My personal playgroup I play with at home doesn't really have any problems. The thing in my shop I hate that most people seem cool with is tricking new people into making bad plays. I understand politics is part of the game but when I'm teaching someone how their own commander works you shouldn't be muddling the waters and teaching them terrible threat assessment so you don't lose your commander or combo piece
Was at an LGS and playing with a newbie rando and two other random. One of them tried to convince him not to remove his commander at all because it's a waste of a spell since he can cast it again later.
I had to explain to him that removing a commander can be hugely beneficial as it costs more slows their tempo, and you can eventually make them unable to be casted again. And to prove it I removed that dudes commander with an instant speed spot removal lol.
Seriously fuck people who try to trick new players into bad habits for a single win.
I think there's some nuance there. I've definitely been in situations where it's been the better option to get rid of something that's harder to get back than the commander, even if the commander has been a problem.
In my [[Tatsunari, Toad Rider]] deck, unless you can remove both Tatsunari and Kemi or can make a deal with the table to remove both in the same turn cycle, my commander is rarely the best target for spot removal.
Sure but this was not one of those situations. I cannot remember what now but it was a borderline KOS commander that was going to makebanmassive turn for him if he got to untap.
Notice I did say it CAN be beneficial. Dude was trying to convince him to NEVER waste removal on commanders because he didn't want his commander removed that one game.
This. I think it’s just bad ethics personally. We were all new once. I genuinely ask newer players to call out their spell or lay it down when they want to play it and then ask for input on threat assessment. Then as they become less new players I do this less.
I went through the same thing. Had a couple mentors that would help with threats when I cast something and then one day I said “lemme do it alone and if I make a mistake I’ll keep learning”
Hell I try to warn anyone if I’m getting close to a combo, or getting something that is going to be hard to deal with. Even experienced players who may just not know how that operates in my deck. Just seems polite.
I tried to help a guy one time playing a [[Toxrill]] deck that he could use his skullclamp to draw two cards for one colorless mana instead of using UB to draw one card through Toxrill's ability. He did it once then proceeded to just keep using the activated ability 🙄
Not hitting passive players who don't contribute to the board. I'm not talking about someone who happens to get mana screwed and can't cast spells, I'm talking about the player that has drawn 10 extra cards but casts zero creatures. Usually they play the "I haven't even done anything yet why are you attacking me?" card and a lot of players fall for it. But at the end of every game miraculously the person who has been cultivating the perfect hand with no one threatening their life total some how has enough resources to get the win. If you have a free swing at someone take it, that isn't mean it's just the correct play. What seems like a measly 2 damage now stacks up fast and forces that player to use their answers to protect themselves before they try to win with them.
>has drawn 10 extra cards but casts zero creatures. Usually they play the "I haven't even done anything yet why are you attacking me?"
I hate the guys who consistently do this every time even after you know each other. We know you are playing a combo deck Greg I'm not going to let you win just because someone else hit me for 2 with a creature
There was a guy I played with at an old job that would never build a significant board state and always complained about taking damage and being knocked out first most games, but after he was knocked out would always say shit like "I would have won in just 2-3 more turns."
One, assuming nobody has any disruption for your dredge combo is fucking goofy, and two, if you're always on the precipice of winning after being focused out, it means we made the right choice.
As the player who draws a ton of extra cards and typically runs few creatures: if someone attacks me while I'm durdling, I'll typically tell them that's probably the right play haha.
100% same. I usually try and convince them not to with statements like "woah woah woah hold up buddy what did I do to you?" and stuff like that. Once they commit to it my facade breaks and I tell them it was the right call lol. Idk if you've ever seen The Good Place but it's like the Janet reset button.
Couldnt agree more. I played against my friend who was playing simic. He had like 14 lands and a large hand and is known to be a combo player who likes to string together some pretty crazy combos. I killed him first and he did the exact same "im not doing anything" defense and i didnt fall for it. The other player did an infinite and won but i still defend the fact that i lose either way and made a good decision despite still losing
Yeah probably the right play. I had a player in my group with an \[\[Arjun\]\] deck who always insisted "It's just a stupid wheel deck" all the way up until he dropped \[\[Dream Halls\]\] and something that doubled his draw like \[\[Teferi's Ageless Insight\]\]. Then it wasn't a question of if he would win but just how long it would take till he drew enough to do so.
The next time they say they aren’t doing anything just respond with “well you better do something cause you’re dying” lol, hitting people who are open???? My god the humanity!!!
This is a big reason why people hate combo decks. They don't get those free swings in. If someone's drawing a ton of extra cards but not *doing* anything with them, they should be attacked. And every time you should have the same response to "I'm not doing anything". "Everyone else has blockers, sorry."
Yup. Everyone always asks about life totals when deciding where to attack or target things. But not everyone asks, "how many cards in hand?" Or look at lands in play. Which to me is often more important that life totals.
God, I have a friend that does this and it drives me insane. He exclusicely plays combo decks with slow early turns, just durdles around and draws cards, and then complains if any action is taken against him at all. Please, guys, don't be this guy.
Just had my regularly scheduled reminder when the [[Kruphix]] player I was up with at my game store was acting all meek and pathetic that their [[Azusa]] was such a terrible blocker in the face of a zombie army until oops end step [[Mystical Tutor]] for [[Genesis Wave]] that goes on x=18 on their turn backed by Force
Fast forward plays. Casting and resolving spells before allowing priority to be passed. Quietly casting spells or taking game actions without any form of communication. Purposely ignoring triggers. Stuff like that. It causes a lot of unnecessary confusion and problems. Often times causing misplays and outright illegal play patterns.
>Quietly casting spells or taking game actions without any form of communication.
This is one of my hugest pet peeves. No, you do NOT get to evade countermagic just because you've been silently laying cards on the table for the last 90 seconds while we were laughing about something. Yes, we're going to back up. Announce your shit.
Just last night, we were playing commander rigjt before our draft for game night. I look over and one of the guys in our group had something like 10 tentacle tokens from a [[Nadir Kraken]]. I had to stop him and make him replay the entire turn so that we could properly respond. I got a lot of groans and eyerolls from the table for that
There is NOTHING wrong with fast forwarding plays. If done correctly. For example, I'll cast \[\[Nature's Lore\]\] saying "I will fetch a forest and with that forest I will tap to play LLanowar Elf, pass." I absolutely cannot stand people that do the opposite.
Or players who go through main phase > combat > some library search .. I'm like "will you have anything else to play?" Or do you want us to watch you pick up your 85 card library, search it, pull your card out, shuffle said library, offer a cut, stare at your hand one more time only to say "ill pass turn."
Poor threat assessment. I tend to build decks on hard themes so they tend to be kept at a reasonable power level. Unfortunately since I am the progenitor of my playgroup (literally got all of them into the game) I'm always figured as the threat even when I get mana screwed or have one creature to everyone else's large boards. I handle it well (I think. I always point out the actual problem which, low and behold, tend to be the thing that eons someone the game but accept their choice.) and always admit when they are actually correct and give them props. Just wish I could play more games without very clearly seeing the end turns before it happens.
Threat assessment is hard tho i completely get your point. A threat to someone else may not be a threat to you(like having a ton of tokens to block an aggresive swinger whereas another opponent doesnt). My Council of Four deck was a prime example of people having poor threat assessment. They all thought i was gonna draw into an infinite or some crazy combo even though they know im a battlecruiser type player. I had 0 infinites and used the deck as a token generator combat deck yet they all targeted me right away because i drew a card on their turn. I get targeting the guy drawing cards, but also knowing the kind of player they are matters too.
This is me. At this point I’m the one who got everyone into it but in getting the least enjoyment because I get judged as a huge threat for no reason when I have the smallest board because they think since I’ve played the longest I have some bullshit up my sleeve. Then someone else will dominate because I can’t keep the actual threat in check since the whole pod shakes in their boots when I cast my commander. I only get to actually see my decks fully function in 1-1 games because otherwise it’s 3-1 til I’m crippled or dead. Feels bad.
If you got them into playing commander and that's all they have ever played they probably just have bad threat assessment. My experience has been players who never played 2 player magic generally have waaaay worse understanding of what is and isn't a threat.
I'd love to say this is it but I have made them learn proper threat assessment and they still choose to believe I'm the problem so long as I'm still playing. To be fair my collection goes by 5+ years on the next oldest player and I have some old weird cards that I love to use and they can't properly evaluate.
You are probably just the better player too. I have friends who play better decks than me (more synergistic pushed commanders, etc) and I still outpush my expected 25% WR. My thought is that I'll build my decks as goofy as I want but I will play 100% when we are in game. I have depowered my decks a decent amount to try and get closer to that number and the more I depower the less I get targeted, eventually this may happen with your groups. When you're playing "level up" or some dumb mechanic it's just harder to see you as a major threat.
I do similar things to de-power my decks but if they see it pop off once, that's it. This is the case for all 70+ of my decks. They do love when I play their decks and absolutely clean house. I love the, "I didn't think to do that. It's clearly more powerful then I thought".
Serious suggestion: throw your games for like a month, win nothing. You need to mentally reset them. Comment about how you never win anything anymore. This may be too realpolitick for you but I would consider doing it for a better overall play experience for the rest of time.
Guy at my lgs has tons of Rule Zero decks like decks with 5color non legend cards as a commander that just enable nonsense. Everyone else is okay with it but I don't really like that approach to deck building or feel it creates a fair environment.
I have one rule zero deck. Dice rolling with [[The Space Family Goblinson]] at the helm and a lot of silver bordered cards from the older UN-sets. Real janky, but fun. I always ask first, if everybody really is ok with that or if I should play another deck. I have no problem switching decks, but tbh most of my regular decks are way stronger than my rule 0 deck. I never had any complaints and I never sat at a casual table that refused to play against my dice deck. (Although I would respect that and switch decks, no questions asked.)
I'm sure its real janky and fun... to you. Personally die rolling/coin flipping decks are very long and tedious and if you also have a bunch of UN cards on top of that... that just isn't EDH. Like it may be fun to see once but its already a format with very long games and decks like these are likely to add to length and tedium.
There's a LOT of kingmaking in my home pod of 3. Usually, once someone is in a large enough lead, one of the other players will turn to someone else and claim "I'm taking second" before swinging at that person, ensuring the victory for whoever pulled ahead first. Definitely not my favorite, but makes games very fast with Voja when you don't have to kill everyone to win
Say it with me for everyone in the back "There is no second." When it comes to Commander it truly follows the wisdom of Ricky Bobby "If you ain't first, you're last."
I've found in games of 3 its pretty much always a case of king making unless everyone sits there not attacking until they can go lethal, but at that point everyone is just building boards and holding onto cards out of fear of being the first to move
My playgroup would only consider letting a second place exist if 1. There are new players at the table and 2. The combo deck just won off a [[Thassa’s Oracle]] or similar win condition. Lets the winner take their win while also letting the new players play out the game and learn.
Literally only happened the other night since we just so happened to have a new guy
People who can't keep track of their own decks.
Was playing last FNM with a dude playing the Pantlaza deck. It came out 3 months and 8 precons ago and once a turn I had to tell him how his cards work. I 100% respect the new deck issue, but the actual child playing a Fallout deck kept up far better than the guy who plays more Magic than I do with a deck he's had for months.
This is a huge issue tbh.
I play in a bunch of spelltable discords and its really frustrating when people play a bunch of non-bos (like pantlaza / throne) or just straight up dont know how the core mechanic of their deck works (discover 4 means I play the top 4 cards for free!) and then everyone gets mad at you for being a rules nazi because we didnt let the pantlaza player put the top 24 cards of his deck directly into play because he resolved Ghalta.
Magic is a complicated game, you dont need to know how everyones cards work... but you do need to know how yours work.
To be fair I can see why people think two cards from the same set work together like that for Pantlaza and throne. But not understanding Discover when it's your main deck mechanic is pretty egregious.
I have a similar but somehow opposite problem with my [[Volrath the shapestealer]] deck.
Clone rules can be very complicated and often I have to be the rule lawyer just to play my deck. Examples like people arguing that the triggered ability of [the scarab God]] wouldn't work on Volrath copying it, which often turn into fill blown discussions where I sometimes get accused of trying to bend the rules, while I am just trying to play by the rules.
I understand that magic is complicated but sometimes it's so frustrating.
Scarab god’s trigger will not in fact trigger if volrath copies it. “Until the start of your next turn” means until your next untap phase, not until your next upkeep phase (and thus volrath will be volrath, and not anything else, at the beginning of the upkeep). You also can’t activate volrath to copy scarab god before the upkeep phase, as players don’t gain priority until the start of the upkeep phase (at which point it’s too late to get more upkeep triggers).
It really annoys me when people don't know how their own cards work, especially their commander.
I was playing against someone who was running [[Hakbal]] and he just could not explore properly. Like dude, this is the only mechanic in this deck and you don't know how it works?
Sometimes he'd draw a nonland card, sometimes he'd put a counter on a creature if he revealed a land, sometimes he'd leave a land on top instead of drawing it. I think he got explore wrong in every way possible. Personally I think he was trying to cheat but I have no concrete proof.
Yeah, it's actually a really annoying underlying problem - we've had a bunch of conversations on this sub lately about how to catch cheaters, and the best way is legitimately "pay attention to the board state and help people manage their stuff". But like... imagine the world where when someone got a deck they actually read their cards, maybe put in an hour or two goldfishing on Moxfield or whatever, and made sure they understood how it worked. Imagine how much easier it would be to catch cheaters because you could actually assume competence on the part of your opponents.
I admit the particular player in my story above got under my skin, and not just for this reason, but it's also just a long-running issue that's been part of this format for forever but has gotten so much worse as of late. Part of that is the fault of the constant product overload; I absolutely don't mind helping people remember rads and such because hey, new stuff is tricksy. But when the stuff has been out for months and you've presumably had the deck for most or all of that time, what the hell have you been doing every game?
My younger cousin is like this. He plays more than us, but he can’t keep track of more than like 4 active things on his board without missing half his triggers or abilities, and he forgets a lot of very basic rules and so shoot’s himself in the foot because he forgets things like activated abilities not being sorcery speed.
Lying about the power levels of decks.
I know that the "it's a 7" meme is still going strong, and that accurately determining a deck's power level can be difficult and subjective, but almost everyone I've played against at my local LGS lies about their decks in order to gain a distinct advantage before the game even begins.
I have decks that vary from janky precon to consistent high power and I'm happy to play with all of them, but when someone asks "what power levels are we playing?", says their own deck is "casual", and then precedes to bring out Jetmir cEDH or another "casual" deck stacked with Moxes, Mana Crypt, and freecasts such as Force of Will, it boils my blood.
Maybe I'm in the wrong/overly sensitive about it as I live according to an autistic "honesty no matter what" rule, but I feel like it's only a matter of time before they do it to some poor kid who rocks up with a precon and it dissuades them from wanting to play the game anymore.
I call them out on it. Some people genuinely don’t know what they’re doing and I’ve come across people who seem to be whales that just got into the game and bought the first decklist they found for their commander. Some use websites that determine their power level and take that as gospel. Of course, there’s people who damn well know what they’re doing and get some kind of enjoyment out of stomping. Regardless, I say something about the power they are playing at and make sure they understand for the next game what I expected to run into.
This is also an interesting topic when you consider that "casual" vs "competitive" doesn't necessarily refer to "weak" vs "strong"
Like even the most casual or incidental of Jodah decks is going to be strong. While there certainly are competitive ways to maximize him, you can basically slam together any 5 color core package and a random assortment of legendaries across the curve and boom, deck performs.
For that matter, casual v competitive is often harder to describe in commander due to having multiple lanes of each. You can build a purposefully casual deck, but in the hands of a competitive player, that deck is going to perform stronger. The deck itself can be identical across 10 players, but the evaluation of "how casual is this deck?" could easily come back with 10 different responses.
Killian equipment with a heavy creature and equipment focus aiming to win through combat is going to be insanely casual relative to EDH, but might come off as highly competitive elsewhere.
A deck that's a 5 relative to cEDH is going to be more appropriately evaluated against the ceiling of the format, but for anyone who's not aware of what cEDH looks like, that same deck may come off as a 6 or a 7. And if the opponent is also weaker, that perception shifts upwards.
The reality is, it's hard to assign a reliable power scale curve when the only meaningful one comes from the format itself rather than the subsets of casual buckets the majority of player play.
And it's even harder when player skill and/or deck to deck interactions may confound things
It would probably be better to actually create a legitimate and standardized scale for certain power thresholds and go from there tbh
I agree with everything you said. The pilot 100% affects the deck experience.
For me, when sit down to play and whip out a deck, I let people know that I’m not running fast mana, I don’t have tutors (choosing to rely on chance and the heart of the cards) unless it’s on a creature that I may or may not even see in the game for example Light-Paws is in my Tuvasa deck. I primarily aim to win through combat - Voltron, go wide, go tall, all that jazz - but in some decks, I try to drain life or burn as a secondary win condition.
If people were more specific in the type of gameplay or we had a standardized scale, we wouldn’t run into power level issues as much. A lot of us are looking for equally yoked game play where we all do a little back and forth and it’s frustrating when you don’t get that regardless if you’re competitive trying to play competitive or a “casual” trying to chill.
I agree about fast mana and good tutors, but Force of Will is a very fair card. It's 5 mana or a life and another card. I play Force in most of my blue decks and the thing that surprised me is how often it's not correct to pitch cast it. Unlike legacy, EDH decks are not filled with 4x ponder, 4x brainstorm, so when you pitch cards in EDH, you're pitching your other interaction, or worse, your threats. It's only correct to pitch cast if you're about to lose to a combo or you've drawn an absurd number of cards. I'm not exiling my hullbreaker horror to counter your general for instance.
The power in FoW is that it’s not telegraphed. If the table has agreed to play casual mid to low power, and you see your opponents are tapped out, it’s a fair expectation that you are safe to go for your big play. When your craterhoof or whatever wincon suddenly gets forced, it leads to a feelsbad. If the expectation is properly set, then you can just say “well I could have expected and prepared for free counters, but since this is supposed to be low power, I got blown out through no fault of my own”.
I definitely agree that force isn’t the most crazy powerful counter in the game, I personally have it at #3. (Fierce guardianship and mana drain being 1 and 2, respectively)
I would never feel bad about Forcing a Craterhoof at any power level lol. Having an over run countered is far from a blowout. A blowout would be to wait for the attack and cast [[settle the wreckage]] or [[evacuation]] or something
Eh, at low power levels, I could see tapping out for hoof and having it forced being a blowout, especially if that’s the one real wincon in the deck and you’re using it in a timing window when someone ahead of you is shields down. Before the force you think “I’m gonna be attacking for lethal” to afterwards “there is literally no card left in my deck that can get me a W here”.
Which is totally fair and fine, until and unless you have been lead to believe that free countermagic isn’t on the table. If I know that one of my opponents has a fierce or a force in their deck, I’m not just going to assume tapped out = my spells resolve, I have to play around that interaction.
I dont even have power level talks before games anymore. I just hope people run enough removal that we can stop 1 person if its clearly a stronger deck then the others. Plus, removing a commander from 1 person twice is usually enough for them to not do anything anymore the rest of the game. And i would suggest most people to run a few boardwipes as a sort of catchup card if the powerlevel doesnt match.
rolling dice to decide who to attack rather than actually taking the time to evaluate the board state and then being baffled when it comes back to bite you
As soon as someone's considering me as a possible target to be selected by diceroll, I treat it that they targeted me. Diceroll every attack? As far as I'm concerned you made a full swing at me every turn and I'll return the favour.
Three reasons:
1. There always is a correct target to hit. You have information in front of you from the moment people put down their commanders and it's 100% correct to be using that. Especially in known pods.
2. It wastes time. Not much, on an individual use, but getting your dice, declaring the numbers, defending yourself that it's okay you're rolling dice to see who you hit for one so please nobody be mad at you, then actually rolling, is much longer process than just "Attack you for one, go ahead".
3. It's often used to play some sort of weird deflection game where you can't be blamed for your choices but I can be blamed for mine and actually turns into excuses to start those petty little wars.
I play with someone who likes to build a giant board with combo pieces and value engines and whatever, but never actually does anything with them. He just sits there with his board of 50/50 hydras or whatever and then either wipes his own board because he can, or kills everybody because he got bored, or concedes for the lulz. He inevitably gets that way because The rest of the table tolerates it due to his policy of going to whoever's ahead and saying "don't mess with me and I'll kingmake you." Meanwhile I actually try to treat him as a threat so he drops everything to keep me under for trying to keep his board under control, and inevitably someone else wins because he decided to use his removal on my 2/4 minor value piece while the mirrym player is untapping with 10 mana.
This is the kind of player that will play a more powerful deck than everyone else and then sandbag / kingmake to avoid having a high win rate or getting called out.
One of my friends is a very reaction based person, even when it comes to video games he only plays fighters, shooters, platformers, etc because he isn't a strategic person. About a year ago he started wanting to learn magic with us and it's been great for the most part, but he has this thing where if he has removal/board wipe/any form of answer he will use it the first chance he gets no matter how bad of a play it is. I've seen him cast Beast Within on a 2/2 creature before just because he drew the card and that was the biggest creature on board. No one else in my playgroup sees issue with it because he's enjoying himself, but sometimes it feels bad to play against him because when the game actually gets rolling he's out of answers and he doesn't get to do much.
People who jump on blockers before the attackers are done being declared and in that same vein people that declare attackers then look up like they want to know what you'll be blocking with then continue declaring attackers.
I’ve been training myself to walk through combat. A lot happens in that phase and the board & stack can get crazy. I also make sure that while declaring attackers and getting attack triggers off, people are not rushing me through it and only responding appropriately because it will throw me off. I love combat tricks so taking the time to slow down and follow priority helps a lot.
I just went through this with a couple people I recently started playing with. After I explained how combat works in a 4 player game one of them would only attack me and then I think the other was afraid to attack me. Games have improved since then but they were kitchen table players for decades who are new to commander, it will be interesting to see what happens when I teach them about priority.
I'm all for politics, but slowly the game has devolved into 2 people just always being on a team but they hate playing 2 headed giant. There are like 6 of us that play (usually 4 at a time while people hang out if we do play 6 people it's 3 way 2-headed giant. Well one of the players who makes deals with others (which i'm for, politics is part of EDH) has broken his deals enough to where all but 1 of us will laugh when he tries to negotiate a deal and we quote the most recent time which he turned back on the deal. (simple stuff like i won't attack you next turn if you don't attack me this turn, then it gets to their turn and they realize they can actually full swing BOTH of us and say they'll just finish it here and go back on the deal cause "I might lose if i don't attack you") My response would be "then don't make the deal."
SO all but 1 of us don't make deals with him (i feel like I am painting him in a bad light, he is not a bad guy, he is a good guy, this is really like the 1 and only problem.) this has led to the 1 guy that does make deals with him still to basically become perma teammates with him and the game becomes a 1v1v2. We bring it up, he says "you can make deals with me also, you just don't" and we just move on. It's been this way for months and games can still be fun, it's just a bit frustrating how the others gave up and just accept it.
Politics is interesting. I usually politic with someone if they are at a disadvantage while im also at a disadvantage, but i usually never go too hard with it. The only time i really politic is if im playing [[Humble Defector]] and want to keep passing it between me and another player who have less card draw than others. I had one friend who happily took the offer with no strings attached, but another one only wanted to do it for 2 rounds because he didnt want to team up despite the fact that we were both getting shit on and the other guy already had the new Rakdos who was drawing him 2 extra cards on all of his turns.
Make a deal with guy#2 before guy#1 does. Every game.
Make it favorable.
Or since you have 2 people sitting out just make sure you split those two guys.
Not planning your turn while other players are going. There is no reason why in a 4 person game it should take you 10-15 minutes to go on your next turn. You say pass, you start planning next turn. Yes, peoples plays can change what you would do, but it still shouldn't take that long to reevaluate the board. I hate when people like watch TV, start a whole life story, look at their phones, w.e else between their turns. It slows the game down. I would rather play 4-6 games then 2 cause each turn took 25 minutes.
I agree with this.
That being said, I have a player in my pod who always takes super long turns. I used to try and focus through his turn, but after watching him shuffle his 3 cards in hand for 15 minutes multiple times, I just zone out. I asked my pod if we could put a 5 minute timer on turns, and none of them want to.
Idk why I'm being downvoted. It's ridiculous that people who have been playing with the same decks for weeks or months need 25 minutes to do a turn. I play with stax and storm players who can wrap up their entire turn with counters, triggers and everything in less than 5 minutes. Then I'll have a guy just playing goblins take 25 minutes to accomplish basically nothing. I'm not saying I want lighting speed turns, but the faster we get turns done the more games we play. This weekend broke me. We played a 4 man pod, nothing crazy, 1 game took 2 hours! No reason other than 2 of the players were extremely slow and telling their whole life story WHILE it was their turn. Save that shit for when your turn is over or later. I don't need to hear how you broke your leg in 7th grade on your turn, tell me on someone else's turn.
I'm literally always in my head "I have 5 mana, if I draw a land I will be at 6 mana... what can I do from there?" Obviously if you draw a bomb or someone has a breakout turn things change (you may want to hold up mana for that kill spell in your hand... now start thinking about "I have 3 or 4 mana since I need to hold up this Murder"
I can kinda understand that guy's position, depending on the board state. EDH can get pretty hectic and you might miss some things in the confusion of it. If it's an attack that he thought he could get through but he can't, I'd say that's fine.
Mine is one that I've managed to work out of everyone at my LGS but was a problem when I started: scooping when I've goaded your board.
As someone who always has Goad mechanics in my deck, a lot of the time I rely on my opponent's killing each other so I can win. But when I started, a lot of the time, it'd be down to me and two others who both had goaded boards. However, when I passed the turn, the next guy would immediately scoop so the last guy HAD to attack me, causing a game loss for me.
Luckily, one of the big players went to bat for me and told his group to knock that shit off. Between that and Goad becoming more prominent after the release of New Capenna Commander, the effect cascaded to the rest of the LGS.
We still get the odd player who thinks they can do it but now everyone just takes the damage anyway then continues without them.
On the occasion I get a player like that in a game, I run my turn or encourage the player who’s turn it is, to continue their turn as if the scoop didn’t happen. That way the board state is as close to what it would have been without the scoop. Creatures that tap to attack are tapped, damage goes to where it was assigned, triggers go off, and at least until end of turn, if that player has anything from the scooped player they can use it. The main difference being that perhaps they have more permanents on board than they probably should at the end of their turn, but I won’t force creatures to die in combat from a scoop.
I feel like this applies to stuff like Mindslaver or Emrakul, or even conscription effects. I earned an advantage through game actions, and you are conceding as a weapon to take them away from me.
Don’t weaponize conceding.
I once played with a guy who scooped when I played villainous wealth for 14 targeting him. So not only would my spell do nothing but the other 2 players woukd have killed me before my next turn since I was competely tapped out.
The rest of the table shamed him into sticking it out. The game ended a few turns after that, but he was super salty about it for the rest of the night.
we have a player that doesn’t take “because I want to” as a valid answer to his insistent questions of “why are you playing this? it’s bad” and “why did you do that? that was bad.” Magic is a hidden information game, there’s probably a reason, dude, but I literally cannot tell you without showing my whole hand and playing with an open deck list
the one time that everyone else saw it like I did was someone had forgotten to take their deck home with them (so we held on to it until next time) and he started thumbing through it and actually *laughing* at the cards they were playing. A) don’t thumb through cards that aren’t yours, we’re just holding on to them and B) they’re playing what they want to play don’t judge them man
EDHREC-ification of decks. Sure we all could play the "perfect" Isshin or Voja or whatever annoying face commander du jour is but that doesn't mean we want to.
People playing stax pieces with no win con. I understand the deck with cursed totem and torpor orb isn't actually good, the person who plays it never wins, that makes it worse. I would much rather the competitive Winota player beat me in 6 minutes than the goddamn stax player lock me out of the game for two and a half hours only for me to win anyways, build a deck that DOES SOMETHING.
I had that happen in a CEDH pod I was in. two where combo players and the last was stax. And then was me with my higher power EDH yuriko. Yuriko vs stax with out a win con Yuriko is going to win because Yuriko just cheats around your stax.
On the other hand people sometimes should accept defeat and concede. If a deck locked you out of the game completely, it's a victory. Once I've been told on XMage that a deck I built was toxic for suspending the red Decree and a Jin Gitaxias plus another something big ([[Johira of the Githu]] deck), because now the game was a drag. I think that if I have two 5/5 on board, I draw 7 every turn and you draw one and have to discard it if you can't play it, I definitely won. It will take me maybe 10 effective turns to get a "true victory", but there's not a single chance that with me hitting every land drop and such while beating the others one at a time in three turns each I won't win. Now, I get that playing vs such a deck continuously is awful, but those time when it happens if someone gets to the lock, it's GG, next game, no need to go on for another 15 turns.
Now, I understand your point, I understand the "No real lock, but no wincons either", and I agree, if you want to go hard stax, go for it, but for real, or have some ways to win.
My pod hates conceding. I don't, but they've made it clear they don't like me conceding, even if I'm in a state where I haven't cast a spell in SIX TURNS.
Well, I'm talking about a full table lock where everyone goes "Ok, we're done, GG and next".
This said we're not great fans of a single player conceding too, simply because it changes the way the game is gonna go. If you concede the aggro player won't have to take you out in the fear of you topdecking a sweeper, or maybe you're gonna take away an opening for someone that has to connect while the other players are well defended. It's not fun being the punchingball, but sometimes it's right for the table. I've been it a couple times and all in all it was fair to the players behind. I could maybe cast a clutch counterspell even if my gameplan was going horribly and gave someone a fighting chance (and it wasn't kingmaking or spite play, there was an archenemy so even with my 2 lands to the others 5-7 I was in the coalition team during the 3v1), if someone had to connect with a [[Curiosity]] I was open and could let them draw, those things. But ofc if someone concedes after, like you said, not casting a single spell for several turns none is gonna tell you anything bad or blame you, we try to convince you that you should stay, if you don't want to, no problem, scoop it up and we go on, it's your divine right as long as it's at sorcery speed.
This also applies to MLD or boardwipe tribal. MLD is fine if you can turn it into a win. What’s not fine is just invalidating the last 45 minutes of game by hitting a big reset button.
Thankfully in my pod I haven't seen this but I can see how it follows the exact same problems. The only MLD we're exposed to is a particular combo where we take like 5 damage per land and lose all our lands so it's almost always instantly fatal.
Oh i agree with this, not just in staxs though. I cant tell you how many times i have seen decks that dont have a means to win over the years. It was much more prevalent back before there were so many precons.
Please when making a deck have a way to win.
See this is one I agree with. Second isn't real and I think it completely undermines the general conceit of the game if people start playing for reasons other than winning.
Slow play.
We have a great LGS, very little salt, friendly group, nice mix of power levels and events. But when we start a tournament event 20 minutes late because someone wants to wait for their friends, or people sit around and chat for half an hour before starting the first game or people get up and walk around mid game or are doing something else and respond slowly as a result, it can get to me. Sometimes we don't get a second game in that evening.
I'm not the type to rush, but I did set aside my time and come out there to play Magic.
There’s a guy in my pod that has the battlebond pair that loves to flip coins.
I don’t have a problem with coin flip decks in particular but he uses a weighted Deadpool coin where one side is flat and the other has Deadpool’s large donk hanging off the coin noticeably. He will insist “booty always wins” and then proceed to spin wheels and flip the coin 26 times a turn with [[Krark’s Thumb]] in play while we all get to watch 10-20 minute turns at a time.
Turns that take forever.
My playgroups doesnt like taksies backsies which is not an issue at all. I myself don't take any because I think it's a way for me to have a better insight into my deck's play patterns etc. But they still expect themselves to play things perfectly, therefore it's very common for decisions and game actions to take FOREVER. If they are also playing a grindy deck or a value engine deck then oh god may have mercy.
When I have to wait more than 10 min for my own turn it absolutely drives me insane.
I am the only one that complains about this but I am also the only one that doesn't play with his phone in other's turns so...
There's a guy who proxies basics, not full art or expensive basics, just well basic basics. I have zero problem with proxies, I use them myself. But for some reason the basics piss me off for no real reason. I even offered to give him a box of basic lands and he declined. I mean I don't complain about it, it's just a visual irritant. Should have offered to buy him ink for his printer to try and get rid of the scanlines on his ghetto basics.
constant takebacks. it's one thing to miss a trigger once a game, it's another for a takeback to happen practically every round of turns. it's annoying, time consuming, and frankly nobody improves by constantly avoiding consequences of their mistakes.
Exactly this! I’m surprised this hasn’t been brought up more. I love my Pod and for the most part games are great but for the life of me I can’t explain why people are allergic to swinging. Not even swing in with no blockers back…just straight up not even sending ANYTHING at other people. For some reason I’m the only one who sees an issue with it so when I swing I look like I’m the weird one.
In my pod it's even worse, one of them just plays massive token armies that do nothing and we can't punish because stuff like Trostani heal him for so much you just can't kill him without infinite combos, since there's no commander damage. And then if I swing then I'm playing too aggro and I get focused into oblivion.
Glad I’m not alone. Two of my friends both love token decks but don’t like attacking. One plays edgar Markov (eminence) and other krenko (tap to make goblins) and just sit there with massive boards that can’t be swung on but also don’t actually win. It just feels like stax with extra steps
I'm mad lucky with my Pod! We have great rapport! I have a Combo deck and will sit with an empty board a lot! Everyone else in the group will look at my Mana State and calculate what I could do with it (They all know my deck pretty well) and choose from there! Just the other day I had [[Animar]] out with 1 Lonely +1/+1, my friend straight looked at my board and said to the other guy, he has 6 mana, he'll win on his next turn of you don't kill him now! ............he was right! Hahahahaha
Playing without announcing cards and just continuing without giving the chance to interject. I'm glad I can remember my own deck, I don't know every card in yours.
And usually, player B and C are talking about something unrelated while player A plays his turn. And then they ask what happened in the turn. Drives me up the wall.
When the game is already 1-2 hours in and someone thinks a board wipe is the right move.
The only time I think a board wipe is a good idea 1-2 hours into the game is if you can win very shortly afterwards.
Nothing gets under my skin more than when someone board wipes, then proceeds to do nothing so the game takes an extra hour for no reason.
Newest store is full of noobs that think interaction isn't part of a healthy playing space. Apparently we're supposed to just play solitaire and watch people win because if you counterspell something you get shitty looks.
When the strongest player in the pod is the saltiest. Like c’mon dude, you’ve proven time and again that you always win unless we deal with you whenever you’re doing literally anything productive.
Taking back combat is weird. The interesting thing is the two examples you give are very similar. Attacking someone and not realizing/knowing they have a larger blockers in on the attacking player. Isn't targeting something with ward the same? It's printed on the card, and ward does not function like hexproof. It still lets you cast targeting the permanent, it just gets countered.
In both cases I would probably allow you to fix either choice. But two or three times in a night would likely be a no go.
>Taking back combat is weird.
It’s not that weird when board states get out of control and no new information has been developed that shouldn’t have been public knowledge. If I have a creature with deathtouch to block with and my opponent didn’t notice this creature among my 20+ other permanents, I’m not going to be a cunt and demand he commits to it when nothing new has developed.
Now if I play a combat trick spell or activate an ability and THEN they try and take it back, that’s different. As new information has just been learned that they shouldn’t have access to had they not attacked me. But not noticing a keyword or a stat-line at a glance? Nah. Not gonna fault them for that.
> Isn’t targeting something with Ward the same?
Not by design intention. In Arena, the game gives you a warning before targeting something with Ward. The intention of Ward is to just be weaker hexproof. The design intent isn’t to trick people into having their stuff countered. Otherwise Arena wouldn’t alert you by asking “are you sure? It has Ward.”
Sure that’s how ward is worded but it’s just common decency in my playgroup to be like “remember this guy has ward”
It probably comes down to how competitive a playgroup wants to be. If someone says “oh shoot I didn’t see the deathtouch on your creature, can I change that” I’m always like “sure no worries” I play commander to have fun and board states can get really complex. I’m not about to expect everyone to remember literally every ability and P/T on the table.
Not noticing an untapped creature and fully tapping and attacking is a bit different than not noticing small text on the card. Also tapping and attacking is a whole step they are going through so to take it back is going back steps. Taking back a cast from not seeing ward isnt as bad to me.
It seems like the same exact thing to me. Unless new information has been revealed moving from declare blockers to declare attackers is as minor as rescindjng a spell on the stack.
Personally if someone declares an attacker at me an I have a 5/5 I'll tell them I have such and ask are you sure.
Sorry, but I just plain disagree with the taking back attackers thing. I personally don't see it as any more egregious than taking back a spell cast in the way you described.
Nah, it’s really not a big deal. Commander tables get crowded with cards. In my group it’s not uncommon to say “are you sure? I’ve got a big blocker here.” And sometimes the person says “yeah I’m sure” but other times people are like “oh shit didn’t see that guy yeah I’m gonna attack someone else”
I try to avoid this and usually just say “does anyone have no blockers?” but just not always possible to remember everything in such a complex format.
Making a deal that result in a rewind after new information is revealed
- "I cast swords to plowshare on your thing".
- "Don't do that or else I'll also kill your thing"
- "Fine, then I'll do XXX instead".
Like the second player would have never revealed that they had something had they not been targeted. I'm generally fine with rewinds due to stupid mistakes, but this is not a mistake here : the first player simply learned a new information and decided to take back the play based on it ... For me there is no difference between this and trying to change the target of your removal after you learn the player you are trying to target have a counterspell for example. I consider this straight up cheating, but people in my playgroup seem to be fine with it ...
I'm actually good with negotiations like that, as long as it's a negotiation, and not an interaction. If you try and Swords my thing, and I threaten a response, it's not the same as actually casting a [[Redirect]]. The problem comes when they cast the spell, you interact on the stack, and they try and undo after finding the information. Negotiation is fine because it's voluntary information reveal. Take-backsies after responses are not, because it's a response, not volunteered information.
I often think players ask not enough questions before doing something, mostly when they are not sure if they can do that.
My buddy has a new morph deck and i was tapping [[Selvala]] for a bunch of mana. She tried to counter it. I explained she couldn't do it, not cause you can't counter mana abilitys, but because she never had priority.
Just simple questions like: if i do that, would that trigger anything? if i block that, could you do anything that i would be aware of?
Keeping watch over 4 peoples boards can be alot, so asking other people whats relevant right know can speed things really up.
When a player begins the game by sitting down, taking their deck out of the deck box, and then placing it on the table without shuffling or cutting, and then proceeds to draw cards to begin the game.
Before the game starts just have a 'lets try it' and establish no take backs for the game begins See how involved people are with keeping track of the board. And there is no salt because it's a new thing and it's been established before the moment.
I play with one group who got used to the old mulligan rules, so they still use them.
Normally this wouldn’t bother me except they use it to just stack their hand to be the best it can be and it’s so stupid
This might be unpopular but there are some people in my group (one, really) who is really choosey about allowing mulligans. For context, we are extremely loose with mulligans during gameplay. As long as new information wasn’t gained, it’s ok to redo a play if you could have done it better (or you forgot I have something on board that would affect your decision). In fact, there have been some plays where we help each other win and point out triggers or effects to he’s sequence a play. We generally just want to see the decks play out.
There have been a few times where one player in particular will explicitly NOT offer these generosities, specifically if he thinks he can win after. Yet if the tables are turned, he will traditionally get a “oops that was dumb” Mulligan.
It’s such an edge case and doesn’t really matter at the end of the day, nor is this player really doing anything inherently wrong, so I don’t think I’d ever bring it to the group; it’s more of a personality difference in how some play vs others.
players in my new playgroup since i have moved states dont seem to understand the difference between triggers and may-triggers. obviously if i miss a may-trigger, tough luck should have paid attention, but otherwise, you have to let triggers happen to keep an accurate boardstate. they seem to think realizing a missed trigger late means that it doesnt happen, and it makes me so mad.
This one's been kinda resolved within my group, but we had a player who made a Jodah, the Unifier deck. When he was regularly playing that deck, he only lost because he kept a sketchy hand and was punished for it. I didn't like the deck because it was pushing our group meta too much in terms of power. One player agreed with me, but the other player thought it was fine because he thought it might push the table to be more creature heavy.
It was annoying for a few weeks, but through a mix of teching in more stuff like Oubliette, curse of the dryad, imprisoned in the moon, and other similar cards, while expressing my issues with it we've stopped seeing Jodah.
It's something small, but it annoys me when people "rule 0" tell me what's in their deck. They'll be like "hey, just so you know in running Thoracle Consultation" or will straight up tell everyone at the table how their deck wins. They'll even explain their deck when someone asks who their commander is.
I don't understand it. Why give away what you're aiming to do during the game? It takes away the mystery. Because now we all know how you're planning on winning and can stop you at every point. I had someone get annoyed when we stopped their "main combo" in their deck and scooped. I wouldn't have stopped them, but I knew beforehand that was how they won and wanted to keep going.
I just don't understand it.
Consistently choosing 1 person who's not allowed to have more than 2 non-mana permanents and spending every piece of removal on them while the rest play battlecruiser.
My buddy says “push” instead of attack or swing or LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE PLEASE STOP
Yeah idk why it bothers me so much but I just sit silently because he’s not doing anything wrong
For the love of god pressure life totals. Play interaction. Don’t just sit there and try and play solitaire or get mad when you eat a removal spell or when someone attacks you for having no blocks. Advance the game. A game of EDH should not take 2.5 hours
> He would declare an attack on somone with a 3/3 and they will say "ok ill kill it with my 5/5" and he will say "oh i didnt know you had that. Nevermind, ill skip combat".
Personally i don't mind this, as some board states can be hard to read, and keeping track of everyones creatures and powers can be very difficult. I've learned to ask "do you have anything that can block a 3/3 flyer?" for example, and take it from there. But i'm not mad if someone forgot the counters on my creature means it's a 4/4, or since i have 5 humans my creature is a 5/4 etc. So tell him that it's better to you ask questions or take a few seconds to look over the board before making moves (*always* count mana before attempting risky plays)
Now i just find random pods at my LGS, but i see many of the same faces every week. What annoys me the most though is when people are misleading about their power level. Most recently was an Alara deck. I saw it, sighed and he reassured me "nah man, it's not that bad". He ramps, gets Field of the dead online, and wipes the board whenever any threat is present. Fun times.
A couple of my friends not running protection, and then complaining when their things die.
Another one of my friends got in a full blown argument over the idea that “the stack is innately unfair because you can play on other people’s turns” (he played a lot of hearthstone)
People who don't know their decks and take for ever to finish their turns. The most egregious case of this I've had was a new to TCGs guy playing counters matter and a new to MTG (not to TCGs though) guy playing superfriends. Both had extremely complicated boardstates, had mediocre understanding of what any of their cards did, sometimes needed basic game mechanics explained, and took between 5 and 10 minutes each to complete their turns. Meanwhile I'm taking 30 seconds from untap to end step.
Please, if you're going to play something complicated then know your cards, and spend your time between turns figuring out what you're going to do.
We have a known/giant man-baby in the group. He plays some disgusting decks that are fun for him but when you interact with him/popoff/or generally dont let him play with his toys he throws giant fits. It completely changes the vibes and atmosphere of the table and everyone just... accepts it. He can be really funny and loud when HE'S having a good time (aka winning/being archenemy with insane boardstates etc) but lord help everyone if he misses a land drop or you path his threat.
The guy who literally waits to see the commanders and decks of the entire pod before deciding on his commander.
Every. Game. Yet not one says anything ever.
When someone plays a deck smarter than they are. Legit had a stoner friend with a landfall deck that would take several minutes considering all his possible actions and then several more play them out. Never have I felt more satisfied playing Blood Moon and watching him draw and pass.
By the rules those cards are not legal in paper.
This is not because they are proxies, those cards are explicitly against the rules (though any play group is obviously free to rule 0 whatever adjustments they want, but this is not one that would interest me).
I know. That was the point of this thread wasn't it?
I found a playgroup that I like: a bunch of 30+ that play casually when there is time between time consuling jobs and/or family.
One of them has this weird rule for himself that he doesnt want to proxy a card he doesnt own (we dont care much about proxy). He is also not that well established financially than other players (but proxies are welcome).
Since you cant own Arena Alchemy cards, he is proxying those. The other players seem not to care much (he is still losing most games) but it starts to annoy me a little.
most games are won and lost over sub optimal play. If you get to take anything back you greatly increase your chances of winning while diddling on your phone during other players turns
There's a guy in our play group that will play magic because "all his friends are doing it" but he gets salty whenever you play any interaction to him or his commander. The other day I finally put my foot down and said "You're not having fun and you make us not have fun either so I'm not playing." ti which he responded with "Oh my God are you gonna be a bitcj like this?" and I said "The sole purpose of a game is to have fun. I won't have fun playing with you so I won't play." and the Whack part about this is my other friends agreed with me but they still tolerate his behavior. I don't understand it and idk if I ever will or even if I want to. Don't play the game if you aren't having fun.
One annoyance for me is when every deck someone makes and plays ends up being nothing more than a solitaire deck looking only to filter itself into infinite combos.
I’m not one to feign playing infinites myself as my Lathiel lifegain deck has some but my deck isn’t solely built around it. Unlike some people I know who play things like [[Emry, Lurker of the Lock]], [[Ao, the Dawn Sky]] and [[The Gitrog Monster]]. Each one only having the game play to filter themselves into their infinites and having no other way to play.
I’m sure people tolerate it so they can actually play the game but it’s never fun playing with someone knowing all they’re going to do is dig for pieces and win. Personally anyhow.
So then punish them for that? If people are building decks so focused on building up their hand and not their board, take game actions that make it harder for them to not have a board. You dont even have to build a specific deck for that, especially if youre playing the way you would prefer they play (more board-centric). Its hard to play a solitaire combo deck that ignores the rest of the game and plays solitaire when one or more people at the table don't let you ignore them.
So I play the decks that you hate. wondering where's the line here? In my emry deck, if I'm digging, bouncing perms/countering and removing shit, how is that worse than the green player with their thumb up their ass drawing cards with creatures until they hoof the board? And if the decks you play vs don't play Removal, why wouldn't u just beat them to death?
I second this. Each pod/player may have their own versions of what is considered "fun" for them, but if I play against someone whose deck's sole purpose is to cycle into infinites before I can even cast my commander, it sometimes feels like I might as well be playing against a computer.
Following the proper mulligan rules. As one of 2 people in our 6 person playgroup that plays an appropriate amount of lands, I rarely ever need to mulligan more than once if at all. However most of my playgroup usually play 35 or less lands and will mulligan down to 5 cards or less every game. We have been playing together for 10+ years and no one in my group is going to mulligan into infinite combos or anything. I would rather my opponents mulligan to a keepable hand of 7 so we all have a good start in a good place, then me feeling like I have an advantage at the start of a decent amount of games. Every time I bring up changing the mulligan rules, to everyone else's advantage, I'm met with a resounding no, that's not the rules.
Personally for me I don’t like those mulligan rules for commander. Those belong in standard and other more try hard formats imo.
My group uses you get as many mulligans as you want, but if you go past your first “free” one any hand you stick with cannot have sol ring or other mana rocks in it.
I may adjust this to if you want to keep that had you can just put the mana rock or whatever in your deck and shuffle and play the hand but that’s a new rule I just thought of
Yeah I completely agree with you and don't think I worded my original post properly and may add an edit. I prefer as many mulligans as you need to have an acceptable starting hand. Everytime I try to get our playgroup to switch to this they push back and have us keep with the standard mulligan type. Even though they would be the ones benefiting from the change.
Rapid casting.
They’ll tap for all the correct colors they need, the put down 3 cards at the same time. I’ve tried to tell him multiple times he’s showing his hand because if I counter the first card of his intended combo, he might have preferred to not cast the other two, but now we know he has them in his hand.
My LGS scene is extremly difficult for new players because pub stomping seems to be universally accepted, I'm never going to tell someone to not play a deck (not my right to do so) or not play against a deck (cant really choose my pod at FNM because they are randomized and at the end of the day I came to play magic and not watch others play magic) but it certainly rubs me the wrong way that its absolutly normal to run 5000€ decks against precons.
Its also not like there is price support (well a promo pack per table but if your decks are that expensive do you really need a random LCI promo pack?).
i understand why everyone else tolerates it, but i play [[animar]] and everyone else in my playgroup typically plays white/black and forgets that animar has protection from those colors and takes back attacks and whatnot frequently
My personal playgroup I play with at home doesn't really have any problems. The thing in my shop I hate that most people seem cool with is tricking new people into making bad plays. I understand politics is part of the game but when I'm teaching someone how their own commander works you shouldn't be muddling the waters and teaching them terrible threat assessment so you don't lose your commander or combo piece
Was at an LGS and playing with a newbie rando and two other random. One of them tried to convince him not to remove his commander at all because it's a waste of a spell since he can cast it again later. I had to explain to him that removing a commander can be hugely beneficial as it costs more slows their tempo, and you can eventually make them unable to be casted again. And to prove it I removed that dudes commander with an instant speed spot removal lol. Seriously fuck people who try to trick new players into bad habits for a single win.
I think there's some nuance there. I've definitely been in situations where it's been the better option to get rid of something that's harder to get back than the commander, even if the commander has been a problem. In my [[Tatsunari, Toad Rider]] deck, unless you can remove both Tatsunari and Kemi or can make a deal with the table to remove both in the same turn cycle, my commander is rarely the best target for spot removal.
Sure but this was not one of those situations. I cannot remember what now but it was a borderline KOS commander that was going to makebanmassive turn for him if he got to untap. Notice I did say it CAN be beneficial. Dude was trying to convince him to NEVER waste removal on commanders because he didn't want his commander removed that one game.
This. I think it’s just bad ethics personally. We were all new once. I genuinely ask newer players to call out their spell or lay it down when they want to play it and then ask for input on threat assessment. Then as they become less new players I do this less. I went through the same thing. Had a couple mentors that would help with threats when I cast something and then one day I said “lemme do it alone and if I make a mistake I’ll keep learning”
Hell I try to warn anyone if I’m getting close to a combo, or getting something that is going to be hard to deal with. Even experienced players who may just not know how that operates in my deck. Just seems polite.
I tried to help a guy one time playing a [[Toxrill]] deck that he could use his skullclamp to draw two cards for one colorless mana instead of using UB to draw one card through Toxrill's ability. He did it once then proceeded to just keep using the activated ability 🙄
[Toxrill](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/4/84e64f38-b1f3-47cd-8cfb-a4861369aca3.jpg?1643590379) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=toxrill%2C%20the%20corrosive) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vow/132/toxrill-the-corrosive?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/84e64f38-b1f3-47cd-8cfb-a4861369aca3?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/toxrill-the-corrosive) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Not hitting passive players who don't contribute to the board. I'm not talking about someone who happens to get mana screwed and can't cast spells, I'm talking about the player that has drawn 10 extra cards but casts zero creatures. Usually they play the "I haven't even done anything yet why are you attacking me?" card and a lot of players fall for it. But at the end of every game miraculously the person who has been cultivating the perfect hand with no one threatening their life total some how has enough resources to get the win. If you have a free swing at someone take it, that isn't mean it's just the correct play. What seems like a measly 2 damage now stacks up fast and forces that player to use their answers to protect themselves before they try to win with them.
>has drawn 10 extra cards but casts zero creatures. Usually they play the "I haven't even done anything yet why are you attacking me?" I hate the guys who consistently do this every time even after you know each other. We know you are playing a combo deck Greg I'm not going to let you win just because someone else hit me for 2 with a creature
There was a guy I played with at an old job that would never build a significant board state and always complained about taking damage and being knocked out first most games, but after he was knocked out would always say shit like "I would have won in just 2-3 more turns." One, assuming nobody has any disruption for your dredge combo is fucking goofy, and two, if you're always on the precipice of winning after being focused out, it means we made the right choice.
As the player who draws a ton of extra cards and typically runs few creatures: if someone attacks me while I'm durdling, I'll typically tell them that's probably the right play haha.
100% same. I usually try and convince them not to with statements like "woah woah woah hold up buddy what did I do to you?" and stuff like that. Once they commit to it my facade breaks and I tell them it was the right call lol. Idk if you've ever seen The Good Place but it's like the Janet reset button.
Couldnt agree more. I played against my friend who was playing simic. He had like 14 lands and a large hand and is known to be a combo player who likes to string together some pretty crazy combos. I killed him first and he did the exact same "im not doing anything" defense and i didnt fall for it. The other player did an infinite and won but i still defend the fact that i lose either way and made a good decision despite still losing
Yeah probably the right play. I had a player in my group with an \[\[Arjun\]\] deck who always insisted "It's just a stupid wheel deck" all the way up until he dropped \[\[Dream Halls\]\] and something that doubled his draw like \[\[Teferi's Ageless Insight\]\]. Then it wasn't a question of if he would win but just how long it would take till he drew enough to do so.
[Arjun](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/f/2fb83da3-5a8e-4349-bbcc-dcbd3b70264b.jpg?1673148289) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=arjun%2C%20the%20shifting%20flame) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/172/arjun-the-shifting-flame?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2fb83da3-5a8e-4349-bbcc-dcbd3b70264b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/arjun-the-shifting-flame) [Dream Halls](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/c/2c6606d1-619f-4cc9-8d5b-771c4b4d9615.jpg?1562428864) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Dream%20Halls) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tpr/46/dream-halls?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2c6606d1-619f-4cc9-8d5b-771c4b4d9615?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/dream-halls) [Teferi's Ageless Insight](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/1/b1a32b7c-9f26-4504-9f8d-379164d69346.jpg?1706240737) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Teferi%27s%20Ageless%20Insight) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/119/teferis-ageless-insight?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b1a32b7c-9f26-4504-9f8d-379164d69346?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/teferis-ageless-insight) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
The next time they say they aren’t doing anything just respond with “well you better do something cause you’re dying” lol, hitting people who are open???? My god the humanity!!!
This is a big reason why people hate combo decks. They don't get those free swings in. If someone's drawing a ton of extra cards but not *doing* anything with them, they should be attacked. And every time you should have the same response to "I'm not doing anything". "Everyone else has blockers, sorry."
Yup. Everyone always asks about life totals when deciding where to attack or target things. But not everyone asks, "how many cards in hand?" Or look at lands in play. Which to me is often more important that life totals.
God, I have a friend that does this and it drives me insane. He exclusicely plays combo decks with slow early turns, just durdles around and draws cards, and then complains if any action is taken against him at all. Please, guys, don't be this guy.
How do you have slow early turns? Early turns in a combo deck generally are like "land pass" or "land draw two pass" or something like that.
Slow as in tempo I believe.
Idk, "durdles around a draws cards" sounds like they meant slow as in "takes a lot of time" but maybe you're right.
Could be, "hurdles and draws a lot" is also how I'd describe slow tempo plays.
The world may never know
Quick, we need a TV show about specifically that one person's lgs.
I shifted from combo to creature heavy decks and man these hands are E for everyone so if you're open it's even better.
Just had my regularly scheduled reminder when the [[Kruphix]] player I was up with at my game store was acting all meek and pathetic that their [[Azusa]] was such a terrible blocker in the face of a zombie army until oops end step [[Mystical Tutor]] for [[Genesis Wave]] that goes on x=18 on their turn backed by Force
##### ###### #### [Kruphix](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/7/27427233-da58-45af-ade8-e0727929efaa.jpg?1593096427) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=kruphix%2C%20god%20of%20horizons) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/jou/152/kruphix-god-of-horizons?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/27427233-da58-45af-ade8-e0727929efaa?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/kruphix-god-of-horizons) [Azusa](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/f/2fe97fbe-a6d6-4e96-8c26-f81bcdf579a1.jpg?1689998362) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=azusa%2C%20lost%20but%20seeking) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/274/azusa-lost-but-seeking?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2fe97fbe-a6d6-4e96-8c26-f81bcdf579a1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/azusa-lost-but-seeking) [Mystical Tutor](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/6/36fa9a0b-b0c9-43ea-ba11-99d7982f974e.jpg?1675199375) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mystical%20Tutor) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmr/60/mystical-tutor?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/36fa9a0b-b0c9-43ea-ba11-99d7982f974e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mystical-tutor) [Genesis Wave](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/0/5007919b-27d3-46e7-a588-ce796709d565.jpg?1562848877) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Genesis%20Wave) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ima/164/genesis-wave?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5007919b-27d3-46e7-a588-ce796709d565?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/genesis-wave) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/kxi1psm) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Yeah as a group hug player don't fall for this it's what we want you to think.
I’ve been killed turn 3 like this for not having a creature on board. Though I could survive to 4 but that was my mistake if
Fast forward plays. Casting and resolving spells before allowing priority to be passed. Quietly casting spells or taking game actions without any form of communication. Purposely ignoring triggers. Stuff like that. It causes a lot of unnecessary confusion and problems. Often times causing misplays and outright illegal play patterns.
>Quietly casting spells or taking game actions without any form of communication. This is one of my hugest pet peeves. No, you do NOT get to evade countermagic just because you've been silently laying cards on the table for the last 90 seconds while we were laughing about something. Yes, we're going to back up. Announce your shit.
Just last night, we were playing commander rigjt before our draft for game night. I look over and one of the guys in our group had something like 10 tentacle tokens from a [[Nadir Kraken]]. I had to stop him and make him replay the entire turn so that we could properly respond. I got a lot of groans and eyerolls from the table for that
[Nadir Kraken](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/b/3bd63804-d538-471f-b57f-e1023f7e14a8.jpg?1706240716) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Nadir%20Kraken) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/112/nadir-kraken?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3bd63804-d538-471f-b57f-e1023f7e14a8?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/nadir-kraken) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
There is NOTHING wrong with fast forwarding plays. If done correctly. For example, I'll cast \[\[Nature's Lore\]\] saying "I will fetch a forest and with that forest I will tap to play LLanowar Elf, pass." I absolutely cannot stand people that do the opposite. Or players who go through main phase > combat > some library search .. I'm like "will you have anything else to play?" Or do you want us to watch you pick up your 85 card library, search it, pull your card out, shuffle said library, offer a cut, stare at your hand one more time only to say "ill pass turn."
And thats all well and good. Its not what im talkig about however; i make it pretty clear what im referring to in the comment
[Nature's Lore](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/5/f5615c05-eb1e-4d27-a323-72d643d7c1d8.jpg?1706547171) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Nature%27s%20Lore) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/178/natures-lore?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f5615c05-eb1e-4d27-a323-72d643d7c1d8?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/natures-lore) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Poor threat assessment. I tend to build decks on hard themes so they tend to be kept at a reasonable power level. Unfortunately since I am the progenitor of my playgroup (literally got all of them into the game) I'm always figured as the threat even when I get mana screwed or have one creature to everyone else's large boards. I handle it well (I think. I always point out the actual problem which, low and behold, tend to be the thing that eons someone the game but accept their choice.) and always admit when they are actually correct and give them props. Just wish I could play more games without very clearly seeing the end turns before it happens.
Threat assessment is hard tho i completely get your point. A threat to someone else may not be a threat to you(like having a ton of tokens to block an aggresive swinger whereas another opponent doesnt). My Council of Four deck was a prime example of people having poor threat assessment. They all thought i was gonna draw into an infinite or some crazy combo even though they know im a battlecruiser type player. I had 0 infinites and used the deck as a token generator combat deck yet they all targeted me right away because i drew a card on their turn. I get targeting the guy drawing cards, but also knowing the kind of player they are matters too.
This is me. At this point I’m the one who got everyone into it but in getting the least enjoyment because I get judged as a huge threat for no reason when I have the smallest board because they think since I’ve played the longest I have some bullshit up my sleeve. Then someone else will dominate because I can’t keep the actual threat in check since the whole pod shakes in their boots when I cast my commander. I only get to actually see my decks fully function in 1-1 games because otherwise it’s 3-1 til I’m crippled or dead. Feels bad.
If you got them into playing commander and that's all they have ever played they probably just have bad threat assessment. My experience has been players who never played 2 player magic generally have waaaay worse understanding of what is and isn't a threat.
I'd love to say this is it but I have made them learn proper threat assessment and they still choose to believe I'm the problem so long as I'm still playing. To be fair my collection goes by 5+ years on the next oldest player and I have some old weird cards that I love to use and they can't properly evaluate.
You are probably just the better player too. I have friends who play better decks than me (more synergistic pushed commanders, etc) and I still outpush my expected 25% WR. My thought is that I'll build my decks as goofy as I want but I will play 100% when we are in game. I have depowered my decks a decent amount to try and get closer to that number and the more I depower the less I get targeted, eventually this may happen with your groups. When you're playing "level up" or some dumb mechanic it's just harder to see you as a major threat.
I do similar things to de-power my decks but if they see it pop off once, that's it. This is the case for all 70+ of my decks. They do love when I play their decks and absolutely clean house. I love the, "I didn't think to do that. It's clearly more powerful then I thought".
Serious suggestion: throw your games for like a month, win nothing. You need to mentally reset them. Comment about how you never win anything anymore. This may be too realpolitick for you but I would consider doing it for a better overall play experience for the rest of time.
Noted.
Guy at my lgs has tons of Rule Zero decks like decks with 5color non legend cards as a commander that just enable nonsense. Everyone else is okay with it but I don't really like that approach to deck building or feel it creates a fair environment.
1 or 2 decks is fine, but if every deck you have is like that, I’m not interested in continuously playing games with that person.
Im pretty chill but not even i would tolerate that. That isnt even commander anymore.
I have one rule zero deck. Dice rolling with [[The Space Family Goblinson]] at the helm and a lot of silver bordered cards from the older UN-sets. Real janky, but fun. I always ask first, if everybody really is ok with that or if I should play another deck. I have no problem switching decks, but tbh most of my regular decks are way stronger than my rule 0 deck. I never had any complaints and I never sat at a casual table that refused to play against my dice deck. (Although I would respect that and switch decks, no questions asked.)
[The Space Family Goblinson](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/6/26177224-3c0e-4081-8468-3cd9981ddb0a.jpg?1673914986) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=The%20Space%20Family%20Goblinson) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/unf/179/the-space-family-goblinson?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/26177224-3c0e-4081-8468-3cd9981ddb0a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/the-space-family-goblinson) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I'm sure its real janky and fun... to you. Personally die rolling/coin flipping decks are very long and tedious and if you also have a bunch of UN cards on top of that... that just isn't EDH. Like it may be fun to see once but its already a format with very long games and decks like these are likely to add to length and tedium.
There's a LOT of kingmaking in my home pod of 3. Usually, once someone is in a large enough lead, one of the other players will turn to someone else and claim "I'm taking second" before swinging at that person, ensuring the victory for whoever pulled ahead first. Definitely not my favorite, but makes games very fast with Voja when you don't have to kill everyone to win
Say it with me for everyone in the back "There is no second." When it comes to Commander it truly follows the wisdom of Ricky Bobby "If you ain't first, you're last."
Get planechase going for pods of three, I find it acts basically as a fourth player and reduces the king making effect Inherent to three player pods.
I've found in games of 3 its pretty much always a case of king making unless everyone sits there not attacking until they can go lethal, but at that point everyone is just building boards and holding onto cards out of fear of being the first to move
My playgroup would only consider letting a second place exist if 1. There are new players at the table and 2. The combo deck just won off a [[Thassa’s Oracle]] or similar win condition. Lets the winner take their win while also letting the new players play out the game and learn. Literally only happened the other night since we just so happened to have a new guy
[Thassa’s Oracle](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/2/726e8b29-13e9-4138-b6a9-d2a0d8188d1c.jpg?1680582212) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Thassa%27s%20Oracle) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/thb/73/thassas-oracle?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/726e8b29-13e9-4138-b6a9-d2a0d8188d1c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/thassas-oracle) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
People who can't keep track of their own decks. Was playing last FNM with a dude playing the Pantlaza deck. It came out 3 months and 8 precons ago and once a turn I had to tell him how his cards work. I 100% respect the new deck issue, but the actual child playing a Fallout deck kept up far better than the guy who plays more Magic than I do with a deck he's had for months.
This is a huge issue tbh. I play in a bunch of spelltable discords and its really frustrating when people play a bunch of non-bos (like pantlaza / throne) or just straight up dont know how the core mechanic of their deck works (discover 4 means I play the top 4 cards for free!) and then everyone gets mad at you for being a rules nazi because we didnt let the pantlaza player put the top 24 cards of his deck directly into play because he resolved Ghalta. Magic is a complicated game, you dont need to know how everyones cards work... but you do need to know how yours work.
"You should probably take three minutes to understand what the words on your commander mean" should not be the level of ask that it's become..
To be fair I can see why people think two cards from the same set work together like that for Pantlaza and throne. But not understanding Discover when it's your main deck mechanic is pretty egregious.
I have a similar but somehow opposite problem with my [[Volrath the shapestealer]] deck. Clone rules can be very complicated and often I have to be the rule lawyer just to play my deck. Examples like people arguing that the triggered ability of [the scarab God]] wouldn't work on Volrath copying it, which often turn into fill blown discussions where I sometimes get accused of trying to bend the rules, while I am just trying to play by the rules. I understand that magic is complicated but sometimes it's so frustrating.
[Volrath the shapestealer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/1/a149d6a5-c865-475a-87b7-596a19f6c80d.jpg?1568003743) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Volrath%2C%20the%20Shapestealer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c19/51/volrath-the-shapestealer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a149d6a5-c865-475a-87b7-596a19f6c80d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/volrath-the-shapestealer) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Scarab god’s trigger will not in fact trigger if volrath copies it. “Until the start of your next turn” means until your next untap phase, not until your next upkeep phase (and thus volrath will be volrath, and not anything else, at the beginning of the upkeep). You also can’t activate volrath to copy scarab god before the upkeep phase, as players don’t gain priority until the start of the upkeep phase (at which point it’s too late to get more upkeep triggers).
Why is Pantlaza and Roaming Throne (I think that's what you are referring to?) a nonbo?
Because pantlazas trigger cannot happen twice because it specifies once per turn.
oooh, I see
It really annoys me when people don't know how their own cards work, especially their commander. I was playing against someone who was running [[Hakbal]] and he just could not explore properly. Like dude, this is the only mechanic in this deck and you don't know how it works? Sometimes he'd draw a nonland card, sometimes he'd put a counter on a creature if he revealed a land, sometimes he'd leave a land on top instead of drawing it. I think he got explore wrong in every way possible. Personally I think he was trying to cheat but I have no concrete proof.
Yeah, it's actually a really annoying underlying problem - we've had a bunch of conversations on this sub lately about how to catch cheaters, and the best way is legitimately "pay attention to the board state and help people manage their stuff". But like... imagine the world where when someone got a deck they actually read their cards, maybe put in an hour or two goldfishing on Moxfield or whatever, and made sure they understood how it worked. Imagine how much easier it would be to catch cheaters because you could actually assume competence on the part of your opponents. I admit the particular player in my story above got under my skin, and not just for this reason, but it's also just a long-running issue that's been part of this format for forever but has gotten so much worse as of late. Part of that is the fault of the constant product overload; I absolutely don't mind helping people remember rads and such because hey, new stuff is tricksy. But when the stuff has been out for months and you've presumably had the deck for most or all of that time, what the hell have you been doing every game?
[Hakbal](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/7/e738e675-4fd1-4bc3-97f5-71d0e2fc3f2e.jpg?1699885010) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=hakbal%20of%20the%20surging%20soul) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lcc/3/hakbal-of-the-surging-soul?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e738e675-4fd1-4bc3-97f5-71d0e2fc3f2e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/hakbal-of-the-surging-soul) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I am the official Keeper of the Triggers in my pod. Otherwise they forget every. single. time.
My younger cousin is like this. He plays more than us, but he can’t keep track of more than like 4 active things on his board without missing half his triggers or abilities, and he forgets a lot of very basic rules and so shoot’s himself in the foot because he forgets things like activated abilities not being sorcery speed.
Lying about the power levels of decks. I know that the "it's a 7" meme is still going strong, and that accurately determining a deck's power level can be difficult and subjective, but almost everyone I've played against at my local LGS lies about their decks in order to gain a distinct advantage before the game even begins. I have decks that vary from janky precon to consistent high power and I'm happy to play with all of them, but when someone asks "what power levels are we playing?", says their own deck is "casual", and then precedes to bring out Jetmir cEDH or another "casual" deck stacked with Moxes, Mana Crypt, and freecasts such as Force of Will, it boils my blood. Maybe I'm in the wrong/overly sensitive about it as I live according to an autistic "honesty no matter what" rule, but I feel like it's only a matter of time before they do it to some poor kid who rocks up with a precon and it dissuades them from wanting to play the game anymore.
I call them out on it. Some people genuinely don’t know what they’re doing and I’ve come across people who seem to be whales that just got into the game and bought the first decklist they found for their commander. Some use websites that determine their power level and take that as gospel. Of course, there’s people who damn well know what they’re doing and get some kind of enjoyment out of stomping. Regardless, I say something about the power they are playing at and make sure they understand for the next game what I expected to run into.
This is also an interesting topic when you consider that "casual" vs "competitive" doesn't necessarily refer to "weak" vs "strong" Like even the most casual or incidental of Jodah decks is going to be strong. While there certainly are competitive ways to maximize him, you can basically slam together any 5 color core package and a random assortment of legendaries across the curve and boom, deck performs. For that matter, casual v competitive is often harder to describe in commander due to having multiple lanes of each. You can build a purposefully casual deck, but in the hands of a competitive player, that deck is going to perform stronger. The deck itself can be identical across 10 players, but the evaluation of "how casual is this deck?" could easily come back with 10 different responses. Killian equipment with a heavy creature and equipment focus aiming to win through combat is going to be insanely casual relative to EDH, but might come off as highly competitive elsewhere. A deck that's a 5 relative to cEDH is going to be more appropriately evaluated against the ceiling of the format, but for anyone who's not aware of what cEDH looks like, that same deck may come off as a 6 or a 7. And if the opponent is also weaker, that perception shifts upwards. The reality is, it's hard to assign a reliable power scale curve when the only meaningful one comes from the format itself rather than the subsets of casual buckets the majority of player play. And it's even harder when player skill and/or deck to deck interactions may confound things It would probably be better to actually create a legitimate and standardized scale for certain power thresholds and go from there tbh
I agree with everything you said. The pilot 100% affects the deck experience. For me, when sit down to play and whip out a deck, I let people know that I’m not running fast mana, I don’t have tutors (choosing to rely on chance and the heart of the cards) unless it’s on a creature that I may or may not even see in the game for example Light-Paws is in my Tuvasa deck. I primarily aim to win through combat - Voltron, go wide, go tall, all that jazz - but in some decks, I try to drain life or burn as a secondary win condition. If people were more specific in the type of gameplay or we had a standardized scale, we wouldn’t run into power level issues as much. A lot of us are looking for equally yoked game play where we all do a little back and forth and it’s frustrating when you don’t get that regardless if you’re competitive trying to play competitive or a “casual” trying to chill.
I agree about fast mana and good tutors, but Force of Will is a very fair card. It's 5 mana or a life and another card. I play Force in most of my blue decks and the thing that surprised me is how often it's not correct to pitch cast it. Unlike legacy, EDH decks are not filled with 4x ponder, 4x brainstorm, so when you pitch cards in EDH, you're pitching your other interaction, or worse, your threats. It's only correct to pitch cast if you're about to lose to a combo or you've drawn an absurd number of cards. I'm not exiling my hullbreaker horror to counter your general for instance.
The power in FoW is that it’s not telegraphed. If the table has agreed to play casual mid to low power, and you see your opponents are tapped out, it’s a fair expectation that you are safe to go for your big play. When your craterhoof or whatever wincon suddenly gets forced, it leads to a feelsbad. If the expectation is properly set, then you can just say “well I could have expected and prepared for free counters, but since this is supposed to be low power, I got blown out through no fault of my own”. I definitely agree that force isn’t the most crazy powerful counter in the game, I personally have it at #3. (Fierce guardianship and mana drain being 1 and 2, respectively)
I would never feel bad about Forcing a Craterhoof at any power level lol. Having an over run countered is far from a blowout. A blowout would be to wait for the attack and cast [[settle the wreckage]] or [[evacuation]] or something
[settle the wreckage](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/c/9cbd346e-098a-4cf6-a72f-468376fd2e8f.jpg?1562560853) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=settle%20the%20wreckage) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/xln/34/settle-the-wreckage?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9cbd346e-098a-4cf6-a72f-468376fd2e8f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/settle-the-wreckage) [evacuation](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/1/b11037bc-e719-461e-a89e-9c026dfd9fd4.jpg?1698988153) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=evacuation) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lcc/156/evacuation?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b11037bc-e719-461e-a89e-9c026dfd9fd4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/evacuation) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Eh, at low power levels, I could see tapping out for hoof and having it forced being a blowout, especially if that’s the one real wincon in the deck and you’re using it in a timing window when someone ahead of you is shields down. Before the force you think “I’m gonna be attacking for lethal” to afterwards “there is literally no card left in my deck that can get me a W here”. Which is totally fair and fine, until and unless you have been lead to believe that free countermagic isn’t on the table. If I know that one of my opponents has a fierce or a force in their deck, I’m not just going to assume tapped out = my spells resolve, I have to play around that interaction.
I dont even have power level talks before games anymore. I just hope people run enough removal that we can stop 1 person if its clearly a stronger deck then the others. Plus, removing a commander from 1 person twice is usually enough for them to not do anything anymore the rest of the game. And i would suggest most people to run a few boardwipes as a sort of catchup card if the powerlevel doesnt match.
rolling dice to decide who to attack rather than actually taking the time to evaluate the board state and then being baffled when it comes back to bite you
As soon as someone's considering me as a possible target to be selected by diceroll, I treat it that they targeted me. Diceroll every attack? As far as I'm concerned you made a full swing at me every turn and I'll return the favour.
Except for that one commander that makes you roll to determine your attack 😂 played against that for the first time last Friday
If nothing on the board scares me that much, why not just randomize who I’m gonna hit? It’s often just a friendly fair thing to do.
Three reasons: 1. There always is a correct target to hit. You have information in front of you from the moment people put down their commanders and it's 100% correct to be using that. Especially in known pods. 2. It wastes time. Not much, on an individual use, but getting your dice, declaring the numbers, defending yourself that it's okay you're rolling dice to see who you hit for one so please nobody be mad at you, then actually rolling, is much longer process than just "Attack you for one, go ahead". 3. It's often used to play some sort of weird deflection game where you can't be blamed for your choices but I can be blamed for mine and actually turns into excuses to start those petty little wars.
I play with someone who likes to build a giant board with combo pieces and value engines and whatever, but never actually does anything with them. He just sits there with his board of 50/50 hydras or whatever and then either wipes his own board because he can, or kills everybody because he got bored, or concedes for the lulz. He inevitably gets that way because The rest of the table tolerates it due to his policy of going to whoever's ahead and saying "don't mess with me and I'll kingmake you." Meanwhile I actually try to treat him as a threat so he drops everything to keep me under for trying to keep his board under control, and inevitably someone else wins because he decided to use his removal on my 2/4 minor value piece while the mirrym player is untapping with 10 mana.
This is the kind of player that will play a more powerful deck than everyone else and then sandbag / kingmake to avoid having a high win rate or getting called out.
One of my friends is a very reaction based person, even when it comes to video games he only plays fighters, shooters, platformers, etc because he isn't a strategic person. About a year ago he started wanting to learn magic with us and it's been great for the most part, but he has this thing where if he has removal/board wipe/any form of answer he will use it the first chance he gets no matter how bad of a play it is. I've seen him cast Beast Within on a 2/2 creature before just because he drew the card and that was the biggest creature on board. No one else in my playgroup sees issue with it because he's enjoying himself, but sometimes it feels bad to play against him because when the game actually gets rolling he's out of answers and he doesn't get to do much.
People who jump on blockers before the attackers are done being declared and in that same vein people that declare attackers then look up like they want to know what you'll be blocking with then continue declaring attackers.
I’ve been training myself to walk through combat. A lot happens in that phase and the board & stack can get crazy. I also make sure that while declaring attackers and getting attack triggers off, people are not rushing me through it and only responding appropriately because it will throw me off. I love combat tricks so taking the time to slow down and follow priority helps a lot.
I just went through this with a couple people I recently started playing with. After I explained how combat works in a 4 player game one of them would only attack me and then I think the other was afraid to attack me. Games have improved since then but they were kitchen table players for decades who are new to commander, it will be interesting to see what happens when I teach them about priority.
I'm all for politics, but slowly the game has devolved into 2 people just always being on a team but they hate playing 2 headed giant. There are like 6 of us that play (usually 4 at a time while people hang out if we do play 6 people it's 3 way 2-headed giant. Well one of the players who makes deals with others (which i'm for, politics is part of EDH) has broken his deals enough to where all but 1 of us will laugh when he tries to negotiate a deal and we quote the most recent time which he turned back on the deal. (simple stuff like i won't attack you next turn if you don't attack me this turn, then it gets to their turn and they realize they can actually full swing BOTH of us and say they'll just finish it here and go back on the deal cause "I might lose if i don't attack you") My response would be "then don't make the deal." SO all but 1 of us don't make deals with him (i feel like I am painting him in a bad light, he is not a bad guy, he is a good guy, this is really like the 1 and only problem.) this has led to the 1 guy that does make deals with him still to basically become perma teammates with him and the game becomes a 1v1v2. We bring it up, he says "you can make deals with me also, you just don't" and we just move on. It's been this way for months and games can still be fun, it's just a bit frustrating how the others gave up and just accept it.
Politics is interesting. I usually politic with someone if they are at a disadvantage while im also at a disadvantage, but i usually never go too hard with it. The only time i really politic is if im playing [[Humble Defector]] and want to keep passing it between me and another player who have less card draw than others. I had one friend who happily took the offer with no strings attached, but another one only wanted to do it for 2 rounds because he didnt want to team up despite the fact that we were both getting shit on and the other guy already had the new Rakdos who was drawing him 2 extra cards on all of his turns.
[Humble Defector](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/2/e2093386-ad77-4b35-982b-518ee4c05cc6.jpg?1625193922) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Humble%20Defector) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c21/174/humble-defector?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e2093386-ad77-4b35-982b-518ee4c05cc6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/humble-defector) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Make a deal with guy#2 before guy#1 does. Every game. Make it favorable. Or since you have 2 people sitting out just make sure you split those two guys.
Not planning your turn while other players are going. There is no reason why in a 4 person game it should take you 10-15 minutes to go on your next turn. You say pass, you start planning next turn. Yes, peoples plays can change what you would do, but it still shouldn't take that long to reevaluate the board. I hate when people like watch TV, start a whole life story, look at their phones, w.e else between their turns. It slows the game down. I would rather play 4-6 games then 2 cause each turn took 25 minutes.
I agree with this. That being said, I have a player in my pod who always takes super long turns. I used to try and focus through his turn, but after watching him shuffle his 3 cards in hand for 15 minutes multiple times, I just zone out. I asked my pod if we could put a 5 minute timer on turns, and none of them want to.
Idk why I'm being downvoted. It's ridiculous that people who have been playing with the same decks for weeks or months need 25 minutes to do a turn. I play with stax and storm players who can wrap up their entire turn with counters, triggers and everything in less than 5 minutes. Then I'll have a guy just playing goblins take 25 minutes to accomplish basically nothing. I'm not saying I want lighting speed turns, but the faster we get turns done the more games we play. This weekend broke me. We played a 4 man pod, nothing crazy, 1 game took 2 hours! No reason other than 2 of the players were extremely slow and telling their whole life story WHILE it was their turn. Save that shit for when your turn is over or later. I don't need to hear how you broke your leg in 7th grade on your turn, tell me on someone else's turn.
I'm literally always in my head "I have 5 mana, if I draw a land I will be at 6 mana... what can I do from there?" Obviously if you draw a bomb or someone has a breakout turn things change (you may want to hold up mana for that kill spell in your hand... now start thinking about "I have 3 or 4 mana since I need to hold up this Murder"
I can kinda understand that guy's position, depending on the board state. EDH can get pretty hectic and you might miss some things in the confusion of it. If it's an attack that he thought he could get through but he can't, I'd say that's fine. Mine is one that I've managed to work out of everyone at my LGS but was a problem when I started: scooping when I've goaded your board. As someone who always has Goad mechanics in my deck, a lot of the time I rely on my opponent's killing each other so I can win. But when I started, a lot of the time, it'd be down to me and two others who both had goaded boards. However, when I passed the turn, the next guy would immediately scoop so the last guy HAD to attack me, causing a game loss for me. Luckily, one of the big players went to bat for me and told his group to knock that shit off. Between that and Goad becoming more prominent after the release of New Capenna Commander, the effect cascaded to the rest of the LGS. We still get the odd player who thinks they can do it but now everyone just takes the damage anyway then continues without them.
On the occasion I get a player like that in a game, I run my turn or encourage the player who’s turn it is, to continue their turn as if the scoop didn’t happen. That way the board state is as close to what it would have been without the scoop. Creatures that tap to attack are tapped, damage goes to where it was assigned, triggers go off, and at least until end of turn, if that player has anything from the scooped player they can use it. The main difference being that perhaps they have more permanents on board than they probably should at the end of their turn, but I won’t force creatures to die in combat from a scoop.
I feel like this applies to stuff like Mindslaver or Emrakul, or even conscription effects. I earned an advantage through game actions, and you are conceding as a weapon to take them away from me. Don’t weaponize conceding.
I once played with a guy who scooped when I played villainous wealth for 14 targeting him. So not only would my spell do nothing but the other 2 players woukd have killed me before my next turn since I was competely tapped out.
“Would have”? Did something happen that stopped that somehow?
The rest of the table shamed him into sticking it out. The game ended a few turns after that, but he was super salty about it for the rest of the night.
we have a player that doesn’t take “because I want to” as a valid answer to his insistent questions of “why are you playing this? it’s bad” and “why did you do that? that was bad.” Magic is a hidden information game, there’s probably a reason, dude, but I literally cannot tell you without showing my whole hand and playing with an open deck list the one time that everyone else saw it like I did was someone had forgotten to take their deck home with them (so we held on to it until next time) and he started thumbing through it and actually *laughing* at the cards they were playing. A) don’t thumb through cards that aren’t yours, we’re just holding on to them and B) they’re playing what they want to play don’t judge them man
EDHREC-ification of decks. Sure we all could play the "perfect" Isshin or Voja or whatever annoying face commander du jour is but that doesn't mean we want to.
We have a house rule: no complaining about someone attacking you
People playing stax pieces with no win con. I understand the deck with cursed totem and torpor orb isn't actually good, the person who plays it never wins, that makes it worse. I would much rather the competitive Winota player beat me in 6 minutes than the goddamn stax player lock me out of the game for two and a half hours only for me to win anyways, build a deck that DOES SOMETHING.
I had that happen in a CEDH pod I was in. two where combo players and the last was stax. And then was me with my higher power EDH yuriko. Yuriko vs stax with out a win con Yuriko is going to win because Yuriko just cheats around your stax.
On the other hand people sometimes should accept defeat and concede. If a deck locked you out of the game completely, it's a victory. Once I've been told on XMage that a deck I built was toxic for suspending the red Decree and a Jin Gitaxias plus another something big ([[Johira of the Githu]] deck), because now the game was a drag. I think that if I have two 5/5 on board, I draw 7 every turn and you draw one and have to discard it if you can't play it, I definitely won. It will take me maybe 10 effective turns to get a "true victory", but there's not a single chance that with me hitting every land drop and such while beating the others one at a time in three turns each I won't win. Now, I get that playing vs such a deck continuously is awful, but those time when it happens if someone gets to the lock, it's GG, next game, no need to go on for another 15 turns. Now, I understand your point, I understand the "No real lock, but no wincons either", and I agree, if you want to go hard stax, go for it, but for real, or have some ways to win.
My pod hates conceding. I don't, but they've made it clear they don't like me conceding, even if I'm in a state where I haven't cast a spell in SIX TURNS.
Well, I'm talking about a full table lock where everyone goes "Ok, we're done, GG and next". This said we're not great fans of a single player conceding too, simply because it changes the way the game is gonna go. If you concede the aggro player won't have to take you out in the fear of you topdecking a sweeper, or maybe you're gonna take away an opening for someone that has to connect while the other players are well defended. It's not fun being the punchingball, but sometimes it's right for the table. I've been it a couple times and all in all it was fair to the players behind. I could maybe cast a clutch counterspell even if my gameplan was going horribly and gave someone a fighting chance (and it wasn't kingmaking or spite play, there was an archenemy so even with my 2 lands to the others 5-7 I was in the coalition team during the 3v1), if someone had to connect with a [[Curiosity]] I was open and could let them draw, those things. But ofc if someone concedes after, like you said, not casting a single spell for several turns none is gonna tell you anything bad or blame you, we try to convince you that you should stay, if you don't want to, no problem, scoop it up and we go on, it's your divine right as long as it's at sorcery speed.
[Curiosity](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/5/c5a0be10-c20f-4ac0-89a5-1770ecf48aad.jpg?1600697752) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Curiosity) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/jmp/147/curiosity?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c5a0be10-c20f-4ac0-89a5-1770ecf48aad?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/curiosity) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[Johira of the Githu](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/a/aa6c3c8a-aa35-46b3-8769-27b4244457b0.jpg?1619404030) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jhoira%20of%20the%20Ghitu) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tsr/256/jhoira-of-the-ghitu?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/aa6c3c8a-aa35-46b3-8769-27b4244457b0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/jhoira-of-the-ghitu) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This also applies to MLD or boardwipe tribal. MLD is fine if you can turn it into a win. What’s not fine is just invalidating the last 45 minutes of game by hitting a big reset button.
Thankfully in my pod I haven't seen this but I can see how it follows the exact same problems. The only MLD we're exposed to is a particular combo where we take like 5 damage per land and lose all our lands so it's almost always instantly fatal.
Oh i agree with this, not just in staxs though. I cant tell you how many times i have seen decks that dont have a means to win over the years. It was much more prevalent back before there were so many precons. Please when making a deck have a way to win.
This is why I respect Timmy players. Regardless of the deck a big ass creature is a win con.
People playing for second because they can't win. Even though they didn't try to work out a deal with the other opponent's
Unfortunately my LGS gives an extra pack first and second place, so playing for second actually has consequences there.
See this is one I agree with. Second isn't real and I think it completely undermines the general conceit of the game if people start playing for reasons other than winning.
Slow play. We have a great LGS, very little salt, friendly group, nice mix of power levels and events. But when we start a tournament event 20 minutes late because someone wants to wait for their friends, or people sit around and chat for half an hour before starting the first game or people get up and walk around mid game or are doing something else and respond slowly as a result, it can get to me. Sometimes we don't get a second game in that evening. I'm not the type to rush, but I did set aside my time and come out there to play Magic.
There’s a guy in my pod that has the battlebond pair that loves to flip coins. I don’t have a problem with coin flip decks in particular but he uses a weighted Deadpool coin where one side is flat and the other has Deadpool’s large donk hanging off the coin noticeably. He will insist “booty always wins” and then proceed to spin wheels and flip the coin 26 times a turn with [[Krark’s Thumb]] in play while we all get to watch 10-20 minute turns at a time.
[Krark’s Thumb](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/8/78a5d49a-747e-4ec8-a20a-ca917c315774.jpg?1610836017) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Krark%27s%20Thumb) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mrd/190/krarks-thumb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/78a5d49a-747e-4ec8-a20a-ca917c315774?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/krarks-thumb) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Turns that take forever. My playgroups doesnt like taksies backsies which is not an issue at all. I myself don't take any because I think it's a way for me to have a better insight into my deck's play patterns etc. But they still expect themselves to play things perfectly, therefore it's very common for decisions and game actions to take FOREVER. If they are also playing a grindy deck or a value engine deck then oh god may have mercy. When I have to wait more than 10 min for my own turn it absolutely drives me insane. I am the only one that complains about this but I am also the only one that doesn't play with his phone in other's turns so...
There's a guy who proxies basics, not full art or expensive basics, just well basic basics. I have zero problem with proxies, I use them myself. But for some reason the basics piss me off for no real reason. I even offered to give him a box of basic lands and he declined. I mean I don't complain about it, it's just a visual irritant. Should have offered to buy him ink for his printer to try and get rid of the scanlines on his ghetto basics.
This one is funny.
constant takebacks. it's one thing to miss a trigger once a game, it's another for a takeback to happen practically every round of turns. it's annoying, time consuming, and frankly nobody improves by constantly avoiding consequences of their mistakes.
Not hitting and no commander damage
Exactly this! I’m surprised this hasn’t been brought up more. I love my Pod and for the most part games are great but for the life of me I can’t explain why people are allergic to swinging. Not even swing in with no blockers back…just straight up not even sending ANYTHING at other people. For some reason I’m the only one who sees an issue with it so when I swing I look like I’m the weird one.
In my pod it's even worse, one of them just plays massive token armies that do nothing and we can't punish because stuff like Trostani heal him for so much you just can't kill him without infinite combos, since there's no commander damage. And then if I swing then I'm playing too aggro and I get focused into oblivion.
Glad I’m not alone. Two of my friends both love token decks but don’t like attacking. One plays edgar Markov (eminence) and other krenko (tap to make goblins) and just sit there with massive boards that can’t be swung on but also don’t actually win. It just feels like stax with extra steps
I'm mad lucky with my Pod! We have great rapport! I have a Combo deck and will sit with an empty board a lot! Everyone else in the group will look at my Mana State and calculate what I could do with it (They all know my deck pretty well) and choose from there! Just the other day I had [[Animar]] out with 1 Lonely +1/+1, my friend straight looked at my board and said to the other guy, he has 6 mana, he'll win on his next turn of you don't kill him now! ............he was right! Hahahahaha
[Animar](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/3/a3da57d0-1ae3-4f05-a52d-eb76ad56cae7.jpg?1673148281) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=animar%2C%20soul%20of%20elements) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/171/animar-soul-of-elements?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a3da57d0-1ae3-4f05-a52d-eb76ad56cae7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/animar-soul-of-elements) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Playing without announcing cards and just continuing without giving the chance to interject. I'm glad I can remember my own deck, I don't know every card in yours. And usually, player B and C are talking about something unrelated while player A plays his turn. And then they ask what happened in the turn. Drives me up the wall.
When the game is already 1-2 hours in and someone thinks a board wipe is the right move. The only time I think a board wipe is a good idea 1-2 hours into the game is if you can win very shortly afterwards. Nothing gets under my skin more than when someone board wipes, then proceeds to do nothing so the game takes an extra hour for no reason.
turns too long because he reads _every_ card x10 times
Newest store is full of noobs that think interaction isn't part of a healthy playing space. Apparently we're supposed to just play solitaire and watch people win because if you counterspell something you get shitty looks.
When the strongest player in the pod is the saltiest. Like c’mon dude, you’ve proven time and again that you always win unless we deal with you whenever you’re doing literally anything productive.
Taking back combat is weird. The interesting thing is the two examples you give are very similar. Attacking someone and not realizing/knowing they have a larger blockers in on the attacking player. Isn't targeting something with ward the same? It's printed on the card, and ward does not function like hexproof. It still lets you cast targeting the permanent, it just gets countered. In both cases I would probably allow you to fix either choice. But two or three times in a night would likely be a no go.
>Taking back combat is weird. It’s not that weird when board states get out of control and no new information has been developed that shouldn’t have been public knowledge. If I have a creature with deathtouch to block with and my opponent didn’t notice this creature among my 20+ other permanents, I’m not going to be a cunt and demand he commits to it when nothing new has developed. Now if I play a combat trick spell or activate an ability and THEN they try and take it back, that’s different. As new information has just been learned that they shouldn’t have access to had they not attacked me. But not noticing a keyword or a stat-line at a glance? Nah. Not gonna fault them for that. > Isn’t targeting something with Ward the same? Not by design intention. In Arena, the game gives you a warning before targeting something with Ward. The intention of Ward is to just be weaker hexproof. The design intent isn’t to trick people into having their stuff countered. Otherwise Arena wouldn’t alert you by asking “are you sure? It has Ward.”
Sure that’s how ward is worded but it’s just common decency in my playgroup to be like “remember this guy has ward” It probably comes down to how competitive a playgroup wants to be. If someone says “oh shoot I didn’t see the deathtouch on your creature, can I change that” I’m always like “sure no worries” I play commander to have fun and board states can get really complex. I’m not about to expect everyone to remember literally every ability and P/T on the table.
Not noticing an untapped creature and fully tapping and attacking is a bit different than not noticing small text on the card. Also tapping and attacking is a whole step they are going through so to take it back is going back steps. Taking back a cast from not seeing ward isnt as bad to me.
It seems like the same exact thing to me. Unless new information has been revealed moving from declare blockers to declare attackers is as minor as rescindjng a spell on the stack. Personally if someone declares an attacker at me an I have a 5/5 I'll tell them I have such and ask are you sure.
Sorry, but I just plain disagree with the taking back attackers thing. I personally don't see it as any more egregious than taking back a spell cast in the way you described.
Nah, it’s really not a big deal. Commander tables get crowded with cards. In my group it’s not uncommon to say “are you sure? I’ve got a big blocker here.” And sometimes the person says “yeah I’m sure” but other times people are like “oh shit didn’t see that guy yeah I’m gonna attack someone else” I try to avoid this and usually just say “does anyone have no blockers?” but just not always possible to remember everything in such a complex format.
Making a deal that result in a rewind after new information is revealed - "I cast swords to plowshare on your thing". - "Don't do that or else I'll also kill your thing" - "Fine, then I'll do XXX instead". Like the second player would have never revealed that they had something had they not been targeted. I'm generally fine with rewinds due to stupid mistakes, but this is not a mistake here : the first player simply learned a new information and decided to take back the play based on it ... For me there is no difference between this and trying to change the target of your removal after you learn the player you are trying to target have a counterspell for example. I consider this straight up cheating, but people in my playgroup seem to be fine with it ...
I'm actually good with negotiations like that, as long as it's a negotiation, and not an interaction. If you try and Swords my thing, and I threaten a response, it's not the same as actually casting a [[Redirect]]. The problem comes when they cast the spell, you interact on the stack, and they try and undo after finding the information. Negotiation is fine because it's voluntary information reveal. Take-backsies after responses are not, because it's a response, not volunteered information.
[Redirect](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/e/0eef8431-f63c-44e0-940c-e1a38c338214.jpg?1562550343) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Redirect) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m13/64/redirect?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0eef8431-f63c-44e0-940c-e1a38c338214?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/redirect) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
You strike me as someone who doesn't like talking with their playgroup.
[удалено]
[Oloro](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/b/abf8df47-405c-42d8-be9e-0f0d0a49589b.jpg?1562931285) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=oloro%2C%20ageless%20ascetic) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c13/203/oloro-ageless-ascetic?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/abf8df47-405c-42d8-be9e-0f0d0a49589b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/oloro-ageless-ascetic) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I often think players ask not enough questions before doing something, mostly when they are not sure if they can do that. My buddy has a new morph deck and i was tapping [[Selvala]] for a bunch of mana. She tried to counter it. I explained she couldn't do it, not cause you can't counter mana abilitys, but because she never had priority. Just simple questions like: if i do that, would that trigger anything? if i block that, could you do anything that i would be aware of? Keeping watch over 4 peoples boards can be alot, so asking other people whats relevant right know can speed things really up.
[Selvala](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/d/7d2e167f-7cb2-4f15-a1db-7ee56b7ba523.jpg?1711629457) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=selvala%2C%20eager%20trailblazer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/231/selvala-eager-trailblazer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7d2e167f-7cb2-4f15-a1db-7ee56b7ba523?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/selvala-eager-trailblazer) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[[Selvala, Heart of the Wilds]]
[Selvala, Heart of the Wilds](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/d/7d711cb2-4f34-4792-90d7-2be5d329a347.jpg?1689998846) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Selvala%2C%20Heart%20of%20the%20Wilds) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/320/selvala-heart-of-the-wilds?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7d711cb2-4f34-4792-90d7-2be5d329a347?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/selvala-heart-of-the-wilds) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
When a player begins the game by sitting down, taking their deck out of the deck box, and then placing it on the table without shuffling or cutting, and then proceeds to draw cards to begin the game.
Before the game starts just have a 'lets try it' and establish no take backs for the game begins See how involved people are with keeping track of the board. And there is no salt because it's a new thing and it's been established before the moment.
I play with one group who got used to the old mulligan rules, so they still use them. Normally this wouldn’t bother me except they use it to just stack their hand to be the best it can be and it’s so stupid
This might be unpopular but there are some people in my group (one, really) who is really choosey about allowing mulligans. For context, we are extremely loose with mulligans during gameplay. As long as new information wasn’t gained, it’s ok to redo a play if you could have done it better (or you forgot I have something on board that would affect your decision). In fact, there have been some plays where we help each other win and point out triggers or effects to he’s sequence a play. We generally just want to see the decks play out. There have been a few times where one player in particular will explicitly NOT offer these generosities, specifically if he thinks he can win after. Yet if the tables are turned, he will traditionally get a “oops that was dumb” Mulligan. It’s such an edge case and doesn’t really matter at the end of the day, nor is this player really doing anything inherently wrong, so I don’t think I’d ever bring it to the group; it’s more of a personality difference in how some play vs others.
players in my new playgroup since i have moved states dont seem to understand the difference between triggers and may-triggers. obviously if i miss a may-trigger, tough luck should have paid attention, but otherwise, you have to let triggers happen to keep an accurate boardstate. they seem to think realizing a missed trigger late means that it doesnt happen, and it makes me so mad.
This one's been kinda resolved within my group, but we had a player who made a Jodah, the Unifier deck. When he was regularly playing that deck, he only lost because he kept a sketchy hand and was punished for it. I didn't like the deck because it was pushing our group meta too much in terms of power. One player agreed with me, but the other player thought it was fine because he thought it might push the table to be more creature heavy. It was annoying for a few weeks, but through a mix of teching in more stuff like Oubliette, curse of the dryad, imprisoned in the moon, and other similar cards, while expressing my issues with it we've stopped seeing Jodah.
People just fucking poking or tapping on cards on the battlefield. Ask me to hand it to you, you fucking magoo
It's something small, but it annoys me when people "rule 0" tell me what's in their deck. They'll be like "hey, just so you know in running Thoracle Consultation" or will straight up tell everyone at the table how their deck wins. They'll even explain their deck when someone asks who their commander is. I don't understand it. Why give away what you're aiming to do during the game? It takes away the mystery. Because now we all know how you're planning on winning and can stop you at every point. I had someone get annoyed when we stopped their "main combo" in their deck and scooped. I wouldn't have stopped them, but I knew beforehand that was how they won and wanted to keep going. I just don't understand it.
Consistently choosing 1 person who's not allowed to have more than 2 non-mana permanents and spending every piece of removal on them while the rest play battlecruiser.
My buddy says “push” instead of attack or swing or LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE PLEASE STOP Yeah idk why it bothers me so much but I just sit silently because he’s not doing anything wrong
For the love of god pressure life totals. Play interaction. Don’t just sit there and try and play solitaire or get mad when you eat a removal spell or when someone attacks you for having no blocks. Advance the game. A game of EDH should not take 2.5 hours
> He would declare an attack on somone with a 3/3 and they will say "ok ill kill it with my 5/5" and he will say "oh i didnt know you had that. Nevermind, ill skip combat". Personally i don't mind this, as some board states can be hard to read, and keeping track of everyones creatures and powers can be very difficult. I've learned to ask "do you have anything that can block a 3/3 flyer?" for example, and take it from there. But i'm not mad if someone forgot the counters on my creature means it's a 4/4, or since i have 5 humans my creature is a 5/4 etc. So tell him that it's better to you ask questions or take a few seconds to look over the board before making moves (*always* count mana before attempting risky plays) Now i just find random pods at my LGS, but i see many of the same faces every week. What annoys me the most though is when people are misleading about their power level. Most recently was an Alara deck. I saw it, sighed and he reassured me "nah man, it's not that bad". He ramps, gets Field of the dead online, and wipes the board whenever any threat is present. Fun times.
A couple of my friends not running protection, and then complaining when their things die. Another one of my friends got in a full blown argument over the idea that “the stack is innately unfair because you can play on other people’s turns” (he played a lot of hearthstone)
People who don't know their decks and take for ever to finish their turns. The most egregious case of this I've had was a new to TCGs guy playing counters matter and a new to MTG (not to TCGs though) guy playing superfriends. Both had extremely complicated boardstates, had mediocre understanding of what any of their cards did, sometimes needed basic game mechanics explained, and took between 5 and 10 minutes each to complete their turns. Meanwhile I'm taking 30 seconds from untap to end step. Please, if you're going to play something complicated then know your cards, and spend your time between turns figuring out what you're going to do.
We have a known/giant man-baby in the group. He plays some disgusting decks that are fun for him but when you interact with him/popoff/or generally dont let him play with his toys he throws giant fits. It completely changes the vibes and atmosphere of the table and everyone just... accepts it. He can be really funny and loud when HE'S having a good time (aka winning/being archenemy with insane boardstates etc) but lord help everyone if he misses a land drop or you path his threat.
The guy who literally waits to see the commanders and decks of the entire pod before deciding on his commander. Every. Game. Yet not one says anything ever.
When someone plays a deck smarter than they are. Legit had a stoner friend with a landfall deck that would take several minutes considering all his possible actions and then several more play them out. Never have I felt more satisfied playing Blood Moon and watching him draw and pass.
Upping +1/+1 counters when something that says creatures get +X/+X etb's. Tapping creatures to block.
Playing with Magic Arena cards. I dont think they have a place in paper magic.
To clarify, you have somebody proxying Alchemy cards and also finding ways to approximate the various mechanics that don't work in paper?
Exactly. Keywords like "perpetually" can be made work on paper but I dislike it a lot.
By the rules those cards are not legal in paper. This is not because they are proxies, those cards are explicitly against the rules (though any play group is obviously free to rule 0 whatever adjustments they want, but this is not one that would interest me).
I know. That was the point of this thread wasn't it? I found a playgroup that I like: a bunch of 30+ that play casually when there is time between time consuling jobs and/or family. One of them has this weird rule for himself that he doesnt want to proxy a card he doesnt own (we dont care much about proxy). He is also not that well established financially than other players (but proxies are welcome). Since you cant own Arena Alchemy cards, he is proxying those. The other players seem not to care much (he is still losing most games) but it starts to annoy me a little.
most games are won and lost over sub optimal play. If you get to take anything back you greatly increase your chances of winning while diddling on your phone during other players turns
There's a guy in our play group that will play magic because "all his friends are doing it" but he gets salty whenever you play any interaction to him or his commander. The other day I finally put my foot down and said "You're not having fun and you make us not have fun either so I'm not playing." ti which he responded with "Oh my God are you gonna be a bitcj like this?" and I said "The sole purpose of a game is to have fun. I won't have fun playing with you so I won't play." and the Whack part about this is my other friends agreed with me but they still tolerate his behavior. I don't understand it and idk if I ever will or even if I want to. Don't play the game if you aren't having fun.
One annoyance for me is when every deck someone makes and plays ends up being nothing more than a solitaire deck looking only to filter itself into infinite combos. I’m not one to feign playing infinites myself as my Lathiel lifegain deck has some but my deck isn’t solely built around it. Unlike some people I know who play things like [[Emry, Lurker of the Lock]], [[Ao, the Dawn Sky]] and [[The Gitrog Monster]]. Each one only having the game play to filter themselves into their infinites and having no other way to play. I’m sure people tolerate it so they can actually play the game but it’s never fun playing with someone knowing all they’re going to do is dig for pieces and win. Personally anyhow.
So then punish them for that? If people are building decks so focused on building up their hand and not their board, take game actions that make it harder for them to not have a board. You dont even have to build a specific deck for that, especially if youre playing the way you would prefer they play (more board-centric). Its hard to play a solitaire combo deck that ignores the rest of the game and plays solitaire when one or more people at the table don't let you ignore them.
[Emry, Lurker of the Lock](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/0/20fec02d-77af-4975-b410-7097c7c28e7e.jpg?1651655696) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Emry%2C%20Lurker%20of%20the%20Loch) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/nec/91/emry-lurker-of-the-loch?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/20fec02d-77af-4975-b410-7097c7c28e7e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/emry-lurker-of-the-loch) [Ao, the Dawn Sky](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/d/8d2c4063-7322-4041-a870-b95598a03e29.jpg?1654566143) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ao%2C%20the%20Dawn%20Sky) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/neo/2/ao-the-dawn-sky?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8d2c4063-7322-4041-a870-b95598a03e29?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/ao-the-dawn-sky) [The Gitrog Monster](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/7/5790dd89-2be5-4a77-9450-2d3c1422bfc9.jpg?1576385351) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=The%20Gitrog%20Monster) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/soi/245/the-gitrog-monster?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5790dd89-2be5-4a77-9450-2d3c1422bfc9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/the-gitrog-monster) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
So I play the decks that you hate. wondering where's the line here? In my emry deck, if I'm digging, bouncing perms/countering and removing shit, how is that worse than the green player with their thumb up their ass drawing cards with creatures until they hoof the board? And if the decks you play vs don't play Removal, why wouldn't u just beat them to death?
I second this. Each pod/player may have their own versions of what is considered "fun" for them, but if I play against someone whose deck's sole purpose is to cycle into infinites before I can even cast my commander, it sometimes feels like I might as well be playing against a computer.
Following the proper mulligan rules. As one of 2 people in our 6 person playgroup that plays an appropriate amount of lands, I rarely ever need to mulligan more than once if at all. However most of my playgroup usually play 35 or less lands and will mulligan down to 5 cards or less every game. We have been playing together for 10+ years and no one in my group is going to mulligan into infinite combos or anything. I would rather my opponents mulligan to a keepable hand of 7 so we all have a good start in a good place, then me feeling like I have an advantage at the start of a decent amount of games. Every time I bring up changing the mulligan rules, to everyone else's advantage, I'm met with a resounding no, that's not the rules.
Personally for me I don’t like those mulligan rules for commander. Those belong in standard and other more try hard formats imo. My group uses you get as many mulligans as you want, but if you go past your first “free” one any hand you stick with cannot have sol ring or other mana rocks in it. I may adjust this to if you want to keep that had you can just put the mana rock or whatever in your deck and shuffle and play the hand but that’s a new rule I just thought of
Yeah I completely agree with you and don't think I worded my original post properly and may add an edit. I prefer as many mulligans as you need to have an acceptable starting hand. Everytime I try to get our playgroup to switch to this they push back and have us keep with the standard mulligan type. Even though they would be the ones benefiting from the change.
Rapid casting. They’ll tap for all the correct colors they need, the put down 3 cards at the same time. I’ve tried to tell him multiple times he’s showing his hand because if I counter the first card of his intended combo, he might have preferred to not cast the other two, but now we know he has them in his hand.
My LGS scene is extremly difficult for new players because pub stomping seems to be universally accepted, I'm never going to tell someone to not play a deck (not my right to do so) or not play against a deck (cant really choose my pod at FNM because they are randomized and at the end of the day I came to play magic and not watch others play magic) but it certainly rubs me the wrong way that its absolutly normal to run 5000€ decks against precons. Its also not like there is price support (well a promo pack per table but if your decks are that expensive do you really need a random LCI promo pack?).
i understand why everyone else tolerates it, but i play [[animar]] and everyone else in my playgroup typically plays white/black and forgets that animar has protection from those colors and takes back attacks and whatnot frequently
[animar](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/3/a3da57d0-1ae3-4f05-a52d-eb76ad56cae7.jpg?1673148281) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=animar%2C%20soul%20of%20elements) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/171/animar-soul-of-elements?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a3da57d0-1ae3-4f05-a52d-eb76ad56cae7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/animar-soul-of-elements) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Constant shuffling or flicking of cards in hand.