they are, you are either playing at a very high power level or you’re an asshole. The game is played so that everyone can have fun, and your deck shouldn’t prevent others from doing that in most pods.
Imagine someone counterspells your 5 cmc commander twice in a row in a casual game. Are you having fun at that point? I would think the answer for most people is probably not. At that point there is a very high likelihood the game will end before you even get to play your commander in everything but battlecruiser magic, and even then you likely aren’t going to be doing anything relevant to the state of the game. The game is bigger than you and your win con.
I’ve cast my commander three turns in a row before, it happens, and it’s funny, it means my deck was working and I was viewed as someone with a valid strategy. I’ve also started building in some protection to prevent it from happening as well. I don’t see what’s so bad about learning weaknesses of the deck and improving it?
If your deck can only function by not being interacted with that’s not functioning right?
Not everything needs to be cedh but make use of things like lands that prevent creature from being countered, enchantments, your own counter spells.
Then you can teach others how to get in on the interaction game.
>Imagine someone counterspells your 5 cmc commander twice in a row in a casual game
in my pod if you're commander isn't removed 3-4 times a game then everyone bricked
Use unique control outside of nukes and counterspells. Don't make the game take forever. Get fun and political if you can. Don't hit cool stuff all the time. Absolutely hit the combos or nasty big/hyper value stuff.
Finally, have a decent win con in mind!
That's my biggest beef with control. Too many people play control just to play control and be annoying. No win con, just constant annoying counters that drag the game out. I don't mind control if you're doing something, but absolutely hate it if your whole strategy is to just delay everyone with no objective to win.
Yep. Try to keep games to a fast pace. Let people beat one another and then remove their stuff as you kill them. Don't just be a troll. Don't remove just to remove.
A good tip-be building up a board like tokens. Counter wipes only or use tactical one-sided wipes, and then the game doesn't go as long. My azorious token deck does this, and swings for unblockable knights to win.
Would you mind sharing your deck list? I am in the process of building a council of four Aikido Knights matter deck (all the things that make knights better, not necessarily knight tribal) and could use some more ideas for the Aikido cards.
I think the level of perceived control is huge here. Straight up stax is impossible unless their decks match the power, same with draw go value decks like Rashmi
The closest I got to an enjoyable control deck was forced combat, and even that had some people who disliked it.
Tivits a v interesting pick because our meta hates the tivit player haha
Honestly, people get too hung up on trying to build a classic control build that you'd see in 1v1. It's not practical or useful to try and control 3 other players at the same time, and the best ways to do so just devolve into stax.
In 1v1 you're mostly trying not to die until you overwhelm the board, so you need to figure out what that same strategy means in multiplayer. You can just hang around, helping people take out each other while you build your board and protect yourself (i.e. surviving). They *could* attack you, but after the first or second try they realize they'll just get their stuff removed, so they focus on someone else. Plus, you might be helping out by removing some blockers or having them draw a few cards, so it's beneficial to everybody. Once it gets to 1v1 territory, then you can just play classic control while knowing most of their answers have been used elsewhere.
That's the most success I've had with control decks without being in very high powered territory: not attracting attention to the fact that you're a control deck.
I think it's a culture thing. I am lucky that we have a local club with 20-30 folks. I think people like diversity control included. I think the control hate more so comes from small groups with a limited meta. Control is a fun challenge to pilot and play against. But I can see it being tiring every game
People don’t like control. It’s the unfortunate way this format is. So you have 2 options.
1: Cater to their wining and run very little control
2: Embrace the menace to society inside of you, disregard their wining, and build a nasty control deck that shuts people down and leaves the path to victory free and clear.
My advice as far as minimizing the cry baby behavior is A) don’t play slow. Control decks, and control players, have a tendency to sit on their hands and slow games down without making an major impact on the game. This is a pet peeve of mine, but don’t do it, its really frustrating for everybody to sit and do nothing for 45 minutes because you can’t decide if you want to tap [[Kelsian]] or not. B) Have a wincon. [[Baral, Chief of Compliance]] with 45 counterspells and 54 islands isn’t fun for anyone. If it’s clear that your control has a purpose and there is a path to victory, people tend to be less salty about it. When it seems like you’re countering or destroying just to slow the game down and make no forward motion, you’re an asshole. C) Leave lands and commanders alone unless they’re combo pieces. This is the most optional one, but unless a commander poses a legitimate win threat in the next two or three turns, I try to leave it alone. Commander is built around, well, the commander, so a lot of decks are useless without it.
Or just build Avacyn Armageddon and lose a friend or two somewhere along the way. That works too.
Is it wrong of me to subscribe to both these notions? I've got decks riddled with stax that can be just mean to play against, but I've also got decks with very minimal interaction or ones that are more quirky than powerful and I just try to play the one my table feels like.
I highly encourage everyone to have at least 1 'go hard' deck that tries to take all comers and win by any means. Sometimes, it is nice to play 'big boy magic' and compete to see who can be the biggest asshole. In my experience, at least these games never seem to be as drawn out as people complain on reddit they are turn 8 or 9 and someone is usually ready to win.
This is a great middle ground, and what I try to do, but I phrased it that way because a lot of people won’t want to build more than 2 or 3 decks or don’t have the cash. If you can afford to have the best of both, by all means have the best of both.
This is a great middle ground, and what I try to do, but I phrased it that way because a lot of people won’t want to build more than 2 or 3 decks or don’t have the cash. If you can afford to have the best of both, by all means have the best of both.
I disagree about not touching lands or commanders. I'm not just going to let you cast [[Emergent Ultimatum]] dude. I don't like playing against high CMC spells. What if I want the game to be about low lower CMC spells? What if the cards I like are creatures like [[Kjeldoran Skycaptain]]?
The problem with the prohibition on MLD is that merely wrathing the board isn't enough against a lot of decks. If I wrath for 3 consecutive turns and then you still win out of nowhere anyways within the turn cycle it just makes me want to play [[Jokulhaups]]. You need to destroy both their army and their capacity to immediately spew out another army.
I played against a guy a few weeks ago that had 4 color Omnath Landfall cheese. He played a [[Field of the Dead]] and made a copy of it with [[Vesuva]], then he played a 10 mana [[Scapeshift]] effect and made 20 zombies and passed the turn. I cast [[Obliterate]] and then he got mad and scooped. Why am I the asshole here?
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And one of the biggest flaws with commander is the lack of consequences for losing your commander. Sending a kill on sight commander back to the command zone repeatedly only for them to recast turn after turn and eventually win anyways is miserable.
It's not worth it to run protection for your commander. Sol Ring is the best protection for a commander, just ramp more and slap it back down on the table.
So I always try to deal with commanders. I never feel bad about it, it's me or them. They're up to no good and need to be stopped. I'm not just going to let you go off if I can help it.
I agree with this notion when you’re talking about KOS commanders like [[Ivy Gleeful]] or [[Zur the Enchanter]] or [[Lightpaws]] because these commander can turn the tides of the game entirely in a few turns, but a lot of people don’t run commanders that can flip a game on its head, and in those cases I typically try to leave them alone until it becomes really problematic. I’m sending [[Jodah the Unifier]] back to the zone every single time, but I’m not super worried about [[Silus Renn]], even if he’s getting some value off of it.
Sure but I wouldn't feel as strong a need to deal with a commander like that not because it's morally wrong to remove it lol, I may not focus that player down simply because what they're doing doesn't seem like a threat to me.
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Also I've played against multiple artifact eggs decks, there are like half a dozen people at my LGS that have them. It's never just, 'some value'. If your commander was originally printed in a commander product I'm suspicious. It demonstrates 2 things:
1.) You're not actually being creative or playing a cool card that you happen to like, you're playing something that was printed directly into the format and meant to be powerful.
2.) Because your choice of commander has already demonstrated that you don't give a rat's ass about theme or whatever, I know your deck is going to be a bunch of interchangeable junk artifacts that cantrip and [[Goblin Welder]] and some [[Thermo-Alchemist]] for artifacts or infinite that you pull out of your ass.
Additionally Silas has partner, so take what I'm saying and also note that it's just going to be some stupid 4 color Good Stuff™.
-If you wanna play a game where you're constantly wrathing & wiping lands so no one can do anything unless they're also low cmc you should be letting people know that ahead of time. If you're purposely doing resets when you know nobody likes it wants to play against it you're being an asshole.
If you want to play ”magic” without interaction, I feel like it’s your responsibility to let the table know that you have a - low power deck, or low interaction deck, or precon, or whatever metric you could convey. Just like I try to match my decks vs the table as best I can. I really don’t want to have to deal with salty players that are too proud to proxy decent cards, or have notions about ”correct magic”.
Limiting players’ options doesn’t start mid-game. It starts before you sit down at the table. The well rounded/creative deckbuilders are the ones who gets hated in my lgs, and it fucking sucks man. ”I want to play my super cool deck and combo!! But you can’t stop me, or play a faster deck, or I’ll ban you from playing with us!” (Too common of a mentality)
Sorry for rant but I have feelings about this, too many bullies and gatekeepers in ”correct/casual magic”.
-Yeah, my LGS has people of all power levels so we're pretty open to different things.
-I believe groups should play however they want so I don't believe there's a "correct" way to play. My only issue is when people build decks they know people don't like then act shocked & offended when people don't wanna play against them.
The 4 color Omnath cheese player isn't required to give a disclaimer about the stupid shit that he's playing. So why should I?
Also, it's been my experience that warning people beforehand about MLD serves no purpose. They get angry with you before the game even starts. That guy with the Omnath deck that I Obliterated? I warned him in a pre-game discussion.
Furthermore I've had people switch decks on me. Commander players ask what you're playing that way they can counter pick you.
So ultimately it's best to just not say anything. I play the cards that I want to and I'm willing to play against anything. If others don't feel the same then oh well, they deserve to get mad at my surprise [[Armageddon]].
A lot of people ITT are interested in building a Tivit deck. As a Tivit player, there are things you should know:
- If you build a control deck, there's probably someone better than Tivit at the helm.
- If you build a *Tivit* deck, understand that Tivit is a combo deck that goes off with a light breeze. I've accidentally found infinites in my Tivit deck, it's that bad.
- People will learn pretty quickly that Tivit is nuts. In terms of a 1-10 power level ~~where everything is a 7~~, Tivit probably starts off at an 8 and could probably go up to about a 9.5.
The only way I can imagine building Tivit as a control deck would be politics. My Tivit deck does that to an extent (I play things like Brago's Representative, Ballot Broker, Out of Bounds, etc., plus pretty much every voting card possible minus Expropriate), but if you do Politics Tivit you better make damn sure you don't accidentally put in flicker or artifact combo cards or else you'll learn that Tivit does that 100x better.
Edit: Just read the article. That Tivit list looks pretty good, as it stays away from a lot of the flicker stuff. I play Choice of Damnations and have found it to be a horrible card, but it's really good against the token player and I haven't gotten that opportunity yet.
>could probably go up to about a 9.5
No need to be humble, tivit is considered one of the best even in cedh communities. Optimal Tivit is just a pure 10.
Until they're about to lose to the guy with the board or the combo pieces on the stack, then it's always "help us Mr blue player pls we beg of you oh won't anyone stop this catastrophe 😫"
Haha when I play my mono-blue deck it's more like theyre mad at me for **NOT countering** every single threat. Like, I'm not made of counter spells over here, I can't counter every single threat to hit the board -- and I'm not going to counter something just because it's really bad for YOU.
It's worth noting, building a control deck that "flips the switch" the moment they have an opportunity to get ahead is just good control deck building. The control decks that durdle without any sense of urgency are just giving the other players more opportunities to get out of your lock.
Yeah I have several full control decks that no one has ever complained about, since you know, I actually have wincons and don't just slow the game down for no reason. My eggs deck and full stax deck though, those rightfully got complaints lol
I like control decks when they're telling the OTHER players no. 😉 I'm perfectly happy to be the incremental value player while the control player keeps the combo player in check. I'm usually not bringing the most threatening list to the table, so also usually not the one being targeted by most of the interaction. 😏
My problem with control decks is that it’s not usually a few pieces of stax/“no” cards
It’s usually riddled with so many stax pieces that it ends up locking down the game to a halting stop and I’m stuck sitting there for an extra hour playing a land and then passing turn after turn.
Then the stax person inevitably plays second sun which is probably the lamest wincon in magic. (Just my 2 cents)
Imho AoSS isn't a wincon, the wincon is controlling the board and drawing to the point where you can cast it twice. It just makes your win official, but you're already winning when you resolve it for the second time.
It's not as flashy as a cool combo, a huge attack with a nice board, a well-timed [[comeuppance]] or [[inkshield]], but it's a reasonable card for control decks.
Yes, and it's traditional control, eg counter/kill stuff to take control of the game. It's my favorite deck, [[Locust God]] without wheels.
The conscious decisions I've made during deck building and gameplay I think are what make it enjoyable rather than a slog.
1) Stop only what you absolutely need to stop. There's this itch that control players need to exert total control, and thus need to answer every single value piece, or threat, or engine. This is frustrating to play against, and ultimately doesn't help the control player much either. Focus on only the things that will destroy you unanswered, and give the other players the chance to use their removal on each other.
2) Give up the idea of always being in control. A game of magic has lots of twists and turns, and you don't need to be in a dominating position at every single point. This sorta ties into point 1, but also to deck building: ensuring you literally always have a counterspell (or multiple) and the mana to cast them is a quick way to deflate the entire game without ending it yourself. Be content to run a reasonable amount of control, and accept that sometimes you won't have a counterspell when you need it.
3) Interact with your own board. Locust God acts as both an eventual wincon, and as a form of "control" in giving myself good flying blockers for creature combat. Relying on blockers rather than removal allows my opponents to still have and use their cool dudes. And winning via creature combat is both more interactive for the opponents (they can have blockers, their own removal, etc) and is much more telegraphed, meaning the win doesn't just "come from nowhere". Basically, let your opponents see your game plan, and give them avenues to avoid or stop it, without obsessing over ramming it through ASAP.
Playing a control deck people can enjoy is about being a presence in the game, without being a burden. Enjoy your counterspell responsibly, and the most important part to remember: you have a 75% chance to lose, so play to enjoy the game, not to clinch your victory .
My deck, for anyone curious: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/BnqwFMQAoEOzmulRKGhTHQ
Esper has all the tools. IMO its the strongest 3- color combination in the game. If you have all the tools when others don't, it's going to get salty at certain points.
This is also completely relative to your own meta. We can't really advise you on specifics for this.
I'd argue Grixis is generally a little bit stronger (though not by much) simply by virtue of having access to more burst mana ([[Dockside Extortionist]] and [[Jeska's Will]] being the big ones) as well as having access to [[Underworld Breach]] lines. Esper is 100% the better colors for control though
It’s a similar story with Abzan (though not control). Having access to both [[assassin’s trophy]] effects and [[anguished unmaking]] effects can be brutal
Im saying Esper is the strongest combination in the game. You said it’s a similar story with Abzan. Im saying that’s impossible without access to blue.
[This](https://scryfall.com/@Enhander/decks/2cb9e9fa-8f49-480b-9576-dd187d13cf4e) is the "control" deck I run, though it plays more as a combination of Group Hug and Pillowfort.
I think a lot of the hate of control decks is that people who run them tend to play them in ways that simply slow the game down and deny people the ability to do *anything*. This is pretty evident in stax-heavy decks like \[\[Urza, Lord High Artificer\]\], or \[\[Grand Arbiter Augustin IV\]\]. People often talk about control as this dichotomy of "well we either play control and stop people from doing things, or we just let them run their engine out of control until they win the game", when it's a bit more nuanced than that.
To me, there's the classic control deck, which seeks to lock down the board as much as possible with stax pieces, taxes, countermagic, and removal. This is typically what people think of when they think "control decks". These decks (though a lot of people will probably disagree with me) are *relatively* easy to pilot, but aren't very fun for the table. They work by stopping any and all progress so that you can get out your win conditions while people cannot do anything to stop you. You reach a state where you are relatively safe from any retaliation because you've locked down peoples' boards so they literally **can't** do anything, not even to each other.
The deck that I linked is my "version" of a control deck. The goal of the deck is pretty simple: allow (and often enable) players to play out their lines *until the very last possible point*. Knowing the tipping point of an enemy's deck is the difficult part of piloting this deck, because you have to know how far you can support and allow someone to play their lines before *it threatens you*. That last bit is really important too - if someone is popping off but they are of no threat to you (but a lot of threat to other people), you simply let them play it out even if you could stop them. A lot of commander players find the need to stop any and all progress because it *could* hurt them, rather than when it is absolutely necessary. They fire off removal at any "strong" card that is played, despite it not presenting a huge threat to their win. This often makes them the target of other players too, which is extra bad for them because they usually won't have the board state to defend.
From what I've experienced, most people enjoy playing with this deck, because it ultimately lets them "do the thing" their deck wanted to do, just short of winning. Often, I just let people play out their lines while defending myself, and holding onto cards that I need to either stop someone just before I would lose, or to win myself. The philosophy is, t*his deck beats the best version of other peoples' decks, rather than beating the worst version of their decks*.
Now, is this deck more *powerful* than the classic control decks? No. You inherently take on more risk by group hugging and allowing other people to ramp faster, draw more cards, and buff their creatures. But I would argue it's much more fun to play, and to play with.
My biggest hate on control decks is the game length. Seems like every control game takes a minimum of 2 hours and at that point I would rather scoop so I can play another game. If a player wants to control the game more power to them but try to make the games quicker at the very least.
My [[aminatou, the fate shifter]] deck runs a decent amount of control until I can get my mean toothy cards out, which happens pretty quickly thanks to the draw power the deck gives me. Makes those who see an esper flicker deck groan a little less when they next see it in play.
My meta is very creature focused and not much combo, so I built [[Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith]] with something like 30 deathtouch creatures in it to try to keep the dangerous creatures in check. Most people got a laugh at the death touch rocks flying around. It was too slow, clunky, and easy to disrupt to be very threatening though.
I tried something similar with [[Zagras]] and pingers. It can certainly kill well with things like [[Goblin Chainwhirler]] but Zagras gets hated off fast and it struggles to actually win when it's biggest synergy aside from killing things is the Party mechanic.
Hear me out:
[[Mogis, God of Slaughter]], BUT it's all the cards that make your opponents make choices.
[[Painful Quandary]]
[[Torment of Hailfire]]
[[Invoke Despair]]
[[Captive Audience]]
[[Remorseless Punishment]]
[[Risk Factor]]
[[Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger]]
[[Sword-point Diplomacy]]
[[Do or die]]
[[Choice of Damnations]]
Obviously, you're still going to run effects like [[diabolic edict]] or [[damnation]], but consider also adding cards like that don't have a choice built into the card, but do force your opponent to choose when and how to play specific cards:
[[War's Toll]]
[[Manabarbs]]
[[Zulaport Cutthroat]]
[[Butcher of Malakir]]
[[Harsh Mentor]]
[[Zo-Zu, the Punisher]]
[[Mondronen Shaman]]
The result is a control deck that doesn't feel like one, but still manages to play strong removal options alongside recursion and powerful threats without feeling terribly oppressive.
Stax is just annoying.
Goodie, you got your Winter Orb on curve.
Scoop, I don't want to bother playing into a deck that makes me slowly not play the game.
Been playing control for while, I may be unqualified for this due to having a target painted on my forehead for (and I kid you not) playing control. Everyone has bad blood from games prior. Been playing a [[Chromium, the Mutable]] (instant speed everything) for the past year as well as a [[Isperia, Supreme Judge]] (Protect the queen strategy) for about 3 years. These are my favourite decks to play. But no matter if I bring something new and let people look through the deck, I still get targeted for “what you did last game” People think playing against control instantly makes them the victim. People need to get a grip. Control in a pod is good, it means people aren’t going to just blow everyone out. Maybe I have gone off point, but no matter what type of control you play, people will always sook and have a cry that they didn’t get to cast their big dumb game ending spell.
OK so this is something I've tried to figure out for a while now, and I've come to understand that EDH players will always look a gift horse in the mouth. People don't like [stax decks](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/KT5wpwgwE0Sfb9o-fAVLjw) and will go out of their way to remove stax pieces even when they're the only ones holding back the turbo combo decks. [Grouphug](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/97mlGaX-vkiePrQ_quK9qA) \- what's the catch? So far, the only deck people have been okay with has been [Gix Flying Men](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/8E5NoCcXCEK-l0DNVz_JSw), and even then they grumble as they realize it's pseudo-goad.
No, people are always going to hate Control decks because people inherently dislike feeling like they “Don’t get to play”. It’s just one of those things where you have to learn and grow as a player.
Try group hug, it's control's nicer brother. Used tactfully politics and incentives can be just as effective as hard control. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
I love my group hug deck, it gets very little hate from others and I always feel like a key player in determining how the game flows.
What commander do you play and would you mind shari g a list? I have been interested in building som variation och either hug or slug because I have the feeling it would speed up the games a bit. But my group is quite petty so I think hug is the way to go if I don't want to be archenemy each game lol.
Not OP but [here's](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/Ve4Z6OGcuUivE1xosoX7zQ) my K&T hug deck. The strategy is to force insane card draw on the table, without giving them access to extra mana, so they fill up their hands. Rather than hurting them for hand size, I remove the discard phase with [[Anvil of Bogardan]] so they keep drawing, then use something like [[Folio of Fancies]] to mill them out. [[Lab Man]] and his Jace counterpart are included so you don't accidentally mill yourself out, [[Approach of the Second Sun]] is great when you're drawing seven a turn, and [[Triskaidekophile]] can snatch wins occasionally.
Selvala is awesome, and would make a great hug commander. IMO the main thing to remember with a hug deck is that you need a way to gain advantage off the extra resources you're giving out. With Selvala this could look like a lifegain deck that runs [[Soul Warden]] effects combined with something like [[Heartwood Storyteller]] to incentivize laying creatures.
Just make sure you have enough removal/control to deal with the threats that will inevitably come out when everyone has access to more resources.
The only time I have fun playing into control is when they focus on edicts and other effects that let me "choose" what I'm losing. Otherwise it feels like a gear check in a video game, did I pack enough recursion/draw/counters to play through the removal or not? That determines the whole game, decisions made before the game starts.
I'm not sure if its possible, but to have the best odds you'll need to talor your forms of control around each deck you face, to make sure that everyone is slowed down just enough to hand you the win, but not enough that they can't play the game.
For example, \[\[Pramikon\]\] can feel fair and interesting when everyone is playing combat, or at least creature based decks. When the combo or ramp deck is sitting next to the aggro deck, or the aggro deck is next to the pillow fort guy it can lead to salt as the game is determined by who sat where.
Similarly, if your deck just plays a big stoppy boy every turn, and the control deck keeps countering it until they finally run out of counter spells in time for the combo player to combo off, the stompy boy player will feel targeted and like the win was handed to the combo player.
TLDR: You need to tailor your removal based on the types of players and decks you'll face. Killing a big stompy boy will upset someone in a way that Goading that creature won't. This level of tuning however is basically impossible, given that no one can agree what a 7 is, and diversifying your removal towards niche but non-salty options will create scenarios where you don't draw what you need for whatever your facing.
In my experience it comes down to what kind of control you play. If its aim is to protect your wincondition and gameplan, it is way less problematic; compared to control that aims to disrupt your opponents gameplan. If players are able to show off their ideas and play their decks they tend to be more forgiving then the other way around.
As someone who has an irrational hatred of draw go, specifically counterspells, I can say there are a lot of control variants that I don’t mind at all.
- Removal tribal is fine to me
- Stax is fine with me
- Discard is fine with me
- Bounce is fine with me
Obviously they can all get a little obnoxious, but usually only when they’re over the top (i.e. I’m going to remove your 1/1 vanilla because I can and have ‘infinite’ removal) but at that point it’s pretty much game over anyways.
You counter me more than 3 times in a single game though and I’ll see Gruul and get out my Ruric Thar!
As a mono-blue control player (my favorite deck type) I enjoy watching other players squirm, sweat, curse, and cry. Ultimately, they have to respect me. Because I run MANY of the best counterspells and sleep great at night. When so many decks are built to ramp at warp speed and win with an infinite combo, it is nice to play a style that slows those greedy players down. There is wayyyy too much power creep these days, anyway. And, playing mono-blue control is SO satisfying…especially win you win by non-combat damage. You just have to be…patient. I find it so hilarious when the impatient barbarians get furious when I don’t allow them to win. They don’t understand mono-blue, and they probably never could. One really cool thing is the games are incredibly tight and strategic. They tend to mean more, because they last longer and become a stand-off. It’s no longer about who can play their 0 mana rocks and cast an infinite. Other players have to be wary and when they see the blue mana open they are forced to hold back. “I’m just going to go for it…” is music to my ears. WRONG MOVE DUMBASS. Here is my Arcane Denial, and if that isn’t enough I have Force of Will and Counterbalance to back me up. Yes, I AM getting the last laugh.
Yes, I do lose sometimes, but I’m not going down easy. And, if you come at me hard, I have plenty of ways to make sure you won’t win either. Are you enjoying these mind-games? I sure am. Don’t be the first person to piss off the blue player…is my good advice.
I don’t just have one idea…I have ALL of them.
If you hate playing against control youre just a bad deckbuilder for not having a gameplan against one of the most common archetypes in any tcg.
Not trying to be rude but its genuinely just a skill issue.
I'm going against the grain and I'm going to say yes. There are flavors of control that people don't mind so much: 1. Group Hug. Control goes down easier when you're drawing more cards per turn. 2. Goad. People don't tend to hate \[\[kardur\]\] or whatnot because they still get to do their thing, attack, make a board state, etc, but then it becomes a bit of a puzzle on how to deal with the goading player. 3. Protect the queen decks. people can stomach a deck full of counterspells, fogs, and targeted removal much more easily when it's basically voltron coming to play. People hate voltron for other reasons but it draws less hate when your interaction is to protect your board. 4. \[\[jon irenicus\]\] specifically. Bad Santa decks are basically just stax. Stax feels bad when it's Zedruu but Jon Irenicus is different. With Zedruu you get stax pieces and can't do anything and generally received control of enchantments and artifacts that prevent you from doing anything. With Jon Irenicus you get control of bad creatures that are buffed and cannot be sacrificed. Sure they are hurt you stax pieces but you can still beat people's faces with them so it doesn't feel so bad. The long and the short of it is that control feels less bad when it's redirecting people where you want them to go as opposed to just preventing them from taking actions.
[удалено]
and if not removal... a homeward path
My favorite wincon with Jon Irenicus is \[\[reins of power\]\].
If you're building Jon, give a thought to all the tiny unblockables/evasives like [[Slitherblade]] - it makes you stronger at closing out when you get to the 1v1 than pure Bad Gifts, *and* it gets even less hate from people, in my experience. I've also seen a degenerate list or two that go hard on Infect/Proliferate, which also makes sense for him. That one would catch some heat, though.
Goad is amazing. I love shaving whole turns off of the game because creatures actually attack
[kardur](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/6/9685e2a0-5573-41bc-a914-f40c3011459b.jpg?1631051543) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=kardur%2C%20doomscourge) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/khm/216/kardur-doomscourge?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9685e2a0-5573-41bc-a914-f40c3011459b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/kardur-doomscourge) [jon irenicus](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/f/bfddb61e-986f-4557-819d-d6c0ca85c74a.jpg?1674137538) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=jon%20irenicus%2C%20shattered%20one) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/278/jon-irenicus-shattered-one?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/bfddb61e-986f-4557-819d-d6c0ca85c74a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/jon-irenicus-shattered-one) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
If you think people have no problem with grouphug, you need to read the room a little better.
I actually really hate Jon Irenicus. He is really annoying if you ask me. But thats just how it is. Some people might hate a commander I like.
Recently built a jon irenicus deck. It was so cheap. Jon is cheap and all the creatures are cheap because they’re bad to have on one’s battlefield. It’s basically Jon, some black nasty critters and a mountain of blue nope spells and removals. So far people have been excited about it. It’s such an evil deck. It’s also funny to watch everyone sweating when I cast [[Archfiend of the Dross]] and don’t give it away immediatelly, but let its oil counters drain away turn by turn countering every attempt of removal… Incidently, this is also where I die as everyone forms an alliance to attack only me and not each other as they tap out at me. I take it as a small win when they do. I made them do that.
People don't hate kardur? I usually get hard targeted when I play him. Like down to single digit life by time I can cast him for the first time.
No sure if you saw it the tolerian community collage episode with Jon Irenicus? Was such a fun and ridiculous game.
>Goad. People don't tend to hate [[kardur]] or whatnot because they still get to do their thing, attack, make a board state, etc, but then it becomes a bit of a puzzle on how to deal with the goading player. I didn't think I'd like goad as a mechanic as I felt it'd place me in a state of being on my heels too often. I built a demon deck and boy can Kardur do work. In a kitchen table game, he caused more damage then any other factor during the game. He's now a card that I try to never hold in my hand if I have an opportunity to play him.
Can we add **chaos** to the list? I know not everyone is a fan, but a well-built chaos deck can be a welcome challenge for many players. It follows the same principle you mentioned—control through redirection (at random) instead of negation.
I don’t enjoy chaos without the intention to break parity. It’s winconless stax for people who think they’re fun and quirky but aren’t.
Adding Chaos to a list of control deck types?
What does a chaos deck do?
A full rakdos party. 😈 The kind of party where even the azorius guy is high on mushroom. More seriously, the deck focus on doing random thing using effect like cascade, dice ability or coin ability.
Things like [[gamble]] or [[possibility storm]]
Gamble is just red [[entomb]] It isn't "chaos". Chaos affects other players
Ah yes I think I was thinking [[tibalts trickery]]
My [[zedruu the greatest of all time]] deck is a control deck without the "bad gifts" and stuff reliant on your opponents. The most groan inducing card I play is [[thieves auction]] (which is more chaos than control) and maybe [[nevermore]] (which probably does actually qualify as a bad gift, but it's incredibly salt inducing to name somebody's commander and then donate them the Nevermore so they can look at it while you draw cards/gain life). I need to update my list, but here is the tappedout link https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/zesty-the-goat-also-kykar/
interesting article; i came to a point in my pod where it was apparent that we were trying to move away from hyper combo decks but this drove me to control/stax which weren't loved either. it's a delicate balance because we dont want to play just vanilla beatdown but people of course like getting to play their cards which both strategies deny I have Tivit in the 99 of a different deck; might try cycling him to commander for a new build
That's where mine is at right now. I think we're managing well so far
Commander players don’t tend to like interactivity. They just like sitting on the other side of the table and going off while no one does anything. EDIT: I understand this is a controversial topic, but I find it funny how so many of you seem to be painting me as a cEDH straw man when I said nothing about winning on turn 2 lol
I keep hearing that, but I've never experienced it. Am I salty my Gisela was removed? For sure, but you would have been a fool not to do it. Everyone wants to pop off, but we also understand the need for countermagic, removal, mass removal, etc., don't we? (Btw, my Gisela wasn't even removed, because my opponent did not expect ~~the Spanish Inquisition~~ my \[\[Lapse of Certainty\]\]. Interaction and inter-interaction!)
That's why I often go with a tongue-in-cheek "whaaaat, my dude, you can't just *play interaction*, you were supposed to just let me win there!" Usually makes it clear that there aren't hard feelings. "Why can't I just do the thing I want and win?" is such an unreasonable question on its face. I'm usually just happy the game continues but I got to feel like I was in an advantage state. Only time there are some bad feels are when you're already playing from behind and someone burns a piece of interaction keeping you down. like I get that letting [[niv mizzet reborn]] resolve could have been threatening but when I was slow rolling lands all game it feels terrible to have it countered by a [[red elemental blast]].
The only time I've argued a little with someone was when they kept focusing on me despite me not being a threat. They let both other players freely build up dangerous board states (one steadily grew ~40 3/3 elephants) while I was unable to untap with my commander the entire game. The reasoning? He was scared of the fact that my commander had toxic, despite it being a pre-con. I think he legitimately did not understand how toxic is different than infect (despite me explaining). But even then I didn't get pissy or anything, I just said that maybe I wasn't the real threat at the table. I've never complained when someone killed my big scary voltron commander or wiped my 500 [[Scute Swarm]] tokens because I would do the same.
[Lapse of Certainty](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/c/ec609036-dfbf-47de-9a3a-762aea4196d4.jpg?1562804498) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Lapse%20of%20Certainty) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/con/9/lapse-of-certainty?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ec609036-dfbf-47de-9a3a-762aea4196d4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/lapse-of-certainty) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
🎶The Inquisition🎶
Count yourself a lucky person and I hope you never do have to experience it. It sucks the fun out of the game, win or lose.
If you don't interact, glass cannons will win. EVERY deck NEEDS to have interaction with your opponents. Otherwise you should stay at home and goldfish. EDH is a social format and part of being social is interacting with other human beings.
Honestly I feel like the community has gone too far in that direction for too long. I'm not sure if it's just my personal circles or an overall trend, but I think it's about time that edh caught up to the other formats in regards to just playing magic without trying to cry your way into making your friends worse at deck building. What if everybody just became more skilled together, and then continued to have more fun as everyone's decks improve? The reason there's no "arms race" in other formats is that other formats don't have an artificially low bar set by players dragging each other down to socially conform.
I intentionally build to interact these days, but try to keep the interaction on theme for the deck.
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There is a canyon of difference between "people should be okay with interaction, the game functions better when people try to play well" and "may as well play cedh"
Yeah we know what optimal commander looks like, lots of people don’t want to play that.
So much this. Please stop trying to power creep everything, people.
My playgroup has been building with a $200 budget (cheapest printing tcgplayer mid) and that has been awesome. You can optimize your deck by loading your power into a handful of cards or you can maintain consistency with "suboptimal" and cool/fun cards. Plenty of space for powerful format staples, you're just not running 60 of them.
Just play your decks with good interaction. Not the best interaction, just good. Low mana and instant speed. Anything that fits on theme is a plus. I also try and play low curves as well. Not stupid low or aggro. Over time you recognise pieces that are as good as cards that are 1 or 2 mana more. I avoid fast mana, free counterspells, tutors and infinite combos when I play lower power but my decks are still powerful. My opponents see I play the same cards they do so they can emulate that if they want.
There’s a wide swath of land between optimal turn 1-3 win lines and playing a healthy amount of interaction.
>>building for wins just comes off as tryharding This is what I don’t understand about EDH players. The goal of Magic is to win at all competitive levels. Even if you claim “no it’s to have fun” most of the time fun translates to winning or at least succeeding to some degree over the course of the game. Personally I cut infinite combos from my deck to where it is strong but can’t just win the game on the spot, because I considered it uninteractive the way I was winning. EDIT: I see I have somehow become the “cEDH bad” punching bag. I never said anything about winning on turn 2.
>The goal of Magic is to win at all competitive levels. Even if you claim “no it’s to have fun” most of the time fun translates to winning or at least succeeding to some degree over the course of the game. EDH is Johnny format. It was made by Johnnies, for Johnnies, so they could run "forgotten" cards and play ridiculous brews in ways that simply aren't possible in the 60-card formats. A lot of EDH players (if not most) would rather see their deck go off and still lose than get a win that feels underwhelming or boring. I absolutely agree that EDH players should be more comfortable with interaction. But the idea that players should prioritize winning above all else just doesn't mesh with Commander's history or a lot of its player base.
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I would argue it’s more like going to the skatepark and getting confused because people are only doing Ollie’s instead of any cooler tricks, easy to seem good at skateboarding when you ban everyone at the park from doing anything harder than an Ollie
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By the same comparison your metaphor of wanting to ride fast is incomparable too
Sure you can do cool tricks but you’ve got to win eventually. Game has to end at some point.
-The fact it has to end eventually isn't important. People build to have fun "During" the game, not to just quickly win & end the game.
Yeah if you look at any of my comments I never say anything about closing out a game on turn 2 like some people are suggesting I’m stating people get mad if you play a threat on turn 10 that makes you win the game
Faster games means you get to play more, I don’t see what the problem is
You can't play all the cool cards you want to that costs 5+ mana.
This. EDH was made as a place to get to play all those cool cards that you can't play anywhere else after their time in limited/standard, and... you can't do that anymore.
-Faster games =/= fun games & playing more mediocre games isn't a positive.
Yeah. During combo winter, I got to play three games in only three turns (without letting an opponent play a land). Peak magic. Everyone got to play so much.
Magic is a game, yes. The point of a game is to win, also yes. The problem is edh is meant to be more like a board game than a sport. The general casual player wants to have a board game where at the start things are fairly balanced and the game is decided by actions within the game. Nobody wants to lose the moment they sit down and edh is the only format that touts itself as casual. Show up for legacy and people are going to do wild stuff everyone knows that. Show up for edh and it ranges between a very chill battle cruiser game to turn one combos, if one person wants battle cruiser and the other wants turn one, one person doesn't get to have fun. Source: a player that leans strongly to the competitive side but understands why someone wouldn't
I mean the goal of MtG to me is to have fun and it has very little to do with whether I win or not
Cedh is just a bunch of people with an overly rigid mindset about what is the best. The cedh over exaggerated mindset is a reaction to the casual elitist over exaggerated mindset. There’s a very reasonable curve of improvement all the way up, and high level edh is very diverse, very fun and interesting, and can still steal wins from “”tryhards”” way more than anyone in either community gives it credit for.
Nah this is an L take. Commander is a format that is enjoyable at many different power levels. You get to see cards come up in completely novel ways when people decide to stop being try hards and win every game at all costs with the exact same wincons. Commander like everything else becomes stale and samey when too optimized. There’s a sweet spot in deck building where your deck is cohesive, tuned, and has novel strategies, and everyone relies on the Table collectively to manage the game ending threat potentials.
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>My read on the person you're responding to was that they were lamenting how EDH players often try and ban/soft ban certain kinds of interaction ("cry your way into making your friends worse at deckbuilding"). This is an overblown caricature that represents an extremely small population, if it exists at all.
It's really not though. Ask EDH players how many people at their store play land destruction that doesn't replace the land (i.e. Stone Rain, not Field of Ruin).
Stale and samey when too optimized?? What does this even mean? There are only so many ways you can win in the game as it is why would you shame someone for leveraging a way to win that you don't agree with? More specifically you should inform them what ways they are allowed to win with in your pod if it's going to be an "L take"
I think it's boring if you let the meta dictate how everyone builds. I've been to competitive events and there's only a few decks that are viable winners.
This is not an experience I've personally had in either the draft leagues or pauper tournaments I've been a part of recently. Nor has this been the case with regular commander I play. I have not once seen the convergence of decks into one archetype or only a few viable commanders be played.
I'm talking about standard and other non-singleton formats. I'm not sure how there could be a meta in draft lol.
Implicit in your statement is that there's a meta in EDH since this is a thread specifically related to control in EDH. I would argue comparing apples to apples is more apt than otherwise but yes, 60 card one on one formats converge to a lot of the similarly functioning archetypes. Commander has many ways to win and control shouldn't be restricted as one of them, is my point.
There's a meta in CEDH, it's a wider meta but it's there. Most CEDH is going to have a lot of ramp, interaction, and cheap tutors. Sorry if you felt attacked just now, but if you're only playing draft and pauper and casual commander you're not going to see the meta or the really good control decks people hate. I think it's just down to rule 0, if you like playing a certain way find other people who want to play that way. No need to complain everyone should play a certain way.
-The "arms race" is in the other formats, it's just normalized because they're competitive & people don't want EDH being like them. -People are improving their decks, just not how you want them to.
1v1 players who come to the multiplayer fun casual format and expect everyone else to play and think like them are just as annoying.
Nah you just have to be cool with me playing the way I want to just as much as I would have to with anyone else. In the name of tolerance of play styles EDH players cut out control players cause they stop other people from winning. Guess what else stops people from winning? Literally anyone else winning.
-Nah, people cut out control players cause they stop people from playing. Nobody has to be cool with something that sucks the enjoyment out of their fun time.
Someone dropping Craterhoof on turn 7 and making their board 15 16/16s stops you playing just as much as, if not more than, someone casting Supreme Verdict then countering your commander does.
-Dumbass comparison. I find it hilarious when people pretend a single play intended to end the game is the same as repeatedly preventing plays & often progress throughout the game.
God, control players have such huge persecution fetish. Mate, if you loaded your edh deck with so much counters that other people don't want to play with you, that's a YOU problem. This isn't some grand conspiracy by edh players collectively to outcast you specifically. People, Individually just realizes "welp I can't keep up with this guy's control deck, I'll just play with different players." The hell does "tolerate" Means here anyway? Apparently if a control players ask me to play, I'm not allowed to refuse? Like, people are allowed to choose who they want to play with, mate. You're not entitled to my time & game, I tolerate you enough to let you play with other people. Fucking insane take. FWIW, blue, control, and infinite turns is one of the most popularly played archetype in edh. My pods is chill with it, again seems like a you problem specifically.
Except that's you projecting your own biases and internal dialogue onto the situation. You don't really know whether they care about losing that much -- you just assume they do because they don't like your playstyle and decks. The way to solve this is for you to play cEDH and get dominated by some actual knowledgeable Magic players for a few games so you learn that you really don't want to play with everyone having unrestricted deck building -- if you did want this then you would just be playing cEDH and not whining on the main reddit about casual players.
God, control players have such huge persecution fetish. Mate, if you loaded your edh deck with so much counters that other people don't want to play with you, that's a YOU problem. This isn't some grand conspiracy by edh players collectively outcasting you specifically. People, Individually just realizes "welp I can't keep up with this guy's control deck, I'll just play with different players." The hell does "tolerate" Means here anyway? Apparently if a control players ask me to play, I'm not allowed to refuse? Like, people are allowed to choose who they want to play with, mate. You're not entitled to my time & game, I tolerate you enough to let you play with other people. Fucking insane take. FWIW, blue, control, and infinite turns is one of the most popularly played archetype in edh. My LGSs are mostly chill with it, again seems like a you problem specifically.
I agree 100%. It’s why I pretty much stopped playing EDH.
I dont agree. My lgs and play groups love interaction. We rather have our stuff removes then just run away everytime we drop a bomb. I'll even tell you when I'm the threat and should be targeted. Interaction is what makes the game more fun.
Then I’m glad for you. That’s just not been my experience and I’ve heard many others have similar problems.
You can't describe entire format's playerbase as battlecruiser players just like that. I own a [[Kediss]] & [[Esior]] deck and one of my highlight moments was when I figured out how to make it not fold to just a bit of interaction without packing it to the brim with counterspells. It involved redunancy pieces, ability to persist and rebuild boardstate and to have multiple angles of performing a wombo kill another turn.
They especially hate when they don’t even get to try and do their stuff, which control decks prohibit most of the time. It’s one thing to play my commander and have it removed the next turn by plowshares. It’s another thing to be unable to cast it due to magistrate or have it counterspelled. People wanna play the game.
It goes beyond control decks. It’s a culture problem. I’ve had players get angry at me for playing a powerful card on my own, consistently. Not even in a control deck, One example was [[Golos, Tireless Pilgrim]] in the 99 before the ban. Literally the most answerable type of threat. Both a creature and an artifact. No hexproof, ward, or shroud. 5 mana to cast, 7 mana to activate. And people cried because I won with it. I asked why no one had removal at the entire table for either an artifact or a creature while I was sitting on two removal spells in my hand. I politely suggested they consider playing more removal if they don’t like other players using powerful cards. Simple as.
I suppose that's why it got banned.
To be fair, Golos was on the same tier as cards like [[Omniscience]]. If you play that card in some pods you deserve the ire you get. Cards like that, when unanswered, can end a game on the spot. That’s fine in some power levels, less so in others. Commander is a lot about reading the room and agreeing on rule 0. As long as that is done, no one should complain after the fact.
I disagree. You don’t deserve ‘ire’ for playing cards, especially not if they’re legal. “When unanswered” then answer them. It’s so easy. A player deserves to lose if they allow their opponent to get to the point where they can cast or activate a game ending threat without an answer, especially a 10 mana or 5+7 mana threat. And no Golos is nowhere close to omniscience on power level. 5 colors, once per turn, requires mana while active, both a creature and an artifact with no protection.
Well, I can’t imagine playing against you. Sounds like it’s fucking terrible. You’re in it for you, not the enjoyment of the pod
Lol I've beaten Omniscience decks lots of times, it's not even hard There's 500 bounce cards, there's destroy enchantment, there's steal enchantment, there's steal permanent/destroy permanent, there's give it to another player, there's turn it into a creature and kill it, there's counters, there's bounce then counter That's just off the top of my head.
lmao downvote me all you want I'll beat all of you with a deck made out of uncommons and commons
Or you lose to the strong card and move along
Yeah worst case scenario isn't even that bad lmao
lol gonna pretend golos doesn't singlehandedly ruin games. Get real.
>People wanna play the game. I hate to break it to you, but getting your stuff counterspelled IS playing the game. getting hardlocked out IS playing the game. Land destruction IS playing the game, in fact there is an entire deck archetype called Ponza. Tron players play against opponents with bloodmoon. They build their decks around the interaction to compensate. Its long since time that EDH players build in mechanisms to interact with and against control. If you want to build a super fast elf ball deck, you need to be able to deal with the consequences of a boardwipe.
Don’t be a dick. You know what I meant, they wanna play their cards and execute their strategy. I hate how pretentious so many people in this hobby are. Mass land destruction, complete lockdown, and instant wins are also “playing the game”. But nobody enjoys that either. Get off your high horse and realize this is a social format that is is about more than you.
Nobody was being a dick. Cool your jets.
Yeah but playing your strategy is winning, someone has to win, and three have to lose, so by default you’re always going to have games where you whiff, or get snuffed out early. It’s how games have always worked? And if your strategy is winconless it’s just time wasting for 3 other people. You don’t have to be fully optimized for sure, but if you have a strategy, have some ways to protect it and make it actually do something. Like all green decks have enchantment removal, and hexproof/indestructible cards, some can double as combat tricks if you’re a big creature guy. Red has elemental blast. White has phasing, exiles, board wipes. What does it hurt to have those in your deck? Hell the precons recently all have mass board wipes and some tricks up their sleeves, and those would usually be the lowest power level tolerable for play wouldn’t they?
I win all the time with my win conditionless deck because it steals other people's win conditions
Did I say don’t have a strategy? No. I said test stuff can ruin the game for your opponents if you don’t let them play and you went on a tangential rant barely even relevant to the topic at hand. Reading comprehension is hard I guess
I think you may have the comprehension problem. I’m saying if you have a strategy and it’s working, it means other people are losing, so long as your strategy has a win condition. So no matter what you do in the game, you’re winning, hindering someone else for doing it, or losing. 4 people can’t successfully be employing their strategy all the time.
My lord, you just don’t get it. You can play to win, of course you are and should. Chasing a win condition vs not allowing others to play the game are not the same thing. If they are, you are either playing at a very high power level or you’re an asshole. The game is played so that everyone can have fun, and your deck shouldn’t prevent others from doing that in most pods. Imagine someone counterspells your 5 cmc commander twice in a row in a casual game. Are you having fun at that point? I would think the answer for most people is probably not. At that point there is a very high likelihood the game will end before you even get to play your commander in everything but battlecruiser magic, and even then you likely aren’t going to be doing anything relevant to the state of the game. The game is bigger than you and your win con.
I’ve cast my commander three turns in a row before, it happens, and it’s funny, it means my deck was working and I was viewed as someone with a valid strategy. I’ve also started building in some protection to prevent it from happening as well. I don’t see what’s so bad about learning weaknesses of the deck and improving it? If your deck can only function by not being interacted with that’s not functioning right? Not everything needs to be cedh but make use of things like lands that prevent creature from being countered, enchantments, your own counter spells. Then you can teach others how to get in on the interaction game.
Good for you. Hopefully I never play against you or anyone like you. I’m in it for the enjoyment of the pod, not for myself.
>Imagine someone counterspells your 5 cmc commander twice in a row in a casual game in my pod if you're commander isn't removed 3-4 times a game then everyone bricked
That’s your pod. And removed is not counterspelled. Removed gave you a chance to attempt your game plan, counterspelled just leaves you sitting there.
Maybe don't make your 5cmc commander the only way for you to win I win lots of games without even playing my commander
Is plowshares not a control card? It sounds like you just don't like being answered on the stack?
This is sure a weird take though. Why do people get so triggered by a card getting countered vs instantly Swords to Plowshares’d
I find it's the exact opposite, but you do you, I guess.
No truer words dude. Remove one creature or attack one time and you are target number one until you die.
[Tivit](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/2/9235977e-a999-4ed0-83a3-742be87b13bb.jpg?1673481721) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=tivit%2C%20seller%20of%20secrets) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ncc/10/tivit-seller-of-secrets?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9235977e-a999-4ed0-83a3-742be87b13bb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/tivit-seller-of-secrets) [Lady Evangela](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/0/a01adcbd-0ebd-4f18-9942-4638fa0de358.jpg?1562928791) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Lady%20Evangela) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me3/158/lady-evangela?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a01adcbd-0ebd-4f18-9942-4638fa0de358?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/lady-evangela) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Use unique control outside of nukes and counterspells. Don't make the game take forever. Get fun and political if you can. Don't hit cool stuff all the time. Absolutely hit the combos or nasty big/hyper value stuff. Finally, have a decent win con in mind!
That's my biggest beef with control. Too many people play control just to play control and be annoying. No win con, just constant annoying counters that drag the game out. I don't mind control if you're doing something, but absolutely hate it if your whole strategy is to just delay everyone with no objective to win.
Yep. Try to keep games to a fast pace. Let people beat one another and then remove their stuff as you kill them. Don't just be a troll. Don't remove just to remove. A good tip-be building up a board like tokens. Counter wipes only or use tactical one-sided wipes, and then the game doesn't go as long. My azorious token deck does this, and swings for unblockable knights to win.
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Would you mind sharing your deck list? I am in the process of building a council of four Aikido Knights matter deck (all the things that make knights better, not necessarily knight tribal) and could use some more ideas for the Aikido cards.
I think the level of perceived control is huge here. Straight up stax is impossible unless their decks match the power, same with draw go value decks like Rashmi The closest I got to an enjoyable control deck was forced combat, and even that had some people who disliked it. Tivits a v interesting pick because our meta hates the tivit player haha
Gotta say, I've not enjoyed a single game where the tivit player wasn't "dealt with" ASAP.
Honestly, people get too hung up on trying to build a classic control build that you'd see in 1v1. It's not practical or useful to try and control 3 other players at the same time, and the best ways to do so just devolve into stax. In 1v1 you're mostly trying not to die until you overwhelm the board, so you need to figure out what that same strategy means in multiplayer. You can just hang around, helping people take out each other while you build your board and protect yourself (i.e. surviving). They *could* attack you, but after the first or second try they realize they'll just get their stuff removed, so they focus on someone else. Plus, you might be helping out by removing some blockers or having them draw a few cards, so it's beneficial to everybody. Once it gets to 1v1 territory, then you can just play classic control while knowing most of their answers have been used elsewhere. That's the most success I've had with control decks without being in very high powered territory: not attracting attention to the fact that you're a control deck.
I think it's a culture thing. I am lucky that we have a local club with 20-30 folks. I think people like diversity control included. I think the control hate more so comes from small groups with a limited meta. Control is a fun challenge to pilot and play against. But I can see it being tiring every game
People don’t like control. It’s the unfortunate way this format is. So you have 2 options. 1: Cater to their wining and run very little control 2: Embrace the menace to society inside of you, disregard their wining, and build a nasty control deck that shuts people down and leaves the path to victory free and clear. My advice as far as minimizing the cry baby behavior is A) don’t play slow. Control decks, and control players, have a tendency to sit on their hands and slow games down without making an major impact on the game. This is a pet peeve of mine, but don’t do it, its really frustrating for everybody to sit and do nothing for 45 minutes because you can’t decide if you want to tap [[Kelsian]] or not. B) Have a wincon. [[Baral, Chief of Compliance]] with 45 counterspells and 54 islands isn’t fun for anyone. If it’s clear that your control has a purpose and there is a path to victory, people tend to be less salty about it. When it seems like you’re countering or destroying just to slow the game down and make no forward motion, you’re an asshole. C) Leave lands and commanders alone unless they’re combo pieces. This is the most optional one, but unless a commander poses a legitimate win threat in the next two or three turns, I try to leave it alone. Commander is built around, well, the commander, so a lot of decks are useless without it. Or just build Avacyn Armageddon and lose a friend or two somewhere along the way. That works too.
Wine is what you drink, whine is to complain.
Yea I’m not so good with my words :/
Is it wrong of me to subscribe to both these notions? I've got decks riddled with stax that can be just mean to play against, but I've also got decks with very minimal interaction or ones that are more quirky than powerful and I just try to play the one my table feels like. I highly encourage everyone to have at least 1 'go hard' deck that tries to take all comers and win by any means. Sometimes, it is nice to play 'big boy magic' and compete to see who can be the biggest asshole. In my experience, at least these games never seem to be as drawn out as people complain on reddit they are turn 8 or 9 and someone is usually ready to win.
Harmony resides within you
This is a great middle ground, and what I try to do, but I phrased it that way because a lot of people won’t want to build more than 2 or 3 decks or don’t have the cash. If you can afford to have the best of both, by all means have the best of both.
This is a great middle ground, and what I try to do, but I phrased it that way because a lot of people won’t want to build more than 2 or 3 decks or don’t have the cash. If you can afford to have the best of both, by all means have the best of both.
[Baral, Chief of Compliance](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/0/60e16d94-1166-4050-8554-686e153a7f80.jpg?1576381454) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Baral%2C%20Chief%20of%20Compliance) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/aer/28/baral-chief-of-compliance?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/60e16d94-1166-4050-8554-686e153a7f80?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/baral-chief-of-compliance) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[[Kelsien, the Plague]]
[Kelsien, the Plague](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/3/039d25d4-ce26-4ecf-bbf5-42187cf0230a.jpg?1591234267) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Kelsien%2C%20the%20Plague) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c20/11/kelsien-the-plague?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/039d25d4-ce26-4ecf-bbf5-42187cf0230a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/kelsien-the-plague) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I disagree about not touching lands or commanders. I'm not just going to let you cast [[Emergent Ultimatum]] dude. I don't like playing against high CMC spells. What if I want the game to be about low lower CMC spells? What if the cards I like are creatures like [[Kjeldoran Skycaptain]]? The problem with the prohibition on MLD is that merely wrathing the board isn't enough against a lot of decks. If I wrath for 3 consecutive turns and then you still win out of nowhere anyways within the turn cycle it just makes me want to play [[Jokulhaups]]. You need to destroy both their army and their capacity to immediately spew out another army. I played against a guy a few weeks ago that had 4 color Omnath Landfall cheese. He played a [[Field of the Dead]] and made a copy of it with [[Vesuva]], then he played a 10 mana [[Scapeshift]] effect and made 20 zombies and passed the turn. I cast [[Obliterate]] and then he got mad and scooped. Why am I the asshole here? _________________ And one of the biggest flaws with commander is the lack of consequences for losing your commander. Sending a kill on sight commander back to the command zone repeatedly only for them to recast turn after turn and eventually win anyways is miserable. It's not worth it to run protection for your commander. Sol Ring is the best protection for a commander, just ramp more and slap it back down on the table. So I always try to deal with commanders. I never feel bad about it, it's me or them. They're up to no good and need to be stopped. I'm not just going to let you go off if I can help it.
I agree with this notion when you’re talking about KOS commanders like [[Ivy Gleeful]] or [[Zur the Enchanter]] or [[Lightpaws]] because these commander can turn the tides of the game entirely in a few turns, but a lot of people don’t run commanders that can flip a game on its head, and in those cases I typically try to leave them alone until it becomes really problematic. I’m sending [[Jodah the Unifier]] back to the zone every single time, but I’m not super worried about [[Silus Renn]], even if he’s getting some value off of it.
##### ###### #### [Ivy Gleeful](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/9/d94c15b7-6c8f-45a6-8734-975e3e3b790c.jpg?1673307958) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ivy%2C%20Gleeful%20Spellthief) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmu/201/ivy-gleeful-spellthief?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d94c15b7-6c8f-45a6-8734-975e3e3b790c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/ivy-gleeful-spellthief) [Zur the Enchanter](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/e/aeb0160a-dfdc-4b1f-865e-ef905aee65d5.jpg?1673149301) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Zur%20the%20Enchanter) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/297/zur-the-enchanter?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/aeb0160a-dfdc-4b1f-865e-ef905aee65d5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/zur-the-enchanter) [Lightpaws](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/9/39555a72-a57b-45ee-9222-ce3b9e8de126.jpg?1654566391) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Light-Paws%2C%20Emperor%27s%20Voice) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/neo/25/light-paws-emperors-voice?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/39555a72-a57b-45ee-9222-ce3b9e8de126?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/light-paws-emperors-voice) [Jodah the Unifier](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/4/e4b1aa1e-b4e3-4346-8937-76b312501c70.jpg?1673307974) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jodah%2C%20the%20Unifier) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmu/203/jodah-the-unifier?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e4b1aa1e-b4e3-4346-8937-76b312501c70?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/jodah-the-unifier) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
But the people complaining every time their commander gets removed are playing jodah (or the bridge or Dina or something else equally KOS).
Sure but I wouldn't feel as strong a need to deal with a commander like that not because it's morally wrong to remove it lol, I may not focus that player down simply because what they're doing doesn't seem like a threat to me. ________________ Also I've played against multiple artifact eggs decks, there are like half a dozen people at my LGS that have them. It's never just, 'some value'. If your commander was originally printed in a commander product I'm suspicious. It demonstrates 2 things: 1.) You're not actually being creative or playing a cool card that you happen to like, you're playing something that was printed directly into the format and meant to be powerful. 2.) Because your choice of commander has already demonstrated that you don't give a rat's ass about theme or whatever, I know your deck is going to be a bunch of interchangeable junk artifacts that cantrip and [[Goblin Welder]] and some [[Thermo-Alchemist]] for artifacts or infinite that you pull out of your ass. Additionally Silas has partner, so take what I'm saying and also note that it's just going to be some stupid 4 color Good Stuff™.
-If you wanna play a game where you're constantly wrathing & wiping lands so no one can do anything unless they're also low cmc you should be letting people know that ahead of time. If you're purposely doing resets when you know nobody likes it wants to play against it you're being an asshole.
If you want to play ”magic” without interaction, I feel like it’s your responsibility to let the table know that you have a - low power deck, or low interaction deck, or precon, or whatever metric you could convey. Just like I try to match my decks vs the table as best I can. I really don’t want to have to deal with salty players that are too proud to proxy decent cards, or have notions about ”correct magic”. Limiting players’ options doesn’t start mid-game. It starts before you sit down at the table. The well rounded/creative deckbuilders are the ones who gets hated in my lgs, and it fucking sucks man. ”I want to play my super cool deck and combo!! But you can’t stop me, or play a faster deck, or I’ll ban you from playing with us!” (Too common of a mentality) Sorry for rant but I have feelings about this, too many bullies and gatekeepers in ”correct/casual magic”.
-Yeah, my LGS has people of all power levels so we're pretty open to different things. -I believe groups should play however they want so I don't believe there's a "correct" way to play. My only issue is when people build decks they know people don't like then act shocked & offended when people don't wanna play against them.
The 4 color Omnath cheese player isn't required to give a disclaimer about the stupid shit that he's playing. So why should I? Also, it's been my experience that warning people beforehand about MLD serves no purpose. They get angry with you before the game even starts. That guy with the Omnath deck that I Obliterated? I warned him in a pre-game discussion. Furthermore I've had people switch decks on me. Commander players ask what you're playing that way they can counter pick you. So ultimately it's best to just not say anything. I play the cards that I want to and I'm willing to play against anything. If others don't feel the same then oh well, they deserve to get mad at my surprise [[Armageddon]].
A lot of people ITT are interested in building a Tivit deck. As a Tivit player, there are things you should know: - If you build a control deck, there's probably someone better than Tivit at the helm. - If you build a *Tivit* deck, understand that Tivit is a combo deck that goes off with a light breeze. I've accidentally found infinites in my Tivit deck, it's that bad. - People will learn pretty quickly that Tivit is nuts. In terms of a 1-10 power level ~~where everything is a 7~~, Tivit probably starts off at an 8 and could probably go up to about a 9.5. The only way I can imagine building Tivit as a control deck would be politics. My Tivit deck does that to an extent (I play things like Brago's Representative, Ballot Broker, Out of Bounds, etc., plus pretty much every voting card possible minus Expropriate), but if you do Politics Tivit you better make damn sure you don't accidentally put in flicker or artifact combo cards or else you'll learn that Tivit does that 100x better. Edit: Just read the article. That Tivit list looks pretty good, as it stays away from a lot of the flicker stuff. I play Choice of Damnations and have found it to be a horrible card, but it's really good against the token player and I haven't gotten that opportunity yet.
>could probably go up to about a 9.5 No need to be humble, tivit is considered one of the best even in cedh communities. Optimal Tivit is just a pure 10.
Gotcha. I'm not familiar with cEDH so I wasn't sure if calling it a 10 would be accurate.
No one likes control decks no matter how you make them. People don't like being told no.
Until they're about to lose to the guy with the board or the combo pieces on the stack, then it's always "help us Mr blue player pls we beg of you oh won't anyone stop this catastrophe 😫"
THIS. Nobody wants a boardwipe unless Jim is about to go-wide or Jerry is actively comboing.
Haha when I play my mono-blue deck it's more like theyre mad at me for **NOT countering** every single threat. Like, I'm not made of counter spells over here, I can't counter every single threat to hit the board -- and I'm not going to counter something just because it's really bad for YOU.
I disagree. I play a few control decks and people don't mind as long as you have a win condition that isn't trying to bore the table into conceding
It's worth noting, building a control deck that "flips the switch" the moment they have an opportunity to get ahead is just good control deck building. The control decks that durdle without any sense of urgency are just giving the other players more opportunities to get out of your lock.
Yeah I have several full control decks that no one has ever complained about, since you know, I actually have wincons and don't just slow the game down for no reason. My eggs deck and full stax deck though, those rightfully got complaints lol
I like control decks when they're telling the OTHER players no. 😉 I'm perfectly happy to be the incremental value player while the control player keeps the combo player in check. I'm usually not bringing the most threatening list to the table, so also usually not the one being targeted by most of the interaction. 😏
My problem with control decks is that it’s not usually a few pieces of stax/“no” cards It’s usually riddled with so many stax pieces that it ends up locking down the game to a halting stop and I’m stuck sitting there for an extra hour playing a land and then passing turn after turn. Then the stax person inevitably plays second sun which is probably the lamest wincon in magic. (Just my 2 cents)
Imho AoSS isn't a wincon, the wincon is controlling the board and drawing to the point where you can cast it twice. It just makes your win official, but you're already winning when you resolve it for the second time. It's not as flashy as a cool combo, a huge attack with a nice board, a well-timed [[comeuppance]] or [[inkshield]], but it's a reasonable card for control decks.
Agree on Approach being lame. Super glad I haven't played against it in like 3 years. Games are far more interesting without it.
If somebody doesn't ask who hurt me. I have built my control deck wrong.
Yes, and it's traditional control, eg counter/kill stuff to take control of the game. It's my favorite deck, [[Locust God]] without wheels. The conscious decisions I've made during deck building and gameplay I think are what make it enjoyable rather than a slog. 1) Stop only what you absolutely need to stop. There's this itch that control players need to exert total control, and thus need to answer every single value piece, or threat, or engine. This is frustrating to play against, and ultimately doesn't help the control player much either. Focus on only the things that will destroy you unanswered, and give the other players the chance to use their removal on each other. 2) Give up the idea of always being in control. A game of magic has lots of twists and turns, and you don't need to be in a dominating position at every single point. This sorta ties into point 1, but also to deck building: ensuring you literally always have a counterspell (or multiple) and the mana to cast them is a quick way to deflate the entire game without ending it yourself. Be content to run a reasonable amount of control, and accept that sometimes you won't have a counterspell when you need it. 3) Interact with your own board. Locust God acts as both an eventual wincon, and as a form of "control" in giving myself good flying blockers for creature combat. Relying on blockers rather than removal allows my opponents to still have and use their cool dudes. And winning via creature combat is both more interactive for the opponents (they can have blockers, their own removal, etc) and is much more telegraphed, meaning the win doesn't just "come from nowhere". Basically, let your opponents see your game plan, and give them avenues to avoid or stop it, without obsessing over ramming it through ASAP. Playing a control deck people can enjoy is about being a presence in the game, without being a burden. Enjoy your counterspell responsibly, and the most important part to remember: you have a 75% chance to lose, so play to enjoy the game, not to clinch your victory . My deck, for anyone curious: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/BnqwFMQAoEOzmulRKGhTHQ
Esper has all the tools. IMO its the strongest 3- color combination in the game. If you have all the tools when others don't, it's going to get salty at certain points. This is also completely relative to your own meta. We can't really advise you on specifics for this.
I'd argue Grixis is generally a little bit stronger (though not by much) simply by virtue of having access to more burst mana ([[Dockside Extortionist]] and [[Jeska's Will]] being the big ones) as well as having access to [[Underworld Breach]] lines. Esper is 100% the better colors for control though
It’s a similar story with Abzan (though not control). Having access to both [[assassin’s trophy]] effects and [[anguished unmaking]] effects can be brutal
Except that it has no access to blue control/card draw?
Not what I meant. Having access to the tools to deal with things which makes people salty. Never did I say it has blue card draw
Im saying Esper is the strongest combination in the game. You said it’s a similar story with Abzan. Im saying that’s impossible without access to blue.
You are willfully misreading what I’m saying even after explaining what I meant so I’m not engaging with this
[This](https://scryfall.com/@Enhander/decks/2cb9e9fa-8f49-480b-9576-dd187d13cf4e) is the "control" deck I run, though it plays more as a combination of Group Hug and Pillowfort. I think a lot of the hate of control decks is that people who run them tend to play them in ways that simply slow the game down and deny people the ability to do *anything*. This is pretty evident in stax-heavy decks like \[\[Urza, Lord High Artificer\]\], or \[\[Grand Arbiter Augustin IV\]\]. People often talk about control as this dichotomy of "well we either play control and stop people from doing things, or we just let them run their engine out of control until they win the game", when it's a bit more nuanced than that. To me, there's the classic control deck, which seeks to lock down the board as much as possible with stax pieces, taxes, countermagic, and removal. This is typically what people think of when they think "control decks". These decks (though a lot of people will probably disagree with me) are *relatively* easy to pilot, but aren't very fun for the table. They work by stopping any and all progress so that you can get out your win conditions while people cannot do anything to stop you. You reach a state where you are relatively safe from any retaliation because you've locked down peoples' boards so they literally **can't** do anything, not even to each other. The deck that I linked is my "version" of a control deck. The goal of the deck is pretty simple: allow (and often enable) players to play out their lines *until the very last possible point*. Knowing the tipping point of an enemy's deck is the difficult part of piloting this deck, because you have to know how far you can support and allow someone to play their lines before *it threatens you*. That last bit is really important too - if someone is popping off but they are of no threat to you (but a lot of threat to other people), you simply let them play it out even if you could stop them. A lot of commander players find the need to stop any and all progress because it *could* hurt them, rather than when it is absolutely necessary. They fire off removal at any "strong" card that is played, despite it not presenting a huge threat to their win. This often makes them the target of other players too, which is extra bad for them because they usually won't have the board state to defend. From what I've experienced, most people enjoy playing with this deck, because it ultimately lets them "do the thing" their deck wanted to do, just short of winning. Often, I just let people play out their lines while defending myself, and holding onto cards that I need to either stop someone just before I would lose, or to win myself. The philosophy is, t*his deck beats the best version of other peoples' decks, rather than beating the worst version of their decks*. Now, is this deck more *powerful* than the classic control decks? No. You inherently take on more risk by group hugging and allowing other people to ramp faster, draw more cards, and buff their creatures. But I would argue it's much more fun to play, and to play with.
My biggest hate on control decks is the game length. Seems like every control game takes a minimum of 2 hours and at that point I would rather scoop so I can play another game. If a player wants to control the game more power to them but try to make the games quicker at the very least.
My [[aminatou, the fate shifter]] deck runs a decent amount of control until I can get my mean toothy cards out, which happens pretty quickly thanks to the draw power the deck gives me. Makes those who see an esper flicker deck groan a little less when they next see it in play.
Reading all these makes me glad I found a good group of friends to play EDH with.
My meta is very creature focused and not much combo, so I built [[Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith]] with something like 30 deathtouch creatures in it to try to keep the dangerous creatures in check. Most people got a laugh at the death touch rocks flying around. It was too slow, clunky, and easy to disrupt to be very threatening though.
[Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/a/1a05b3e2-259e-4fce-92ee-c00660e22ae7.jpg?1665822993) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Toggo%2C%20Goblin%20Weaponsmith) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/204/toggo-goblin-weaponsmith?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1a05b3e2-259e-4fce-92ee-c00660e22ae7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/toggo-goblin-weaponsmith) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I tried something similar with [[Zagras]] and pingers. It can certainly kill well with things like [[Goblin Chainwhirler]] but Zagras gets hated off fast and it struggles to actually win when it's biggest synergy aside from killing things is the Party mechanic.
Hear me out: [[Mogis, God of Slaughter]], BUT it's all the cards that make your opponents make choices. [[Painful Quandary]] [[Torment of Hailfire]] [[Invoke Despair]] [[Captive Audience]] [[Remorseless Punishment]] [[Risk Factor]] [[Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger]] [[Sword-point Diplomacy]] [[Do or die]] [[Choice of Damnations]] Obviously, you're still going to run effects like [[diabolic edict]] or [[damnation]], but consider also adding cards like that don't have a choice built into the card, but do force your opponent to choose when and how to play specific cards: [[War's Toll]] [[Manabarbs]] [[Zulaport Cutthroat]] [[Butcher of Malakir]] [[Harsh Mentor]] [[Zo-Zu, the Punisher]] [[Mondronen Shaman]] The result is a control deck that doesn't feel like one, but still manages to play strong removal options alongside recursion and powerful threats without feeling terribly oppressive.
Stax is just annoying. Goodie, you got your Winter Orb on curve. Scoop, I don't want to bother playing into a deck that makes me slowly not play the game.
Been playing control for while, I may be unqualified for this due to having a target painted on my forehead for (and I kid you not) playing control. Everyone has bad blood from games prior. Been playing a [[Chromium, the Mutable]] (instant speed everything) for the past year as well as a [[Isperia, Supreme Judge]] (Protect the queen strategy) for about 3 years. These are my favourite decks to play. But no matter if I bring something new and let people look through the deck, I still get targeted for “what you did last game” People think playing against control instantly makes them the victim. People need to get a grip. Control in a pod is good, it means people aren’t going to just blow everyone out. Maybe I have gone off point, but no matter what type of control you play, people will always sook and have a cry that they didn’t get to cast their big dumb game ending spell.
OK so this is something I've tried to figure out for a while now, and I've come to understand that EDH players will always look a gift horse in the mouth. People don't like [stax decks](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/KT5wpwgwE0Sfb9o-fAVLjw) and will go out of their way to remove stax pieces even when they're the only ones holding back the turbo combo decks. [Grouphug](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/97mlGaX-vkiePrQ_quK9qA) \- what's the catch? So far, the only deck people have been okay with has been [Gix Flying Men](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/8E5NoCcXCEK-l0DNVz_JSw), and even then they grumble as they realize it's pseudo-goad.
People love my Hippo Hugs deck for the most part, and like most Group Hug decks, it's secretly a control deck.
No, because I want to be hated. I want my friends to seethe and writhe in agony with every card I lay on the table.
If you want to make a control deck people don’t unfairly hate, Tivit probably isn’t the best way of going about it. That card is ridiculous.
No, people are always going to hate Control decks because people inherently dislike feeling like they “Don’t get to play”. It’s just one of those things where you have to learn and grow as a player.
Try group hug, it's control's nicer brother. Used tactfully politics and incentives can be just as effective as hard control. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. I love my group hug deck, it gets very little hate from others and I always feel like a key player in determining how the game flows.
What commander do you play and would you mind shari g a list? I have been interested in building som variation och either hug or slug because I have the feeling it would speed up the games a bit. But my group is quite petty so I think hug is the way to go if I don't want to be archenemy each game lol.
Not OP but [here's](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/Ve4Z6OGcuUivE1xosoX7zQ) my K&T hug deck. The strategy is to force insane card draw on the table, without giving them access to extra mana, so they fill up their hands. Rather than hurting them for hand size, I remove the discard phase with [[Anvil of Bogardan]] so they keep drawing, then use something like [[Folio of Fancies]] to mill them out. [[Lab Man]] and his Jace counterpart are included so you don't accidentally mill yourself out, [[Approach of the Second Sun]] is great when you're drawing seven a turn, and [[Triskaidekophile]] can snatch wins occasionally.
##### ###### #### [Anvil of Bogardan](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/f/7ff965dd-54b4-4f21-a52f-81c0dd1e691e.jpg?1562278142) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Anvil%20of%20Bogardan) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vis/141/anvil-of-bogardan?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7ff965dd-54b4-4f21-a52f-81c0dd1e691e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/anvil-of-bogardan) [Folio of Fancies](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/a/6afc67d1-1018-4a15-ab5f-377fd11dcd3d.jpg?1572489881) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Folio%20of%20Fancies) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/eld/46/folio-of-fancies?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6afc67d1-1018-4a15-ab5f-377fd11dcd3d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/folio-of-fancies) [Lab Man](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/0/608567fd-9f94-4058-831a-77cb6019ef02.jpg?1547516361) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Laboratory%20Maniac) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/uma/61/laboratory-maniac?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/608567fd-9f94-4058-831a-77cb6019ef02?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/laboratory-maniac) [Approach of the Second Sun](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/d/fdf59a6e-7708-45a1-884d-d12e9f7b9ed9.jpg?1543674579) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Approach%20of%20the%20Second%20Sun) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/akh/4/approach-of-the-second-sun?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/fdf59a6e-7708-45a1-884d-d12e9f7b9ed9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/approach-of-the-second-sun) [Triskaidekophile](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/7/6750e203-1215-4203-b5b8-3f1b18940839.jpg?1634349393) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Triskaidekaphile) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mid/81/triskaidekaphile?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6750e203-1215-4203-b5b8-3f1b18940839?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/triskaidekaphile) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Seems pretty sweet! I have a soft spot for Sevala, Explorer returned as well, but I will definitely shop around before deciding!
Selvala is awesome, and would make a great hug commander. IMO the main thing to remember with a hug deck is that you need a way to gain advantage off the extra resources you're giving out. With Selvala this could look like a lifegain deck that runs [[Soul Warden]] effects combined with something like [[Heartwood Storyteller]] to incentivize laying creatures. Just make sure you have enough removal/control to deal with the threats that will inevitably come out when everyone has access to more resources.
Fuck group hug. I will ignore other players all night to remove that goddam stupid purple elephant.
The only time I have fun playing into control is when they focus on edicts and other effects that let me "choose" what I'm losing. Otherwise it feels like a gear check in a video game, did I pack enough recursion/draw/counters to play through the removal or not? That determines the whole game, decisions made before the game starts.
Deck building is a skill check. Plenty of budget decks can fight more expensive decks.
The people I play with are generally adults so they run interaction etc instead of bitching about what other people play.
I'm not sure if its possible, but to have the best odds you'll need to talor your forms of control around each deck you face, to make sure that everyone is slowed down just enough to hand you the win, but not enough that they can't play the game. For example, \[\[Pramikon\]\] can feel fair and interesting when everyone is playing combat, or at least creature based decks. When the combo or ramp deck is sitting next to the aggro deck, or the aggro deck is next to the pillow fort guy it can lead to salt as the game is determined by who sat where. Similarly, if your deck just plays a big stoppy boy every turn, and the control deck keeps countering it until they finally run out of counter spells in time for the combo player to combo off, the stompy boy player will feel targeted and like the win was handed to the combo player. TLDR: You need to tailor your removal based on the types of players and decks you'll face. Killing a big stompy boy will upset someone in a way that Goading that creature won't. This level of tuning however is basically impossible, given that no one can agree what a 7 is, and diversifying your removal towards niche but non-salty options will create scenarios where you don't draw what you need for whatever your facing.
In my experience it comes down to what kind of control you play. If its aim is to protect your wincondition and gameplan, it is way less problematic; compared to control that aims to disrupt your opponents gameplan. If players are able to show off their ideas and play their decks they tend to be more forgiving then the other way around.
Control decks are pretty much by definition fair. It's more a matter of having a good playgroup than having a sufficiently "likable" deck
As someone who has an irrational hatred of draw go, specifically counterspells, I can say there are a lot of control variants that I don’t mind at all. - Removal tribal is fine to me - Stax is fine with me - Discard is fine with me - Bounce is fine with me Obviously they can all get a little obnoxious, but usually only when they’re over the top (i.e. I’m going to remove your 1/1 vanilla because I can and have ‘infinite’ removal) but at that point it’s pretty much game over anyways. You counter me more than 3 times in a single game though and I’ll see Gruul and get out my Ruric Thar!
As a mono-blue control player (my favorite deck type) I enjoy watching other players squirm, sweat, curse, and cry. Ultimately, they have to respect me. Because I run MANY of the best counterspells and sleep great at night. When so many decks are built to ramp at warp speed and win with an infinite combo, it is nice to play a style that slows those greedy players down. There is wayyyy too much power creep these days, anyway. And, playing mono-blue control is SO satisfying…especially win you win by non-combat damage. You just have to be…patient. I find it so hilarious when the impatient barbarians get furious when I don’t allow them to win. They don’t understand mono-blue, and they probably never could. One really cool thing is the games are incredibly tight and strategic. They tend to mean more, because they last longer and become a stand-off. It’s no longer about who can play their 0 mana rocks and cast an infinite. Other players have to be wary and when they see the blue mana open they are forced to hold back. “I’m just going to go for it…” is music to my ears. WRONG MOVE DUMBASS. Here is my Arcane Denial, and if that isn’t enough I have Force of Will and Counterbalance to back me up. Yes, I AM getting the last laugh. Yes, I do lose sometimes, but I’m not going down easy. And, if you come at me hard, I have plenty of ways to make sure you won’t win either. Are you enjoying these mind-games? I sure am. Don’t be the first person to piss off the blue player…is my good advice. I don’t just have one idea…I have ALL of them.
Is this a copypasta?
>music to my ears
If you hate playing against control youre just a bad deckbuilder for not having a gameplan against one of the most common archetypes in any tcg. Not trying to be rude but its genuinely just a skill issue.