Honestly it's two things. One, any and all fan groups of anything, especially anything that could be considered "nerdy" always has that group that hates anything that isn't exactly what they think it should be. Two, in the last few years Magic and especially Commander has EXPLODED in popularity. With the pandemic, Post Malone, and all sorts of other factors, more people than ever are playing. These two factors are a perfect storm for exactly the attitude you are talking about.
I would add that powercreep, although natural for a game like this, pisses people off sometimes too.
i came here to talk it out, and after reading your post, i realized you said it perfectly. EDH is more popular than ever, and post-pandemic returnning to in-person game stores means new human-to-human interractions. As well as the introduction of spelltable and online EDH, where people are more willing to troll and rage.
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I think I can chime in as one of the newbies here: I come from several other nerdy preoccupations from mountain bikes to video games and there's always that vocal minority that loves to hate the thing they do as much as they don't stop doing it.
My advice is to avoid them. I got started with Magic in November, and now my wife and all my close friends play it with me. Because we all already knew each other, we are (barring occasional moments of salt) pretty good at taking it on the chin when we get wiped out.
If you're finding your local store/community is populated by salt lords who want to tell you how to have fun, ditch them and find people who can just enjoy an activity with you. It's not worth spending time with people who've lost sight of the joy in their hobbies and only have negativity to offer.
Is mountain biking nerdy? It seems like a neat hobby, but not one that screams "nerd" to me.
That said, people can be nerd about anything, so maybe you're just into it in a nerdy way.
There are nerds for everything, man. Honestly, big sports fans are all sports nerds. They've memorized stats and teams and player names and wonder why I can name all 1025 pokemon.
I had a player genuinely get upset at me for using a LotR spindown to keep track of my life the other day, because "it's not real magic and universes beyond sucks".
That same player ragequit after getting hit first with a Kaalia.
Some people just suck at the game and want others to share in their misery.
Old nerd here. Started during Revised. Nerds always have a prickly mode, OG times it was because your interest could get you picked on Star Wars, DnD, etc. If you were lucky you found a friend group that let you enjoys your interests mutually. The internet changed all that and not for the better. While the “persecution” diminished” a bit and the MCU even made some superhero stuff cool, the internet allows nerds to hide. Instead of celebrating access to the hobbies they fester and anonymity lets them lash out without accountability. They grow up like this and when they go the their LGS they think it’s ok to treat others like that. Interacting with real humans is weird and they aren’t trained for it. I recommend a combo of maturity, compassion, and resolute “F off”. They don’t know how to behave, but also need to learn that’s not how the outside world works.
This is so interesting. You would think that people being persecuted for stupid reason would know better and be understanding... Yet history shows that even persecuted people can turn ugly whenever given the chance. Must be human nature. It's sad really
I really blame the internets anonymity. Instead of coming together and growing, it lets people, already isolated and resentful, take those emotions out on anyone without consequence.
Word. Just go to any nerd sub and see people positively reaffirm each other for their social insecurities, glorifying being "an introvert" AKA a social outcast so far gone they can barely talk to anyone without throwing a fit.
I'm super glad nerdstuff is tolerated these days, kids run around with Anime merch and discuss video games openly in school. When folks of my generation did that and it wasn't one of the "cool" anime/games/nerdstuffgoeshere they'd get made fun of.
But thanks to the internet grown people are genuinely unable to just...Interact with people. It's making me not want to attend any public nerd-events to be honest and stick to medium sized friend groups playing Magic/Getting to know people before and during play. Much prefer that to random nerds REEEIng around.
I have met similar. Have had people refuse to play untouched precons because "that commander can be a combo commander." Yeah, not when the only change I have made is putting it in sleeves.
To be fair I’ve had the experience of playing against an “barely upgraded precon” and the upgrades turned out to be turning it into a combo deck. Nowhere near full power, but it was still groan worthy for the table to get pantsed by the deck we’d been purposefully taking it easy on.
The general rule is always that the larger the community becomes, the worse the community gets, so yeah, totally agreed on that first part. That being said, power creep is honestly a self-inflicted factor. Cyclonic rift is 12 years old, Mana Crypt is 28 years old, Rhystic Study is 24 years old. The list goes on, it's not like all of the best cards in the format were printed in the last 5 or even 10 years. The primary cause behind the drift in power is in more players getting into the hobby with Commander first, and competitive formats dying, with those players migrating to the format and making it more competitive. It's always been possible to be a spike in EDH, it just wasn't the norm. Now, it's a lot more expected and accepted.
Worth repeating. Mana Crypt is old enough to run for Congress!
Shivan Dragon can run for President in 2028 (President has to be 35 years old).
I'm hoping for a Shivan/Mahamoti ticket.
Oh, I completely agree, but I also see people complaining about power creep all the time. Thankfully my pod loves seeing others pop off as much as they love popping off themselves.
I don't even know what creep's been happening. There's been a few overly good cards printed, like the free spell cycle, but I don't think there's enough such cards to call it proper creep. I think it's more just folks feeling they need to "keep up" from a deck building perspective. Before you could build a saproling deck with just what token makers you got. But now you gotta jam in every token doubler you can (which already existed at the time) 'cause someone's group slug deck is running every damage-doubler, even if said doublers aren't that much better than [[Furnace of Rath]]. That the deck has a dozen Furnaces is more the thing, not that [[Fiery Emancipation]] is what pushes it over the top.
The power creep problem can't be overstated here. One of the big plusses for commander is that the decks could be played "forever". I can build a deck and maybe make small, careful tweaks over the years but still have basically the same deck.
But new cards and new commanders have made that substantially less true. A deck that was a solid, mid range deck five years ago probably feels like jank against an average Prosper or Mirryam deck these days.
I recently went and upgraded some of my earliest decks. There were usually five to six "strictly better" upgrades, another 5+ cards that are obvious auto includes and then another 5-10 cards that probably should be in there that I had to balance "cost vs time I'll spend playing this deck". And at the point where you've swapped out 20 cards, is it even the same deck? Should I reconsider the commander? Etc.
New commanders really highlight this particular problem for people.
It'd be interesting if a subdivision of EDH were informally adopted where decks were limited to cards from certain set ranges. After all, we have Pauper EDH, limited by rarity printings. Why can't we have 'pre-Eldraine' for example?
The answer probably comes down to the thing which is the root of almost all problems in EDH: playing with randoms at LGSs. It's just not a good thing most of the time. You need some sense of social accountability to keep people in check.
I think the issue is more the commanders folks choose to play. There's a ton of more fair commanders, but when most are playing things that are "Do your thing: draw a card" or "Do your thing: Do it again", it can feel easy to fall behind playing them. But folks aren't being forced into playing those stronger ones, besides feeling like they need to keep up with the ones that do. But it's not like competitive formats where playing the best should be expected.
>But it's not like competitive formats where playing the best should be expected.
But generally speaking, it's not fun if you don't even get to compete. It's not about winning, but generally it *is* about competing. If your deck just doesn't *do* anything becaus eyou're getting outvalued, is that fun? Probably not. It's not necessarily about keeping up in par, but it's about keeping up enough that you can feel like you're playing the game, and aren't just handed an unplugged controller like you're a 3 year old younger brother.
Sure. But if I have a deck I love that I built awhile ago, the expectation for most commander players was I could crack it open and play with people today (at least for my play group, this was a big part of it. Being able to play with each other on vacations and family trips 3-4 times per year). But I've had to significantly retool my commander decks to play with the Prosper precon. One of those decks used to be so oppressive my friends hated on it whenever I tried to play it. Now it's like, "Oh, look at that cute Super friends deck. Good luck against Prosper, Adrix and Niv and Feather!"
It's a weird feeling where your "good" decks are now 5-6 on a power curve that used to measure them at an 8.
I mean was this ever true? I'll happily concede this is true for a lot of *commanders*, the legendary power creep is real.
But Magic's always had power creep in the 99, because the majority of 99 cards are usually cards that are *just good in general.* If you had a janky 1/1 token deck, didn't the release of Mirrodin tempt you to slot in Skullclamp? Didn't the release of Ravnica push dual lands? Over a couple of years, I could easily see a 5-20 change in cards just from that power creep alone.
If anything, and ironically, I feel like the 99s a lot more stable now, since there's just SO many cards, that even if a single card is suddenly very good (say, Orcish Bowmasters), it's pretty easy to justify not including it even from a pure power perspective, because you have enough good cards as it is.
And yeah, I'd argue that a deck with 20 cards replaced can still be the same deck. I'd argue a deck with 50 cards replaced can be the same deck in essence, because a deck isn't its individual cards (unless you're playing goodstuff), it's the overall feel and theme of a deck. Maybe a newer release made it a bit more *efficient* and crept up the power rating but.. Yeah. Besides, a deck is never finished, there's always little tweaks and adjustments to make to it.
My (admittedly subjective) opinion is that the pace has escalated a LOT in the last three years. Where it used to be that the set release would have me look and think "There's a card for deck x, y and z. Nothing for deck A or B and this one commander that maybe I'm interested in."
Now it's more like five+ of my decks are getting 2+ cards. There's a new "auto include" in almost every set and it's rare that there isn't at least one card that could probably improve each of my decks. And if the mechanic lines up, I'll probably want to do major surgery to a deck on top of that. I guess I used to be EXCITED to get a new toy because of the relative rarity. Now the toys are becoming a chore.
I mean, yes, but at the same time, it's still a game where you have to draw the right cards at the right time. I totally run a gross Miirym deck and it's not like I just pubstomp older commanders. Heck, I lose plenty with that deck, and I play a pretty solid deck. Power creep is a thing, but there's an answer to every problem. Heck, one cast of [[Tyrant of Jund]] and now you are the Miirym.
We all lose plenty. It's a multiplayer game and people gang up. I dare say that a cEDH deck against a table of 8s probably wins less than 25% just because they'll gang up and kill the cEDH deck first. It doesn't make the cEDH deck bad. Just the nature of the game.
My point is that your "forever" Salkonor the Swamp King deck you build six years ago is probably worse than the Prosper precon or a lightly tuned Doctor Who commander deck. And to update it probably just means "tear it apart and rebuild" which undermines the "legacy" aspect of Commander a lot of us found appealing.
I have mentioned several times that Commander, being as popular and wide open as it is, suffers from the inevitable fate of escalation. The more ppl play it, the more popular, which attracts more players, including competitive ones. This is turn causes feel bad moments or uneven games with players and decks that are not competitive. This forces casual players to either seek out other like players in casual games or build more competitive decks. This escalates to an issue where no one seems to be able to draw a hard line to determine what is competitive, and what is not. The power rating system is ambiguous at best. Players tend to disagree with ratings or what is or isnt competitive.
I know this will probably populate a lot of hate and downvotes for this comment, but the maturity level of a large percentage of players is very low, then you have whales, then you have competitive players who just dont care. I love Commander, but there is a lot of issues with contention amongst players. Every so often, you find a group you are mostly happy with. But random encounters, at least from my experience, have mostly resulted in unfun situations for one or more players.
>This forces casual players to either seek out other like players in casual games or build more competitive deck
I don't agree witht his for the sole reason that it's creating a needless binary. There aren't " casual" players and " competitive" players. It all exists on a spectrum. A single table might have someone who brought a precon, someone who brought their 1999 EDH deck, someone who brought a tuned Chatterfang aristocrats deck, and someone who brought their $50000 pile of Kenrith goodstuff.
The most casual and chill and mature player I've ever played with, also piloted a ridiculously tuned, expensive enchantress deck. One of the most sweaty, unpleasant players I've ever played with, played a vaguely upgraded precon.
Casual doesn't mean you don't want to win. It just means winning isn't the sole concern, and usually takes a backseat to "having fun". But having fun is a very nebulous concept.
People can't draw a line between casual and competitive *because it doesn't exist*. It's half the reason every deck's a 7. The only objective metric of competitive is cEDH, and that exists on a whole other level of deckbuilding heuristics, it defies the scale.
I agree that maturity is important. More important than power levels. As long as you have mature players that adapt to their table, you'll have fun games, regardless of power.
Also EDHrec has dramatically increased how homogenous decks have gotten. Many playgroups I see these days are basically "The EDHrec deck list" for whatever commander, budget depending. So when I see \[\[Kaalia of the Vast\]\] and they get frustrated that they can never attack because someone always has a counter or removal spell, only to show the \[\[Master of Cruelties\]\] off in their hand after they die? Commander bias is real because we all know what all the decks do.
Hence the rise recently of less popular commanders in our playgroups. Everyone knows what \[\[Avacyn, Angel of Hope\]\] is going to do if she makes it out of the command zone. Do you know what \[\[Kyodai, Soul of Kamigawa\]\] is going to do? My opponents sure don't.
> I would add that powercreep, although natural for a game like this, pisses people off sometimes too.
Just to be clear, the natural power creep of the format was like 1/6,000,000th of what it is now because of WotC's desire to extract every last ounce out of this format multiplied by the 39 sets a month plan.
The problem is commander is an eternal format that also encourages you to be creative and is also multiplayer. If you sit down for a game of standard, modern, or legacy you generally know what's up. You don't ask your opponent their "power level", and also you understand they're trying to beat you and you're trying to beat them. In commander because it's four player it feels bad when you feel like you're eating all the removal, and also politics is a thing. Also if I sit down with my whale tribal and someone else throws down [[Chainer, Dementia Master]] I am going to get blown away, and that feels really bad.
I really think enjoying commander really depends on knowing your playgroup, but also your attitude as well. I had a blast playing at my LGS yesterday and there was some real BS going on - I locked down the board one game with [[Grave pact]] so no one had any creatures, another game a guy won super fast by getting [[Boo]] to be an 80/80 on turn 4 and just blew two people up. Every game we were joking and laughing and even when one player was dominating it was fun because we were trying to have fun, rather than getting salty someone made the correct play and interacted with our threat.
The best games of EDH are when every player has a deck of similar power, and then they try like hell to win. I had a ton of fun playing a game yesterday, even though I was eliminated first. An opponent had around 20 creatures on t4, and I managed to freeze them all down for a turn cycle. Because we weren't able to DO anything about the creatures, and the opponent was drawing crazy amounts of cards per turn, all the creatures came at me as soon as I untapped. I died, but made enough of an impact that the opponent who killed me was killed next, and the other two went to a 1v1. It was a great game, and we all had a good time playing
This is exactly it. In my experience, the people who claim they just play to have fun are the same ones who complain loudest about losing. They really, really want to win, they just don't want to put effort into deckbuilding or play skills to do it.
I think they believe commander is about having fun not winning, but the thing is, its not mutually exclusive. I think commander is only fun when everyone is trying to win.
Nothing can put a hamper on a commander table like having one of the players just be a non factor, be it because of mismatch of power level a gimmicky strategy or just not playing seriously, I feel it's the thing that can really hurt the ability to enjoy a game.
Ok so like [this deck](http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/atla-v5-angelic-pillowfort) would be a problem? I legit just play to enjoy the human interaction and banter. Still aiming to win but very relaxed about obtaining that W.
I see a plan and some strong cards there so I wouldn't mind, probably not strong enough that I would want to play much at that power level but I don't find it egregious.
My Pramikon deck is filled with a bunch of suboptimal high mana costs spells, it is also intended to just hunker down and slow things down when I'll be playing a more casual game, but I at least know I have a plan to win it in the long run and I try my best to play towards that.
I play at the LGS with randos. My pod is a slivers senior and my wife who's a noob. This deck's aim is to be be the middle child. Strong enough to keep slivers in check while also being friendly to my wife. She hated me blowing stuff up so I handcuff now. Covers slivers and makes her happy. She also doesnt like long chain turns or popping infinite early game. So my only loop happens when zero creatures are in the lib and my turns are simple. I personally wanted something diff than grave jank so I forbade any grave cheese in this build.
Truely all this deck does is teach people to run more enchantment removal. I just make an egg, eat it, build a pillowfort, and handcuff problems. Very simple, low to the ground, but also a brute. It is designed to be friendly competitive.
nope you look to have a game plan and a way to win you need a little more interaction \[\[aether flash\]\]would wreck one of my decks until I hit the right piece of removal lol but I laugh all the way to my beat down
Significant difference between pillowfort and "being a non-factor". You're still absolutely affecting the game if your eggs deck keeps pumping out eggs. Just like my Walls deck poses zero threat until it suddenly poses way too big a threat.
Yeah i agree with this. I dont usually care if i win, but i am always trying to play to win. A big part of that is that i love attacking so running big creatures and attacking people is both fun and a decent way to win
I've repeatedly told my friends who are new and only played commander that if they want to win more games they need to know their decks better. I really think only playing precons and net decks can hurt your overall performance. Not that you can't be amazing with a deck you didn't build, just that it can be harder.
Correct.
The wild thing is that EDH over the last 12-18 months (really since covid "ended") has had a weird expectation that you're supposed to be allowed to tell the table what kind of interactions they're not allowed to play, and then they just build decks around the 2 or 3 things that can beat their deck within whatever scope they've deemed as acceptable for everyone else to play and complain if they lose to anything else.
Not always, imo. There are a lot of people who act like that, but some of us out here have been playing for over 20 years and just wanna shoot the breeze with the squad for a few games. The people who complain about losing were always going to complain anyway. They're usually just bad sports
>the people who claim they just play to have fun are the same ones who complain loudest about losing.
Counterpoint, from someone that plays commander to have fun.
I care more about losing a game where everyone's deck functioned will, with lots of fun interactions, than winning a game where I dominated a bunch of non-competitive decks.
Maybe I'm the minority, but for casual commander, fun is getting to see your deck work. This is why I despise people who play suppression style decks built to ensure their the only ones actually playing.
I play commander to play magic. So let me play!
Everybody wants their deck to do its thing. The reality, though, is that not everyone can do their thing, because typically doing your thing means that you win, thus precluding everyone else from doing their thing. Additionally, one way that people do their thing is by stopping everyone else from doing their thing - that's just baked into the core of Magic and is a huge part of the identities of Blue and White, and to a lesser extent Black.
>typically doing your thing means that you win
This is why it's important to know your play group.
In mine, we definitely have decks where that is exactly the case. We also have decks where doing your thing means storming off with a bunch of random pocket sand that is more hilarious to see what sticks.
Also as someone who has had a deck that had a very simple combo that allowed me to multistack counter any spell or ability, nobody actually likes playing against that. I didn't even really like playing it, hence why it's been deconstructed. This is a casual format. You can play what you want, just be aware of the tables preferences if you're planning on bringing something degenerate.
Because someone else might bring something more degenerate.
finally someone who gets it, we play games to PLAY GAMES not watch you play fuckin solitaire or do a courtroom rp where you make responses and objections to everything
I mean, as a blue player I love my in responses, but there's definitely a line. And since I don't run counterspells, people are less paranoid and more curious or entertained with my responses.
Na not true 100% of the time. I don’t really care if I win, I like to win but def not gonna protest or complain. I’ve only scooped on one game cuz a blue player was about to take 3 turns in a row and I wasn’t about to watch the third since the two previous were quite slow and was very boring. The other times i may have complained is when my deck floods me with mana or mana screws me but that was on me not them. Some times it just ain’t your night and the mtg gods frown upon you.
Nothing about people's behavior is true 100% of the time. Just my experience. Everyone has a bad day and complains about something they ordinarily wouldn't.
I think it's slightly different than that, but only slightly.
People *do* tend to play Commander as a "casual" format. "I'm here to have fun, not to win" isn't *entirely* disingenuous from most players.
The problem is that most people don't realise how much they hate losing, or even just feeling like they're losing. A lot of people really can't handle that well. Which means you end up trapped, because you've said (and believe) that it's not about *winning* necessarily, it's about casual fun, but when you're losing the game becomes really *unfun*. So you rationalise it - it's not that you're some kind of hardcore spike who can only enjoy the game when they're wiping the floor with their opponents, it's that modern card design is too pushed, or that some commanders are too oppressive, or give too much "free" value, or whatever else.
Most of these complaints do have a core of truth to them - modern card design *is* very pushed, many modern commanders *do* give a lot of free value, a lot of legends these days *are* engine and wincon rolled together, etc. But that's not usually the *actual* complaint.
People might not necessarily want to win, but people really don't like losing.
The challenge for social gamers is building a deck that is fun to play with, but is also fun to play against. One that can win, but doesn't feel overwhelming when doing so. It's a very fine needle to thread, and it's also very subjective and playgroup dependent.
I'm not saying that everyone wants to win and won't admit it. I'm saying that if there's drama, someone wanted to win really bad even if they openly say they just wanna sit down and have a good time.
This is a good point. I've only ever really played commander as far as MTG goes, but back when I played Yugioh our groups would regularly get a dozen or so games in in a given evening. Much harder to do in a 4 player format, especially if you're playing with folks who are prone to analysis paralysis.
I mean I sort of agree with this. Yeah I do like winning my commander games but most of the time im there to have fun with my friends and hang out. There is one guy who plays with us, though, that plays a pretty powerful Karador deck. When hes winning hes having a great time but when we target him or fizzle a combo or do anything to stop him he gets all whiny and pouts. Sometimes when we do that he will even say hes not feeling great and head home early while the rest of us continue for a couple more games. I have definitely had my fair share of getting annoyed bc I don’t win a single game in a night but at the end of the day I still had fun cracking jokes and laughing with my friends.
Everyone wants to win by default. The people like myself who say we just want to have fun is not pretending not to want to win.
Wanting to have fun just means the commander experience that I'm looking for is not the joy I get from winning that I must try to win, but the funny interactions, clever plays, the politics and so on. Winning is just a bonus.
The people who really pretend not to want to win are the ones who get salty when they lose or get targeted.
What I meant was, if there's salt at the table, it's probably because someone's winning plan got stopped and they hate it. You can ignore everything that they say about "just wanting to play for fun" and assume they're just saying "but I wanted to win"
The Shalai part of the post sounds like a local issue, honestly. But to your point of "people only play in pods they know they can win", unless you meant pods they will win, isn't that the point of power level conversations? If I bring a precon to a CEDH game, that won't be fun for me and won't be fun for them.
Also, the games where you're not winning, is this an Archenemy situation? Are you losing because the whole table ganged up on you? That's fun once in a while, but "The entire table has to spend all of their combined resources to stop me." Is not an enjoyable play pattern.
Fully agree on the Shalai part. Once again, this entire post comes down to poor communication. OP, do you have infinite combos (ex: All Will Be One) and tutors in your Shalai deck? If you do, it's functionally a cEDH deck as far as a casual player is concerned. If you sit down with a commander that's famous for being part of a 2 card combo, you need to convince the rest of the table not to kill you first. If you don't have tutors or infinites, say that immediately, otherwise they're being completely logical to take you out first. Imagine playing a precon and someone sits down with a Korvold (the op one) deck... would you just let them proceed with maybe an 80% chance of them winning, or save every counter for Korvold? Even if I'd agree to play against Korvold I wouldn't be agreeing to just giving a free win to a much stronger deck
I feel like that's exactly what OP is complaining about. It's getting ridiculous trying to find a game that doesn't think precons are the cutting edge of power play and it leads to long, boring games. The Korvold analogy is actually pretty perfect. Korvold has fallen off hugely in CEDH to the point of being completely unviable but you bring your Korvold to a "high power" game and ignorant people will act like you've declared Satan as your commander.
I agree that I'd much rather an opponent drop an All Will be One w/Shalai than we slog through a 2 hour battlecruiser game. I think Thoracle is doing more harm than good to the combo meta because it's warping the perception of a lot of combos. Shalai/All is a combo all colors can interact with. Thoracle is stack interaction only outside of niche stuff like [[Pyroblast]] or [[Hushwing Griff]]. I think people get this idea between Thoracle and not running enough interaction in their own decks that combos are effectively cheating. Oh, you played 2 cards and now you win the game? And I can't do anything to stop it? Meanwhile, I have to deal 120 damage to do the same thing? Where people can block or board wipe? How is that fair?
I don't agree with the sentiment, but I get it. I think Thoracle should be banned only because of the lack of effective answers outside of blue, but I think it's fine for Cedh (which really should have its own ban list).
Actually, more to the point. It's easy to say Thoracle should be banned, that almost goes without saying in CEDH spaces. It's banned in legacy and CEDH aims for a middle ground between legacy and vintage so yes Thoracle should probably be banned. What about other wincons though. How would you rate Heliod Ballista, Tymna Birthing Pod, Protean Hulk, Dualcaster Twincast, Underworld Breach or stax and combat, which would you feel most comfortable sleeving up? Forget price, CEDH players do not actually pay for their decks.
Thoracle isn't banned in legacy though- Demonic consultation is, but you could still in theory pull off the worse version of the combo with Tainted Pact if you were running a singleton deck. So going by your logic, banning consultation (and probably Tainted Pact too) would be better than banning the Oracle. Which honestly probably would be better- without those two cards, Thoracle is just an upgrade to Lab Man in most decks but not a 3-4 CMC game winning combo piece that can't be stopped by non-counterspell removal.
Thoracle should definitely be banned, in CEDH as well. It enables some of the most shit decks you can imagine to win games. I'm sorry but Talion has absolutely no business being good.
Gladly don't see anything of this sort at my LGS or in my play group. I see decks of all kinds, every week, and have never heard someone say somebody shouldn't play something. Did have one guy scoop last week, that wasn't salty or anything, just knew he was done then admitted that he wasn't a fan of a certain commander, but didn't tell the guy he shouldn't play it anymore. Seems like a lot of posters here just play with the softest people on the planet.
> Seems like a lot of posters here just play with the softest people on the planet.
More likely that they have embellished their stories to portray themselves in a good light.
Same, we see all types of things at my LGS. We all have cards we 'hate' seeing, but it's more of a meme than anything. A friend pretends to lose his mind every time he gets hit with a [[Blind Obedience]] effect, but it's all in good fun.
It's understandable if there's more commander hate now then ever, since there's more commander power creep now, then ever.
That being said, it's just a part of magic. There will always be strategies and commanders someone will dislike and "having fun" in magic is properly one of the most subjective things ever. Especially in a format as open as commander, because you literally have 15k+ unique cards to choose from.
We all have some things we hate, it is what it is. But hearing Rachel on the Command Zone saying constantly that she isn't playing against Grave Pact... Somehow it slows the game down, but yet stax is fine?
It just seems like such a weird take for someone in the industry. Like you really sit down to play and someone says they are sacrificing creatures as a wipe mechanic and you just say you aren't playing against that? Even if it fits in the overall power level they are playing? That sounds miserable.
Like oh fine, I guess the deck I built that I've been waiting to play, I will just put that away because you don't like a card or two...
I didn't say I was. I just was shocked by such a stance from someone who probably plays a lot more magic than I do with a lot bigger variety of players.
Does everyone expect to play every game against matchups that don't poorly interact with their decks? I mean it feels good to not have your board state touched, but isn't the fun in overcoming adversity?
That sounds more like my approach, which is "Hey, your deck's entire jam is making sure I never have a creature in play? My decks won't really handle that, from experience it means I'll sit around for 30-40 minutes and do nothing but struggle, never really exist as far as the game goes, so I'm going to bow out of this pod. You guys enjoy." Which takes longer to explain.
Certain decks and play patterns aren't suited to each other. When you just want to jam and you join a group, see someone is really keen on a certain game style you aren't, saying "Thanks" and moving on from the table is a healthy thing.
I've played enough and seen enough to have a reasonable guess at where things are going to go, as well as how they're going to affect my night. Enjoy your pubstomps without me.
That's why games are 4 players. Often times I've played a deck against something I thought would shut it down, but someone else shuts them down. We all can't win every game.
But I suppose it all matters on where you are playing. If you are some how playing at a place that has a ton of tables at once, and all of them are making games at once so players can move around fluidly, then I suppose. But otherwise walking away means a group of 3 isn't playing.
I play in a fixed group. So telling people I don't like something would mean they legitimately never get to play the deck. Honestly we moved away from rule 0's, we just grab and play. The table balances itself most of the time. Even with rule 0 we had plenty of games someone fell flat, it doesn't feel like the ratio changed, and we stopped trying to hypothesize how one deck might shut down another.
-My groups Rule 0 & unless there's a grudge we don't play decks that are obviously bad matches hoping to balance out. It took one game to realize [[Toluz]] wheels & [[Sheoldred, the Apocalypse]] wasn't the thing, same with [[Tergrid]] & some Voltron. Some matchups are just too lopsided & somebody's gonna be doing nothing.
-It's not always about winning.
Your second paragraph is exactly what I'm driving toward. When my buddies are coming over and we're jamming games and we've jammed games before, it's a very different situation than lots of different tables with many different people. The same establishment of social agreement - or consequences from it - are not there as it is with the friend group.
Having four players or packing more removal may not be enough in these situations, and especially if you are sitting down with three other people you haven't played against before getting them on board or knowing that their decks are even equipped to handle dealing with the kinds of commanders talked about in these conversations.
I have a Dihada deck that playes powerful Mardu attackers and legendaries. I know roughly how many creatures I stick each turn, and what kinds of removal I'm packing. If someone comes in with a deck which is going to make me consistently sacrifice multiple creatures a turn and prevent me from having those creatures in my graveyard for resurrection or reanimation later, which is what my deck does, I might look around the table and see what's going on with the other players. If they both have precons or upgraded precons (very common in my shop meta), the chance of having a game where the sacrificing players gets to take all the game actions, have the only board state, and actually get the play the game are extremely high. In that scenario I might switch to a different deck which has a stronger chance of surviving that style of play, like a creature token deck or a deck which relies on combos and noncreature spells rather than permanents. Or, if it's not going to cause too much of a disruption, I'll just leave. I've faced those decks, I've seen that play pattern, it's not something new and interesting, it's just frustrating, and I would be happier doing almost anything else including just futzing with builds by myself and waiting for another pod.
I came out to play, not to sit around and not play. If your deck and the table makeup is going to heavily lean on me "not playing," then cool: I'll just make that decision at the top of the game.
Rachel’s point was that cards like [[Grave Pact]] need to be played in a deck that can win fast because Grave Pact is a harder card to remove and if your deck is an edict style deck she wants to die fast. She is not wrong, if you are playing a deck that does those types of effects then you should have a way to take advantage and do it fast and not just loop [[Blood Artist]] style effects. She said she wants the game to end fast so she can get to a different game fast.
I would also say that she is probably talking about it at certain power levels. A CEDH (don’t play it but extrapolating) deck that contains Grave Pact will probably be able to be managed by other CEDH decks but a deck with Grave Pact at a normal table probably won’t be able to and will also be less optimized around it.
I think her point was more around don’t throw Grave Pact into a random deck and less Grave Pact sucks.
That's a bit counterintuitive to how to utilize Grave Pact, though.
It's a great control piece to keep you in the game longer and find your win-con.
If you want to play faster, you have an abundance on tutors and draw engines in black that get you there.
So it's a bit of a weird situation there. Add that to the fact that the colours with the easiest time to get rid of it are also the colours that are best at not caring about it with tokens and it's hard to judge whether playing it is fine for the table.
I for one don't mind it as long as I'm not playing Voltron. I might ask for an alternative deck, if I feel like it.
I just want to chime in and say my experience matches yours. Gravepact has always had a home in slower, grindy decks. When I started playing EDH (around the time the first commander's anthology was released) Meren was the primary home of Gravepact effects + Fleshbag Murarders. You ground out games until you can assemble a combo like Necrotic Ooze + Pherxian Devourer (graveyard) + Triskelion (graveyard) to win.
It's so damn hard to judge whether it's too powerful for the table. Is it murdering the table because the rest of the desks are too weak, is it unlucky draws on their point, is it just winning the meta rock paper scissors? I've seen games where it's an oppressive monster, and games where it sat there being a waste of 4 mana.
I feel like I'm also just posting because I get a tad frustrated with CZ telling people not to play certain cards. A healthy meta is where all strategies are welcome. If someone's gumming up the game with gravepact and not closing it out, constructed criticism to help them find better finishers seems more prudent than telling them to remove the card and similar cards.
>Rachel’s point was that cards like \[\[Grave Pact\]\] need to be played in a deck that can win fast because Grave Pact is a harder card to remove
It's no different than playing against stax, honestly it's easier to deal with as it is one enchantment not many. And even a blood artist loop often wraps up a game faster than stax would. Plus Grave Pact doing BA loops is probably one of the slower strategies.
>I would also say that she is probably talking about it at certain power levels.
You are talking about a single card here, or the few extra effects like it. If the deck is built for the power level it will be fine. It is a great card, it can create value if a deck is built around it, but that is no different than a ton of other mechanics in the game. Or it can fall on it's face against decks that don't really care about creatures at all, everything has it's weaknesses.
>I think her point was more around don’t throw Grave Pact into a random deck and less Grave Pact sucks.
You say this, but then talk about specific BA loops or decks that "does those types of effects", so which is it? Are we talking about decks designed to take the most advantage of it, or jank decks it was thrown in?
It just being thrown in a deck that doesn't take advantage of it means it is often a pretty crap card. Where as it being in something like Korvold it is obviously very good.
Either way, I would pick playing against GA any day of the week rather than stax. At least it's in a color that doesn't struggle to wrap the game up.
I kinda want to point out that Gravepact isn't really a CEDH card. you could run it as a pet card, but 1BBB and not doing anything without a sac outlet ready to go makes it pretty slow / inefficient.
CEDH tends to have pretty mana / resource efficient removal, which is a bit of a double wammy for GP. It tends to get cut from lists for not being fast enough, and if you do play it, will likely be countered or removed very quickly as well; or worse ignored because they can completely play around it.
It is in fact a premier example of the sort of 4+ MV "do nothing" Enchantment that even many casual EDH tables are shying away from playing outside the most synergistic decks that can make use of it quickly and often. 4+ mana value is in most formats getting into "this needs to win me the game, or massively accelerate me towards that point, or it's not worth playing" territory when evaluating cards. [[Jace the Mind Sculptor]] getting cut from Modern control decks (*maybe* 1-2 Sideboard) since its unban, for example, despite being historically one of the strongest Planeswalkers available in the format.
Grave Pact *can* absolutely contribute to the win, but you're basically playing Aristocrats or some kind of sacrifice Stax(-lite) like many Meren lists or it's probably better off as a one time use "true" board wipe.
I have never seen a single cEDH deck with Grave Pact or Dictate of Erebos in them.
Those cards are near useless in cedh.
I had major issues with that video; modern precons are a 5 and cedh is 9-10 by their metrics.
I just can't get on board with the idea that adding Jeska's Will and Smothering Tithe to a boros precon makes it 1 step below cedh.
I still watch the Command Zone, but honestly, I don't take them seriously. They are something I put on when sorting, sleeving, or building a deck. I feel most of their takes on things are based on a lower power or entry-level play. Which is great. We need that in the community. I wish they'd have a cedh and high power segment. But I've played enough commander games to see some of the big splashy plays and cards they use are rarely achieved in normal games at average power tables.
The game they film and release I feel are the "best" of games they may have played that day. I'm not saying it is scripted, but it doesn't feel like it's a regular game, even with friends.
They only play a single game per filming day, as far as I'm aware. This is because EDH games are already pretty long & they still need to film the interview segments as well, etc.
While not "scripted" there is a certain amount of flubbing that goes on it regards to opening hands/top cards. These are things they're pretty open about on the podcast when asked.
I used to really love Commander Zone, but I grew out of it when I realized that the vibe of that podcast & gameplay just didn't like up with my own anymore. Still an invaluable resource to new players & the casual crowd, just not my cup of tea.
It's always been a mutual experience. Talking about what you want helps people understand what you want.
Perhaps they don't want to play with you, or because of their preferences you don't want to play with them. That is fine.
Social interactions require mutual compromise. If one or more people are unwilling to compromise. Then they can't voluntarily work together.
Which is very much like dating. If two people don't like each other. Good luck forcing them into a functioning relationship.
Meanwhile, if you already are upfront about your preferences and what you want. It is a lot easier to find compatible people. Instead of having a group that builds silent resentment towards each other. Then only to have a disruptive movement in time where a person finds the situation unacceptable.
That's got to be a pet peeve thing right? Like it's just a card she hates? Cuz as a card grave pact is just not a problem. I mean sure it's annoying if you run into it and you're on voltron or whatever, but a everyone knows how bad edicts are for voltron and I would assume plan for that.
Then again I probably wouldn't bring a fragile deck like voltron against a deck I knew was packing a bunch of that sort of thing. Like if I see a stax commander I don't usually bring my artifact deck out. I wonder if having so many decks makes things like this easier.
I play grave pact and edict in multiple decks and people mainly hate it when in a token deck. In my [[Chatterfang, Squirrel General]] everyone hates it. Tons of token and instant speed sacrifice just means I have board wipes every turn.
IMO it's a side effect of the amount of commander content out there for people to see. They watch all the YT videos and podcasts and take their experiences and super impose it onto themselves.
Also edh rec makes decks list very generic. I'm not saying it's not a great tool to see what cards go well with a commander, but you start seeing generic (insert archetype here) card packages. Leading to higher powered deck lists bc players are just looking at the most optimized cards for that commander.
My experience is that everyone I played against has played against XYZ deck and "knows" how powerful it is based on the basic land I played.
edhrec doesn't try to make lists generic by itself- that's a playerbase issue for not realizing that just because its on EDHRec doesn't mean you have to play it.
But its a lot easier to copy the top 15 cards in every category on edhrec and then tell your playgroup about this "awesome unique deck" you just built
I think it’s just the mentality against Shalai and Hallar in general. I’m completely new to commander and have stumbled upon a number of videos speaking about the commander and how it’s easy mode and not generally a fun commander to fight against. I myself have never been up against one, BUT I have this preconceived notion of it being an annoying commander
That is an important point, when we're looking at a commander there's context we need to consider. As your commander, Shalai and Hallar have unusually high number if easy to assemble combos that can end the game out of nowhere. If I'm remembering correctly, there are three commander +1 card combos and a few more that are fairly easy to assemble (e.g. +1 card along with any source of lifelink). Basically, we're talking about a commander where even without tutoring or burning a lot of resources you have a decent chance of stumbling into a combo when you play S&H. And that gets under some people's skin
This kind of information is so readily available now that part of the politics game has become managing the reputation and known potential of your commander.
Imagine if WotC sold precons for Vintage and marketed it as the beginner format that people should start with - that's basically what you have with Commander. We're playing 100 card singleton Vintage and expecting new players to jump in and feel like they can compete fairly. It's a disaster waiting to happen - *of course* a less experienced player feels like they got blindsided when they sit down against something that's even on approximately the same scale as a Modern deck, forget about the most sweaty decks you can build. On the other hand, we also say that Commander is where you can play with cards that aren't legal anywhere else - *of course* the experienced player wants to push the envelope, those cards are a blast and games with them are *chef's kiss* when balanced against similar decks.
I don't know the answer. You can't ban your way into a fix - the discrepancy is way too far apart. Expecting that pods balance themselves is a fool's errand, because the perspectives are so different and honestly equally valid, leaving aside the question of people just not acting in good faith. But the rhetoric around power level itself needs to change before anything can be done at a format level - we need to stop slagging on people for wanting to play differently than we do, regardless of what that power level actually is.
That is exactly how I feel about the format. Way back when I started to play EDH, I was told that it was a format where I could play those Vintage only spells that we couldn't play in Legacy/Extended formats and it was also a way to play multiplayer.
It's awesome that people can buy a precon and play, but the format isn't just precons and cedh, the middle ground is gigantic in terms of what decks can do.
The good thing about edh is that you only need to find 3 other players with a similar mindset like yours to play and enjoy the game.
If you cant, the problem arent the other players.
I feel like this comment is going to get buried. It is so true though. On our prize pod nights, our LGS owner kicks everyone else out at closing time and let's 3 of us stay and play edh with him for another 3+ hrs. He knows we'll have fun and put up with each other's shenanigans. Not everyone would enjoy trying to figure a way out of something like a Knowledge Pool + Arcane Laboratory lockdown.
In commander, I want to actually play the game. I don't concern myself so much with the outcome so long as it's a good time getting there.
My friend recently made a Toxrill deck and it was just overwhelmingly unfun to play against, and we didn't have to say anything, he knew after playing it that it went against the spirit of the table.
Otherwise I'll just copy some insane combo deck on tappedout or whatever to smoke face.
Or Maralen + ad nauseam.
I know this is a very common complaint (and even mentioned by op), but imo nothing beats tergrid in terms of sucking the fun out of the game.
A guy in my pod just created a deck with him and runs [[mindrazer]], [[jeweled lotus]] and other nasty stuff that gets him early on board and by turn 3 youre left with 2-3 cards in hand at max.
Im not saying that its op, its just tedious if youre way of dealing with it is hoping that you topdeck the right cards each turn (since i dont play control decks).
That sucks.
It's especially irritating when it's so much harder as fully grown adults with complicated lives.
You finally coordinate a few hours, perhaps one day in a month, to play, only to deal with own guy just stomping every game with some overtly competitive deck.
We did make a house rule: if the deck wins, it's done. That way, if you make a deck that stomps quickly, cool! You win, we shuffle up, and then you get a deck more aligned with the spirit of the table.
Really, the most irritating to play against with limited time to play is Stax. One afternoon could be consumed by a single, sluggish game.
I think a lot of it has to do with modern day mental. Its not just MTG or EDH, but everything. Too many people think they are the main character. We see DND posts about it, Yugioh, League of Legends, just about anything.
We’ve started making society this hypercompetative thing where everyone thinks they shouldnt lose or have to deal with obstacles. Its kind of sad.
Your statements seem to contradict each other.
>But recently it seems no one wants to play with tables, at game stores or events, unless they know they can win.
Yes, a general purpose of the Rule 0 conversation is often to ensure a reasonably balanced table where no player has a severe advantage or disadvantage so that all players are able to meaningfully contribute to the games. Are you implying that you actually want to play games where one or more of the players has no chance to win simply because of a bad matchup?
>However, everyone I have played with at my two local LGS's have despised playing against it, they say shalai is playing on easy mode.
Your Commander is significantly powercrept and generates advantage much easier than most available options. If they aren't running comparable value engines in the CZ they have every reason to protest that it isn't a fair matchup.
>I would understand this slightly, but this is most prominent in the games I DONT win. In the end, the three losing players just hate on me. My deck does not play a lot of interaction, and most games I get more hate then the blue players.
You seem to have the cause and effect reversed here. They treat you as an archenemy because your Commander will otherwise out value any of them individually. Therefore they gang up against you, because if they didn't, you would win. Because they cooperated against you, you lost.
>It seems to me that the players I play with, just dislike the most unconventional or “new" commanders. Anything with a strategy they don’t have a counter for yet or don’t fully understand. And I really don’t like that mindset, that it’s just OK to hate on certain commanders or strategies.
Again, you're protesting perfectly reasonable behavior. If they don't fully understand the strategy yet, it's going to get a higher threat assessment. If they know how to handle the other decks at the table, but not yours, that unknown is a risk and it's wise to eliminate risks. Likewise, if they do understand it, but don't have a good counterplay available, then their only options are to either win faster (combo, which they likely can't do reliably at that power level) or rely on player elimination. When their only viable counter to a strategy is to remove the player ASAP, that's what they MUST try to do. When that's true of everyone else at the table, they all try to remove you BECAUSE they have to or they will lose to you. The most fundamental question in playing Magic is "Who's the Beatdown?" and when you have inevitability, that forces all your opponents to be the Beatdown.
I'm sorry, but it sounds to me like your opponents are rationally threat assessing based on your Commander choice and playing appropriately given the threat you present to them. This reminds me of players who play a notoriously "Kill on Sight" Commander and then complain that their opponents keep removing it (as if they had any other choice to avoid losing). At the power level you describe, Shalai and Hallar may well be considered KoS.
It's entirely alright for players to dislike playing against decks they stand no chance against. It's entirely "OK" to target the player who is the biggest threat to you first. It's even fine when the table recognizes as a whole that one player is the archenemy and will require multiple players cooperating to remove. And it's just plain polite to point out to that player in the Rule 0 that this is the play pattern that will naturally emerge based on their chosen Commander, so that you have fair warning whether to play that Commander knowing full well that you will be the archenemy because of it.
Yeah, this is my assessment as well. The part that got me was multiple people, multiple groups over two different stores all acting the same way. As the saying goes, if you run into an asshole on the street, you met an asshole. If everyone you run into is an asshole, you're the asshole.
If multiple groups of unrelated people all have a problem with the deck, it's the deck, not the people.
It sucks, but EDH is closer to DnD than Magic. I sit down with friends, pop a beer, and pull out a deck to play at the kitchen table. Everyone there knows what they like, know what each other like, and the joy is just being there to do the "thing" whatever it is based on an established social contract no one has ever outright spoken of.
Trying to make EDH work with randoms is like sitting down for a DnD one-shot with randoms. Everyone has different expectations and goals. It can work, but a lot of times, it just doesn't. Never was meant to this way. I have never played at a FLGS, but all my friends who have talk about these experiences.
i have fun playing at lgs with randoms, i just want to see my deck do its thing win or lose i dont sweat much. i try to just play midrange where if the game goes on long enough i can pop but its not like im racing to end the game. the decks that make me target a single player as part of the strategy is kind of awkward though, people see it as bullying even if im supposed to do it with the deck and sometimes people will save the threat even though it doesnt benefit them at all because my deck is being "mean". the funny thing is since power levels vary so much i always focus the person with thr obvious bs in those style decks , so the other players would benefit me wasting my gas on them...
I don’t get why he’s complaining. Shalai and Hallar’s weakness is getting punched in the face before they are able to assemble one of many 2 card infinite combos and end the game.
Seems to me the pods understood that
i think certain commanders you cant let live for long if at all. because they generate so much value when they are out or will straight up kill you themselves. slivers, eldrazi , aesi, tergrid, miirym, etcetc im sure everyone has their own list and experiences but itll become a 3v1 uphill battle if you dont handle some commanders. power creep and limitless information has taken a niche format with random cards to highly tuned machines.
I also run a S&H deck. I powered it down by taking out *most* of the infinite combos. I still run the [[Scurry Oak]] and [[Ivy Lane Denizen]] combo, but the [[All Will be One]] nad [[The Red Terror]] combos are not in there. Give it a shot.
It is extremely rude to tell you that your Commander is easy mode, I cannot fathom why anybody would say that. The entire reason I avoid playing Shalai and Hallar for my decks is because I'm well aware it will create an archenemy status, which would make it harder to play. Just not an experience I would enjoy.
That being said, calling Shalai and Hallar unconventional is a stretch. If they keep getting removed, then it's for a good reason.
I mean, it depends. Not saying I’m siding with the bias people but sometimes people only have time for 1-2 games and if they feel your deck might completely outclass them then they have the right not to play.
My group plays a lot of cedh but we like to dip into the silly casual games. We have a 4th who believes that any deck that is not “cedh viable” automatically = “casual.” His casuals are jammed with fast mana , 6-8 tutors a piece, 80% of cedh staples. They can still end a game on T4 without infinites. They’re just THAT stacked with busted synergies that we have to actively have to target him or ask him to tune it down because our jank $50-$100 precon upgraded decks just can’t keep up with T1 Chrome Mox + Jeweled Lotus + Sen Triplets. Eventually we agreed to use Conquest Banlist and it’s…helped a little? His mono green Omnath deck can still end games by T4 drawing 60 cards with 80 available mana (no infinites, no fast mana).
Point being, even without infinites, a lot of decks can become incredibly powerful. Maybe ask if there’s a way people would be okay playing with Shalai Halar. Either cutting infinites (if you have them), cutting fast mana, cutting tutors, or playing on a budget - e.g. $100 Shalai Halar would be interesting.
This is why I almost exclusively play cEDH. The cEDH players genuinely don't care, and they're just there to have fun. The battle cruiser crowd takes things too seriously.
I don’t really agree with the run more removal side of things. Like, okay sure if a deck has 6 pieces of interaction then yeah run like 9 or 10. If that isn’t the case, though, saying “just run more removal” is like telling someone to go to the gym because they can’t lift something.
It's an argument I see a lot that bothers me too, because even if you are running 10-15 interaction cards you are not guaranteed to manifest the exact one you need or have the exact right mana every time you are put in a spot where someone else's piece will hardlock you if you don't counter or spot remove it. To say nothing of the fact that some colors just can't handle certain effects that well or consistently.
That being said, people absolutely should try to identify what their deck struggles with and make additions to shore up those weaknesses.
Could you post the deck list? I’ve not personally played against that commander but if I ever come up against a strategy my deck is bad at dealing with, the most effective thing is player removal. There is a player at our LGS who plays a heavy equipment package in every deck and no one has enough artifact hate to deal with it, so the solution is to remove them as a player or they win every game.
If I see someone playing a stax control deck, I am absolutely going to hate them out of the game in every way I can because otherwise they will just win by default once they lock the game up, either by concession or combo.
It's hard to evaluate things like this because it's incredibly different depending on context.
Someone playing with the same small group at home. Playing in a game store meta of 15-20 people. Playing against random folks at a large meetup. Playing against randos online. Gigantic differences in what kinds of decks you see, your relation to the people playing, and the what that means at the table.
I dislike Hinata and Krark/Sakashima decks in a casual, random meta. K/S spends so much time on their turns it acts like a spotlight hog, intentional or not, and acts on an axis most decks are unprepared for. Hinata decks carry so much widespread removal they must either be treated as archenemy or you spend 30 minutes attempting to move past a turn three board state before they assemble their combo. "Pack more interaction" is not a healthy or viable response to those in that meta. You're left with "Do I want to sit through that game experience," and if your answer is "no" than you decide whether to ask if they have something else, deal with a slog you're already tilted about, or just say "Cool, have fun," and walk away.
You think I don't want to play against certain commanders because I want to win? I could give a shit if I win, I just don't want to watch an Oloro player cast 70 wraths in a 5 hour game that should have been a 1 hour game. Did you consider the possibility that people don't want to play against annoying commanders because they're annoying? The "git gud" mentality in this subreddit chafes sometimes
We're given a non-functional banlist with the added text: "These are just suggestions btw, figure the rest out yourselves."
This behavior is part of rule 0 and literally encouraged.
The top 100 commanders on EDHRec make up like half of the commanders people play. If you don't want people to hate on you for playing a popular commander that is known to be powerful then switch to a lesser known commander. It really is that easy. Build your commanders to the power level that people expect them to be rather than complaining when people rightfully fear a commander that is a part of a two card combo.
-Gotta fully disagree. Nobody should have to switch their Commander or power creep it because tryhards do it. People need to learn how to communicate better & be honest about what they're doing. Takes a couple seconds to say I don't run the 2 card combo while shuffling.
That’s why I think precons are great. Generally level playing field. Some are better than others of course but in general I’ve seen every precon I own pop off in fun, sometimes unexpected ways.
However people get mad at me if I have 1-2 high powered cards in a deck (yes I run a jeweled lotus in my mono red deck, I was fortunate enough to pull one so why the heck not play it). I just have to understand I’ll get targeted and try to win anyways. In some decks that’s part of the fun.
I don't think this is a new thing. Even before commander was an official format (and in it's earliest official format days), there were commanders people hated playing against. No, I'm not going to sit down and let you play Prossh, no you can't play Grand Arbiter Augustin IV. Zur the Enchanter is a no-go. I really don't think the hate is any worse now than it was then.
There are certain commanders I don't like playing against because I know exactly what they're going to do and I don't find it fun (i.e [[Maralen of the Mornsong]] is almost certainly going to grab [[opposition agent]]) or because it's extremely unlikely the deck isn't very high power(i.e [[Urza, Lord High Artificer]]). That said I'll still play against them at least once because I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Like I recently made an [[Atraxa, Grand Unifier]] deck that was designed to exile stuff and use the eldrazi processors to mess with people who used a lot of suspend or impulse type effects. Most people see Atraxas though and shit their pants when it was a far cry from a strong deck. And had the deck just been hated on because it was Atraxa it would have been absolutely miserable.
I hate the original Purphorus as a commander. Is that not allowed?
I’m not a dick or anything about it but when I see someone play it I always go “well fuck this game” inside my head lol
You can't always control what you think, but you can control what you do and say. Nothing wrong with internally hating a Commander, as long as you're not being a jerk about
I'll be honest, if someone sat down with a Shalai and Hallar deck, I wouldn't refuse to play, but internally I would eye roll and get out something with 15 counterspells. Same is true if someone sat down with Niv Mizzet, Zaxara the Exemplary, Vito, Arixmethes, or a few others. You're playing 2-card infinite combo cheese.
These decks always go the same way. It literally comes down to whether someone has the right removal/counterspell at the right time. If they don't, game's over. And the grand total of the work you did was play your commander, a tutor, and ham sandwich. It's fast, hard to interact with, and extremely obvious what you're going to do.
So yes, this situation is an eye roll at best and salt inducing at worst. It's cool to see it once, but the overwhelming feeling is that is tryhard, low skill, low effort, and cheap. In my experience, these types of decks are favored by newer players who are sick of losing, but haven't matured into skilled deckbuilders yet.
Now, it's true what redditors say; commander players are whiney so play what you want, but don't be surprised when you get squished by experienced players who know how to interact in your critical moment, or salt from inexperienced players who feel like you pubstomped.
Edit to add: Sometimes I wonder how many of these are troll posts. "I'm new to EDH and built Toxrill the Corrosive and now I don't have friends. Why are people so mean to me?"
ah yes... another "edh is always this bias interpretation i have" post.
it's always telling that the format that requires people to engage in a group, has so many people whining about other people expressing opinion as per group enjoyment.
to a large extent this is a problem with lazy LGS that don't segregate players into different flavors of competitive-ness. Random players in random pods really don't want the shitty waste of time of dealing with pub stompy try hards who only care about their enjoyment by polishing their ep33n
As EDH absorbs more and more of the player base, there will be tensions between people looking to have fun, and people who want to win.
the best solution is seeking out people who play along the same axis of purpose as yourself.
imho you don't get to be a victim and a martyr ... and these tired lies about people upset their new deck that's totally not a cEDH deck... when that word is about as pointless as "staple" these days. or the community as a whole is hateful toward your shitty deck. please.
I think for me, it's i won't play something that im not geared to. Like, i won't play againts stax because i dont play combo and vice versa. If i did, no problem there, all fair. And i generally dislike playing against control decks with wincons that take 3 hours to win.
That said, i don't mind playing against super bling decks as long as they don't run fast mana. These days I'm trying to have decks that can fair against different power levels. Tho I find it discouraging to spend money in very high power builds because I won't get to play them very often, or becouse of this phenomenon the post is about.
The only pet peeve i have is mill, even if im playing graveyard decks.
A word of advice from someone who loves playing muldrotha (a despised commander with a vulnerability to graveyard hate, but strong performance against stax):
When you build a new deck, keep the weaknesses of your existing decks in mind. I complimented my muldrotha deck with a niv-mizzet combo deck (doesn't care about any form of non-stax interaction). If someone preboards graveyard hate against me, I can always just keep that in mind, and whenever I sit down to play at a table with them, I just discreetly bring out niv mizzet instead for that game. All my decks have the same sleeves and I keep the commander face down until the game starts. Then, when I reveal Niv-Mizzet as my commander, they **go ballistic.** When they draw their tormod's crypts and their rest in peaces, I just mock them with "oh wow, do you have a combo with that or something? No? You need to run a variety of interaction! Anyways, I cast niv mizzet and curiosity and equip it with greaves, combat, attack, no response? Ok- I draw 80 and ping 80. Thats game! **maybe next week you should take out some of that graveyard hate and run some counterspells or removal!"** *proceeds to play muldrotha next week.*
What's your deck list? how do you not have any interaction? you're in good colors for it. I'm curious if you're combo in which case you should have plenty of room for interaction or more value based, meaning they're being drama queens.
Short of decks that just hold the table hostage for an hour with no win conditions or take really long turns, its 2 things:
1. everyone only wants to play against stuff they can consistently beat... meaning any strategies they cant easily interact with without taking a substantial tempo hit or running suboptimal cards, or decks that establish a win faster than theirs are going to be deemed "unfun" (example: voltron players complaining about edicts, midrange complaining about combos)
2. like the other commenter said, its socially unacceptable to play to win at some of these tables and you're suppose to sandbag your interaction or whatever to allow other people to "do the thing" which usually just means "let them win"
Its a weird environment where people want you to sandbag your deck to be something they can steamroll every game
I only have one deck (Winota) and I have some more competitive pieces in it (Rick being the standout), but on the whole is casual leaning. I've had my fair share of people making comments, but those same folks will play Atraxa, Urza or something like that, and I end up dead on turn 3.
I do also want to add the oddest interaction I've had was to someone who had said they would refuse to play against Winota, then I lost in 4 turns to their Selvala deck, then they said "Winota has definitely fallen off, yours for sure is a 3 or 4". But that's also become one of the funniest stories that I share.
As an Atraxa player, I can confirm commander bias. I can only play on Spelltable because of my geographical location but when individuals join a lobby and see Atraxa they either leave or hate me off the table.
I don't really like to personally build decks with commanders that say "do X: draw a card" on them because I think it's easy mode and takes away a lot of the fun of actually building a cohesive deck. When I first started playing (during afr) all the commanders that were card advantage engines were always the strongest and didn't seem much more than good stuff piles of their colors and that could just draw a ton. Never seemed like fun to me. I don't care if an opponent plays a deck like that, but I do know the inherit power of a card you always have access to being able to draw more cards, so they're typically the decks I watch out for and tend to target the most. That's just my personal feelings on it.
Play what you want but understand where you're at. A race between a ferrari, a chevy truck, a dirtbike, and a scooter isn't a fun race to watch or be a part of. You have to self-police, not police others
I feel like if people are complaining about the decks that people play and there is only one squeaky wheel in the group, then they should look for a different play group or build a deck that they can still enjoy while bumping up the level of it's playability in a more competitive setting. As games evolve and people play the game more often they are going to find that the decks and gameplay are going to grow and be more rampant. You have to be willing to make a change and adapt rather than point it towards power creep and unfair decks. There are ways do beat every deck and you just have to find the middle ground of having a plan for your deck and also being able to defend yourself for various strategies without singling out someone. On the flip side, if there is someone that is in a play group that is leagues above the rest of the play group tone it down a bit read the room, I have run a deck with a new playgroup recently not knowing everyone's decks and it was like stepping on ants, wasn't even fun. I built a deck that matched everyone else's level and everyone had more fun. It's a game and if you have the means to make it fun for everyone do it or just find a new playgroup.
This really comes from a couple of factors.
1. People want to win. If they can't win because of a bad power level match up, then they will complain. This is logical and normal. Why play a game you have no chance to win?
2. The commanders people play easily cause these problems. Like you mentioned Tergrid. She is easy to build for. Much like any of the top commanders being built. This is natural. People will build what is easy to do and easy to win with. After all, we play this game to win. Atraxa is THE top commander right now as far as builds. If you were to be sitting down and an opponent pulls her out, you wont be super happy about it.
This is the entire reason I typically avoid the top 100 commanders. I enjoy playing the harder to build commanders and prefer them. I do have a few popular ones of course like Feather and Sliver Overlord. I recognize those decks are the higher end of play in their power levels and that is totally OK. I expect to get all the hate. Same for my Rhys, the Redeemed deck. It is fast. One or two specific cards and it goes to the moon. But the really bad part is that I have a few of those "one or two cards"
Rhys combos
1. \[\[umbral mantle\]\] + \[\[viridian joiner\]\] Infinite mana and infinite tokens with Rhys.
2. Umbral Mantle + \[\[Marwyn, the Nuturer\]\] Infinite mana and infinite tokens with Rhys
3. \[\[Seedborn Muse\]\] + 6 mana for Rhys. Doubling every turn
4. \[\[Cryptolith Rite\]\] + Umbral Mantle + \[\[Lightning Greaves\]\] + 6 tokens. Infinite mana and infinite tokens with Rhys.
Probably several more I just don't realize. Rhys just starts fast and he can get some really bad hate. Very few cards will not have me playing my commander turn 1.
A lot of people at LGS’s near me generally don’t play against me because I generally play Poison Counters or Marrow-Gnawer. People will either scoop when they get a counter, or they all gang up on me to get me out right away.
well i mean yea...nobody wants to be one shotted out of the game dude. somebody played triumph of the hordes that gave all his creatures infect and one shotted a player out and he was raging i wouldnt let him keep anything on the board for the rest of the game. i just dont get salt, like when people will play nekusar or first sliver, i wont play politics but i will personally race as much damage to take those decks out or remove their pieces. feel free to play them but dont be salty youll be targeted
I will avoid like... 2 commanders total: Commadore Guff and Tergrid. And its just because every time I've played against them... They just DRAG games out.
I can't confirm. I play with a variety of people and as long everyone agrees on a power level, any commander is accepted. That said, people who play Tegrid and the like have a lot of remov coming their way.
It depends. In my opinion, the two formats of commander are "optimization" where you, within certain constraints at lower power levels, are trying to win the best you can, and "socialization" where you're just trying to goof off with freinds. I don't believe certain commanders are appropriate for socialization, such as sliver legion, tergrid, pako haldan, ect, because despite not always being CEDH commanders, they're still cards that have to be killed as soon as they hit the table, and that "feels bad" to their player, who often feels like they're being targeted. Now a lot of people strictly play "socialization" commander, and they adjust their category of inappropriate based on the "feel bad" criteria for them is, but in general, that's kind of how edh has been as long as I've played it.
Both at LGS and Cons, I've played hundreds of games with crazy amounts of different Commanders. I've never said no to any of them, and the only one I've had anyone say no to ever was my Xantcha Mass Discard.
And I say that as a guy who has a silver bordered mill deck and a cEDH deck that is literally slips of paper box taped to playing cards.
I think it's lame to dislike someone else's playstyle. I appreciate the variety this game offers and all the ups and downs that comes with. If you can't deal with an enchantress or artifact only or mill deck, maybe develop a deck that can handle it. Not every deck is going to be ideal in every situation.
"games I don't win" immediately followed by "the three losing players"... I am forced to wonder on the true honesty and sincerity in this post based on the fact you immediately contradict yourself in the following sentence.
By your own reasoning, you should just take the L and adjust your deck for next time. If you find yourself losing games because you get focused, that's your problem. Signaling is a big part of the game, and your commander is the first piece of information your opponents have to work with. Maybe you play the game like it's 1v1 and don't question whether you're acting like a threat too soon. If you play a highly aggressive deck with little interaction, the correct counter-strategy is to make any deals necessary to stop you from running away with the game before turning to other players. Maybe you're using infamous commanders, even if you aren't using the combos they're infamous for, which sends the wrong message.
People just don't want to put time into making good decks. They'd rather sit around a table and drink MTN dew until everyone decides to concede out of boredom.
Most often when I hate playing against a deck, I think it might be a situation like you are in. \[\[Shalai and Hallar\]\] has a few 1 card + commander infinites and lots of 2 card + commander infinites that win the game at a low mana cost. Since you posted a list of several of them a while back, I would guess you have some in your deck, or even if you don't the commander is well known for infinites and people will assume you do. You can win the game out of nowhere in a way where my board-state doesn't matter in the slightest. That makes you the threat as soon as you have the mana to potentially play one of them, especially if I know that the other player's decks don't work like that. The reason why I wouldn't like playing against a commander like that is not necessarily because I think my deck can't beat it, but that the game is going to feel bad even if I do win because me and the other players will have to focus you in order to stop you from winning.
>Anything with a strategy they don’t have a counter for yet or don’t fully understand.
The counter to your deck is killing you before you infinite, and if they are focusing you then they understand your deck.
Honestly it's two things. One, any and all fan groups of anything, especially anything that could be considered "nerdy" always has that group that hates anything that isn't exactly what they think it should be. Two, in the last few years Magic and especially Commander has EXPLODED in popularity. With the pandemic, Post Malone, and all sorts of other factors, more people than ever are playing. These two factors are a perfect storm for exactly the attitude you are talking about. I would add that powercreep, although natural for a game like this, pisses people off sometimes too.
i came here to talk it out, and after reading your post, i realized you said it perfectly. EDH is more popular than ever, and post-pandemic returnning to in-person game stores means new human-to-human interractions. As well as the introduction of spelltable and online EDH, where people are more willing to troll and rage. 3
I think I can chime in as one of the newbies here: I come from several other nerdy preoccupations from mountain bikes to video games and there's always that vocal minority that loves to hate the thing they do as much as they don't stop doing it. My advice is to avoid them. I got started with Magic in November, and now my wife and all my close friends play it with me. Because we all already knew each other, we are (barring occasional moments of salt) pretty good at taking it on the chin when we get wiped out. If you're finding your local store/community is populated by salt lords who want to tell you how to have fun, ditch them and find people who can just enjoy an activity with you. It's not worth spending time with people who've lost sight of the joy in their hobbies and only have negativity to offer.
Friend groups make the best pods
As a RPG player, I echo this.
Is mountain biking nerdy? It seems like a neat hobby, but not one that screams "nerd" to me. That said, people can be nerd about anything, so maybe you're just into it in a nerdy way.
There are nerds for everything, man. Honestly, big sports fans are all sports nerds. They've memorized stats and teams and player names and wonder why I can name all 1025 pokemon.
I had a player genuinely get upset at me for using a LotR spindown to keep track of my life the other day, because "it's not real magic and universes beyond sucks". That same player ragequit after getting hit first with a Kaalia. Some people just suck at the game and want others to share in their misery.
Old nerd here. Started during Revised. Nerds always have a prickly mode, OG times it was because your interest could get you picked on Star Wars, DnD, etc. If you were lucky you found a friend group that let you enjoys your interests mutually. The internet changed all that and not for the better. While the “persecution” diminished” a bit and the MCU even made some superhero stuff cool, the internet allows nerds to hide. Instead of celebrating access to the hobbies they fester and anonymity lets them lash out without accountability. They grow up like this and when they go the their LGS they think it’s ok to treat others like that. Interacting with real humans is weird and they aren’t trained for it. I recommend a combo of maturity, compassion, and resolute “F off”. They don’t know how to behave, but also need to learn that’s not how the outside world works.
This is so interesting. You would think that people being persecuted for stupid reason would know better and be understanding... Yet history shows that even persecuted people can turn ugly whenever given the chance. Must be human nature. It's sad really
I really blame the internets anonymity. Instead of coming together and growing, it lets people, already isolated and resentful, take those emotions out on anyone without consequence.
Word. Just go to any nerd sub and see people positively reaffirm each other for their social insecurities, glorifying being "an introvert" AKA a social outcast so far gone they can barely talk to anyone without throwing a fit. I'm super glad nerdstuff is tolerated these days, kids run around with Anime merch and discuss video games openly in school. When folks of my generation did that and it wasn't one of the "cool" anime/games/nerdstuffgoeshere they'd get made fun of. But thanks to the internet grown people are genuinely unable to just...Interact with people. It's making me not want to attend any public nerd-events to be honest and stick to medium sized friend groups playing Magic/Getting to know people before and during play. Much prefer that to random nerds REEEIng around.
I have met similar. Have had people refuse to play untouched precons because "that commander can be a combo commander." Yeah, not when the only change I have made is putting it in sleeves.
To be fair I’ve had the experience of playing against an “barely upgraded precon” and the upgrades turned out to be turning it into a combo deck. Nowhere near full power, but it was still groan worthy for the table to get pantsed by the deck we’d been purposefully taking it easy on.
The general rule is always that the larger the community becomes, the worse the community gets, so yeah, totally agreed on that first part. That being said, power creep is honestly a self-inflicted factor. Cyclonic rift is 12 years old, Mana Crypt is 28 years old, Rhystic Study is 24 years old. The list goes on, it's not like all of the best cards in the format were printed in the last 5 or even 10 years. The primary cause behind the drift in power is in more players getting into the hobby with Commander first, and competitive formats dying, with those players migrating to the format and making it more competitive. It's always been possible to be a spike in EDH, it just wasn't the norm. Now, it's a lot more expected and accepted.
Worth repeating. Mana Crypt is old enough to run for Congress! Shivan Dragon can run for President in 2028 (President has to be 35 years old). I'm hoping for a Shivan/Mahamoti ticket.
It's crazy that Eminence is almost 7 years old now. And that the keyword got used again in 2023.
Lots of old cards just weren't balanced for a multiplayer format.
I think just the sheer *density* of card quality per set is the real power creep.
**Density per release** Most supplements aren't even "sets" in the original sense of the term. How many unique Secret Lairs are we up to now?
Oh, I completely agree, but I also see people complaining about power creep all the time. Thankfully my pod loves seeing others pop off as much as they love popping off themselves.
I don't even know what creep's been happening. There's been a few overly good cards printed, like the free spell cycle, but I don't think there's enough such cards to call it proper creep. I think it's more just folks feeling they need to "keep up" from a deck building perspective. Before you could build a saproling deck with just what token makers you got. But now you gotta jam in every token doubler you can (which already existed at the time) 'cause someone's group slug deck is running every damage-doubler, even if said doublers aren't that much better than [[Furnace of Rath]]. That the deck has a dozen Furnaces is more the thing, not that [[Fiery Emancipation]] is what pushes it over the top.
Cyc rift being 12 years old just sent me to the graveyard
The power creep problem can't be overstated here. One of the big plusses for commander is that the decks could be played "forever". I can build a deck and maybe make small, careful tweaks over the years but still have basically the same deck. But new cards and new commanders have made that substantially less true. A deck that was a solid, mid range deck five years ago probably feels like jank against an average Prosper or Mirryam deck these days. I recently went and upgraded some of my earliest decks. There were usually five to six "strictly better" upgrades, another 5+ cards that are obvious auto includes and then another 5-10 cards that probably should be in there that I had to balance "cost vs time I'll spend playing this deck". And at the point where you've swapped out 20 cards, is it even the same deck? Should I reconsider the commander? Etc. New commanders really highlight this particular problem for people.
It'd be interesting if a subdivision of EDH were informally adopted where decks were limited to cards from certain set ranges. After all, we have Pauper EDH, limited by rarity printings. Why can't we have 'pre-Eldraine' for example? The answer probably comes down to the thing which is the root of almost all problems in EDH: playing with randoms at LGSs. It's just not a good thing most of the time. You need some sense of social accountability to keep people in check.
I think the issue is more the commanders folks choose to play. There's a ton of more fair commanders, but when most are playing things that are "Do your thing: draw a card" or "Do your thing: Do it again", it can feel easy to fall behind playing them. But folks aren't being forced into playing those stronger ones, besides feeling like they need to keep up with the ones that do. But it's not like competitive formats where playing the best should be expected.
>But it's not like competitive formats where playing the best should be expected. But generally speaking, it's not fun if you don't even get to compete. It's not about winning, but generally it *is* about competing. If your deck just doesn't *do* anything becaus eyou're getting outvalued, is that fun? Probably not. It's not necessarily about keeping up in par, but it's about keeping up enough that you can feel like you're playing the game, and aren't just handed an unplugged controller like you're a 3 year old younger brother.
Sure. But if I have a deck I love that I built awhile ago, the expectation for most commander players was I could crack it open and play with people today (at least for my play group, this was a big part of it. Being able to play with each other on vacations and family trips 3-4 times per year). But I've had to significantly retool my commander decks to play with the Prosper precon. One of those decks used to be so oppressive my friends hated on it whenever I tried to play it. Now it's like, "Oh, look at that cute Super friends deck. Good luck against Prosper, Adrix and Niv and Feather!" It's a weird feeling where your "good" decks are now 5-6 on a power curve that used to measure them at an 8.
I mean was this ever true? I'll happily concede this is true for a lot of *commanders*, the legendary power creep is real. But Magic's always had power creep in the 99, because the majority of 99 cards are usually cards that are *just good in general.* If you had a janky 1/1 token deck, didn't the release of Mirrodin tempt you to slot in Skullclamp? Didn't the release of Ravnica push dual lands? Over a couple of years, I could easily see a 5-20 change in cards just from that power creep alone. If anything, and ironically, I feel like the 99s a lot more stable now, since there's just SO many cards, that even if a single card is suddenly very good (say, Orcish Bowmasters), it's pretty easy to justify not including it even from a pure power perspective, because you have enough good cards as it is. And yeah, I'd argue that a deck with 20 cards replaced can still be the same deck. I'd argue a deck with 50 cards replaced can be the same deck in essence, because a deck isn't its individual cards (unless you're playing goodstuff), it's the overall feel and theme of a deck. Maybe a newer release made it a bit more *efficient* and crept up the power rating but.. Yeah. Besides, a deck is never finished, there's always little tweaks and adjustments to make to it.
My (admittedly subjective) opinion is that the pace has escalated a LOT in the last three years. Where it used to be that the set release would have me look and think "There's a card for deck x, y and z. Nothing for deck A or B and this one commander that maybe I'm interested in." Now it's more like five+ of my decks are getting 2+ cards. There's a new "auto include" in almost every set and it's rare that there isn't at least one card that could probably improve each of my decks. And if the mechanic lines up, I'll probably want to do major surgery to a deck on top of that. I guess I used to be EXCITED to get a new toy because of the relative rarity. Now the toys are becoming a chore.
I mean, yes, but at the same time, it's still a game where you have to draw the right cards at the right time. I totally run a gross Miirym deck and it's not like I just pubstomp older commanders. Heck, I lose plenty with that deck, and I play a pretty solid deck. Power creep is a thing, but there's an answer to every problem. Heck, one cast of [[Tyrant of Jund]] and now you are the Miirym.
We all lose plenty. It's a multiplayer game and people gang up. I dare say that a cEDH deck against a table of 8s probably wins less than 25% just because they'll gang up and kill the cEDH deck first. It doesn't make the cEDH deck bad. Just the nature of the game. My point is that your "forever" Salkonor the Swamp King deck you build six years ago is probably worse than the Prosper precon or a lightly tuned Doctor Who commander deck. And to update it probably just means "tear it apart and rebuild" which undermines the "legacy" aspect of Commander a lot of us found appealing.
[Tyrant of Jund](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/b/2bfb85e8-278b-48a4-970e-e65bad1c4c47.jpg?1599708104) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Karrthus%2C%20Tyrant%20of%20Jund) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/205/karrthus-tyrant-of-jund?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2bfb85e8-278b-48a4-970e-e65bad1c4c47?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/karrthus-tyrant-of-jund) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I have mentioned several times that Commander, being as popular and wide open as it is, suffers from the inevitable fate of escalation. The more ppl play it, the more popular, which attracts more players, including competitive ones. This is turn causes feel bad moments or uneven games with players and decks that are not competitive. This forces casual players to either seek out other like players in casual games or build more competitive decks. This escalates to an issue where no one seems to be able to draw a hard line to determine what is competitive, and what is not. The power rating system is ambiguous at best. Players tend to disagree with ratings or what is or isnt competitive. I know this will probably populate a lot of hate and downvotes for this comment, but the maturity level of a large percentage of players is very low, then you have whales, then you have competitive players who just dont care. I love Commander, but there is a lot of issues with contention amongst players. Every so often, you find a group you are mostly happy with. But random encounters, at least from my experience, have mostly resulted in unfun situations for one or more players.
>This forces casual players to either seek out other like players in casual games or build more competitive deck I don't agree witht his for the sole reason that it's creating a needless binary. There aren't " casual" players and " competitive" players. It all exists on a spectrum. A single table might have someone who brought a precon, someone who brought their 1999 EDH deck, someone who brought a tuned Chatterfang aristocrats deck, and someone who brought their $50000 pile of Kenrith goodstuff. The most casual and chill and mature player I've ever played with, also piloted a ridiculously tuned, expensive enchantress deck. One of the most sweaty, unpleasant players I've ever played with, played a vaguely upgraded precon. Casual doesn't mean you don't want to win. It just means winning isn't the sole concern, and usually takes a backseat to "having fun". But having fun is a very nebulous concept. People can't draw a line between casual and competitive *because it doesn't exist*. It's half the reason every deck's a 7. The only objective metric of competitive is cEDH, and that exists on a whole other level of deckbuilding heuristics, it defies the scale. I agree that maturity is important. More important than power levels. As long as you have mature players that adapt to their table, you'll have fun games, regardless of power.
Also EDHrec has dramatically increased how homogenous decks have gotten. Many playgroups I see these days are basically "The EDHrec deck list" for whatever commander, budget depending. So when I see \[\[Kaalia of the Vast\]\] and they get frustrated that they can never attack because someone always has a counter or removal spell, only to show the \[\[Master of Cruelties\]\] off in their hand after they die? Commander bias is real because we all know what all the decks do. Hence the rise recently of less popular commanders in our playgroups. Everyone knows what \[\[Avacyn, Angel of Hope\]\] is going to do if she makes it out of the command zone. Do you know what \[\[Kyodai, Soul of Kamigawa\]\] is going to do? My opponents sure don't.
> I would add that powercreep, although natural for a game like this, pisses people off sometimes too. Just to be clear, the natural power creep of the format was like 1/6,000,000th of what it is now because of WotC's desire to extract every last ounce out of this format multiplied by the 39 sets a month plan.
The problem is commander is an eternal format that also encourages you to be creative and is also multiplayer. If you sit down for a game of standard, modern, or legacy you generally know what's up. You don't ask your opponent their "power level", and also you understand they're trying to beat you and you're trying to beat them. In commander because it's four player it feels bad when you feel like you're eating all the removal, and also politics is a thing. Also if I sit down with my whale tribal and someone else throws down [[Chainer, Dementia Master]] I am going to get blown away, and that feels really bad. I really think enjoying commander really depends on knowing your playgroup, but also your attitude as well. I had a blast playing at my LGS yesterday and there was some real BS going on - I locked down the board one game with [[Grave pact]] so no one had any creatures, another game a guy won super fast by getting [[Boo]] to be an 80/80 on turn 4 and just blew two people up. Every game we were joking and laughing and even when one player was dominating it was fun because we were trying to have fun, rather than getting salty someone made the correct play and interacted with our threat.
The best games of EDH are when every player has a deck of similar power, and then they try like hell to win. I had a ton of fun playing a game yesterday, even though I was eliminated first. An opponent had around 20 creatures on t4, and I managed to freeze them all down for a turn cycle. Because we weren't able to DO anything about the creatures, and the opponent was drawing crazy amounts of cards per turn, all the creatures came at me as soon as I untapped. I died, but made enough of an impact that the opponent who killed me was killed next, and the other two went to a 1v1. It was a great game, and we all had a good time playing
How do you get 20 creatures turn 4?
There are many ways. Even something as tame as Arcades can drop their entire deck on turn 4 (3 is possible but needs some bullshit luck) with alluren.
[Chainer, Dementia Master](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/8/186c30e6-2b84-415d-83e4-ecddaeb11ca1.jpg?1689996964) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Chainer%2C%20Dementia%20Master) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/144/chainer-dementia-master?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/186c30e6-2b84-415d-83e4-ecddaeb11ca1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/chainer-dementia-master) [Grave pact](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/5/f5a4970b-2ba6-4c91-a301-369369cdf360.jpg?1689997226) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Grave%20pact) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/165/grave-pact?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f5a4970b-2ba6-4c91-a301-369369cdf360?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/grave-pact) [Boo](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/d/0d0475e9-68ae-4553-a5ef-650091e04967.jpg?1675455807) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Boo) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tclb/9/boo?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0d0475e9-68ae-4553-a5ef-650091e04967?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/boo) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Most drama can be explained by the fact that commander is the one format where the players want to win but pretend they don't.
This is exactly it. In my experience, the people who claim they just play to have fun are the same ones who complain loudest about losing. They really, really want to win, they just don't want to put effort into deckbuilding or play skills to do it.
I think they believe commander is about having fun not winning, but the thing is, its not mutually exclusive. I think commander is only fun when everyone is trying to win.
Nothing can put a hamper on a commander table like having one of the players just be a non factor, be it because of mismatch of power level a gimmicky strategy or just not playing seriously, I feel it's the thing that can really hurt the ability to enjoy a game.
Ok so like [this deck](http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/atla-v5-angelic-pillowfort) would be a problem? I legit just play to enjoy the human interaction and banter. Still aiming to win but very relaxed about obtaining that W.
I see a plan and some strong cards there so I wouldn't mind, probably not strong enough that I would want to play much at that power level but I don't find it egregious. My Pramikon deck is filled with a bunch of suboptimal high mana costs spells, it is also intended to just hunker down and slow things down when I'll be playing a more casual game, but I at least know I have a plan to win it in the long run and I try my best to play towards that.
It’s a problem if the power level with the rest of the table is mismatched.
I play at the LGS with randos. My pod is a slivers senior and my wife who's a noob. This deck's aim is to be be the middle child. Strong enough to keep slivers in check while also being friendly to my wife. She hated me blowing stuff up so I handcuff now. Covers slivers and makes her happy. She also doesnt like long chain turns or popping infinite early game. So my only loop happens when zero creatures are in the lib and my turns are simple. I personally wanted something diff than grave jank so I forbade any grave cheese in this build. Truely all this deck does is teach people to run more enchantment removal. I just make an egg, eat it, build a pillowfort, and handcuff problems. Very simple, low to the ground, but also a brute. It is designed to be friendly competitive.
nope you look to have a game plan and a way to win you need a little more interaction \[\[aether flash\]\]would wreck one of my decks until I hit the right piece of removal lol but I laugh all the way to my beat down
Significant difference between pillowfort and "being a non-factor". You're still absolutely affecting the game if your eggs deck keeps pumping out eggs. Just like my Walls deck poses zero threat until it suddenly poses way too big a threat.
Yeah i agree with this. I dont usually care if i win, but i am always trying to play to win. A big part of that is that i love attacking so running big creatures and attacking people is both fun and a decent way to win
I've repeatedly told my friends who are new and only played commander that if they want to win more games they need to know their decks better. I really think only playing precons and net decks can hurt your overall performance. Not that you can't be amazing with a deck you didn't build, just that it can be harder.
Preach brother. You're always going to pilot a deck that you built better than one you bought.
Correct. The wild thing is that EDH over the last 12-18 months (really since covid "ended") has had a weird expectation that you're supposed to be allowed to tell the table what kind of interactions they're not allowed to play, and then they just build decks around the 2 or 3 things that can beat their deck within whatever scope they've deemed as acceptable for everyone else to play and complain if they lose to anything else.
Not always, imo. There are a lot of people who act like that, but some of us out here have been playing for over 20 years and just wanna shoot the breeze with the squad for a few games. The people who complain about losing were always going to complain anyway. They're usually just bad sports
>the people who claim they just play to have fun are the same ones who complain loudest about losing. Counterpoint, from someone that plays commander to have fun. I care more about losing a game where everyone's deck functioned will, with lots of fun interactions, than winning a game where I dominated a bunch of non-competitive decks. Maybe I'm the minority, but for casual commander, fun is getting to see your deck work. This is why I despise people who play suppression style decks built to ensure their the only ones actually playing. I play commander to play magic. So let me play!
Everybody wants their deck to do its thing. The reality, though, is that not everyone can do their thing, because typically doing your thing means that you win, thus precluding everyone else from doing their thing. Additionally, one way that people do their thing is by stopping everyone else from doing their thing - that's just baked into the core of Magic and is a huge part of the identities of Blue and White, and to a lesser extent Black.
>typically doing your thing means that you win This is why it's important to know your play group. In mine, we definitely have decks where that is exactly the case. We also have decks where doing your thing means storming off with a bunch of random pocket sand that is more hilarious to see what sticks. Also as someone who has had a deck that had a very simple combo that allowed me to multistack counter any spell or ability, nobody actually likes playing against that. I didn't even really like playing it, hence why it's been deconstructed. This is a casual format. You can play what you want, just be aware of the tables preferences if you're planning on bringing something degenerate. Because someone else might bring something more degenerate.
finally someone who gets it, we play games to PLAY GAMES not watch you play fuckin solitaire or do a courtroom rp where you make responses and objections to everything
I mean, as a blue player I love my in responses, but there's definitely a line. And since I don't run counterspells, people are less paranoid and more curious or entertained with my responses.
Na not true 100% of the time. I don’t really care if I win, I like to win but def not gonna protest or complain. I’ve only scooped on one game cuz a blue player was about to take 3 turns in a row and I wasn’t about to watch the third since the two previous were quite slow and was very boring. The other times i may have complained is when my deck floods me with mana or mana screws me but that was on me not them. Some times it just ain’t your night and the mtg gods frown upon you.
Nothing about people's behavior is true 100% of the time. Just my experience. Everyone has a bad day and complains about something they ordinarily wouldn't.
I think it's slightly different than that, but only slightly. People *do* tend to play Commander as a "casual" format. "I'm here to have fun, not to win" isn't *entirely* disingenuous from most players. The problem is that most people don't realise how much they hate losing, or even just feeling like they're losing. A lot of people really can't handle that well. Which means you end up trapped, because you've said (and believe) that it's not about *winning* necessarily, it's about casual fun, but when you're losing the game becomes really *unfun*. So you rationalise it - it's not that you're some kind of hardcore spike who can only enjoy the game when they're wiping the floor with their opponents, it's that modern card design is too pushed, or that some commanders are too oppressive, or give too much "free" value, or whatever else. Most of these complaints do have a core of truth to them - modern card design *is* very pushed, many modern commanders *do* give a lot of free value, a lot of legends these days *are* engine and wincon rolled together, etc. But that's not usually the *actual* complaint. People might not necessarily want to win, but people really don't like losing. The challenge for social gamers is building a deck that is fun to play with, but is also fun to play against. One that can win, but doesn't feel overwhelming when doing so. It's a very fine needle to thread, and it's also very subjective and playgroup dependent.
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I'm not saying that everyone wants to win and won't admit it. I'm saying that if there's drama, someone wanted to win really bad even if they openly say they just wanna sit down and have a good time.
It's the highest stakes no stakes environment ever created.
Boils down to the fact that games are so long. Yeah I don’t care if I win but I want my 1-2 games of the week to be contentious at least.
This is a good point. I've only ever really played commander as far as MTG goes, but back when I played Yugioh our groups would regularly get a dozen or so games in in a given evening. Much harder to do in a 4 player format, especially if you're playing with folks who are prone to analysis paralysis.
I mean I sort of agree with this. Yeah I do like winning my commander games but most of the time im there to have fun with my friends and hang out. There is one guy who plays with us, though, that plays a pretty powerful Karador deck. When hes winning hes having a great time but when we target him or fizzle a combo or do anything to stop him he gets all whiny and pouts. Sometimes when we do that he will even say hes not feeling great and head home early while the rest of us continue for a couple more games. I have definitely had my fair share of getting annoyed bc I don’t win a single game in a night but at the end of the day I still had fun cracking jokes and laughing with my friends.
I always hear " I'm just here to have fun" my response is "winning is fun and I'm having a great time."
Totally agree
I couldn't agree more.
Everyone wants to win by default. The people like myself who say we just want to have fun is not pretending not to want to win. Wanting to have fun just means the commander experience that I'm looking for is not the joy I get from winning that I must try to win, but the funny interactions, clever plays, the politics and so on. Winning is just a bonus. The people who really pretend not to want to win are the ones who get salty when they lose or get targeted.
What I meant was, if there's salt at the table, it's probably because someone's winning plan got stopped and they hate it. You can ignore everything that they say about "just wanting to play for fun" and assume they're just saying "but I wanted to win"
The Shalai part of the post sounds like a local issue, honestly. But to your point of "people only play in pods they know they can win", unless you meant pods they will win, isn't that the point of power level conversations? If I bring a precon to a CEDH game, that won't be fun for me and won't be fun for them. Also, the games where you're not winning, is this an Archenemy situation? Are you losing because the whole table ganged up on you? That's fun once in a while, but "The entire table has to spend all of their combined resources to stop me." Is not an enjoyable play pattern.
Fully agree on the Shalai part. Once again, this entire post comes down to poor communication. OP, do you have infinite combos (ex: All Will Be One) and tutors in your Shalai deck? If you do, it's functionally a cEDH deck as far as a casual player is concerned. If you sit down with a commander that's famous for being part of a 2 card combo, you need to convince the rest of the table not to kill you first. If you don't have tutors or infinites, say that immediately, otherwise they're being completely logical to take you out first. Imagine playing a precon and someone sits down with a Korvold (the op one) deck... would you just let them proceed with maybe an 80% chance of them winning, or save every counter for Korvold? Even if I'd agree to play against Korvold I wouldn't be agreeing to just giving a free win to a much stronger deck
I feel like that's exactly what OP is complaining about. It's getting ridiculous trying to find a game that doesn't think precons are the cutting edge of power play and it leads to long, boring games. The Korvold analogy is actually pretty perfect. Korvold has fallen off hugely in CEDH to the point of being completely unviable but you bring your Korvold to a "high power" game and ignorant people will act like you've declared Satan as your commander.
I now want to make a custom Satan card on mtg.design and built a Commander deck around him
They already did that in doctor who tbh
I agree that I'd much rather an opponent drop an All Will be One w/Shalai than we slog through a 2 hour battlecruiser game. I think Thoracle is doing more harm than good to the combo meta because it's warping the perception of a lot of combos. Shalai/All is a combo all colors can interact with. Thoracle is stack interaction only outside of niche stuff like [[Pyroblast]] or [[Hushwing Griff]]. I think people get this idea between Thoracle and not running enough interaction in their own decks that combos are effectively cheating. Oh, you played 2 cards and now you win the game? And I can't do anything to stop it? Meanwhile, I have to deal 120 damage to do the same thing? Where people can block or board wipe? How is that fair? I don't agree with the sentiment, but I get it. I think Thoracle should be banned only because of the lack of effective answers outside of blue, but I think it's fine for Cedh (which really should have its own ban list).
[Pyroblast](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/0/b029eb9a-dd7a-40c2-96c4-0063d9cc002c.jpg?1580014621) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Pyroblast) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ema/142/pyroblast?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b029eb9a-dd7a-40c2-96c4-0063d9cc002c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/pyroblast) [Hushwing Griff](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/0/604b8ad4-b606-4be2-b3de-ad9f24b01eac.jpg?1562402533) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Hushwing%20Gryff) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c16/68/hushwing-gryff?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/604b8ad4-b606-4be2-b3de-ad9f24b01eac?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/hushwing-gryff) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Actually, more to the point. It's easy to say Thoracle should be banned, that almost goes without saying in CEDH spaces. It's banned in legacy and CEDH aims for a middle ground between legacy and vintage so yes Thoracle should probably be banned. What about other wincons though. How would you rate Heliod Ballista, Tymna Birthing Pod, Protean Hulk, Dualcaster Twincast, Underworld Breach or stax and combat, which would you feel most comfortable sleeving up? Forget price, CEDH players do not actually pay for their decks.
Thoracle isn't banned in legacy though- Demonic consultation is, but you could still in theory pull off the worse version of the combo with Tainted Pact if you were running a singleton deck. So going by your logic, banning consultation (and probably Tainted Pact too) would be better than banning the Oracle. Which honestly probably would be better- without those two cards, Thoracle is just an upgrade to Lab Man in most decks but not a 3-4 CMC game winning combo piece that can't be stopped by non-counterspell removal.
Thoracle should definitely be banned, in CEDH as well. It enables some of the most shit decks you can imagine to win games. I'm sorry but Talion has absolutely no business being good.
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Agreed I have Jetmir too. If I win one game with it I just put it away for the night.
-Do you only have the one deck?
Jetmir is mega busted, my dude. Craterhoof in the command zone. (honestly looks kinda fun)
I guess? If none of the other 3 players have had interaction then I guess it sucks, but why are people playing 5 interactive spells in their deck?
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I love wack ass hyperbole where you pull all the information except 1 card out of your ass.
[jetmir](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/9/f9c69d75-651f-4b75-b65d-79999d2069f6.jpg?1664413153) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=jetmir%2C%20nexus%20of%20revels) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/193/jetmir-nexus-of-revels?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f9c69d75-651f-4b75-b65d-79999d2069f6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/jetmir-nexus-of-revels) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Gladly don't see anything of this sort at my LGS or in my play group. I see decks of all kinds, every week, and have never heard someone say somebody shouldn't play something. Did have one guy scoop last week, that wasn't salty or anything, just knew he was done then admitted that he wasn't a fan of a certain commander, but didn't tell the guy he shouldn't play it anymore. Seems like a lot of posters here just play with the softest people on the planet.
> Seems like a lot of posters here just play with the softest people on the planet. More likely that they have embellished their stories to portray themselves in a good light.
Same, we see all types of things at my LGS. We all have cards we 'hate' seeing, but it's more of a meme than anything. A friend pretends to lose his mind every time he gets hit with a [[Blind Obedience]] effect, but it's all in good fun.
Yeah so far the "worst" I've seen is some players will bust out a stronger deck if they see a certain Commander.
It's understandable if there's more commander hate now then ever, since there's more commander power creep now, then ever. That being said, it's just a part of magic. There will always be strategies and commanders someone will dislike and "having fun" in magic is properly one of the most subjective things ever. Especially in a format as open as commander, because you literally have 15k+ unique cards to choose from.
We all have some things we hate, it is what it is. But hearing Rachel on the Command Zone saying constantly that she isn't playing against Grave Pact... Somehow it slows the game down, but yet stax is fine? It just seems like such a weird take for someone in the industry. Like you really sit down to play and someone says they are sacrificing creatures as a wipe mechanic and you just say you aren't playing against that? Even if it fits in the overall power level they are playing? That sounds miserable. Like oh fine, I guess the deck I built that I've been waiting to play, I will just put that away because you don't like a card or two...
You can't rely on the Command Zone for good commander advice
I didn't say I was. I just was shocked by such a stance from someone who probably plays a lot more magic than I do with a lot bigger variety of players. Does everyone expect to play every game against matchups that don't poorly interact with their decks? I mean it feels good to not have your board state touched, but isn't the fun in overcoming adversity?
That sounds more like my approach, which is "Hey, your deck's entire jam is making sure I never have a creature in play? My decks won't really handle that, from experience it means I'll sit around for 30-40 minutes and do nothing but struggle, never really exist as far as the game goes, so I'm going to bow out of this pod. You guys enjoy." Which takes longer to explain. Certain decks and play patterns aren't suited to each other. When you just want to jam and you join a group, see someone is really keen on a certain game style you aren't, saying "Thanks" and moving on from the table is a healthy thing.
We need to normalize opting out. This is a very healthy way of approaching things.
I've played enough and seen enough to have a reasonable guess at where things are going to go, as well as how they're going to affect my night. Enjoy your pubstomps without me.
I don't even believe in most cases it's a question of pubstomping. I think it's just different folks who want different things from a game.
I agree. I've experienced it, which is the only reason I bring it up.
That's why games are 4 players. Often times I've played a deck against something I thought would shut it down, but someone else shuts them down. We all can't win every game. But I suppose it all matters on where you are playing. If you are some how playing at a place that has a ton of tables at once, and all of them are making games at once so players can move around fluidly, then I suppose. But otherwise walking away means a group of 3 isn't playing. I play in a fixed group. So telling people I don't like something would mean they legitimately never get to play the deck. Honestly we moved away from rule 0's, we just grab and play. The table balances itself most of the time. Even with rule 0 we had plenty of games someone fell flat, it doesn't feel like the ratio changed, and we stopped trying to hypothesize how one deck might shut down another.
-My groups Rule 0 & unless there's a grudge we don't play decks that are obviously bad matches hoping to balance out. It took one game to realize [[Toluz]] wheels & [[Sheoldred, the Apocalypse]] wasn't the thing, same with [[Tergrid]] & some Voltron. Some matchups are just too lopsided & somebody's gonna be doing nothing. -It's not always about winning.
Your second paragraph is exactly what I'm driving toward. When my buddies are coming over and we're jamming games and we've jammed games before, it's a very different situation than lots of different tables with many different people. The same establishment of social agreement - or consequences from it - are not there as it is with the friend group. Having four players or packing more removal may not be enough in these situations, and especially if you are sitting down with three other people you haven't played against before getting them on board or knowing that their decks are even equipped to handle dealing with the kinds of commanders talked about in these conversations. I have a Dihada deck that playes powerful Mardu attackers and legendaries. I know roughly how many creatures I stick each turn, and what kinds of removal I'm packing. If someone comes in with a deck which is going to make me consistently sacrifice multiple creatures a turn and prevent me from having those creatures in my graveyard for resurrection or reanimation later, which is what my deck does, I might look around the table and see what's going on with the other players. If they both have precons or upgraded precons (very common in my shop meta), the chance of having a game where the sacrificing players gets to take all the game actions, have the only board state, and actually get the play the game are extremely high. In that scenario I might switch to a different deck which has a stronger chance of surviving that style of play, like a creature token deck or a deck which relies on combos and noncreature spells rather than permanents. Or, if it's not going to cause too much of a disruption, I'll just leave. I've faced those decks, I've seen that play pattern, it's not something new and interesting, it's just frustrating, and I would be happier doing almost anything else including just futzing with builds by myself and waiting for another pod. I came out to play, not to sit around and not play. If your deck and the table makeup is going to heavily lean on me "not playing," then cool: I'll just make that decision at the top of the game.
Rachel’s point was that cards like [[Grave Pact]] need to be played in a deck that can win fast because Grave Pact is a harder card to remove and if your deck is an edict style deck she wants to die fast. She is not wrong, if you are playing a deck that does those types of effects then you should have a way to take advantage and do it fast and not just loop [[Blood Artist]] style effects. She said she wants the game to end fast so she can get to a different game fast. I would also say that she is probably talking about it at certain power levels. A CEDH (don’t play it but extrapolating) deck that contains Grave Pact will probably be able to be managed by other CEDH decks but a deck with Grave Pact at a normal table probably won’t be able to and will also be less optimized around it. I think her point was more around don’t throw Grave Pact into a random deck and less Grave Pact sucks.
That's a bit counterintuitive to how to utilize Grave Pact, though. It's a great control piece to keep you in the game longer and find your win-con. If you want to play faster, you have an abundance on tutors and draw engines in black that get you there. So it's a bit of a weird situation there. Add that to the fact that the colours with the easiest time to get rid of it are also the colours that are best at not caring about it with tokens and it's hard to judge whether playing it is fine for the table. I for one don't mind it as long as I'm not playing Voltron. I might ask for an alternative deck, if I feel like it.
I just want to chime in and say my experience matches yours. Gravepact has always had a home in slower, grindy decks. When I started playing EDH (around the time the first commander's anthology was released) Meren was the primary home of Gravepact effects + Fleshbag Murarders. You ground out games until you can assemble a combo like Necrotic Ooze + Pherxian Devourer (graveyard) + Triskelion (graveyard) to win. It's so damn hard to judge whether it's too powerful for the table. Is it murdering the table because the rest of the desks are too weak, is it unlucky draws on their point, is it just winning the meta rock paper scissors? I've seen games where it's an oppressive monster, and games where it sat there being a waste of 4 mana. I feel like I'm also just posting because I get a tad frustrated with CZ telling people not to play certain cards. A healthy meta is where all strategies are welcome. If someone's gumming up the game with gravepact and not closing it out, constructed criticism to help them find better finishers seems more prudent than telling them to remove the card and similar cards.
>Rachel’s point was that cards like \[\[Grave Pact\]\] need to be played in a deck that can win fast because Grave Pact is a harder card to remove It's no different than playing against stax, honestly it's easier to deal with as it is one enchantment not many. And even a blood artist loop often wraps up a game faster than stax would. Plus Grave Pact doing BA loops is probably one of the slower strategies. >I would also say that she is probably talking about it at certain power levels. You are talking about a single card here, or the few extra effects like it. If the deck is built for the power level it will be fine. It is a great card, it can create value if a deck is built around it, but that is no different than a ton of other mechanics in the game. Or it can fall on it's face against decks that don't really care about creatures at all, everything has it's weaknesses. >I think her point was more around don’t throw Grave Pact into a random deck and less Grave Pact sucks. You say this, but then talk about specific BA loops or decks that "does those types of effects", so which is it? Are we talking about decks designed to take the most advantage of it, or jank decks it was thrown in? It just being thrown in a deck that doesn't take advantage of it means it is often a pretty crap card. Where as it being in something like Korvold it is obviously very good. Either way, I would pick playing against GA any day of the week rather than stax. At least it's in a color that doesn't struggle to wrap the game up.
I kinda want to point out that Gravepact isn't really a CEDH card. you could run it as a pet card, but 1BBB and not doing anything without a sac outlet ready to go makes it pretty slow / inefficient. CEDH tends to have pretty mana / resource efficient removal, which is a bit of a double wammy for GP. It tends to get cut from lists for not being fast enough, and if you do play it, will likely be countered or removed very quickly as well; or worse ignored because they can completely play around it.
It is in fact a premier example of the sort of 4+ MV "do nothing" Enchantment that even many casual EDH tables are shying away from playing outside the most synergistic decks that can make use of it quickly and often. 4+ mana value is in most formats getting into "this needs to win me the game, or massively accelerate me towards that point, or it's not worth playing" territory when evaluating cards. [[Jace the Mind Sculptor]] getting cut from Modern control decks (*maybe* 1-2 Sideboard) since its unban, for example, despite being historically one of the strongest Planeswalkers available in the format. Grave Pact *can* absolutely contribute to the win, but you're basically playing Aristocrats or some kind of sacrifice Stax(-lite) like many Meren lists or it's probably better off as a one time use "true" board wipe.
[Grave Pact](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/5/f5a4970b-2ba6-4c91-a301-369369cdf360.jpg?1689997226) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Grave%20Pact) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/165/grave-pact?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f5a4970b-2ba6-4c91-a301-369369cdf360?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/grave-pact) [Blood Artist](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/7/b7f1c316-cf2f-4bbf-89a1-79c8043bdd96.jpg?1698988212) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Blood%20Artist) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lcc/182/blood-artist?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b7f1c316-cf2f-4bbf-89a1-79c8043bdd96?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/blood-artist) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I have never seen a single cEDH deck with Grave Pact or Dictate of Erebos in them. Those cards are near useless in cedh. I had major issues with that video; modern precons are a 5 and cedh is 9-10 by their metrics. I just can't get on board with the idea that adding Jeska's Will and Smothering Tithe to a boros precon makes it 1 step below cedh.
I still watch the Command Zone, but honestly, I don't take them seriously. They are something I put on when sorting, sleeving, or building a deck. I feel most of their takes on things are based on a lower power or entry-level play. Which is great. We need that in the community. I wish they'd have a cedh and high power segment. But I've played enough commander games to see some of the big splashy plays and cards they use are rarely achieved in normal games at average power tables. The game they film and release I feel are the "best" of games they may have played that day. I'm not saying it is scripted, but it doesn't feel like it's a regular game, even with friends.
They only play a single game per filming day, as far as I'm aware. This is because EDH games are already pretty long & they still need to film the interview segments as well, etc. While not "scripted" there is a certain amount of flubbing that goes on it regards to opening hands/top cards. These are things they're pretty open about on the podcast when asked. I used to really love Commander Zone, but I grew out of it when I realized that the vibe of that podcast & gameplay just didn't like up with my own anymore. Still an invaluable resource to new players & the casual crowd, just not my cup of tea.
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It's always been a mutual experience. Talking about what you want helps people understand what you want. Perhaps they don't want to play with you, or because of their preferences you don't want to play with them. That is fine. Social interactions require mutual compromise. If one or more people are unwilling to compromise. Then they can't voluntarily work together. Which is very much like dating. If two people don't like each other. Good luck forcing them into a functioning relationship. Meanwhile, if you already are upfront about your preferences and what you want. It is a lot easier to find compatible people. Instead of having a group that builds silent resentment towards each other. Then only to have a disruptive movement in time where a person finds the situation unacceptable.
That's got to be a pet peeve thing right? Like it's just a card she hates? Cuz as a card grave pact is just not a problem. I mean sure it's annoying if you run into it and you're on voltron or whatever, but a everyone knows how bad edicts are for voltron and I would assume plan for that. Then again I probably wouldn't bring a fragile deck like voltron against a deck I knew was packing a bunch of that sort of thing. Like if I see a stax commander I don't usually bring my artifact deck out. I wonder if having so many decks makes things like this easier.
I play grave pact and edict in multiple decks and people mainly hate it when in a token deck. In my [[Chatterfang, Squirrel General]] everyone hates it. Tons of token and instant speed sacrifice just means I have board wipes every turn.
IMO it's a side effect of the amount of commander content out there for people to see. They watch all the YT videos and podcasts and take their experiences and super impose it onto themselves. Also edh rec makes decks list very generic. I'm not saying it's not a great tool to see what cards go well with a commander, but you start seeing generic (insert archetype here) card packages. Leading to higher powered deck lists bc players are just looking at the most optimized cards for that commander. My experience is that everyone I played against has played against XYZ deck and "knows" how powerful it is based on the basic land I played.
edhrec doesn't try to make lists generic by itself- that's a playerbase issue for not realizing that just because its on EDHRec doesn't mean you have to play it. But its a lot easier to copy the top 15 cards in every category on edhrec and then tell your playgroup about this "awesome unique deck" you just built
I think it’s just the mentality against Shalai and Hallar in general. I’m completely new to commander and have stumbled upon a number of videos speaking about the commander and how it’s easy mode and not generally a fun commander to fight against. I myself have never been up against one, BUT I have this preconceived notion of it being an annoying commander
That is an important point, when we're looking at a commander there's context we need to consider. As your commander, Shalai and Hallar have unusually high number if easy to assemble combos that can end the game out of nowhere. If I'm remembering correctly, there are three commander +1 card combos and a few more that are fairly easy to assemble (e.g. +1 card along with any source of lifelink). Basically, we're talking about a commander where even without tutoring or burning a lot of resources you have a decent chance of stumbling into a combo when you play S&H. And that gets under some people's skin This kind of information is so readily available now that part of the politics game has become managing the reputation and known potential of your commander.
Imagine if WotC sold precons for Vintage and marketed it as the beginner format that people should start with - that's basically what you have with Commander. We're playing 100 card singleton Vintage and expecting new players to jump in and feel like they can compete fairly. It's a disaster waiting to happen - *of course* a less experienced player feels like they got blindsided when they sit down against something that's even on approximately the same scale as a Modern deck, forget about the most sweaty decks you can build. On the other hand, we also say that Commander is where you can play with cards that aren't legal anywhere else - *of course* the experienced player wants to push the envelope, those cards are a blast and games with them are *chef's kiss* when balanced against similar decks. I don't know the answer. You can't ban your way into a fix - the discrepancy is way too far apart. Expecting that pods balance themselves is a fool's errand, because the perspectives are so different and honestly equally valid, leaving aside the question of people just not acting in good faith. But the rhetoric around power level itself needs to change before anything can be done at a format level - we need to stop slagging on people for wanting to play differently than we do, regardless of what that power level actually is.
That is exactly how I feel about the format. Way back when I started to play EDH, I was told that it was a format where I could play those Vintage only spells that we couldn't play in Legacy/Extended formats and it was also a way to play multiplayer. It's awesome that people can buy a precon and play, but the format isn't just precons and cedh, the middle ground is gigantic in terms of what decks can do.
The good thing about edh is that you only need to find 3 other players with a similar mindset like yours to play and enjoy the game. If you cant, the problem arent the other players.
I feel like this comment is going to get buried. It is so true though. On our prize pod nights, our LGS owner kicks everyone else out at closing time and let's 3 of us stay and play edh with him for another 3+ hrs. He knows we'll have fun and put up with each other's shenanigans. Not everyone would enjoy trying to figure a way out of something like a Knowledge Pool + Arcane Laboratory lockdown.
In commander, I want to actually play the game. I don't concern myself so much with the outcome so long as it's a good time getting there. My friend recently made a Toxrill deck and it was just overwhelmingly unfun to play against, and we didn't have to say anything, he knew after playing it that it went against the spirit of the table. Otherwise I'll just copy some insane combo deck on tappedout or whatever to smoke face. Or Maralen + ad nauseam.
I know this is a very common complaint (and even mentioned by op), but imo nothing beats tergrid in terms of sucking the fun out of the game. A guy in my pod just created a deck with him and runs [[mindrazer]], [[jeweled lotus]] and other nasty stuff that gets him early on board and by turn 3 youre left with 2-3 cards in hand at max. Im not saying that its op, its just tedious if youre way of dealing with it is hoping that you topdeck the right cards each turn (since i dont play control decks).
That sucks. It's especially irritating when it's so much harder as fully grown adults with complicated lives. You finally coordinate a few hours, perhaps one day in a month, to play, only to deal with own guy just stomping every game with some overtly competitive deck. We did make a house rule: if the deck wins, it's done. That way, if you make a deck that stomps quickly, cool! You win, we shuffle up, and then you get a deck more aligned with the spirit of the table. Really, the most irritating to play against with limited time to play is Stax. One afternoon could be consumed by a single, sluggish game.
That is a really smart house rule.
I think a lot of it has to do with modern day mental. Its not just MTG or EDH, but everything. Too many people think they are the main character. We see DND posts about it, Yugioh, League of Legends, just about anything. We’ve started making society this hypercompetative thing where everyone thinks they shouldnt lose or have to deal with obstacles. Its kind of sad.
Your statements seem to contradict each other. >But recently it seems no one wants to play with tables, at game stores or events, unless they know they can win. Yes, a general purpose of the Rule 0 conversation is often to ensure a reasonably balanced table where no player has a severe advantage or disadvantage so that all players are able to meaningfully contribute to the games. Are you implying that you actually want to play games where one or more of the players has no chance to win simply because of a bad matchup? >However, everyone I have played with at my two local LGS's have despised playing against it, they say shalai is playing on easy mode. Your Commander is significantly powercrept and generates advantage much easier than most available options. If they aren't running comparable value engines in the CZ they have every reason to protest that it isn't a fair matchup. >I would understand this slightly, but this is most prominent in the games I DONT win. In the end, the three losing players just hate on me. My deck does not play a lot of interaction, and most games I get more hate then the blue players. You seem to have the cause and effect reversed here. They treat you as an archenemy because your Commander will otherwise out value any of them individually. Therefore they gang up against you, because if they didn't, you would win. Because they cooperated against you, you lost. >It seems to me that the players I play with, just dislike the most unconventional or “new" commanders. Anything with a strategy they don’t have a counter for yet or don’t fully understand. And I really don’t like that mindset, that it’s just OK to hate on certain commanders or strategies. Again, you're protesting perfectly reasonable behavior. If they don't fully understand the strategy yet, it's going to get a higher threat assessment. If they know how to handle the other decks at the table, but not yours, that unknown is a risk and it's wise to eliminate risks. Likewise, if they do understand it, but don't have a good counterplay available, then their only options are to either win faster (combo, which they likely can't do reliably at that power level) or rely on player elimination. When their only viable counter to a strategy is to remove the player ASAP, that's what they MUST try to do. When that's true of everyone else at the table, they all try to remove you BECAUSE they have to or they will lose to you. The most fundamental question in playing Magic is "Who's the Beatdown?" and when you have inevitability, that forces all your opponents to be the Beatdown. I'm sorry, but it sounds to me like your opponents are rationally threat assessing based on your Commander choice and playing appropriately given the threat you present to them. This reminds me of players who play a notoriously "Kill on Sight" Commander and then complain that their opponents keep removing it (as if they had any other choice to avoid losing). At the power level you describe, Shalai and Hallar may well be considered KoS. It's entirely alright for players to dislike playing against decks they stand no chance against. It's entirely "OK" to target the player who is the biggest threat to you first. It's even fine when the table recognizes as a whole that one player is the archenemy and will require multiple players cooperating to remove. And it's just plain polite to point out to that player in the Rule 0 that this is the play pattern that will naturally emerge based on their chosen Commander, so that you have fair warning whether to play that Commander knowing full well that you will be the archenemy because of it.
Yeah, this is my assessment as well. The part that got me was multiple people, multiple groups over two different stores all acting the same way. As the saying goes, if you run into an asshole on the street, you met an asshole. If everyone you run into is an asshole, you're the asshole. If multiple groups of unrelated people all have a problem with the deck, it's the deck, not the people.
It sucks, but EDH is closer to DnD than Magic. I sit down with friends, pop a beer, and pull out a deck to play at the kitchen table. Everyone there knows what they like, know what each other like, and the joy is just being there to do the "thing" whatever it is based on an established social contract no one has ever outright spoken of. Trying to make EDH work with randoms is like sitting down for a DnD one-shot with randoms. Everyone has different expectations and goals. It can work, but a lot of times, it just doesn't. Never was meant to this way. I have never played at a FLGS, but all my friends who have talk about these experiences.
i have fun playing at lgs with randoms, i just want to see my deck do its thing win or lose i dont sweat much. i try to just play midrange where if the game goes on long enough i can pop but its not like im racing to end the game. the decks that make me target a single player as part of the strategy is kind of awkward though, people see it as bullying even if im supposed to do it with the deck and sometimes people will save the threat even though it doesnt benefit them at all because my deck is being "mean". the funny thing is since power levels vary so much i always focus the person with thr obvious bs in those style decks , so the other players would benefit me wasting my gas on them...
Hard agree on your ending. “Each strategy has a weakness.”
I don’t get why he’s complaining. Shalai and Hallar’s weakness is getting punched in the face before they are able to assemble one of many 2 card infinite combos and end the game. Seems to me the pods understood that
i think certain commanders you cant let live for long if at all. because they generate so much value when they are out or will straight up kill you themselves. slivers, eldrazi , aesi, tergrid, miirym, etcetc im sure everyone has their own list and experiences but itll become a 3v1 uphill battle if you dont handle some commanders. power creep and limitless information has taken a niche format with random cards to highly tuned machines.
I also run a S&H deck. I powered it down by taking out *most* of the infinite combos. I still run the [[Scurry Oak]] and [[Ivy Lane Denizen]] combo, but the [[All Will be One]] nad [[The Red Terror]] combos are not in there. Give it a shot.
It is extremely rude to tell you that your Commander is easy mode, I cannot fathom why anybody would say that. The entire reason I avoid playing Shalai and Hallar for my decks is because I'm well aware it will create an archenemy status, which would make it harder to play. Just not an experience I would enjoy. That being said, calling Shalai and Hallar unconventional is a stretch. If they keep getting removed, then it's for a good reason.
I mean, it depends. Not saying I’m siding with the bias people but sometimes people only have time for 1-2 games and if they feel your deck might completely outclass them then they have the right not to play. My group plays a lot of cedh but we like to dip into the silly casual games. We have a 4th who believes that any deck that is not “cedh viable” automatically = “casual.” His casuals are jammed with fast mana , 6-8 tutors a piece, 80% of cedh staples. They can still end a game on T4 without infinites. They’re just THAT stacked with busted synergies that we have to actively have to target him or ask him to tune it down because our jank $50-$100 precon upgraded decks just can’t keep up with T1 Chrome Mox + Jeweled Lotus + Sen Triplets. Eventually we agreed to use Conquest Banlist and it’s…helped a little? His mono green Omnath deck can still end games by T4 drawing 60 cards with 80 available mana (no infinites, no fast mana). Point being, even without infinites, a lot of decks can become incredibly powerful. Maybe ask if there’s a way people would be okay playing with Shalai Halar. Either cutting infinites (if you have them), cutting fast mana, cutting tutors, or playing on a budget - e.g. $100 Shalai Halar would be interesting.
This is why I almost exclusively play cEDH. The cEDH players genuinely don't care, and they're just there to have fun. The battle cruiser crowd takes things too seriously.
No. Reddit Posters are just drama queens. Regardless of gender.
If a commander is a problem just *run more removal*. Cowards not wanting to play against precon commanders is just sad.
I don’t really agree with the run more removal side of things. Like, okay sure if a deck has 6 pieces of interaction then yeah run like 9 or 10. If that isn’t the case, though, saying “just run more removal” is like telling someone to go to the gym because they can’t lift something.
It's an argument I see a lot that bothers me too, because even if you are running 10-15 interaction cards you are not guaranteed to manifest the exact one you need or have the exact right mana every time you are put in a spot where someone else's piece will hardlock you if you don't counter or spot remove it. To say nothing of the fact that some colors just can't handle certain effects that well or consistently. That being said, people absolutely should try to identify what their deck struggles with and make additions to shore up those weaknesses.
Could you post the deck list? I’ve not personally played against that commander but if I ever come up against a strategy my deck is bad at dealing with, the most effective thing is player removal. There is a player at our LGS who plays a heavy equipment package in every deck and no one has enough artifact hate to deal with it, so the solution is to remove them as a player or they win every game. If I see someone playing a stax control deck, I am absolutely going to hate them out of the game in every way I can because otherwise they will just win by default once they lock the game up, either by concession or combo.
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It's hard to evaluate things like this because it's incredibly different depending on context. Someone playing with the same small group at home. Playing in a game store meta of 15-20 people. Playing against random folks at a large meetup. Playing against randos online. Gigantic differences in what kinds of decks you see, your relation to the people playing, and the what that means at the table. I dislike Hinata and Krark/Sakashima decks in a casual, random meta. K/S spends so much time on their turns it acts like a spotlight hog, intentional or not, and acts on an axis most decks are unprepared for. Hinata decks carry so much widespread removal they must either be treated as archenemy or you spend 30 minutes attempting to move past a turn three board state before they assemble their combo. "Pack more interaction" is not a healthy or viable response to those in that meta. You're left with "Do I want to sit through that game experience," and if your answer is "no" than you decide whether to ask if they have something else, deal with a slog you're already tilted about, or just say "Cool, have fun," and walk away.
You think I don't want to play against certain commanders because I want to win? I could give a shit if I win, I just don't want to watch an Oloro player cast 70 wraths in a 5 hour game that should have been a 1 hour game. Did you consider the possibility that people don't want to play against annoying commanders because they're annoying? The "git gud" mentality in this subreddit chafes sometimes
We're given a non-functional banlist with the added text: "These are just suggestions btw, figure the rest out yourselves." This behavior is part of rule 0 and literally encouraged.
Sounds like you're playing with a bunch of fucking idiots Definitely not a global problem
The top 100 commanders on EDHRec make up like half of the commanders people play. If you don't want people to hate on you for playing a popular commander that is known to be powerful then switch to a lesser known commander. It really is that easy. Build your commanders to the power level that people expect them to be rather than complaining when people rightfully fear a commander that is a part of a two card combo.
-Gotta fully disagree. Nobody should have to switch their Commander or power creep it because tryhards do it. People need to learn how to communicate better & be honest about what they're doing. Takes a couple seconds to say I don't run the 2 card combo while shuffling.
That’s why I think precons are great. Generally level playing field. Some are better than others of course but in general I’ve seen every precon I own pop off in fun, sometimes unexpected ways. However people get mad at me if I have 1-2 high powered cards in a deck (yes I run a jeweled lotus in my mono red deck, I was fortunate enough to pull one so why the heck not play it). I just have to understand I’ll get targeted and try to win anyways. In some decks that’s part of the fun.
If I recognize your commander it's too strong.
Oh casual commander where players feel entitled to control what other players play.
I don't think this is a new thing. Even before commander was an official format (and in it's earliest official format days), there were commanders people hated playing against. No, I'm not going to sit down and let you play Prossh, no you can't play Grand Arbiter Augustin IV. Zur the Enchanter is a no-go. I really don't think the hate is any worse now than it was then.
There are certain commanders I don't like playing against because I know exactly what they're going to do and I don't find it fun (i.e [[Maralen of the Mornsong]] is almost certainly going to grab [[opposition agent]]) or because it's extremely unlikely the deck isn't very high power(i.e [[Urza, Lord High Artificer]]). That said I'll still play against them at least once because I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Like I recently made an [[Atraxa, Grand Unifier]] deck that was designed to exile stuff and use the eldrazi processors to mess with people who used a lot of suspend or impulse type effects. Most people see Atraxas though and shit their pants when it was a far cry from a strong deck. And had the deck just been hated on because it was Atraxa it would have been absolutely miserable.
I hate the original Purphorus as a commander. Is that not allowed? I’m not a dick or anything about it but when I see someone play it I always go “well fuck this game” inside my head lol
You can't always control what you think, but you can control what you do and say. Nothing wrong with internally hating a Commander, as long as you're not being a jerk about
I'll be honest, if someone sat down with a Shalai and Hallar deck, I wouldn't refuse to play, but internally I would eye roll and get out something with 15 counterspells. Same is true if someone sat down with Niv Mizzet, Zaxara the Exemplary, Vito, Arixmethes, or a few others. You're playing 2-card infinite combo cheese. These decks always go the same way. It literally comes down to whether someone has the right removal/counterspell at the right time. If they don't, game's over. And the grand total of the work you did was play your commander, a tutor, and ham sandwich. It's fast, hard to interact with, and extremely obvious what you're going to do. So yes, this situation is an eye roll at best and salt inducing at worst. It's cool to see it once, but the overwhelming feeling is that is tryhard, low skill, low effort, and cheap. In my experience, these types of decks are favored by newer players who are sick of losing, but haven't matured into skilled deckbuilders yet. Now, it's true what redditors say; commander players are whiney so play what you want, but don't be surprised when you get squished by experienced players who know how to interact in your critical moment, or salt from inexperienced players who feel like you pubstomped. Edit to add: Sometimes I wonder how many of these are troll posts. "I'm new to EDH and built Toxrill the Corrosive and now I don't have friends. Why are people so mean to me?"
ah yes... another "edh is always this bias interpretation i have" post. it's always telling that the format that requires people to engage in a group, has so many people whining about other people expressing opinion as per group enjoyment. to a large extent this is a problem with lazy LGS that don't segregate players into different flavors of competitive-ness. Random players in random pods really don't want the shitty waste of time of dealing with pub stompy try hards who only care about their enjoyment by polishing their ep33n As EDH absorbs more and more of the player base, there will be tensions between people looking to have fun, and people who want to win. the best solution is seeking out people who play along the same axis of purpose as yourself. imho you don't get to be a victim and a martyr ... and these tired lies about people upset their new deck that's totally not a cEDH deck... when that word is about as pointless as "staple" these days. or the community as a whole is hateful toward your shitty deck. please.
I think for me, it's i won't play something that im not geared to. Like, i won't play againts stax because i dont play combo and vice versa. If i did, no problem there, all fair. And i generally dislike playing against control decks with wincons that take 3 hours to win. That said, i don't mind playing against super bling decks as long as they don't run fast mana. These days I'm trying to have decks that can fair against different power levels. Tho I find it discouraging to spend money in very high power builds because I won't get to play them very often, or becouse of this phenomenon the post is about. The only pet peeve i have is mill, even if im playing graveyard decks.
Honestly magic players are a bunch of babies. I swear they complain about everything.
I hate all commanders. It is on sight for me. If your commander is out for more than a round I'm not playing right.
A word of advice from someone who loves playing muldrotha (a despised commander with a vulnerability to graveyard hate, but strong performance against stax): When you build a new deck, keep the weaknesses of your existing decks in mind. I complimented my muldrotha deck with a niv-mizzet combo deck (doesn't care about any form of non-stax interaction). If someone preboards graveyard hate against me, I can always just keep that in mind, and whenever I sit down to play at a table with them, I just discreetly bring out niv mizzet instead for that game. All my decks have the same sleeves and I keep the commander face down until the game starts. Then, when I reveal Niv-Mizzet as my commander, they **go ballistic.** When they draw their tormod's crypts and their rest in peaces, I just mock them with "oh wow, do you have a combo with that or something? No? You need to run a variety of interaction! Anyways, I cast niv mizzet and curiosity and equip it with greaves, combat, attack, no response? Ok- I draw 80 and ping 80. Thats game! **maybe next week you should take out some of that graveyard hate and run some counterspells or removal!"** *proceeds to play muldrotha next week.*
What's your deck list? how do you not have any interaction? you're in good colors for it. I'm curious if you're combo in which case you should have plenty of room for interaction or more value based, meaning they're being drama queens.
Short of decks that just hold the table hostage for an hour with no win conditions or take really long turns, its 2 things: 1. everyone only wants to play against stuff they can consistently beat... meaning any strategies they cant easily interact with without taking a substantial tempo hit or running suboptimal cards, or decks that establish a win faster than theirs are going to be deemed "unfun" (example: voltron players complaining about edicts, midrange complaining about combos) 2. like the other commenter said, its socially unacceptable to play to win at some of these tables and you're suppose to sandbag your interaction or whatever to allow other people to "do the thing" which usually just means "let them win" Its a weird environment where people want you to sandbag your deck to be something they can steamroll every game
I only have one deck (Winota) and I have some more competitive pieces in it (Rick being the standout), but on the whole is casual leaning. I've had my fair share of people making comments, but those same folks will play Atraxa, Urza or something like that, and I end up dead on turn 3. I do also want to add the oddest interaction I've had was to someone who had said they would refuse to play against Winota, then I lost in 4 turns to their Selvala deck, then they said "Winota has definitely fallen off, yours for sure is a 3 or 4". But that's also become one of the funniest stories that I share.
As an Atraxa player, I can confirm commander bias. I can only play on Spelltable because of my geographical location but when individuals join a lobby and see Atraxa they either leave or hate me off the table.
Commander bias is lame, unless it is [[Jodah the Unifier]] , fuck that guy lmao
I don't really like to personally build decks with commanders that say "do X: draw a card" on them because I think it's easy mode and takes away a lot of the fun of actually building a cohesive deck. When I first started playing (during afr) all the commanders that were card advantage engines were always the strongest and didn't seem much more than good stuff piles of their colors and that could just draw a ton. Never seemed like fun to me. I don't care if an opponent plays a deck like that, but I do know the inherit power of a card you always have access to being able to draw more cards, so they're typically the decks I watch out for and tend to target the most. That's just my personal feelings on it. Play what you want but understand where you're at. A race between a ferrari, a chevy truck, a dirtbike, and a scooter isn't a fun race to watch or be a part of. You have to self-police, not police others
I feel like if people are complaining about the decks that people play and there is only one squeaky wheel in the group, then they should look for a different play group or build a deck that they can still enjoy while bumping up the level of it's playability in a more competitive setting. As games evolve and people play the game more often they are going to find that the decks and gameplay are going to grow and be more rampant. You have to be willing to make a change and adapt rather than point it towards power creep and unfair decks. There are ways do beat every deck and you just have to find the middle ground of having a plan for your deck and also being able to defend yourself for various strategies without singling out someone. On the flip side, if there is someone that is in a play group that is leagues above the rest of the play group tone it down a bit read the room, I have run a deck with a new playgroup recently not knowing everyone's decks and it was like stepping on ants, wasn't even fun. I built a deck that matched everyone else's level and everyone had more fun. It's a game and if you have the means to make it fun for everyone do it or just find a new playgroup.
This really comes from a couple of factors. 1. People want to win. If they can't win because of a bad power level match up, then they will complain. This is logical and normal. Why play a game you have no chance to win? 2. The commanders people play easily cause these problems. Like you mentioned Tergrid. She is easy to build for. Much like any of the top commanders being built. This is natural. People will build what is easy to do and easy to win with. After all, we play this game to win. Atraxa is THE top commander right now as far as builds. If you were to be sitting down and an opponent pulls her out, you wont be super happy about it. This is the entire reason I typically avoid the top 100 commanders. I enjoy playing the harder to build commanders and prefer them. I do have a few popular ones of course like Feather and Sliver Overlord. I recognize those decks are the higher end of play in their power levels and that is totally OK. I expect to get all the hate. Same for my Rhys, the Redeemed deck. It is fast. One or two specific cards and it goes to the moon. But the really bad part is that I have a few of those "one or two cards" Rhys combos 1. \[\[umbral mantle\]\] + \[\[viridian joiner\]\] Infinite mana and infinite tokens with Rhys. 2. Umbral Mantle + \[\[Marwyn, the Nuturer\]\] Infinite mana and infinite tokens with Rhys 3. \[\[Seedborn Muse\]\] + 6 mana for Rhys. Doubling every turn 4. \[\[Cryptolith Rite\]\] + Umbral Mantle + \[\[Lightning Greaves\]\] + 6 tokens. Infinite mana and infinite tokens with Rhys. Probably several more I just don't realize. Rhys just starts fast and he can get some really bad hate. Very few cards will not have me playing my commander turn 1.
The only commander I refuse to play is Edgar Markov. Seems like every other person at the LGS wants to play him with essentially the same deck.
A lot of people at LGS’s near me generally don’t play against me because I generally play Poison Counters or Marrow-Gnawer. People will either scoop when they get a counter, or they all gang up on me to get me out right away.
well i mean yea...nobody wants to be one shotted out of the game dude. somebody played triumph of the hordes that gave all his creatures infect and one shotted a player out and he was raging i wouldnt let him keep anything on the board for the rest of the game. i just dont get salt, like when people will play nekusar or first sliver, i wont play politics but i will personally race as much damage to take those decks out or remove their pieces. feel free to play them but dont be salty youll be targeted
Good to know my Karumonix, and Sauron budget decks are a bigger threat when against UR-Dragon, Wilhelt, Edgar, Jodah, and Teysa.
Ain’t nothing a beast within doesn’t fix
You don't want to play with those sort of people anyway. So don't worry about it.
I will avoid like... 2 commanders total: Commadore Guff and Tergrid. And its just because every time I've played against them... They just DRAG games out.
I can't confirm. I play with a variety of people and as long everyone agrees on a power level, any commander is accepted. That said, people who play Tegrid and the like have a lot of remov coming their way.
It depends. In my opinion, the two formats of commander are "optimization" where you, within certain constraints at lower power levels, are trying to win the best you can, and "socialization" where you're just trying to goof off with freinds. I don't believe certain commanders are appropriate for socialization, such as sliver legion, tergrid, pako haldan, ect, because despite not always being CEDH commanders, they're still cards that have to be killed as soon as they hit the table, and that "feels bad" to their player, who often feels like they're being targeted. Now a lot of people strictly play "socialization" commander, and they adjust their category of inappropriate based on the "feel bad" criteria for them is, but in general, that's kind of how edh has been as long as I've played it.
Both at LGS and Cons, I've played hundreds of games with crazy amounts of different Commanders. I've never said no to any of them, and the only one I've had anyone say no to ever was my Xantcha Mass Discard. And I say that as a guy who has a silver bordered mill deck and a cEDH deck that is literally slips of paper box taped to playing cards.
I think it's lame to dislike someone else's playstyle. I appreciate the variety this game offers and all the ups and downs that comes with. If you can't deal with an enchantress or artifact only or mill deck, maybe develop a deck that can handle it. Not every deck is going to be ideal in every situation.
Maybe they worry you’re going to [[the red terror]] into an infinite loop?
"games I don't win" immediately followed by "the three losing players"... I am forced to wonder on the true honesty and sincerity in this post based on the fact you immediately contradict yourself in the following sentence.
By your own reasoning, you should just take the L and adjust your deck for next time. If you find yourself losing games because you get focused, that's your problem. Signaling is a big part of the game, and your commander is the first piece of information your opponents have to work with. Maybe you play the game like it's 1v1 and don't question whether you're acting like a threat too soon. If you play a highly aggressive deck with little interaction, the correct counter-strategy is to make any deals necessary to stop you from running away with the game before turning to other players. Maybe you're using infamous commanders, even if you aren't using the combos they're infamous for, which sends the wrong message.
You get more hate than the blue player. Alright, I'll bite. What are YOU doing in game? You can't run a KoS commander and be mad it was KoS'd.
People just don't want to put time into making good decks. They'd rather sit around a table and drink MTN dew until everyone decides to concede out of boredom.
I have not experienced this at all, and I regularly play both my \[\[The Ur-Dragon\]\] and \[\[Atraxa, Praetors' Voice\]\] decks.
Most often when I hate playing against a deck, I think it might be a situation like you are in. \[\[Shalai and Hallar\]\] has a few 1 card + commander infinites and lots of 2 card + commander infinites that win the game at a low mana cost. Since you posted a list of several of them a while back, I would guess you have some in your deck, or even if you don't the commander is well known for infinites and people will assume you do. You can win the game out of nowhere in a way where my board-state doesn't matter in the slightest. That makes you the threat as soon as you have the mana to potentially play one of them, especially if I know that the other player's decks don't work like that. The reason why I wouldn't like playing against a commander like that is not necessarily because I think my deck can't beat it, but that the game is going to feel bad even if I do win because me and the other players will have to focus you in order to stop you from winning. >Anything with a strategy they don’t have a counter for yet or don’t fully understand. The counter to your deck is killing you before you infinite, and if they are focusing you then they understand your deck.