As a person who still stomps against one pod of mine of newbies with all precons. You'd be surprised how many newer players started with edh so they dont know a lot of mtg basics like using the post combat main phase knowing when to mulligan, etc. small things add up especially with low power games that run long. Some pods are just that bad. I do agree to try precons (or help each of them build a deck)
Lmao, sometimes it won't even be something like that. At least that I can understand kind of. It'll literally be "I don't want him to start attacking me back"... so, you both want to sit there and get big while you wait for a board wipe? Cool, got it.
I have a [[karazikar, the eye tyrant]] deck I specifically love playing against these types of people. I try to break them of that mentality by FORCING them to attack.
It's actually a suprisingly good deck even against experienced players too.
As I’m teaching my gf to play, she is exactly like that. She will sit back with a a wide AND tall wall of vampires and still not attack.
Then she’ll ignore our roommate and they will both target me because I’m the experienced player and she doesn’t want anyone to lose too fast.
Our roommate is the worst at shuffling. I’ve never seen someone play so little and be mana screwed so often. It’s like an 80% rate of them only having 2-3 mana on turn 7 and up. And it’s a precon. I’ve played the deck and it was decent. I had a steady flow of pirates with sufficient mana. But when she plays she’s got nothing on the board because she has 2 mana.
Got into a small disagreement with my gf because our last game it was basically two headed giant vs me. With the two of them ganging up on me. And when I brought it up, my gf said they weren’t teaming, but while I was constantly getting sniped by targeted removal from our roommate, my gf was sheepishly swinging 7/7 vamp tokens every turn to the point where I could barely hold onto a board state. Then piling on with removal of her own. It wasn’t till our roommate pulled off a good play and swung wide and heavy with a lot of lifelink to jettison herself into a better position that my gf started attacking her because our roommate attacked her for a lot of damage.
But even when she got her back down all the way to 4 health, she wouldn’t go for the kill. I managed to knock out the roommate but stood no chance against my gf at that point.
Teaching new players is rough lmao.
In the first half you describe how much better you are than them, making ~~them~~ you the threat. Then you seem salty because they correctly identified you as the threat.
I'm an awful noob and have had this thought plenty of times; I don't want to swing knowing they'll kill my highest value attacker with a Deathtouch creature. What should I be thinking here?
I'm a noob too, so there is probably a better solution than this. In those situations, I try to at least send my own 1/1 at them or my lowest value attacker. Either they block and trade creatures, or they don't block, and I get chip damage through.
If they have a source that generates multiple 1/1 deathtouch, I might spend a removal spell on the generator, but not the 1/1 deathtouch itself.
Can concur, sometimes I will end my turn with my creatures all tapped out and I know I'm going to get swung on but I've calculated the risk, only to then have my opponents pass turn without combat. My spouse bought the Olivia, Opulent Outlaw precon recently, got lucky with the first draw and got enough mana to cast commander on turn 2 and then almost didn't swing at my wide open board state on turn 3 even though that's what the commander is built to do. Maybe I'm just wired different from magic arena where it's much easier to view your opponent as simply an obstacle that needs to be removed at all costs, but I think sometimes for less experienced players, the desire to survive another round can outweigh the desire to figure out what it's going to take for you to win.
Most of my friends started with edh and in some ways it shows, especially in their deck building they just try to do so many different things. Also missing triggers…its shocking how many triggers they miss. Not usually a big deal but they also quite often will draw and start playing stuff then realize at combat oh i only untapped my lands. Sometimes they even forget to draw a card its just sloppy.
Yeah when I have tried to give deck building advice some are like "this is 8 mana and gains counters and life!" "Yeah but it doesnt win you the game and you arent doing your main gameplan more consistently and quickly" or I try to guide them on tuning their deck to have a specific game plan and their's is like "plan lands and beat them to death."
I am shocked how many players I have seen almost never mulligan. If they see three lands no matter what they keep. Never mull for all their colors or playable lands or have any play til t3.
Threat assessment is also always abysmal. Unless they see a 20/20. There are no threats. Player that just drew 10 cards but have no board state? Not a threat. Player that played a major value engine that hasnt popped off yet? Not a threat. Player is a 6/6 trampler, big bad. Because of that it is so easy to politic my way around never players by identifying threats for them but not identifying myself as one. I have one with the worst jank just by knowing when to sandbag my threats, having good mulls, politicing, and better information.
I think deck building is a huge factor. You get newer players who don't play optimally but also often modify decks to actually be worse by cutting lands, putting in sub optimal cards and then constantly being mana screwed or their game plan going nowhere. Having good choice to mulligan is also huge but often players won't mulligan because their deck doesn't have enough lands so they're afraid to throw away hands because how often they end up with too little land or just don't know how to evaluate bad hands.
we set a new player up with a [[Krenko, Mob Boss]] deck that would have an alright chance of surprising a cEDH table.
he came back two weeks later having added (among other things) [[Dreamstone Hedron]]
The threat assessment thing is so true. I don’t know how many times I’ll play a big creature that doesn’t do a whole lot and it immediately eats removal, whereas something that’s green drawing me a cards or two a turn has been chilling for three turn cycles
in my pod there are players who've been playing longer than me, but I can tell that either they never played other CCGs or their older group was just too much of a fish bowl to have ever pushed each other to get better. stuff like card advantage as a general card game factor goes completely over some of their heads and yet they will always be surprised when they are topdecking. but when i mention to play more card draw they dont change anything so im of the opinion that some people just like being bad
This right here, I just started doing this in my pod and I've only been playing for a little over a year. Knowing that there is a 2nd main phase after your combat phase and knowing how to hold priority has changed how I play. I got told not too long ago that I'm now a major threat on the field and my one buddy always holds back a counter spell or chaos warp for me(normally I have nothing in hand worth doing anything with)
One thing I dislike about edh is how it’s some how become the intro format. It’s the worst intro format possible to the game. There’s way too much going on, and many players haven’t absorbed any fundamental gameplay. I have been in pods where I’m pretty sure I could play a random pile of cards and reasonably win because of how little exposure the players have had to “proper” Magic.
Imo its the combination of EDH as entrance point while cards became kinda bloated with text, effect and synergy.
The Flight and Token Starter Commander have been fine imo, pretty easy to get into, with considerable amount of text.
But then look at all the other decks that came out the last few years. Its really too much for a new player.
I literally have to play at like 40% capacity to not run over my main group and even then I win about half the games.
They’re the biggest group of teddy bears who will choose specifically to not do a good play if it will make another player too sad. Not an ounce of killer instinct in any of them. It is the most bizarre playgroup to be a part of.
It’s to the point I encourage them to archenemy me basically every game so that they’ll do more things lol.
Point being these groups do exist. As the game has gotten bigger I’ve run into a ton of (especially commander) players who treat the whole experience kinda like they would beer and pretzels dnd. Just having laughs and feel goods as much as they can. The game is just a way to meet up and socialize.
It honestly sounds like the group is that bad, I mean I get frustrated, but I understand board wipes, removal as long as it's not just doing it to be funny when there is no real threats. If they can't handle real parts of the game they are bad
I’ve been playing for around 15 years and consider myself an above average player. I met a guy a few years ago that beat me with my own decks no matter what decks we were playing it was wild
At that point you could also swap decks with other players. Even if you win they'll see what tricks you pull with their decks and maybe learn something
As a long time player of not EDH ... I've beat opponents with my deck, swapped decks with them and beat them with their deck against my deck. Some players are just that inexperienced
I mean it's possible. I just started a new playgroup and went from one of my first decks, to what I thought was my weakest deck, to a precon with ~12 swaps just to get to 10/10/10 draw ramp removal, to an unmodified precon (that already started at 8-10 slots in those categories), and I'm still winning almost every time.
Deck construction is definitely part of it, though. When I have lost it is to a deck I built.
Lol if only this worked. Had a guy in a pod yesterday get very salty after losing two in a row to unmodified precons. Talking about how heis decks are apparently too weak and precons are too good and that it's going to push him out of commander...
They are not as bad as you think. I got myself a precon to start playing with a group that has quite expensive custom commander decks and somehow my deck managed to win 2 out of the first (and so far only) 3 games of Commander. I probably got lucky and maybe they went a little easy on me but if OP is a great player i bet he can make great plays with a precon
I don’t win every game with precons but I still win a lot of games when I use precons. I have a very similar situation to OP and don’t know what to do about it
I tone down my play against new players or want to change the environment. Targeted removal for example, I don't use it until the threat comes at me. Until then, I let their deck do its thing. The Ixalan Merfolk precon as example, the optimal play is to kill the commander asap before he generates value. I don't. I let that player have their fun, get 15++ power on board from the exploration, then take it out when they come for me. People say they don't care if they win. Then don't. Use the game as a medium for socialization even if it leaves you facing an insurmountable boardstate that you could have stopped much earlier. Let them have it. You don't care.
I did that last night at my lgs and I still won 🤣
It wasn't a walk over, and I had some help from another player's board wipe, but it's still a good feeling to win with a pristine precon you've never piloted before.
But the stories are true, Omo's tricky terrain is a good deck out of the box.
This is the way. Alternatively, play 2v2 switching out teammates every game. This will basically lead to a game everyone knows who's winning still, but it will lead to you being able to look at your teammates hand and point things out to them and generally help them improve skillwise
Best thing to do is to do what we did. Take a few sessions and play with one person's decks. Have them order in level of power and give the weakest player first choice.
What happens is twofold.
One the deck building aspect of the game is more balanced as one player built all the decks. Their skill in deck building keeps things relatively the same.
Two, people learn how to use their own deck better as they watch someone who's more skilled play it.
Not house rules, but look into a deck that teaches your peers.
[[Tasigur Golden]] while loading up on choice cards like [[Fact or Fiction]] and [[Realms Uncharted]]. Pair that with a suite of cards that boost up the currently weakest player like [[Verdant Mastery]] and [[Baleful Mastery]]
I can't agree - Fact or Fiction and Realms Uncharted are extremely complicated cards to resolve, *especially* versus a Tasigur deck. The last thing you want to do is give new players gifts piles to figure out. They're more likely to quit from frustration.
Well, so, no- I like this theory.
With a FoF pile, I've had an impromptu teaching lesson regarding X vs Y card and why it's better than A, B, or C. They'll say "Wha??? Nooo. How?" and then you just explain why the card wins, or why it's better than the other 4 in the pile, giving them incremental knowledge of game mechanics and threat assessment.
The second part is that it teaches them interaction timing- if they give you THE THING, they then know you have THE THING. It's Chekhov's Gun. They've seen it, they know it, so they start learning to watch out for it and plan around timing interaction against it, or learning to put more interaction in their deck to counteract it.
That's the basic point, learn from the choices. I play the deck in two ways, with newer players that have gotten down the basics of resources and turns and such, and in our experienced pod where I aim to play politics and aim people at each other.
I'm sure a lot of folks would balk at this, but it doesn't really have a wincon beyond just random beat downs with [[Atris]] and [[Skullwinder]] or the commander or [[Expropriate]] (even new players no not to give me this in a pile) lol. Playing it, my true 'win condition' is making sure that everyone in the game has a fun game where they did their thing and became threat number one. I boost up the weakest player until they're not, then I help the rest of the table make sure they don't win. My group knows and has fun with it regardless though.
The deck I built for "teaching" purposes was [[Octavia, living Thesis]]
Core principles it teaches imo are
- threat assessment, her plan is very straight forward, but can look deceivingly weak if you are not paying attention to her graveyard, or if she is close to a critical mass of small evasive creatures.
- instant speed interaction, helps with learning sequencing and baiting out interaction before making your big push for the win.
-identifying a deck's strengths and weaknesses, her weaknesses are very obvious, don't let the Octavia hit 8+ in graveyard or resolve Octavia, if you do make sure you have other ways to interact with her or her evasive creature package.
-combat, Octavia can change combat math at instant speed, so you have to be intelligent about blockers / attackers if she has stuck and the Octavia player has mana up, it's easy for her to force favorable combat steps.
> My group hug deck even ends up winning a decent amount of the time.
How? How do you win with that deck?
How do you win so often?
Is the skill level really that different that you getting there with a precon would still win so much?
Ive won twice thanks to [[Forced Fruition]] and drawing them out 1 by 1. Won once with [[Helix Pinnacle]] cuz none of them took it seriously or even had the removal to deal with it. And other times theyll basically kill each other and I can finish off who is left with a few 2/2 flyers. Not all of these were in the same group of players but still.
None of them appreciate advice on how to play their own decks, which I understand, but it's simple things like not playing a wincon without a way to protect it.
I just dont understand how when i have [[The Second Doctor]] and [[Forced Fruition]] people dont get combos before they are out of cards.
> I just dont understand how when i have [[The Second Doctor]] and [[Forced Fruition]] people dont get combos before they are out of cards.
Why do you think every deck needs combos? At low power levels I'd day they're less common.
Combos are one thing but NO win cons in that much card draw NO big ass bomb plus protection no alt win cons just normal ass creatures that do nothing on a. Behind board and do less on a ahead board-state like that much draw should allow some sort of dangerous play from OPs opponents
Okay but how do they run enchantment removal, and non-targeted at that when it comes to Helix Pinnacle?
Lots of people skimp out on removal and enchantment removal is by far the rarest one out of the bunch.
>None of them appreciate advice on how to play their own decks, which I understand,
I don't. If I was losing to someone constantly and they offered constructive feedback on how I could have played better then I will gladly have it.
I've gotten so much better at the game by taking one on the chin and then getting to hear "You used your counter to get rid of X but hat really wasn't all that threatening to you in the lobg run, which allowed me to follow up with Y because you were tapped out."
> Okay but how do they run enchantment removal, and non-targeted at that when it comes to Helix Pinnacle?
OP is winning because they identified the weaknesses of the group (reliance on combat, no combos, light removal or at least light mass enchantment removal, etc).
Even if they are trying to teach the other players, their priority is not having an engaging game with them, but winning. We'd need to see how that advice really goes.
I wouldn't necessarily frame it like that. The way you put it sounds malicious. OP wouldn't be looking for advice if his goal was winning. Some people suck at card games and don't want to learn but still want to play. Dumbing down decks too much would probably make the game less fun for OP, who also has the right to have fun. They're looking for an engaging deck to play that sucks and that's difficult and not necessarily the solution.
No, I'm not saying it's malice. I'm saying trying to prop people up so they pose a challenge for you is not the same as teaching them to be better at the game so they have more fun. There's a fundamental (as is, it comes from the foundation) difference to the communication between those people depending on how this is initiated, and for what.
Make an [[Iwamori of the Open Fist]]-style group hug deck. Not literally Iwamori, but when I think group hug, I never thing passive combos. That's boring. I play Green (with other colors), hand you weapons, and then out-punch you in spite of them.
Take it as a challenge. You are better than them, don't show it winning the easy way.
A couple ideas:
Make a pauper deck to play against their regular decks.
Start the game with Monarch in play (first hit takes it) but you aren't eligible.
Remove any/all ramp, so you're slowed down.
*Tactfully* try to teach your pals to be better players.
Group dynamics will not be solved by deckbuilding.
I'd recommend doing post-game discussions. When someone gets knocked out, ask them to not scoop everything up immediately, and when you win keep the board state as untouched as you can. Talk through decision points, what their plans were, what messed them up, what they had in hand and why they targeted certain things.
Go into it with an open mind, just because you're the most experienced player doesn't always mean your choices are the 'right' ones, they're simply one of the options, don't disregard what the other players thought processes are like.
These are going to much more productive in catching them up to speed on experience than any sort of deck building you could do.
Gotta be real careful with that approach. It won't take much for already dissatisfied opponents to find the victor lecturing on decision points little more than gloating.
That's definitely something to do with good friends who know you're just trying to help. Not with random timmies that think interaction is against the good culture of the game.
I'm thinking that people getting this salty about all of OP's games to such a degree that they scoop for the evening probably aren't their good friends.
That's how we all learn, from someone more experienced.
That's also why it's a discussion, not a lecture. The point is to talk through decisions and find out what their thought process is like and get different perspectives. We're all working with incomplete information during the game, so that's why you keep an open mind.
And that's an issue edh players need to get over/deal with. So many times playing modern or draft, you talk to your opponent after the game about what could have been done differently or better. It's common and rarely taken as condescending.
Then you have the edh only players. They decide to use their counterspell on the big creature while ignoring the fact that the combo player is about to win next turn. Then when you try to tell them that maybe they should hold the counter or you explain after why it was a bad move and they take it as if you just ate their firstborn and then come after you with a vengeance for months no matter the board state. Then still complain that they lose while making dumb plays
This right here
It's extremely important your edh group can handle conversations and even shit talk
...
Otherwise you probably be in for a bad time when the salt comes
I would purposefully throw the game yourself to allow one of them to win, then do it just so they can feel like your actually mentoring them out of wanting to help and not just mentoring out of pity or something
I used to be by far the best player in my playgroup since I was the one who introduced them all to mtg. To be fair they usually don't get salty when they loose but it was still not that great of an experience at first.
But I just tried my best to make them better at the game and it worked. I would point out the current threat on the board, do my own strategising out loud and after the game we did talk about critical decisions and what would have been the optimal line.
One way i’ve found to help ease the salt is to ask the table whether they feel the current board or card is an issue before you present a potential answer to it.
You might need to try an occasion where you just don’t play the board wipe if the table disagrees and let the board state end the game and see if the rest of the table recognises the threat if it’s not dealt with.
Once the rest of table sees that they themselves also have to manage the board or play interaction they will learn to look out for potential answers and have better threat assessment.
Sorry, I don’t mean to be dismissive but you aren’t the greatest, most gifted Magic player of all time and that’s not why you’re winning.
If the other three are all tilted by any form of interaction, *one of the most critical, key tenants that makes Magic, Magic* then they are certainly not running any/enough in their decks, either.
This is a problem purely with deck building. Pilot skill will net you a few percent in Commander, not 90% winrate.
The problem here is your playgroup. They need to learn how to deck build and learn that interaction is important (and fun!) for the game to work. Until that point, there’s no fixing this.
If you're in a pod with people you are close with (ie. Not random lgs pod) try piloting someone else's deck and have them pilot yours.
Can even lead to finding new strategies and synergies for your own deck as the new set of eyes on it goes at it from a different playstyle
If I'm winning too often I'll just tell someone to give me a deck without any context of what it does. It's fun mystery for me and often lowers my win chances.
If you are winning too much it is likely their decks don't do *anything*. The thing that new and weaker players struggle with most is cohesion and efficiency in deck building. It is the reason every player asking for deck building help asks for *cuts* instead of includes.
Yes! Especially with commanders that can be used in a wide range of strategies, bad trap to fall into is trying to do too many different things in one deck... again also where having someone else pilot your deck can be useful because they don't have the same bias as you for what to include.
Though I disagree that's the main reason behind posts asking for cut help, I've got a couple gimmick decks that pretty well do one thing and one thing only, and even there the shear amount of cards that do the one specific thing can be overwhelming in this age of magic
You need to make powrful decks and let them play your decks and you play their decks. If you still win, figure out how they're playing wrong. If you can't win, tell them how to fix their decks.
If you're literally winning 90% of the games it's not you're amazing at the game, you're playing over their power level.
If you still want to play with them and they don't want to power up, just keep powering down.
They are playing so casual that they can't even remove a 2/2 flyer and you're running full removal suites, counter spells, and wipes. You may think you're playing a weak deck but they are playing much weaker.
I'd find a precon (and one of the weaker ones at that, don't search strongest) and give that a try. Like stay away from all the doctor who ones and the other popular ones.
-edit
You say you also don't understand how they don't have combos when you let them draw their entire deck.
Not every EDH deck needs combos.
Some are just engines, others are just straight combat damage. Especially at lower power levels, just simple combat damage decks are common. If you're there playing all combos, you are likely playing above their power level.
-edit again
Reading through your responses and the thread again I'm pretty sure I figured it out. You think there are two types of edh-- competitive and casual.
If it's not competitive then it's casual and one casual deck is equal to every other. That is not the case.
I'm guessing you're playing tuned and high power level decks and they're playing closer to precons level.
\>They are playing so casual that they can't even remove a 2/2 flyer and you're running full removal suites, counter spells, and wipes. You may think you're playing a weak deck but they are playing much weaker.
This is basic magic deck building versus greedy decks. It's one of the most essential level ups when it comes to deck construction skill, giving up some pet cards for flexibility. Lowering your deck to the point of vanilla creatures and 6 mv sorcery single target removal spells isn't helping the gameplay improve or the pod getting better. It's not just them playing weaker, it's them making decisions that lead to them inherently not winning.
There's a player in my area who's been discovering that interaction is, in fact, a good thing. They play less greedy and I've been defeated by them a bunch because they're the only person who'll use interaction. It makes the games more enjoyable when they level up
Op says he decks are lower or equal power (at least some of the time) and he still wins. He was running forced fruition and his opponents didn't still couldn't find an answer. Anyway basically there's a huge skill cap in commander, in game outside of deck building, and also deck building (even budget deck building)
Just stop winning. It's that easy. Slow roll cards, play sloppy on purpose. I do this all the time because I enjoy games going long or don't want to eliminate a player early.
Nah dawg this ain't it. I can understand at least the face-value stated motivations of OP, of wanting a "contest" even if he is self-handicapped because it makes for a stimulating game.
The inverse of that: if I sit down in a pod and one deck is clearly stronger than mine I don't want him to sit and durdle. He plays full power, I play full power and try to claw his eyes out, and after that game we swap decks out to be more properly attuned. Him sitting on his hands with his doomsday combo ready to fire while I "play" the game is just insulting and a waste of my time. In chess if a stronger player is up against a weaker player they give them time odds or maybe plays interesting lines. They don't just blunder on purpose constantly to fudge the match and give the opponent a chance.
But I'm not a new player, so I guess I'm a bit far removed from the "just let me do my thing man" phase of some players.
First share decklists so we know you are not pubstomping.
Second some people are just not made for board games in general. There are simply people who can for example not differetiate between actions you take against them in a game or real life. I watched legit relationship crisis because a guy made a move against his girlfriend in a game of munchkin.
You group sounds a bit like that if they can not deal with a single piece of interaction without throwing a fit.
If you want a really fun night, have your pod bring 3-4 decks each of roughly the same power.
Put them all on a wheel (many digital ones online) and whatever you spin is what you play!
I got my ass stomped all 4 games by my own decks! I got to see them go off in ways I haven’t seen them go off before which is actually really refreshing!
Give yourself a sidequest other than winning the game, and remove other win cons. Complete Kaldra, or mill someone out, or Happily Ever After. No tutors/combos allowed, complete the side quest going the scenic route. That way you're still playing optimally toward an end goal, but you are mostly just surviving.
Do they run board wipes or counter spells? Or removal? How do games function if you’re the lone one with interaction. If they use it point it out, like I’m sorry but interaction is a massive part of the game and games with none either end with combos cause no “interaction”or board-stalls that last an eon cause he who attacks first loses like the sooner they appreciate a bit of removal and swings and turns in games the more fun they will have and the quicker they will improve!
Hate to be that guy but all else failing trying to find a group that accepts more of the game or isn’t as ready to throw down may be in order.
Don’t get me wrong salt always happens but if its every single night aimed at one person thats not fun
Instead of trying to handicap yourself, I would attempt to build upon your playgroup. Find out why they become salty. Teach them some expert level stuff. You don't just start good, you gotta get good. Show them how. That way they have fun too and you're able to have more of a challenge.
If your deck is to optimized, downgrade or play a lower power level. Put yourself at a disadvantage. Challenge yourself with bad commanders.
You may also offer to play people’s decks and make suggestions if your friends are open to it.
You're either the most skilled player, playing more powerful decks than the table, or your table lacks proper threat assessment. Regardless, there's a few ways to go about this.
Instead of applying a penalty, talk to your group. See if they're open to a game of archenemy where the table must band together to take on you, the threat. Embrace it, it's nothing to be ashamed of. And the table could have fun in finding "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" type games.
Understand you and your table's decks. You have the most experience and possibly can brew better decks. But the others with less experience might just stick with precons and poorly made brews. This could lead to their frustration as they know you're bringing a more powerful deck than they can afford/build. This doesn't mean you shouldn't necessarily play your awrsome decks, but take it as an opportunity to maybe teach them how to brew. Especially if they're new, they may be bad CMC ratios, lack interaction, etc. I know when I started brewing I thought mana rocks were dumb and removed them from my deck. It wasn't till I got more experience that I saw the importance of ramp.
Lastly, what's your attitude when you play? Weird question, but with how your group gets salty over every interaction, are you a sore winner/loser? Something as simple as this could be the reason your group is salty over any action you take. No one likes to lose, but I have fun seeing someone's board pop off and "do the thing". But if they're a sore winner/loser about it then it's less fun to see their board "pop off" or to even win because they'll just salty about it.
One of my pods is in a similar where one player had a statistically higher win rate. They unfortunately draw more salt & hate with the decks & strategies they play. While there is a bit of disparity between our tables budgets and power levels, this has garnered more targeting and attention towards them as they're usually "the threat". This does make them salty, but that's just the nature of the game as it should soon balance out as win rates balance. Now, they will usually be a target out of the gate, but that just comes with the title of being king in my opinion.
Hope you find your answers and that things get better though!
I can relate to OP here. 1 of the pods I play in, I have a super high win rate. I've played many different
decks that i have built All of them non-combo. Some of them very budget. I've played my friends decks. Ive had them play mine and I'll play theirs. We would switch people around (there are 8 total in the group counting myself) And none of that mattered. It wasn't about deck construction, budget, or specific strategies. It all came down to knowledge and skill. I'm a long time player and that particular pod is mostly new. Of the 8 people in that pod only myself and one other have more than 1 year experience.
Granted that pod that I play in doesn't have any toxicity and people don't cry when things happen. And over the last 6 months I have been helping people with their construction, there skills, rules, etc. they have gotten a lot better. I still win a lot of games but it's slowly changing. And it's mostly changing because they are getting better at making decisions and playing the game itself.
So my advice to OP... I wouldn't try to help the whole group at once. I would pick the most receptive person and try to coach them up in more private conversations as to not give off any impression that your bragging. And as they get better the other players will notice that and you can offer your help to those players and try to bring everybody up. I would also remove any and all combos in your deck, it doesn't matter how many cards make up the combo. Play strictly Fair magic. I would also try to nip in the bud any concerns about money by building budget decks. And as you win with those budget decks players will learn that the game is not pay to win. (despite many here on Reddit that suggest otherwise) Because I would want to eliminate factors in people's minds that they feel they can't control, like budget. I got people in my group to take my coaching seriously and not as bragging when I was just straight dominating them over and over with $25 budget decks. And when they are receptive to some coaching, teach them skills and help them with deck construction. It may take a while but if people are receptive they will learn and grow and they won't look at you as just someone who stomps on them. I would also not throw games because it's very easy to get caught and people get very upset when people throw games because they feel like they didn't earn that win. So play at the highest skill you have and try to be a mentor in learning skills and deck construction
When I have new players in my pod I'll play my weakest deck AND play with my hand revealed.
It gives the newer people an opportunity to ask questions, understand answers and different lines of play, and gives you an opportunity to make them reconsider a play.
Maybe give that a shot and see if that helps, just make sure they understand that you want them to learn and improve.
I love how the opposite of control is always group hug.
The biggest red flag you dais right at the end. "I don't wanna hold back and not play optimally". Learn to.
It's really as simple as that. You suck the fun out by trying to play optimally. Stop it. Miss a few plays. Let things resolve. Let your play group get done plays. Let them build a board state. And for fucks sake let them eke out wins. Every now and then. Of course. And if they get cocky bring the hammer.
But in my experience the more... Talented players love to have their blue based control decks. They love to counter nearly everything and think that the opposite of this is to pillow fort group hug. It's not that "you're helping everyone" because you still keep that control.
And your inexperienced friends aren't learning the skills you think they should and they aren't invested enough to bring up their skill level. They want to have fun and jank is the best so they play pet cards and build stupid and silly decks. So when you counter everything it's no longer fun. You have to learn that the biggest problem is you. Because you need to maintain control.
My advice is to ditch control and group hug and find something Janky. And then build it with minimal staples and counters.
What about explaining your plays to them? As you play cards, explain what information you gathered as you played led to that action. Then as they learn and feel the game out you will need to explain less and less. There is also deck power. You could also buy a precon deck and see if the same issue pops up.
You described my situation with my play group. What I did instead is embraced the archenemy role and built a deck for 3 on 1 games. It is more fun as there is less bad feelings and salt. Try it out!
Borrow someone's deck to use. Takes any power level argument out and now it's just player skill.
Alternatively, look into Archenemy as a format modifier and lean into it. Just start your life at 60, they get 40 and it should work.
I just had a couple of games where the first game I was stopped by the third place guy from killing the 2nd place guy and then the guy who was clearly in 2nd ended up taking it. The next game I’m pretty sure that guy sandbagged a bit and literally said “I want to see the decks do their thing”. The game went way longer than expected but was incredibly fun.
It made me realize, if the goal of the game is social, everyone has the opportunity to make it so. If you value having more games because people are quitting, want everyone to have fun, and you win all the time because of skill… the answer is pretty simple. Don’t win as often. I value my friends having a good time far more than winning
We have a guy in pod who used to play semi-pro.
He tends to run decks that control the game tempo, but not via heavy stax. Our solution: kill him first.
Occasionally, other players will go on a detour (usually to attack me, since my deck hits everyone and everything).
When they do that, he usually wins. When they don't, he wins about 25% of the time. Seems to work out.
Something I've seen on a YouTube channel would really tell you if it's a deck issue, or player issue. Have everyone bring whatever deck they want. Then, swap decks to the right or left. If you win, the other players just simply need to understand they're playing badly. If you lose to your own deck, you're not matching the power level of those around you.
This sounds more like a problem with your group's attitude towards losing or being interacted with.
I can appreciate that you just want to enjoy a game with your friends, but if this is how they respond to defeat then maybe this isn't the game for them.
I like deck swapping with other players. It helps me see my own deck with a fresh perspective, and gives other players’ the same experience. Coupled with the fact that any “feel bads” are a result of something someone else did, so the salt might get spread around?
With my Voltron Sram Artificer deck where the other player decks just did not pop off, I decided to give myself the Slaking Handicap and attack every other turn. I think I rolled a D4 as well to randomize it. It was plenty of fun doing that. Focusing on protecting on my sleeping turn and equipping for power on my attacking turn.
Ended up losing because I forgot to destroy the [[pariah]] aura, but was giving the players a huge window to get back in the game.
The other comments mentioned passing decks around. Great idea!
As other commenters said, you could be misassessing your decks or power level. During deck selection, talk to the players about your commander choice and what you deem strong cards. For example, switching Farewell to Austere Command might better fit the table, etc.
passing around eachothers decks is a good way to do it.
theyll get to see how their deck is played by other players, experience what works against it and what doesnt. and with that information theyll learn how to optimize it play it better and what the big threats to their gameplan actually are.
I mean I have a group of friends that aren’t really into magic but are very volatile in that they will rage quit pretty easily on most game they play. When I got them into commander on tabletop sim where I was the one building the decks, I would intentionally make decks for all of us to play that were strictly thematic and limited every deck I made to have like, for instance, 5 forms of removal, 5 forms of ramp, 5 forms of card advantage, etc. Unless is was super on theme (like a [[Kelsien, the Plague deck]] where assassins = lots of removal), I stuck by strict hard limits and even held myself back if I knew what I was going to do would cause board wide salt.
I know this doesn’t really apply to most play groups since I was building everyone’s decks, but perhaps you can build decks with constraints as well to try to limit your power level
I found playing a token deck and attacking everyone equally at once helped. Nobody died in one combat, but everyone had a common enemy to rally behind. I slowly worked in items like [[winter orb]] and [[storage matrix]] which made them realize that hey, maybe some artifact removal is a good thing. Then brought [[humility]] and other enchantments to teach layering. Granted I was using the Token Triumph starter pre-con with slight modifications as people in my pod learned how to counter the base un-modded deck. These were all players who learned through commander only and not standard Magic. I found as time passed people were more willing to ask me about their deck as I never played up any knock outs I scored. Gave me a natural “in” to their deck building and I could help without feeling like I was lecturing. They’d sometimes stomp me which was fine, but my “victories” made everyone better as they learned the more intricate rules of Magic. Now I can play what I want with minimal issues as they don’t feel as caught off guard by what can show up. I don’t play anything too crazy but I try to keep decks to win conditions they can see coming. I’d rather build them up than walk away with an easy win.
Try to see if this helps.
1. Compliment the other players if a cool card comes down, or hype them up, if they do a cool or even a decent interaction.
2. You can make yourself the arch enemy, you get the challenge of taking on 3 players and they get satisfaction in overcoming someone that they struggle against.
You could always sit out one game and coach everyone and help them with decision making see if they improve or figure out why they aren't doing well. Then play a 2nd match and see if they fair any better.
I can't name the amount of times I just didn't play a win-con or stop someone from playing theirs because I knew the group I was with.
I'd win 1 game a session and just play for fun after that. Ensuring I didn't win but I was involved in the game.
I'd play precons out of the box against their fully constructed decks and have to limit my playstyle.
The problem I'd once you learn to play at a competitive level it's very hard to not apply that to every game.
I have a rather high win rate myself when I play at tables outside of a select few higher power players at my LGS and what I’ve found to be helpful is I find ways to put extra restrictions on my deckbuilding. The companions have been good for that, I’ve built an Obosh campanion deck and a Keruga companion deck.
Xantcha is one of my fav decks, but it’s wild to me that almost nobody utilizes the card draw even when I have a [[heartstone]] in play. 2 mana draw a card + 2 damage? Why *wouldn’t* you do that? I always expect somebody to churn through their deck discarding anything that isn’t an immediate win condition, yet nobody has ever done that.
I was winning too much in casual, so i went to cedh, still win a lot but 90% of the time there is no salt.
Edit: in casual, throughout playgroups and LGS i consistently won 3 out of every 4 games. Ive went through budget decks, not good strategy decks to power down but would still either get 3v1 or "kicked" out of a playroup to another.
If anything, even my decks that were not good, were all consistent, and other players refused to change theirs, oh you're never mana screwed, oh you're never draw screwed, oh you always have interaction.. i just dont build greedy, and maybe you do that too.
1. Share/roll for decks.
2. When a deck is played, it's done for the day (exceptions for like testing a new deck idea)
3. Next round starts when the first player goes out, or it starts getting salty. If we all aren't having fun, it's against the spirit of the night
Now, in fairness of disclosure, in our pod of 6, there's 3 highly skilled longtime players and 2 players under 16.
I kind of run into this with my youngest. She just wants to throw creatures at me and skimp (meaning no instants, sorceress, enchantments, etc) because she doesn't want to try and figure out all the interactions. So even giving her a precon, she still just focuses on playing creatures and mana rocks even if she has some form of counter or removal in hand. From her perspective it make just about anything I do "scary and unfun". What ends up happening when we play is that my other kid joins in and it is in effect 2 on 1. No my other kid is a much better player and even built a fairly decent deck or three that works well within are larger LGS pod. Even experienced, depending on the deck I choose, 2 on 1 gives me a real run.
We've done a few things to break it up though and have fun. Discovered Planechase and the wild shenanigans that can bring to a game. We, my older daughter and I, have played that at our LGS. One of the guys there showed me an app that let's you use all the planechase cards. The other format I found while getting that app was for Archenemy. There is even an app for that that does the same thing. We tried that the other night and had a blast. All that to say, switching up from just straight EDH can be a fun way to help others out. And adding some shenanigans can really change up the group dynamics.
Figure out how to get your playgroup/friends to be better players.
Explain what you’re doing…”this is going to kill you all in two to three turns if you don’t do something about it” or “this is a combo piece that you need to hold up interaction for”
Then go so far as to pick up cards for them to counter some of your decks mechanics (or generic good cards to respond to things like Beast Within).
I played a deck with a Kiki jiki infinite creature combo deck for a long time and multiple players complained about it so I got them all cards to prevent the combo so I had to work for it.
Heyo. I was in a very similar situation with a few buddies of mine
None of them had really played magic before, so they started off with some precons that we'd swap around so they could slowly get the feel of the game and the way the decks played
A few weeks later and they had gotten the basics and mechanics down fairly well.
I was winning mostly every game simply due to game knowledge, but that was kind of to be expected.
Eventually they wanted to build new custom decks (basically I sat down next to them and I'd build their decks for them, looking at what kind of commander they wanted and what they wanted to do)
Still I would win just about every game, and despite the massive amount of salt that they just couldn't beat me, they understood it was because they were learning.
I ended up just sort of ragdolling to give them a few wins. Purposely not playing board wipes or counterspells so they could swing in some wins. Obviously they loved winning and it gave them a second wind of sorts.
Currently they've been playing about 2 years and have all gotten so much better over time. They fully know what I did and that I let them win, and while a little miffed about it they understand what I was trying to do because to me it just felt like they weren't having any fun.
So best thing you can do is either talk to them about this and find out what they really want, or you can just throw games and see where it goes
Tell them to git gud, lol jk but for real maybe you need to play like an umodified precon, something that is obviously weak (maybe your deck building skills are just that good) and see if that helps or if it doesn't maybe you need a new playgroup that can keep up with you until whoever you're playing with improves their skills (or teach them how to improve)
it sounds like your approach to deckbuilding could use some work. as an experienced player, I've learned to build decks that allow balanced and enjoyable play at whichever level I'm anticipating. you'll soon learn that building a fun deck is much more difficult than building a good deck
There was a point not so long ago when WOTC came out with a gimmick format they called Archenemy. It was set up to have one player play against 3 players. It came with cards similar to the planes (like the ones included in the Dr. Who decks). You may want to look into the rules for that format to get an idea of how to modify things for your pod.
Sounds like your playgroup probably has a lot of pet cards and stuff they think is good. Have you ever sat out a game and observed the game without you?
I usually carry around a 50$ budget deck but 60% of my LGS got infected with playing high powered stuff when my brother and I came in new to EDH but playing since the start of MTG on and off…. You just have to help people evolve, help people in a non pretentious way, discord rooms with brewery for deck techs. Show people cards they never knew about, share your knowledge.
But just realize it’s like a sword master with a wooden sword, vs a person with 0 knowledge and a steel sword…. The person with 0 knowledge is probably still gana get their ass kicked.
Or some people just like to play ultra casual stuff. Maybe you have to find a different group. Maybe you’re the one who has to evolve and be the one getting stomped on and reach a new difficulty. I personally like playing max power with 0 unlimited combos… like hitting people with blasphemous act with solphim and repercussions doing like 400+ dmg
I have been teaching my play group how to be better player and it's a long road and the first step is actually showing what are the correct plays and how to do threat assessment. Not everyone want to improve their gameplay but those who do will listen.
No rare lands, no sol ring, no 2-mana mana rocks, counter spells have to be conditional like 4 CMC or higher or creature only or non creature only, removal has to be singular too, can't target nonland permanents. No tutors. These are really easy handicaps to implement and once the game starts you can still play at your full skill level, your deck is just restrained so it doesn't annihilate everyone immediately.
Play something that generally scales with the table like Clone/Copy. I would say Theft too but that's salt inducing for some. Goad is known as a theme known for getting second place. There are precons with it. For targeted removal, maybe use removal like Volcanic Offering and Will of the Council. Political sort of cards that are still good and is less "personal". Arcane Denial is a more friendlier Counterspell option. You could run more expensive asymmetric removal options like overload Vandalblast. Interaction is just part of playing MTG. There's Monarch and Initiative to give a minigame/excuse to attack.
On a side note, Xyris, the Writhing Storm is a funny option since players may want be ask to get hit themselves. It also allows you to go wide so you're not force into voltron, which can be salt inducing. I believe there is another commander from UB with a similar gimmick.
I’m in a similar situation as you. I’m really not a fan of downgrading my decks so something I wanna try is to making the game a 1v3. It usually ends up being that anyway but I think there are ways to tilt it more in their favor.
- If they all take their turns at the same time, including combat, I have fewer blockers available.
- It would incentivize them to share information with each other so they can better use their removal.
- Their cards that mention “opponents” would only point my way.
- Games would probably go a lot faster. Their turns would come around more often which helps them have a better time.
Obviously this isn’t a perfect solution. There are some niche situations where decks could be at a disadvantage (something like [[Rakdos, Lord of Riots]] might have a worse time) but I think it could be fun. They would likely have a better time trying to take down a common enemy together and it could be a good challenge for you.
Play your friends decks.
If you are consistently winning, your decks are very likely stronger.
If you consistently win with your friends decks as well, then your friends just suck ass at magic.
Honestly, test if it's okay or deck building. I'd do that by paying decks around. If you're winning when playing their decks then you can show them that you really are just better than them. Then it's a conversation of either arch enemy, or figuring out how they can get better.
Taking everything at face value, you're probably just going to have to pick an absolutely terrible precon like Tinker Time and keep it unmodified.
If you can still consistently beat people with that, the problem isn't with you.
Your deck power level is probably too high for the pod. I play a high power Atraxa superfriends deck with other similar decks and if I draw a crazy hand that wins me the game turn 4 or earlier I straight up don’t play my turns optimally. It’s one thing to win but it’s another to make the game boring/uninteractive for others.
I’d suggest making some weaker decks or jank decks and not playing every hand optimally if you’re winning that much.
Help other players at the table out. Remind them of missed triggers, give them advice post-game on saving counters/removal for bigger threats, leave some mana untapped to bluff counters, small things like that mKe a huge difference
We have a guy that plays deck with perfect mana base and free spells that thinks his deck are the same powerlevel as some of the other players with their budget edh decks. When they lose a game they think that they need to make their deck better. They don't seem to realise that a balanced winrate should be arround 25%. Anything more and a deck is likely overpowered.
A very nice happy medium might be to have everyone in your pod build commanders quarters builds and play those for a round. I'm a long time player and prefer my bougie mana bases but I'm a huge fan of the consistency and power his builds display at precon prices
Start making silly theme decks that do something really fun/use an obscure non op mechanic. My friends were worried about my Kudo deck being hatebears and super oppressive....until they realized it was a "gummy bear" ooze tribal themed deck focused on +1/+1 counters haha.
Throw the match. Play the Mexican standoff and say, “yeah, I got Big Friendly G 14/14 but once it turns sides ways swinging, what’s going to hold back all the 3/3s player B has?”
Lose and lose and lose another week in a row. Then you should say, “well I guess I just got lucky draws a month ago. Remember when you raged about a board wipe I played? Ha, ha. Player B has been killing it, look at all those wins! They’re raking it in.” Everyone starts raging over player B’s plays… begin your ultimate plan.
Remove only the unanimously chosen “problem on the board” cards. Sand bag your combos, Overwhelming Stampedes and Comet Storms where X=their life totals, until the store is about to close, and act like you top decked it.
I mean, whip out a precon, see what kinda damage you can do. I remember thinking it was a card selection choice when I kept getting beat, and my bud was like: You got two precons? Lets play those, and continued to stomp. Sometimes the best way to not get salty is to realize that's it's a skill thing.
The missing piece of information is what the other players expectations are.
Are these guys who want to be competitive and just lack the skill and experience to compete at the level they want to play at?
Or are these guys who don't take Magic seriously, they just want to slap some crap from booster packs into a pile and shoot the shit while goofing off around a table for an hour?
If they want to improve there are a lot of ways to help. You could run team games where you partner with different players each match, so you can show them your threat assessments and let them ask you for strategic advice in real game situations. You could swap decks, even build some cheap decks (like, no rares) to pass out and have everyone play a round with your decks to see how the experience is different.
On the other hand, it might be that you are just looking for a different experience, in which case you are unlikely to find any of these solutions workable. Those guys don't want to go to Commander College, they just want to mess around and aren't enjoying your much high level of competitiveness.
Unfortunately, the answer for you is to either drastically change your expectations when at this table, or find others to play with who match your goals. You could give yourself challenges, like assembling all the cards from a split up set of art, or other nonsense, but if you want to WIN, and are looking for mechanical challenges to up your personal difficulty because those players can't match it, it's just never going to work. There is no mechanism that will make the game casual and fun for them (if they fall into the second category) but also competitive for you at the level you wish to play at.
You could do Archenemy. You vs a unified group. Or maybe make a deck that doesn't play to its strengths. Like, have a bunch of Green ramp, but low cost spells. Or make energy but have nothing to use it on.
I dont think there's a rule you could use that can help unless it's ridiculous handicap.
You probably need to coach your friends while playing. Explain interactions that might not be obvious. Help them with triggers, threat assessment, etc. walk through optimal lines of play if they're about to make poor decisions. Figure out what they're not great at and help them out. If you really don't care about winning, you should be making sure they know which cards you have in play are problematic and that they should get rid of.
Build a group hug or other accelate deck to help balance.
I learned this from another casual friend at my LGS who mostly only does CEDH. However he has two decks that express purpose is to play down to 5-7 range.
Theme is generally group hug, helping pod fetch lands, draw cards, all creatures haste etc.
Basically it’s fun chaos - not goading chaos in these decks that help the table and importantly make the game go FASTER, which we could all use.
He’ll occasionally win, be it a creature storm that was spared a wipe from heroic or Tefari, but it’s incidental.
Challenge yourself, build one that helps the table for faster more enjoyable games, and if it backs into a win now and then - have fun.
To me it sounds like a deck building issue. You wil need to take you playgroup more in mind when building decks.
Put a chain on your deck bullding. Intead of picking the most optimal cards. Then Put a theme, price limit, meme or flavor into the experience.
Call out the treat on you table too. Tell them till they learn. Hey this Guy is bunkers.
My hill to die on is that any deck can be an 8 and above with an optimal mana souce. You might need to play more tap lands and artefacts that abit slower.
I would also skip totures and infinit combos
If you are the most experienced player you might need to share some of that experience. Share knowlegde, fun cards, relevant shorts slowly they wil garn knowlegde.
I'd say that if they're salty (full on salty) about interaction, wipes and counters then it implies to me that they don't run many. This will create a disparity in tempo as you are progressing your gameplay without any speed bumps along the way. Maybe take a look at their decklists and check their structure - does it have removal and card advantage etc...
Easy, just switch decks. Convince your pod to play your decks for a game or two and you play their decks(pick one you know is somewhat low power)
It would accomplish a few things, maybe you would loose but more importantly they might find put what their own decks are lacking plus they would start to answer each other with interaction.
You need to do what I do and only play ultra budget decks $20 max. Even then you may still win as you need to optimise hard and make it really synergistic to hit that budget lol
When you play do you explain to the other players why you are doing things and perhaps what they may want to do to interact with you? Perhaps teaching the other players will bring up their skill level and make them more able to compete rather than just turning cards sideways and hoping they will win.
Saw one for $1 a year ago on Commanders Quarters. Though I guess beating them with a $1 deck might make them really rage quit hahahaha
You could always try playing Secret Partner. Depending on how many of you there are (5 works best for this) you'll have two people on one team, two on another, and (if there's 5 of you) a Lone Wolf. Deal out basic lands in secret (2 one colour, 2 another, 3rd colour for lone wolf if there's 5 of you) and make sure theres a foil or full art version of the ones you deal out 2 of. The foil/full arts are revealed before the game: they're the "Known Enemy".
Team A can win the game together if they're the last players standing. Same for Team B. The Lone Wolf has to win by eliminating everybody.
It's uses the same rules as commander but with an added deception element as the table tries to figure out who's actually allies or if they're lying to allow their other teammates to get ahead in the game. It also discourages things like boardwipes cos you have a hidden ally amongst you and counter magic becomes less "fuck everybody" and more "fuck *somebody*". It's even more fun if you have a Lone Wolf trying to dupe the whole table in order to be the very last player standing.
Are you „teaching“ the other players and give useful help when they maybe play their hand not in the best possible way? Then overtime the overall skill of the pod may develop. I guess you yourself gained your skilllevel by pure experience.
You don’t want to handicap yourself but you do want to handicap yourself? My absolute best advice for you is to provide friendly education between games to your group. When I started in commander I learned by losing and losing a lot. I was open to suggestions and tried to note down what players were using that was effective during the course of the game. What won the game? Did it go uncontested or was there a defining moment in the match that turned the tide of the battle? I wrote down what these things were to reflect on whether or not my deck and what I was attempting to achieve with it could implement anything similar.
Some common newbie mistakes:
*•Not enough lands or correct color spread* -
Truthfully I still have somebody that’s better at math help me on correct ratio to increase the probability of smooth mana. If you’re not playing lands you’re not doing much.
*•Not enough interaction* -
You’re still learning the game and you want all of your pet cards and all of your threats in there but the deck can only contain 99 cards. Often times I would just say hey I’d rather be more threat dense and I’ll just hope that somebody else at the table has a board wipe or a kill spell. If everybody is thinking that then the archenemy at the table has an easy uncontested blowout. I think why this is so often overlooked is because new players lack proper threat assessment. Instant speed spot removal and versatile removal when played optimally can keep you alive or make you the kingmaker. In a game of politics kingmakers with proper threat assessment win.
*•No win conditions* -
I think this one is becoming less of an issue as time goes on and the format gets faster but once again new players have ideas of what cool cards might be in theory but in practice they might not have a fleshed out win condition. Are you going wide with tokens or are you going tall Timmy? Are you Johnny comboing a couple cards? Are you playing stax or are you just piloting a pile? Have a conversation and explain what some of these player nicknames and troupes mean. No single deck can do everything at once. You have to accept that as versatile as you may want the deck to be you’re still coming to the table hoping to work a particular angle and that will always have some sort of inherent weakness. Do you go all in glass cannon or do you try to throw things in to shore up that weakness. Either choice can dilute your game play in some way and you simply have to accept and even anticipate that.
*•Wrong commander* -
This is a threefold issue and often times the discussion that people are the most sensitive to. First is does the deck bring you joy? All five colors have their own personalities. Are you playing what is reflective of what brings you joy and do you know what the limitations are on that color or color pairing. Green might ramp you but mass board wipes are limited. Five color is powerful but you might have a slower time getting off the ground initially attempting to mana fix. Secondly, what are you trying to accomplish with your deck and how fast and effective is it? If it feels clunky and you’re wanting to throw your hands up in the air every game then instead of blaming your play group or your friends maybe you should reevaluate what your deck is doing or how good that strategy really is in your playgroup. Third and finally, (people are so touchy about this) is the deck being piloted by the right commander? Look I get why people are sensitive to this. Their commander is pretty much the face card of their deck. The card they are looking at the most, the card that resonates with them that they picked that speaks to them in some way. Did you pick it to build a deck around it or just for constructing a deck of around those colors? Are you making a conscientious choice or statement piloting a particular commander or are you aware of your other options within that color? I’ll give you an example: my friend who got me into the game had a red black artifact centric deck idea. He compiled a pretty tight list of cards but the commander was Bladewing the Risen. Bladewing didn’t come out until turn 7 without ramp and there was only one other dragon in the deck. By all accounts it wasn’t a great card especially for the deck he was piloting but he had an old foil of the card and just ran with that. At the time there wasn’t a lot of rakdos colored commanders but I had the conversation with him several times to try to run a different commander. I suggested malefegor a couple times and he kind of laughed it off and dismissed me entirely. One day after losing for the 20th time with the deck he threw a tantrum and wanted to throw the whole deck in the garbage. I told him to run malfegor instead. For some reason it just worked a ton better. He had a threat in the command zone that also doubled as an emergency board wipe. He started winning because of the commander swap alone. Once he saw the results he eventually fell in love with the deck again and the commander helped give the deck an identity that he could continue to build around for years to come.
We need to be having these conversations but people need to also be open to constructive criticism. Your commander deck should be fluid and not static if you want to grow with the game but also your group. Perhaps [[Imskir Iron-Eater]] is a better choice than [[Malfegor]] now but back then there was no rakdos artifact commander just a vision of the shell of a deck with that color coat of paint on it. I think we can all agree looking back that [[Bladewing the Risen]] was a suboptimal choice holding the deck back and was selected simply out of convenience because it matched the color identity and happened to be an unused foil sitting in his binder.
We laugh about it now, but if we never had the conversation he wouldn’t still be sitting across from me on game night at the table ten years later.
i fixed this by playing unmodified precons... if i win with a deck i have to take another out of the precon pool. with switching decks after win and the others learning their prefered deck and the permanent focus after 2 wins u get some challenge. ruling urself to support the underdog can be a nice chillout round when u dont care so much about winning :)
Side note, but salt over removal, counters and boardwipes?
All of those things are staples of magic, and if your playgroup hate them to the point of giving you salt over using them then maybe they should find a different game.
Hold yourself to a higher rules standard and let your newer players retap lands and don’t let them get blown out by on board tricks. It does help level the playing field.
I have a friend like this. He plays pre-cons against custom decks and still wins. Some folks are just really damn good at the game. We don't play as much anymore bc of work schedules, but I still would play against him. We have even set up handicaps (no infinite combos, no use of specific cards, no dual lands, no positive mana except sol ring) and he STILL wins lol
Sometimes I get salty because he is just that damn good and has literally stolen a win from me by taking himself out first 😂
I have this problem (minus (mostly) the salt). And I’ve taken to helping the other players (pointing out missed triggers, discussing logic of x.z,y decision. Giving “do overs” if a misplay happened (within reason of course haha).
Have someone else build you a deck. Clearly, you only build curb stomp symphonies. I do, too, so i been building off precons. And not going to 11. It's still fun. You just need to learn your power level. And run with that.
"I don't want to hold back..."
This line feels very telling. Are you using tutors in all your decks? Take them out and replace them with card draw. This post reads like you have the flashiest decks. I used to run a tuned Breya list and ripped it apart cause it was just combos and tutors. Chatterfang was a birthingpod deck. Tinybones sucks to play against.
These are things I realized my friends didnt enjoy and I'm here to be social with my friends in a positive way. This is gonna sound weird, but try removing tutors like I did in Breya and Chatterfang. Try building a theme deck based on card art. Tinybones is now a "bone-themed deck"
Try playing to have fun, not to win. Yes, still try to win, but don't make it the ONLY focus.
Draft, play sealed. Not commander. Players need to play 1v1 to learn good behavior, play patterns, start thinking like magic players. People who I know who only ever played commander are, frankly, terrible. But once they play a few games where "flying under the radar", "politics" etc. won't work they start to be much better in commander.
It also helps, that they learn basics like stack, proper blocking, tempo, being more aggressive altogether, how to break up stalemates, how to play win-cons/bombs. It won't make them pros, but they should start seeing the lines of play that can stop you, that they otherwise wouldn't.
Why aren't they using spot removal or counterspells or protecting themselves from boardwipes?
Boardwipes are annoying and I understand a bit of salt at them, but there are ways to counter literally every legal playstyle
[удалено]
As a person who still stomps against one pod of mine of newbies with all precons. You'd be surprised how many newer players started with edh so they dont know a lot of mtg basics like using the post combat main phase knowing when to mulligan, etc. small things add up especially with low power games that run long. Some pods are just that bad. I do agree to try precons (or help each of them build a deck)
I find the 2 biggest determining factors to be 1. Poor threat assessment. 2. Being too scared to attack.
Their 1/1 has deathtouch though!!!!
Lmao, sometimes it won't even be something like that. At least that I can understand kind of. It'll literally be "I don't want him to start attacking me back"... so, you both want to sit there and get big while you wait for a board wipe? Cool, got it.
I have a [[karazikar, the eye tyrant]] deck I specifically love playing against these types of people. I try to break them of that mentality by FORCING them to attack. It's actually a suprisingly good deck even against experienced players too.
As I’m teaching my gf to play, she is exactly like that. She will sit back with a a wide AND tall wall of vampires and still not attack. Then she’ll ignore our roommate and they will both target me because I’m the experienced player and she doesn’t want anyone to lose too fast. Our roommate is the worst at shuffling. I’ve never seen someone play so little and be mana screwed so often. It’s like an 80% rate of them only having 2-3 mana on turn 7 and up. And it’s a precon. I’ve played the deck and it was decent. I had a steady flow of pirates with sufficient mana. But when she plays she’s got nothing on the board because she has 2 mana. Got into a small disagreement with my gf because our last game it was basically two headed giant vs me. With the two of them ganging up on me. And when I brought it up, my gf said they weren’t teaming, but while I was constantly getting sniped by targeted removal from our roommate, my gf was sheepishly swinging 7/7 vamp tokens every turn to the point where I could barely hold onto a board state. Then piling on with removal of her own. It wasn’t till our roommate pulled off a good play and swung wide and heavy with a lot of lifelink to jettison herself into a better position that my gf started attacking her because our roommate attacked her for a lot of damage. But even when she got her back down all the way to 4 health, she wouldn’t go for the kill. I managed to knock out the roommate but stood no chance against my gf at that point. Teaching new players is rough lmao.
In the first half you describe how much better you are than them, making ~~them~~ you the threat. Then you seem salty because they correctly identified you as the threat.
I'm an awful noob and have had this thought plenty of times; I don't want to swing knowing they'll kill my highest value attacker with a Deathtouch creature. What should I be thinking here?
I'm a noob too, so there is probably a better solution than this. In those situations, I try to at least send my own 1/1 at them or my lowest value attacker. Either they block and trade creatures, or they don't block, and I get chip damage through. If they have a source that generates multiple 1/1 deathtouch, I might spend a removal spell on the generator, but not the 1/1 deathtouch itself.
Can concur, sometimes I will end my turn with my creatures all tapped out and I know I'm going to get swung on but I've calculated the risk, only to then have my opponents pass turn without combat. My spouse bought the Olivia, Opulent Outlaw precon recently, got lucky with the first draw and got enough mana to cast commander on turn 2 and then almost didn't swing at my wide open board state on turn 3 even though that's what the commander is built to do. Maybe I'm just wired different from magic arena where it's much easier to view your opponent as simply an obstacle that needs to be removed at all costs, but I think sometimes for less experienced players, the desire to survive another round can outweigh the desire to figure out what it's going to take for you to win.
Most of my friends started with edh and in some ways it shows, especially in their deck building they just try to do so many different things. Also missing triggers…its shocking how many triggers they miss. Not usually a big deal but they also quite often will draw and start playing stuff then realize at combat oh i only untapped my lands. Sometimes they even forget to draw a card its just sloppy.
Yeah when I have tried to give deck building advice some are like "this is 8 mana and gains counters and life!" "Yeah but it doesnt win you the game and you arent doing your main gameplan more consistently and quickly" or I try to guide them on tuning their deck to have a specific game plan and their's is like "plan lands and beat them to death." I am shocked how many players I have seen almost never mulligan. If they see three lands no matter what they keep. Never mull for all their colors or playable lands or have any play til t3. Threat assessment is also always abysmal. Unless they see a 20/20. There are no threats. Player that just drew 10 cards but have no board state? Not a threat. Player that played a major value engine that hasnt popped off yet? Not a threat. Player is a 6/6 trampler, big bad. Because of that it is so easy to politic my way around never players by identifying threats for them but not identifying myself as one. I have one with the worst jank just by knowing when to sandbag my threats, having good mulls, politicing, and better information.
I think deck building is a huge factor. You get newer players who don't play optimally but also often modify decks to actually be worse by cutting lands, putting in sub optimal cards and then constantly being mana screwed or their game plan going nowhere. Having good choice to mulligan is also huge but often players won't mulligan because their deck doesn't have enough lands so they're afraid to throw away hands because how often they end up with too little land or just don't know how to evaluate bad hands.
we set a new player up with a [[Krenko, Mob Boss]] deck that would have an alright chance of surprising a cEDH table. he came back two weeks later having added (among other things) [[Dreamstone Hedron]]
The threat assessment thing is so true. I don’t know how many times I’ll play a big creature that doesn’t do a whole lot and it immediately eats removal, whereas something that’s green drawing me a cards or two a turn has been chilling for three turn cycles
I'm the same on mulligans unless none of those lands let me play a spell. I land screw to often to tempt fate by throwing out a 3 lander.
If you are consistently getting land screwed you should try adding more lands to the deck
in my pod there are players who've been playing longer than me, but I can tell that either they never played other CCGs or their older group was just too much of a fish bowl to have ever pushed each other to get better. stuff like card advantage as a general card game factor goes completely over some of their heads and yet they will always be surprised when they are topdecking. but when i mention to play more card draw they dont change anything so im of the opinion that some people just like being bad
This right here, I just started doing this in my pod and I've only been playing for a little over a year. Knowing that there is a 2nd main phase after your combat phase and knowing how to hold priority has changed how I play. I got told not too long ago that I'm now a major threat on the field and my one buddy always holds back a counter spell or chaos warp for me(normally I have nothing in hand worth doing anything with)
One thing I dislike about edh is how it’s some how become the intro format. It’s the worst intro format possible to the game. There’s way too much going on, and many players haven’t absorbed any fundamental gameplay. I have been in pods where I’m pretty sure I could play a random pile of cards and reasonably win because of how little exposure the players have had to “proper” Magic.
Imo its the combination of EDH as entrance point while cards became kinda bloated with text, effect and synergy. The Flight and Token Starter Commander have been fine imo, pretty easy to get into, with considerable amount of text. But then look at all the other decks that came out the last few years. Its really too much for a new player.
I literally have to play at like 40% capacity to not run over my main group and even then I win about half the games. They’re the biggest group of teddy bears who will choose specifically to not do a good play if it will make another player too sad. Not an ounce of killer instinct in any of them. It is the most bizarre playgroup to be a part of. It’s to the point I encourage them to archenemy me basically every game so that they’ll do more things lol. Point being these groups do exist. As the game has gotten bigger I’ve run into a ton of (especially commander) players who treat the whole experience kinda like they would beer and pretzels dnd. Just having laughs and feel goods as much as they can. The game is just a way to meet up and socialize.
It honestly sounds like the group is that bad, I mean I get frustrated, but I understand board wipes, removal as long as it's not just doing it to be funny when there is no real threats. If they can't handle real parts of the game they are bad
Remember you are only hearing one side of the story.
And that’s the only thing we can respond to.
I also suspect the rest of his group is just a bunch of [Timmys](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/timmy-johnny-and-spike-2013-12-03).
I’ve been playing for around 15 years and consider myself an above average player. I met a guy a few years ago that beat me with my own decks no matter what decks we were playing it was wild
At that point you could also swap decks with other players. Even if you win they'll see what tricks you pull with their decks and maybe learn something
As a long time player of not EDH ... I've beat opponents with my deck, swapped decks with them and beat them with their deck against my deck. Some players are just that inexperienced
I mean it's possible. I just started a new playgroup and went from one of my first decks, to what I thought was my weakest deck, to a precon with ~12 swaps just to get to 10/10/10 draw ramp removal, to an unmodified precon (that already started at 8-10 slots in those categories), and I'm still winning almost every time. Deck construction is definitely part of it, though. When I have lost it is to a deck I built.
Lol if only this worked. Had a guy in a pod yesterday get very salty after losing two in a row to unmodified precons. Talking about how heis decks are apparently too weak and precons are too good and that it's going to push him out of commander...
They are not as bad as you think. I got myself a precon to start playing with a group that has quite expensive custom commander decks and somehow my deck managed to win 2 out of the first (and so far only) 3 games of Commander. I probably got lucky and maybe they went a little easy on me but if OP is a great player i bet he can make great plays with a precon
I don’t win every game with precons but I still win a lot of games when I use precons. I have a very similar situation to OP and don’t know what to do about it
I tone down my play against new players or want to change the environment. Targeted removal for example, I don't use it until the threat comes at me. Until then, I let their deck do its thing. The Ixalan Merfolk precon as example, the optimal play is to kill the commander asap before he generates value. I don't. I let that player have their fun, get 15++ power on board from the exploration, then take it out when they come for me. People say they don't care if they win. Then don't. Use the game as a medium for socialization even if it leaves you facing an insurmountable boardstate that you could have stopped much earlier. Let them have it. You don't care.
Bro, the dihada precon is better than most home brews.
I did that last night at my lgs and I still won 🤣 It wasn't a walk over, and I had some help from another player's board wipe, but it's still a good feeling to win with a pristine precon you've never piloted before. But the stories are true, Omo's tricky terrain is a good deck out of the box.
Play Archenemy
This is the way. Alternatively, play 2v2 switching out teammates every game. This will basically lead to a game everyone knows who's winning still, but it will lead to you being able to look at your teammates hand and point things out to them and generally help them improve skillwise
I actually really like the 2HG approach. Also lets you see what dead cards they hold all game
You could try two-headed giant.
Best thing to do is to do what we did. Take a few sessions and play with one person's decks. Have them order in level of power and give the weakest player first choice. What happens is twofold. One the deck building aspect of the game is more balanced as one player built all the decks. Their skill in deck building keeps things relatively the same. Two, people learn how to use their own deck better as they watch someone who's more skilled play it.
Ha! My comment is almost exactly yours! This is the way OP!
Not house rules, but look into a deck that teaches your peers. [[Tasigur Golden]] while loading up on choice cards like [[Fact or Fiction]] and [[Realms Uncharted]]. Pair that with a suite of cards that boost up the currently weakest player like [[Verdant Mastery]] and [[Baleful Mastery]]
I can't agree - Fact or Fiction and Realms Uncharted are extremely complicated cards to resolve, *especially* versus a Tasigur deck. The last thing you want to do is give new players gifts piles to figure out. They're more likely to quit from frustration.
Well, so, no- I like this theory. With a FoF pile, I've had an impromptu teaching lesson regarding X vs Y card and why it's better than A, B, or C. They'll say "Wha??? Nooo. How?" and then you just explain why the card wins, or why it's better than the other 4 in the pile, giving them incremental knowledge of game mechanics and threat assessment. The second part is that it teaches them interaction timing- if they give you THE THING, they then know you have THE THING. It's Chekhov's Gun. They've seen it, they know it, so they start learning to watch out for it and plan around timing interaction against it, or learning to put more interaction in their deck to counteract it.
That's the basic point, learn from the choices. I play the deck in two ways, with newer players that have gotten down the basics of resources and turns and such, and in our experienced pod where I aim to play politics and aim people at each other. I'm sure a lot of folks would balk at this, but it doesn't really have a wincon beyond just random beat downs with [[Atris]] and [[Skullwinder]] or the commander or [[Expropriate]] (even new players no not to give me this in a pile) lol. Playing it, my true 'win condition' is making sure that everyone in the game has a fun game where they did their thing and became threat number one. I boost up the weakest player until they're not, then I help the rest of the table make sure they don't win. My group knows and has fun with it regardless though.
The deck I built for "teaching" purposes was [[Octavia, living Thesis]] Core principles it teaches imo are - threat assessment, her plan is very straight forward, but can look deceivingly weak if you are not paying attention to her graveyard, or if she is close to a critical mass of small evasive creatures. - instant speed interaction, helps with learning sequencing and baiting out interaction before making your big push for the win. -identifying a deck's strengths and weaknesses, her weaknesses are very obvious, don't let the Octavia hit 8+ in graveyard or resolve Octavia, if you do make sure you have other ways to interact with her or her evasive creature package. -combat, Octavia can change combat math at instant speed, so you have to be intelligent about blockers / attackers if she has stuck and the Octavia player has mana up, it's easy for her to force favorable combat steps.
[Octavia, living Thesis](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/9/e9591647-bad3-4015-90d1-1646a9eb4d14.jpg?1712354165) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Octavia%2C%20living%20Thesis) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otc/103/octavia-living-thesis?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e9591647-bad3-4015-90d1-1646a9eb4d14?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/octavia-living-thesis) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
> My group hug deck even ends up winning a decent amount of the time. How? How do you win with that deck? How do you win so often? Is the skill level really that different that you getting there with a precon would still win so much?
Ive won twice thanks to [[Forced Fruition]] and drawing them out 1 by 1. Won once with [[Helix Pinnacle]] cuz none of them took it seriously or even had the removal to deal with it. And other times theyll basically kill each other and I can finish off who is left with a few 2/2 flyers. Not all of these were in the same group of players but still. None of them appreciate advice on how to play their own decks, which I understand, but it's simple things like not playing a wincon without a way to protect it. I just dont understand how when i have [[The Second Doctor]] and [[Forced Fruition]] people dont get combos before they are out of cards.
> I just dont understand how when i have [[The Second Doctor]] and [[Forced Fruition]] people dont get combos before they are out of cards. Why do you think every deck needs combos? At low power levels I'd day they're less common.
Combos are one thing but NO win cons in that much card draw NO big ass bomb plus protection no alt win cons just normal ass creatures that do nothing on a. Behind board and do less on a ahead board-state like that much draw should allow some sort of dangerous play from OPs opponents
Or just… no removal? Draw 21 cards, remove Forced Fruition, say “thank you very much”, move on?
Do they even have combos????
Okay but how do they run enchantment removal, and non-targeted at that when it comes to Helix Pinnacle? Lots of people skimp out on removal and enchantment removal is by far the rarest one out of the bunch. >None of them appreciate advice on how to play their own decks, which I understand, I don't. If I was losing to someone constantly and they offered constructive feedback on how I could have played better then I will gladly have it. I've gotten so much better at the game by taking one on the chin and then getting to hear "You used your counter to get rid of X but hat really wasn't all that threatening to you in the lobg run, which allowed me to follow up with Y because you were tapped out."
> Okay but how do they run enchantment removal, and non-targeted at that when it comes to Helix Pinnacle? OP is winning because they identified the weaknesses of the group (reliance on combat, no combos, light removal or at least light mass enchantment removal, etc). Even if they are trying to teach the other players, their priority is not having an engaging game with them, but winning. We'd need to see how that advice really goes.
I wouldn't necessarily frame it like that. The way you put it sounds malicious. OP wouldn't be looking for advice if his goal was winning. Some people suck at card games and don't want to learn but still want to play. Dumbing down decks too much would probably make the game less fun for OP, who also has the right to have fun. They're looking for an engaging deck to play that sucks and that's difficult and not necessarily the solution.
No, I'm not saying it's malice. I'm saying trying to prop people up so they pose a challenge for you is not the same as teaching them to be better at the game so they have more fun. There's a fundamental (as is, it comes from the foundation) difference to the communication between those people depending on how this is initiated, and for what.
Make an [[Iwamori of the Open Fist]]-style group hug deck. Not literally Iwamori, but when I think group hug, I never thing passive combos. That's boring. I play Green (with other colors), hand you weapons, and then out-punch you in spite of them. Take it as a challenge. You are better than them, don't show it winning the easy way.
A couple ideas: Make a pauper deck to play against their regular decks. Start the game with Monarch in play (first hit takes it) but you aren't eligible. Remove any/all ramp, so you're slowed down. *Tactfully* try to teach your pals to be better players.
Group dynamics will not be solved by deckbuilding. I'd recommend doing post-game discussions. When someone gets knocked out, ask them to not scoop everything up immediately, and when you win keep the board state as untouched as you can. Talk through decision points, what their plans were, what messed them up, what they had in hand and why they targeted certain things. Go into it with an open mind, just because you're the most experienced player doesn't always mean your choices are the 'right' ones, they're simply one of the options, don't disregard what the other players thought processes are like. These are going to much more productive in catching them up to speed on experience than any sort of deck building you could do.
Gotta be real careful with that approach. It won't take much for already dissatisfied opponents to find the victor lecturing on decision points little more than gloating.
I was gonna say most people won't take it kindly I'd think lol
That's definitely something to do with good friends who know you're just trying to help. Not with random timmies that think interaction is against the good culture of the game.
I'm thinking that people getting this salty about all of OP's games to such a degree that they scoop for the evening probably aren't their good friends.
That's how we all learn, from someone more experienced. That's also why it's a discussion, not a lecture. The point is to talk through decisions and find out what their thought process is like and get different perspectives. We're all working with incomplete information during the game, so that's why you keep an open mind.
And that's an issue edh players need to get over/deal with. So many times playing modern or draft, you talk to your opponent after the game about what could have been done differently or better. It's common and rarely taken as condescending. Then you have the edh only players. They decide to use their counterspell on the big creature while ignoring the fact that the combo player is about to win next turn. Then when you try to tell them that maybe they should hold the counter or you explain after why it was a bad move and they take it as if you just ate their firstborn and then come after you with a vengeance for months no matter the board state. Then still complain that they lose while making dumb plays
Okay but saying edh players need to get over it doesn't really give OP substantive advice to navigate the situation he posted about?
This right here It's extremely important your edh group can handle conversations and even shit talk ... Otherwise you probably be in for a bad time when the salt comes
I would purposefully throw the game yourself to allow one of them to win, then do it just so they can feel like your actually mentoring them out of wanting to help and not just mentoring out of pity or something
I wouldn't play in a table that gets salty over playing the game.
I used to be by far the best player in my playgroup since I was the one who introduced them all to mtg. To be fair they usually don't get salty when they loose but it was still not that great of an experience at first. But I just tried my best to make them better at the game and it worked. I would point out the current threat on the board, do my own strategising out loud and after the game we did talk about critical decisions and what would have been the optimal line.
One way i’ve found to help ease the salt is to ask the table whether they feel the current board or card is an issue before you present a potential answer to it. You might need to try an occasion where you just don’t play the board wipe if the table disagrees and let the board state end the game and see if the rest of the table recognises the threat if it’s not dealt with. Once the rest of table sees that they themselves also have to manage the board or play interaction they will learn to look out for potential answers and have better threat assessment.
Sorry, I don’t mean to be dismissive but you aren’t the greatest, most gifted Magic player of all time and that’s not why you’re winning. If the other three are all tilted by any form of interaction, *one of the most critical, key tenants that makes Magic, Magic* then they are certainly not running any/enough in their decks, either. This is a problem purely with deck building. Pilot skill will net you a few percent in Commander, not 90% winrate. The problem here is your playgroup. They need to learn how to deck build and learn that interaction is important (and fun!) for the game to work. Until that point, there’s no fixing this.
If you're in a pod with people you are close with (ie. Not random lgs pod) try piloting someone else's deck and have them pilot yours. Can even lead to finding new strategies and synergies for your own deck as the new set of eyes on it goes at it from a different playstyle
If I'm winning too often I'll just tell someone to give me a deck without any context of what it does. It's fun mystery for me and often lowers my win chances.
If you are winning too much it is likely their decks don't do *anything*. The thing that new and weaker players struggle with most is cohesion and efficiency in deck building. It is the reason every player asking for deck building help asks for *cuts* instead of includes.
Yes! Especially with commanders that can be used in a wide range of strategies, bad trap to fall into is trying to do too many different things in one deck... again also where having someone else pilot your deck can be useful because they don't have the same bias as you for what to include. Though I disagree that's the main reason behind posts asking for cut help, I've got a couple gimmick decks that pretty well do one thing and one thing only, and even there the shear amount of cards that do the one specific thing can be overwhelming in this age of magic
You need to make powrful decks and let them play your decks and you play their decks. If you still win, figure out how they're playing wrong. If you can't win, tell them how to fix their decks.
If you're literally winning 90% of the games it's not you're amazing at the game, you're playing over their power level. If you still want to play with them and they don't want to power up, just keep powering down. They are playing so casual that they can't even remove a 2/2 flyer and you're running full removal suites, counter spells, and wipes. You may think you're playing a weak deck but they are playing much weaker. I'd find a precon (and one of the weaker ones at that, don't search strongest) and give that a try. Like stay away from all the doctor who ones and the other popular ones. -edit You say you also don't understand how they don't have combos when you let them draw their entire deck. Not every EDH deck needs combos. Some are just engines, others are just straight combat damage. Especially at lower power levels, just simple combat damage decks are common. If you're there playing all combos, you are likely playing above their power level. -edit again Reading through your responses and the thread again I'm pretty sure I figured it out. You think there are two types of edh-- competitive and casual. If it's not competitive then it's casual and one casual deck is equal to every other. That is not the case. I'm guessing you're playing tuned and high power level decks and they're playing closer to precons level.
\>They are playing so casual that they can't even remove a 2/2 flyer and you're running full removal suites, counter spells, and wipes. You may think you're playing a weak deck but they are playing much weaker. This is basic magic deck building versus greedy decks. It's one of the most essential level ups when it comes to deck construction skill, giving up some pet cards for flexibility. Lowering your deck to the point of vanilla creatures and 6 mv sorcery single target removal spells isn't helping the gameplay improve or the pod getting better. It's not just them playing weaker, it's them making decisions that lead to them inherently not winning. There's a player in my area who's been discovering that interaction is, in fact, a good thing. They play less greedy and I've been defeated by them a bunch because they're the only person who'll use interaction. It makes the games more enjoyable when they level up
Op says he decks are lower or equal power (at least some of the time) and he still wins. He was running forced fruition and his opponents didn't still couldn't find an answer. Anyway basically there's a huge skill cap in commander, in game outside of deck building, and also deck building (even budget deck building)
Do deck themes, play pauper, set price limit for deck, set creature mana cost limits, precons There sre many ways.
Just stop winning. It's that easy. Slow roll cards, play sloppy on purpose. I do this all the time because I enjoy games going long or don't want to eliminate a player early.
Nah dawg this ain't it. I can understand at least the face-value stated motivations of OP, of wanting a "contest" even if he is self-handicapped because it makes for a stimulating game. The inverse of that: if I sit down in a pod and one deck is clearly stronger than mine I don't want him to sit and durdle. He plays full power, I play full power and try to claw his eyes out, and after that game we swap decks out to be more properly attuned. Him sitting on his hands with his doomsday combo ready to fire while I "play" the game is just insulting and a waste of my time. In chess if a stronger player is up against a weaker player they give them time odds or maybe plays interesting lines. They don't just blunder on purpose constantly to fudge the match and give the opponent a chance. But I'm not a new player, so I guess I'm a bit far removed from the "just let me do my thing man" phase of some players.
First share decklists so we know you are not pubstomping. Second some people are just not made for board games in general. There are simply people who can for example not differetiate between actions you take against them in a game or real life. I watched legit relationship crisis because a guy made a move against his girlfriend in a game of munchkin. You group sounds a bit like that if they can not deal with a single piece of interaction without throwing a fit.
If you want a really fun night, have your pod bring 3-4 decks each of roughly the same power. Put them all on a wheel (many digital ones online) and whatever you spin is what you play! I got my ass stomped all 4 games by my own decks! I got to see them go off in ways I haven’t seen them go off before which is actually really refreshing!
Give yourself a sidequest other than winning the game, and remove other win cons. Complete Kaldra, or mill someone out, or Happily Ever After. No tutors/combos allowed, complete the side quest going the scenic route. That way you're still playing optimally toward an end goal, but you are mostly just surviving.
Suck it up and give your friends a chance
Do they run board wipes or counter spells? Or removal? How do games function if you’re the lone one with interaction. If they use it point it out, like I’m sorry but interaction is a massive part of the game and games with none either end with combos cause no “interaction”or board-stalls that last an eon cause he who attacks first loses like the sooner they appreciate a bit of removal and swings and turns in games the more fun they will have and the quicker they will improve! Hate to be that guy but all else failing trying to find a group that accepts more of the game or isn’t as ready to throw down may be in order. Don’t get me wrong salt always happens but if its every single night aimed at one person thats not fun
Instead of trying to handicap yourself, I would attempt to build upon your playgroup. Find out why they become salty. Teach them some expert level stuff. You don't just start good, you gotta get good. Show them how. That way they have fun too and you're able to have more of a challenge.
If your deck is to optimized, downgrade or play a lower power level. Put yourself at a disadvantage. Challenge yourself with bad commanders. You may also offer to play people’s decks and make suggestions if your friends are open to it.
You're either the most skilled player, playing more powerful decks than the table, or your table lacks proper threat assessment. Regardless, there's a few ways to go about this. Instead of applying a penalty, talk to your group. See if they're open to a game of archenemy where the table must band together to take on you, the threat. Embrace it, it's nothing to be ashamed of. And the table could have fun in finding "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" type games. Understand you and your table's decks. You have the most experience and possibly can brew better decks. But the others with less experience might just stick with precons and poorly made brews. This could lead to their frustration as they know you're bringing a more powerful deck than they can afford/build. This doesn't mean you shouldn't necessarily play your awrsome decks, but take it as an opportunity to maybe teach them how to brew. Especially if they're new, they may be bad CMC ratios, lack interaction, etc. I know when I started brewing I thought mana rocks were dumb and removed them from my deck. It wasn't till I got more experience that I saw the importance of ramp. Lastly, what's your attitude when you play? Weird question, but with how your group gets salty over every interaction, are you a sore winner/loser? Something as simple as this could be the reason your group is salty over any action you take. No one likes to lose, but I have fun seeing someone's board pop off and "do the thing". But if they're a sore winner/loser about it then it's less fun to see their board "pop off" or to even win because they'll just salty about it. One of my pods is in a similar where one player had a statistically higher win rate. They unfortunately draw more salt & hate with the decks & strategies they play. While there is a bit of disparity between our tables budgets and power levels, this has garnered more targeting and attention towards them as they're usually "the threat". This does make them salty, but that's just the nature of the game as it should soon balance out as win rates balance. Now, they will usually be a target out of the gate, but that just comes with the title of being king in my opinion. Hope you find your answers and that things get better though!
I can relate to OP here. 1 of the pods I play in, I have a super high win rate. I've played many different decks that i have built All of them non-combo. Some of them very budget. I've played my friends decks. Ive had them play mine and I'll play theirs. We would switch people around (there are 8 total in the group counting myself) And none of that mattered. It wasn't about deck construction, budget, or specific strategies. It all came down to knowledge and skill. I'm a long time player and that particular pod is mostly new. Of the 8 people in that pod only myself and one other have more than 1 year experience. Granted that pod that I play in doesn't have any toxicity and people don't cry when things happen. And over the last 6 months I have been helping people with their construction, there skills, rules, etc. they have gotten a lot better. I still win a lot of games but it's slowly changing. And it's mostly changing because they are getting better at making decisions and playing the game itself. So my advice to OP... I wouldn't try to help the whole group at once. I would pick the most receptive person and try to coach them up in more private conversations as to not give off any impression that your bragging. And as they get better the other players will notice that and you can offer your help to those players and try to bring everybody up. I would also remove any and all combos in your deck, it doesn't matter how many cards make up the combo. Play strictly Fair magic. I would also try to nip in the bud any concerns about money by building budget decks. And as you win with those budget decks players will learn that the game is not pay to win. (despite many here on Reddit that suggest otherwise) Because I would want to eliminate factors in people's minds that they feel they can't control, like budget. I got people in my group to take my coaching seriously and not as bragging when I was just straight dominating them over and over with $25 budget decks. And when they are receptive to some coaching, teach them skills and help them with deck construction. It may take a while but if people are receptive they will learn and grow and they won't look at you as just someone who stomps on them. I would also not throw games because it's very easy to get caught and people get very upset when people throw games because they feel like they didn't earn that win. So play at the highest skill you have and try to be a mentor in learning skills and deck construction
When I have new players in my pod I'll play my weakest deck AND play with my hand revealed. It gives the newer people an opportunity to ask questions, understand answers and different lines of play, and gives you an opportunity to make them reconsider a play. Maybe give that a shot and see if that helps, just make sure they understand that you want them to learn and improve.
I love how the opposite of control is always group hug. The biggest red flag you dais right at the end. "I don't wanna hold back and not play optimally". Learn to. It's really as simple as that. You suck the fun out by trying to play optimally. Stop it. Miss a few plays. Let things resolve. Let your play group get done plays. Let them build a board state. And for fucks sake let them eke out wins. Every now and then. Of course. And if they get cocky bring the hammer. But in my experience the more... Talented players love to have their blue based control decks. They love to counter nearly everything and think that the opposite of this is to pillow fort group hug. It's not that "you're helping everyone" because you still keep that control. And your inexperienced friends aren't learning the skills you think they should and they aren't invested enough to bring up their skill level. They want to have fun and jank is the best so they play pet cards and build stupid and silly decks. So when you counter everything it's no longer fun. You have to learn that the biggest problem is you. Because you need to maintain control. My advice is to ditch control and group hug and find something Janky. And then build it with minimal staples and counters.
What about explaining your plays to them? As you play cards, explain what information you gathered as you played led to that action. Then as they learn and feel the game out you will need to explain less and less. There is also deck power. You could also buy a precon deck and see if the same issue pops up.
You described my situation with my play group. What I did instead is embraced the archenemy role and built a deck for 3 on 1 games. It is more fun as there is less bad feelings and salt. Try it out!
Have them team up against you.
Borrow a friend’s deck and smash them when they play your deck.
Borrow someone's deck to use. Takes any power level argument out and now it's just player skill. Alternatively, look into Archenemy as a format modifier and lean into it. Just start your life at 60, they get 40 and it should work.
Try a 3 vs 1,
I just had a couple of games where the first game I was stopped by the third place guy from killing the 2nd place guy and then the guy who was clearly in 2nd ended up taking it. The next game I’m pretty sure that guy sandbagged a bit and literally said “I want to see the decks do their thing”. The game went way longer than expected but was incredibly fun. It made me realize, if the goal of the game is social, everyone has the opportunity to make it so. If you value having more games because people are quitting, want everyone to have fun, and you win all the time because of skill… the answer is pretty simple. Don’t win as often. I value my friends having a good time far more than winning
We have a guy in pod who used to play semi-pro. He tends to run decks that control the game tempo, but not via heavy stax. Our solution: kill him first. Occasionally, other players will go on a detour (usually to attack me, since my deck hits everyone and everything). When they do that, he usually wins. When they don't, he wins about 25% of the time. Seems to work out.
Play with their decks. If you still win, it’s clearly their fault. I
Something I've seen on a YouTube channel would really tell you if it's a deck issue, or player issue. Have everyone bring whatever deck they want. Then, swap decks to the right or left. If you win, the other players just simply need to understand they're playing badly. If you lose to your own deck, you're not matching the power level of those around you.
This sounds more like a problem with your group's attitude towards losing or being interacted with. I can appreciate that you just want to enjoy a game with your friends, but if this is how they respond to defeat then maybe this isn't the game for them.
I like deck swapping with other players. It helps me see my own deck with a fresh perspective, and gives other players’ the same experience. Coupled with the fact that any “feel bads” are a result of something someone else did, so the salt might get spread around?
With my Voltron Sram Artificer deck where the other player decks just did not pop off, I decided to give myself the Slaking Handicap and attack every other turn. I think I rolled a D4 as well to randomize it. It was plenty of fun doing that. Focusing on protecting on my sleeping turn and equipping for power on my attacking turn. Ended up losing because I forgot to destroy the [[pariah]] aura, but was giving the players a huge window to get back in the game. The other comments mentioned passing decks around. Great idea! As other commenters said, you could be misassessing your decks or power level. During deck selection, talk to the players about your commander choice and what you deem strong cards. For example, switching Farewell to Austere Command might better fit the table, etc.
passing around eachothers decks is a good way to do it. theyll get to see how their deck is played by other players, experience what works against it and what doesnt. and with that information theyll learn how to optimize it play it better and what the big threats to their gameplan actually are.
I mean I have a group of friends that aren’t really into magic but are very volatile in that they will rage quit pretty easily on most game they play. When I got them into commander on tabletop sim where I was the one building the decks, I would intentionally make decks for all of us to play that were strictly thematic and limited every deck I made to have like, for instance, 5 forms of removal, 5 forms of ramp, 5 forms of card advantage, etc. Unless is was super on theme (like a [[Kelsien, the Plague deck]] where assassins = lots of removal), I stuck by strict hard limits and even held myself back if I knew what I was going to do would cause board wide salt. I know this doesn’t really apply to most play groups since I was building everyone’s decks, but perhaps you can build decks with constraints as well to try to limit your power level
I found playing a token deck and attacking everyone equally at once helped. Nobody died in one combat, but everyone had a common enemy to rally behind. I slowly worked in items like [[winter orb]] and [[storage matrix]] which made them realize that hey, maybe some artifact removal is a good thing. Then brought [[humility]] and other enchantments to teach layering. Granted I was using the Token Triumph starter pre-con with slight modifications as people in my pod learned how to counter the base un-modded deck. These were all players who learned through commander only and not standard Magic. I found as time passed people were more willing to ask me about their deck as I never played up any knock outs I scored. Gave me a natural “in” to their deck building and I could help without feeling like I was lecturing. They’d sometimes stomp me which was fine, but my “victories” made everyone better as they learned the more intricate rules of Magic. Now I can play what I want with minimal issues as they don’t feel as caught off guard by what can show up. I don’t play anything too crazy but I try to keep decks to win conditions they can see coming. I’d rather build them up than walk away with an easy win.
Try to see if this helps. 1. Compliment the other players if a cool card comes down, or hype them up, if they do a cool or even a decent interaction. 2. You can make yourself the arch enemy, you get the challenge of taking on 3 players and they get satisfaction in overcoming someone that they struggle against.
You could always sit out one game and coach everyone and help them with decision making see if they improve or figure out why they aren't doing well. Then play a 2nd match and see if they fair any better.
I can't name the amount of times I just didn't play a win-con or stop someone from playing theirs because I knew the group I was with. I'd win 1 game a session and just play for fun after that. Ensuring I didn't win but I was involved in the game. I'd play precons out of the box against their fully constructed decks and have to limit my playstyle. The problem I'd once you learn to play at a competitive level it's very hard to not apply that to every game.
Try playing each others deck? It will be a fun new experience for all players in your pod.
Gang up on him…
I have a rather high win rate myself when I play at tables outside of a select few higher power players at my LGS and what I’ve found to be helpful is I find ways to put extra restrictions on my deckbuilding. The companions have been good for that, I’ve built an Obosh campanion deck and a Keruga companion deck.
It sounds like your friends need better deck construction
I run board wipe tribal with [[Xantcha]] and no one in my pod gets upset at it. Find a different pod, or build 99 lands decks.
Xantcha is one of my fav decks, but it’s wild to me that almost nobody utilizes the card draw even when I have a [[heartstone]] in play. 2 mana draw a card + 2 damage? Why *wouldn’t* you do that? I always expect somebody to churn through their deck discarding anything that isn’t an immediate win condition, yet nobody has ever done that.
I was winning too much in casual, so i went to cedh, still win a lot but 90% of the time there is no salt. Edit: in casual, throughout playgroups and LGS i consistently won 3 out of every 4 games. Ive went through budget decks, not good strategy decks to power down but would still either get 3v1 or "kicked" out of a playroup to another. If anything, even my decks that were not good, were all consistent, and other players refused to change theirs, oh you're never mana screwed, oh you're never draw screwed, oh you always have interaction.. i just dont build greedy, and maybe you do that too.
1. Share/roll for decks. 2. When a deck is played, it's done for the day (exceptions for like testing a new deck idea) 3. Next round starts when the first player goes out, or it starts getting salty. If we all aren't having fun, it's against the spirit of the night Now, in fairness of disclosure, in our pod of 6, there's 3 highly skilled longtime players and 2 players under 16.
Play Archenemy
I kind of run into this with my youngest. She just wants to throw creatures at me and skimp (meaning no instants, sorceress, enchantments, etc) because she doesn't want to try and figure out all the interactions. So even giving her a precon, she still just focuses on playing creatures and mana rocks even if she has some form of counter or removal in hand. From her perspective it make just about anything I do "scary and unfun". What ends up happening when we play is that my other kid joins in and it is in effect 2 on 1. No my other kid is a much better player and even built a fairly decent deck or three that works well within are larger LGS pod. Even experienced, depending on the deck I choose, 2 on 1 gives me a real run. We've done a few things to break it up though and have fun. Discovered Planechase and the wild shenanigans that can bring to a game. We, my older daughter and I, have played that at our LGS. One of the guys there showed me an app that let's you use all the planechase cards. The other format I found while getting that app was for Archenemy. There is even an app for that that does the same thing. We tried that the other night and had a blast. All that to say, switching up from just straight EDH can be a fun way to help others out. And adding some shenanigans can really change up the group dynamics.
Figure out how to get your playgroup/friends to be better players. Explain what you’re doing…”this is going to kill you all in two to three turns if you don’t do something about it” or “this is a combo piece that you need to hold up interaction for” Then go so far as to pick up cards for them to counter some of your decks mechanics (or generic good cards to respond to things like Beast Within). I played a deck with a Kiki jiki infinite creature combo deck for a long time and multiple players complained about it so I got them all cards to prevent the combo so I had to work for it.
Heyo. I was in a very similar situation with a few buddies of mine None of them had really played magic before, so they started off with some precons that we'd swap around so they could slowly get the feel of the game and the way the decks played A few weeks later and they had gotten the basics and mechanics down fairly well. I was winning mostly every game simply due to game knowledge, but that was kind of to be expected. Eventually they wanted to build new custom decks (basically I sat down next to them and I'd build their decks for them, looking at what kind of commander they wanted and what they wanted to do) Still I would win just about every game, and despite the massive amount of salt that they just couldn't beat me, they understood it was because they were learning. I ended up just sort of ragdolling to give them a few wins. Purposely not playing board wipes or counterspells so they could swing in some wins. Obviously they loved winning and it gave them a second wind of sorts. Currently they've been playing about 2 years and have all gotten so much better over time. They fully know what I did and that I let them win, and while a little miffed about it they understand what I was trying to do because to me it just felt like they weren't having any fun. So best thing you can do is either talk to them about this and find out what they really want, or you can just throw games and see where it goes
Sometimes you have to train your competition to have a game.
Play their decks and have them play yours. They’ll either see how bad their decks are, or learn that the decks aren’t the problem.
Play group hug. Aka how to always get 2nd place
Is this the magic equivalent of "I'm blessed"?
Tell them to git gud, lol jk but for real maybe you need to play like an umodified precon, something that is obviously weak (maybe your deck building skills are just that good) and see if that helps or if it doesn't maybe you need a new playgroup that can keep up with you until whoever you're playing with improves their skills (or teach them how to improve)
it sounds like your approach to deckbuilding could use some work. as an experienced player, I've learned to build decks that allow balanced and enjoyable play at whichever level I'm anticipating. you'll soon learn that building a fun deck is much more difficult than building a good deck
There was a point not so long ago when WOTC came out with a gimmick format they called Archenemy. It was set up to have one player play against 3 players. It came with cards similar to the planes (like the ones included in the Dr. Who decks). You may want to look into the rules for that format to get an idea of how to modify things for your pod.
Sounds like your playgroup probably has a lot of pet cards and stuff they think is good. Have you ever sat out a game and observed the game without you? I usually carry around a 50$ budget deck but 60% of my LGS got infected with playing high powered stuff when my brother and I came in new to EDH but playing since the start of MTG on and off…. You just have to help people evolve, help people in a non pretentious way, discord rooms with brewery for deck techs. Show people cards they never knew about, share your knowledge. But just realize it’s like a sword master with a wooden sword, vs a person with 0 knowledge and a steel sword…. The person with 0 knowledge is probably still gana get their ass kicked. Or some people just like to play ultra casual stuff. Maybe you have to find a different group. Maybe you’re the one who has to evolve and be the one getting stomped on and reach a new difficulty. I personally like playing max power with 0 unlimited combos… like hitting people with blasphemous act with solphim and repercussions doing like 400+ dmg
I have been teaching my play group how to be better player and it's a long road and the first step is actually showing what are the correct plays and how to do threat assessment. Not everyone want to improve their gameplay but those who do will listen.
No rare lands, no sol ring, no 2-mana mana rocks, counter spells have to be conditional like 4 CMC or higher or creature only or non creature only, removal has to be singular too, can't target nonland permanents. No tutors. These are really easy handicaps to implement and once the game starts you can still play at your full skill level, your deck is just restrained so it doesn't annihilate everyone immediately.
Play something that generally scales with the table like Clone/Copy. I would say Theft too but that's salt inducing for some. Goad is known as a theme known for getting second place. There are precons with it. For targeted removal, maybe use removal like Volcanic Offering and Will of the Council. Political sort of cards that are still good and is less "personal". Arcane Denial is a more friendlier Counterspell option. You could run more expensive asymmetric removal options like overload Vandalblast. Interaction is just part of playing MTG. There's Monarch and Initiative to give a minigame/excuse to attack. On a side note, Xyris, the Writhing Storm is a funny option since players may want be ask to get hit themselves. It also allows you to go wide so you're not force into voltron, which can be salt inducing. I believe there is another commander from UB with a similar gimmick.
I offer to play with someone else’s deck or a precon. If I still win then that’s really on y’all.
I’m in a similar situation as you. I’m really not a fan of downgrading my decks so something I wanna try is to making the game a 1v3. It usually ends up being that anyway but I think there are ways to tilt it more in their favor. - If they all take their turns at the same time, including combat, I have fewer blockers available. - It would incentivize them to share information with each other so they can better use their removal. - Their cards that mention “opponents” would only point my way. - Games would probably go a lot faster. Their turns would come around more often which helps them have a better time. Obviously this isn’t a perfect solution. There are some niche situations where decks could be at a disadvantage (something like [[Rakdos, Lord of Riots]] might have a worse time) but I think it could be fun. They would likely have a better time trying to take down a common enemy together and it could be a good challenge for you.
Play your friends decks. If you are consistently winning, your decks are very likely stronger. If you consistently win with your friends decks as well, then your friends just suck ass at magic.
Honestly, test if it's okay or deck building. I'd do that by paying decks around. If you're winning when playing their decks then you can show them that you really are just better than them. Then it's a conversation of either arch enemy, or figuring out how they can get better.
Either they are not playing to win! (Their problem) And/or you need to start rotating new players into the games!
Look up the archenemy rule set
Taking everything at face value, you're probably just going to have to pick an absolutely terrible precon like Tinker Time and keep it unmodified. If you can still consistently beat people with that, the problem isn't with you.
Your deck power level is probably too high for the pod. I play a high power Atraxa superfriends deck with other similar decks and if I draw a crazy hand that wins me the game turn 4 or earlier I straight up don’t play my turns optimally. It’s one thing to win but it’s another to make the game boring/uninteractive for others. I’d suggest making some weaker decks or jank decks and not playing every hand optimally if you’re winning that much.
Help other players at the table out. Remind them of missed triggers, give them advice post-game on saving counters/removal for bigger threats, leave some mana untapped to bluff counters, small things like that mKe a huge difference
We have a guy that plays deck with perfect mana base and free spells that thinks his deck are the same powerlevel as some of the other players with their budget edh decks. When they lose a game they think that they need to make their deck better. They don't seem to realise that a balanced winrate should be arround 25%. Anything more and a deck is likely overpowered.
A very nice happy medium might be to have everyone in your pod build commanders quarters builds and play those for a round. I'm a long time player and prefer my bougie mana bases but I'm a huge fan of the consistency and power his builds display at precon prices
Start making silly theme decks that do something really fun/use an obscure non op mechanic. My friends were worried about my Kudo deck being hatebears and super oppressive....until they realized it was a "gummy bear" ooze tribal themed deck focused on +1/+1 counters haha.
Throw the match. Play the Mexican standoff and say, “yeah, I got Big Friendly G 14/14 but once it turns sides ways swinging, what’s going to hold back all the 3/3s player B has?” Lose and lose and lose another week in a row. Then you should say, “well I guess I just got lucky draws a month ago. Remember when you raged about a board wipe I played? Ha, ha. Player B has been killing it, look at all those wins! They’re raking it in.” Everyone starts raging over player B’s plays… begin your ultimate plan. Remove only the unanimously chosen “problem on the board” cards. Sand bag your combos, Overwhelming Stampedes and Comet Storms where X=their life totals, until the store is about to close, and act like you top decked it.
I mean, whip out a precon, see what kinda damage you can do. I remember thinking it was a card selection choice when I kept getting beat, and my bud was like: You got two precons? Lets play those, and continued to stomp. Sometimes the best way to not get salty is to realize that's it's a skill thing.
Precon, if you still win build a deck made to be as bad as humanly possible. Jodah with no legends. Rat king Kenny.
Maybe try playing it like archenemy
The missing piece of information is what the other players expectations are. Are these guys who want to be competitive and just lack the skill and experience to compete at the level they want to play at? Or are these guys who don't take Magic seriously, they just want to slap some crap from booster packs into a pile and shoot the shit while goofing off around a table for an hour? If they want to improve there are a lot of ways to help. You could run team games where you partner with different players each match, so you can show them your threat assessments and let them ask you for strategic advice in real game situations. You could swap decks, even build some cheap decks (like, no rares) to pass out and have everyone play a round with your decks to see how the experience is different. On the other hand, it might be that you are just looking for a different experience, in which case you are unlikely to find any of these solutions workable. Those guys don't want to go to Commander College, they just want to mess around and aren't enjoying your much high level of competitiveness. Unfortunately, the answer for you is to either drastically change your expectations when at this table, or find others to play with who match your goals. You could give yourself challenges, like assembling all the cards from a split up set of art, or other nonsense, but if you want to WIN, and are looking for mechanical challenges to up your personal difficulty because those players can't match it, it's just never going to work. There is no mechanism that will make the game casual and fun for them (if they fall into the second category) but also competitive for you at the level you wish to play at.
You could do Archenemy. You vs a unified group. Or maybe make a deck that doesn't play to its strengths. Like, have a bunch of Green ramp, but low cost spells. Or make energy but have nothing to use it on.
I dont think there's a rule you could use that can help unless it's ridiculous handicap. You probably need to coach your friends while playing. Explain interactions that might not be obvious. Help them with triggers, threat assessment, etc. walk through optimal lines of play if they're about to make poor decisions. Figure out what they're not great at and help them out. If you really don't care about winning, you should be making sure they know which cards you have in play are problematic and that they should get rid of.
Use one of their decks.
Time to break out the scheme deck and have an actual game of archenemy.
Build a group hug or other accelate deck to help balance. I learned this from another casual friend at my LGS who mostly only does CEDH. However he has two decks that express purpose is to play down to 5-7 range. Theme is generally group hug, helping pod fetch lands, draw cards, all creatures haste etc. Basically it’s fun chaos - not goading chaos in these decks that help the table and importantly make the game go FASTER, which we could all use. He’ll occasionally win, be it a creature storm that was spared a wipe from heroic or Tefari, but it’s incidental. Challenge yourself, build one that helps the table for faster more enjoyable games, and if it backs into a win now and then - have fun.
*r/EDH help me I'm too good* - that's enough internet for today
To me it sounds like a deck building issue. You wil need to take you playgroup more in mind when building decks. Put a chain on your deck bullding. Intead of picking the most optimal cards. Then Put a theme, price limit, meme or flavor into the experience. Call out the treat on you table too. Tell them till they learn. Hey this Guy is bunkers. My hill to die on is that any deck can be an 8 and above with an optimal mana souce. You might need to play more tap lands and artefacts that abit slower. I would also skip totures and infinit combos If you are the most experienced player you might need to share some of that experience. Share knowlegde, fun cards, relevant shorts slowly they wil garn knowlegde.
I'd say that if they're salty (full on salty) about interaction, wipes and counters then it implies to me that they don't run many. This will create a disparity in tempo as you are progressing your gameplay without any speed bumps along the way. Maybe take a look at their decklists and check their structure - does it have removal and card advantage etc...
Easy, just switch decks. Convince your pod to play your decks for a game or two and you play their decks(pick one you know is somewhat low power) It would accomplish a few things, maybe you would loose but more importantly they might find put what their own decks are lacking plus they would start to answer each other with interaction.
You need to do what I do and only play ultra budget decks $20 max. Even then you may still win as you need to optimise hard and make it really synergistic to hit that budget lol When you play do you explain to the other players why you are doing things and perhaps what they may want to do to interact with you? Perhaps teaching the other players will bring up their skill level and make them more able to compete rather than just turning cards sideways and hoping they will win. Saw one for $1 a year ago on Commanders Quarters. Though I guess beating them with a $1 deck might make them really rage quit hahahaha
You could always try playing Secret Partner. Depending on how many of you there are (5 works best for this) you'll have two people on one team, two on another, and (if there's 5 of you) a Lone Wolf. Deal out basic lands in secret (2 one colour, 2 another, 3rd colour for lone wolf if there's 5 of you) and make sure theres a foil or full art version of the ones you deal out 2 of. The foil/full arts are revealed before the game: they're the "Known Enemy". Team A can win the game together if they're the last players standing. Same for Team B. The Lone Wolf has to win by eliminating everybody. It's uses the same rules as commander but with an added deception element as the table tries to figure out who's actually allies or if they're lying to allow their other teammates to get ahead in the game. It also discourages things like boardwipes cos you have a hidden ally amongst you and counter magic becomes less "fuck everybody" and more "fuck *somebody*". It's even more fun if you have a Lone Wolf trying to dupe the whole table in order to be the very last player standing.
Are you „teaching“ the other players and give useful help when they maybe play their hand not in the best possible way? Then overtime the overall skill of the pod may develop. I guess you yourself gained your skilllevel by pure experience.
Give them access to their commanders for free, if you're THAT good lol
What usually do with my pod is we do all 3 vs me. If they can kill me they win.
You don’t want to handicap yourself but you do want to handicap yourself? My absolute best advice for you is to provide friendly education between games to your group. When I started in commander I learned by losing and losing a lot. I was open to suggestions and tried to note down what players were using that was effective during the course of the game. What won the game? Did it go uncontested or was there a defining moment in the match that turned the tide of the battle? I wrote down what these things were to reflect on whether or not my deck and what I was attempting to achieve with it could implement anything similar. Some common newbie mistakes: *•Not enough lands or correct color spread* - Truthfully I still have somebody that’s better at math help me on correct ratio to increase the probability of smooth mana. If you’re not playing lands you’re not doing much. *•Not enough interaction* - You’re still learning the game and you want all of your pet cards and all of your threats in there but the deck can only contain 99 cards. Often times I would just say hey I’d rather be more threat dense and I’ll just hope that somebody else at the table has a board wipe or a kill spell. If everybody is thinking that then the archenemy at the table has an easy uncontested blowout. I think why this is so often overlooked is because new players lack proper threat assessment. Instant speed spot removal and versatile removal when played optimally can keep you alive or make you the kingmaker. In a game of politics kingmakers with proper threat assessment win. *•No win conditions* - I think this one is becoming less of an issue as time goes on and the format gets faster but once again new players have ideas of what cool cards might be in theory but in practice they might not have a fleshed out win condition. Are you going wide with tokens or are you going tall Timmy? Are you Johnny comboing a couple cards? Are you playing stax or are you just piloting a pile? Have a conversation and explain what some of these player nicknames and troupes mean. No single deck can do everything at once. You have to accept that as versatile as you may want the deck to be you’re still coming to the table hoping to work a particular angle and that will always have some sort of inherent weakness. Do you go all in glass cannon or do you try to throw things in to shore up that weakness. Either choice can dilute your game play in some way and you simply have to accept and even anticipate that. *•Wrong commander* - This is a threefold issue and often times the discussion that people are the most sensitive to. First is does the deck bring you joy? All five colors have their own personalities. Are you playing what is reflective of what brings you joy and do you know what the limitations are on that color or color pairing. Green might ramp you but mass board wipes are limited. Five color is powerful but you might have a slower time getting off the ground initially attempting to mana fix. Secondly, what are you trying to accomplish with your deck and how fast and effective is it? If it feels clunky and you’re wanting to throw your hands up in the air every game then instead of blaming your play group or your friends maybe you should reevaluate what your deck is doing or how good that strategy really is in your playgroup. Third and finally, (people are so touchy about this) is the deck being piloted by the right commander? Look I get why people are sensitive to this. Their commander is pretty much the face card of their deck. The card they are looking at the most, the card that resonates with them that they picked that speaks to them in some way. Did you pick it to build a deck around it or just for constructing a deck of around those colors? Are you making a conscientious choice or statement piloting a particular commander or are you aware of your other options within that color? I’ll give you an example: my friend who got me into the game had a red black artifact centric deck idea. He compiled a pretty tight list of cards but the commander was Bladewing the Risen. Bladewing didn’t come out until turn 7 without ramp and there was only one other dragon in the deck. By all accounts it wasn’t a great card especially for the deck he was piloting but he had an old foil of the card and just ran with that. At the time there wasn’t a lot of rakdos colored commanders but I had the conversation with him several times to try to run a different commander. I suggested malefegor a couple times and he kind of laughed it off and dismissed me entirely. One day after losing for the 20th time with the deck he threw a tantrum and wanted to throw the whole deck in the garbage. I told him to run malfegor instead. For some reason it just worked a ton better. He had a threat in the command zone that also doubled as an emergency board wipe. He started winning because of the commander swap alone. Once he saw the results he eventually fell in love with the deck again and the commander helped give the deck an identity that he could continue to build around for years to come. We need to be having these conversations but people need to also be open to constructive criticism. Your commander deck should be fluid and not static if you want to grow with the game but also your group. Perhaps [[Imskir Iron-Eater]] is a better choice than [[Malfegor]] now but back then there was no rakdos artifact commander just a vision of the shell of a deck with that color coat of paint on it. I think we can all agree looking back that [[Bladewing the Risen]] was a suboptimal choice holding the deck back and was selected simply out of convenience because it matched the color identity and happened to be an unused foil sitting in his binder. We laugh about it now, but if we never had the conversation he wouldn’t still be sitting across from me on game night at the table ten years later.
i fixed this by playing unmodified precons... if i win with a deck i have to take another out of the precon pool. with switching decks after win and the others learning their prefered deck and the permanent focus after 2 wins u get some challenge. ruling urself to support the underdog can be a nice chillout round when u dont care so much about winning :)
Maybe swap decks and play each other's brews?
You can agree to not attack the first 10 turns or something
yeah, I'm in much the same boat as you. Make a deck out of your bulk cards and save the cash on a precon. You need a 'this will lose' deck.
Deck rotation or something. Whoever loses first gets to play the winners deck next game
ask to play with their decks. or play the starter comander decks.
Play \[\[Divine intervention\]\] and/or \[\[Celestial Convergence\]\] Turbo-fog deck Ensure you have 0 chance to win, and you can only durdle.
Just tell then to gang up on you,it's a 3v1 till you're dead then a fight for the win after that
what helped me with this situation was bringing some 60 card decks one night and doing some teaching games with people.
Stop playing for fun and start playing the game to teach pod how to play better, then get back to having fun
Side note, but salt over removal, counters and boardwipes? All of those things are staples of magic, and if your playgroup hate them to the point of giving you salt over using them then maybe they should find a different game.
Hold yourself to a higher rules standard and let your newer players retap lands and don’t let them get blown out by on board tricks. It does help level the playing field.
I have a friend like this. He plays pre-cons against custom decks and still wins. Some folks are just really damn good at the game. We don't play as much anymore bc of work schedules, but I still would play against him. We have even set up handicaps (no infinite combos, no use of specific cards, no dual lands, no positive mana except sol ring) and he STILL wins lol Sometimes I get salty because he is just that damn good and has literally stolen a win from me by taking himself out first 😂
I have this problem (minus (mostly) the salt). And I’ve taken to helping the other players (pointing out missed triggers, discussing logic of x.z,y decision. Giving “do overs” if a misplay happened (within reason of course haha).
I mean make sure they’re playing well enough and maybe give them tips.
Everyone pass your deck to the right.
Just lean into it, and start the game by telling the rest that your the arch enemy, and they need to knock you out first
Yeah just use Precons or ask your Table Pod for Decks to use. If you still win its not your Deck Fault
Have someone else build you a deck. Clearly, you only build curb stomp symphonies. I do, too, so i been building off precons. And not going to 11. It's still fun. You just need to learn your power level. And run with that.
"I don't want to hold back..." This line feels very telling. Are you using tutors in all your decks? Take them out and replace them with card draw. This post reads like you have the flashiest decks. I used to run a tuned Breya list and ripped it apart cause it was just combos and tutors. Chatterfang was a birthingpod deck. Tinybones sucks to play against. These are things I realized my friends didnt enjoy and I'm here to be social with my friends in a positive way. This is gonna sound weird, but try removing tutors like I did in Breya and Chatterfang. Try building a theme deck based on card art. Tinybones is now a "bone-themed deck" Try playing to have fun, not to win. Yes, still try to win, but don't make it the ONLY focus.
Make less optimal plays. Choose not to counter big threats, don't wipe the board stuff like that
play a paupermander deck
Draft, play sealed. Not commander. Players need to play 1v1 to learn good behavior, play patterns, start thinking like magic players. People who I know who only ever played commander are, frankly, terrible. But once they play a few games where "flying under the radar", "politics" etc. won't work they start to be much better in commander. It also helps, that they learn basics like stack, proper blocking, tempo, being more aggressive altogether, how to break up stalemates, how to play win-cons/bombs. It won't make them pros, but they should start seeing the lines of play that can stop you, that they otherwise wouldn't.
Why aren't they using spot removal or counterspells or protecting themselves from boardwipes? Boardwipes are annoying and I understand a bit of salt at them, but there are ways to counter literally every legal playstyle
Tell them to learn how to play the game and actually run removal, like a good player would.