How to Beat a Pubstomper  

Joined a pod of strangers at my LGS and 2 friends each kept 2 landers with no ramp or draw in their hands and tried complaining about the 3rd player pubstomping with his voltron deck despite him targeting me first and giving both of them a chance to catch up. Sometimes the real pubstompers are just lessons that need to be learned when deckbuilding.

When I first got into commander and understood deckbuilding I felt like pubstompers were a thing. A few months later I played against the same players and realized I just didn't know what I was doing. A few years later I realize they still don't know what they're doing. Run more interaction.

The first 1:00 of this video is the funniest thing I’ve heard in months

I'm so happy I saw Ulasht, the Hate Seed in the thumbnail

Every deck is a mid power 7 unless you have a turn 1 sol ring, then its a 9.

It's exactly like you said: Actual pubstompers are few and far between. I've had someone try to cheat, even, in a casual edh game. But most of the time it's just either a difference in how people interpret power levels (which happens a lot) or a lucky hand.

There is psychology of 7/10, it seems high enough that its over average, but low enough its not best of best. Usually when someone says 7 it says they dont really know.

I think that the problem with pubstomping has more to do with budget. Newcomers will usually build around lower budgets than people who played the game for a longer period, as they tend to have more and therefore more powerful cards. Not to mention the fact that as you grow into the game you know better what cards you want and need in your deck. That by itself doesn’t explain pubstomping, but once you come to terms with the fact that some commanders can become very oppressive even at low budget and with limited knowledge of the card pool you can piece together how pubstomping happens. I think that part of the reason why tergrid, god of fright is so hated in commander is because she fulfills both of those criteria.

Fantastic video! I think the true pubstomper, like you mentioned, is sort of like Bigfoot. I agree that a lot of the pubstomping I've witnessed is simply accidental or the result of not enough removal. The "play more removal and graveyard hate" thing is something that I am guilty of and also tell myself constantly. I've found that cards like Haywire Mite feel amazing in Korvold and I think this video convinced me to get a Tormod's Crypt as well, which similarly should feel great in Korvold.

My Kalamax deck packs a lot of removal, and with how many copies of cards I'm often getting, it occasionally runs into the issue of not enough targets available, but it definitely can easily do the job of removing several threats and has some very sneaky boardwipes (red instants the deal 2 damage to almost all creatures for only 3 mana tends to nuke most go wide strategies when you're also copying it one or two times).

Low powered decks also suffer from what I call the “solitaire players”, as in they just simply put their own cards into play and kind of just ignore other people’s boards. Then they complain when something is “too strong” because it affects their own board but don’t bring removal to get rid of it. Like yeah, Elesh Norn, MoM is a powerful card and shuts down opponents ETBs. But that just means it’s a lightning rod for removal so REMOVE IT! I think the biggest reason why people say “strong decks” are pu stompers is because they win because no one targets their board for removal, because no one wants to spend their own turn stopping someone else. Everyone would rather play their own permanents and hope they win the arms race, hence the “playing alone” or “solitaire” gameplay I call it where it’s just 4 people playing by themselves pretty much until someone wins. Not often do you see this but when I do, it’s often frustrating hearing these players complain about stuff when all they did was advance their own board state and not affect anything else in any other way.

I gotta analyse your decks to see more precisely what you are talking about and working with in terms of interaction/removal. Often the outcome of a game can be bumming so gotta learn more. And besides asking people to play lower power with me, I have no idea of pre-game talk, will see. Gotta think. Have a nice day

I have found more and more that players don’t play test their decks enough (especially newer players), which often leads to them making poor choices during game play (even right at the start not taking a mulligan). The better a player knows their deck, the more familiar they are with the cards in it, the better choices they will make right from the start of a game and through until the end. I don’t play with any/many tutors unless it’s a high power game (I find deck searching to be boring and leads to repetitive game play experiences) and would rather slot in something to answer an opponents play 99% of the time. I enjoyed your video, keep up the great content!

I remember i got pubstomped by a cedh brago deck While i playing the golgari elves precon. Plus they didn't even say anything about until after the game cuz they didn't want to be targeted

I think the other problem is that mtg is a fairly niche hobby and when you go to your lgs to play some commander, especially if you're in a less populated area, chances are the majority of players there are long-time players who have played against each other for a long time, which can make it hard for new players to establish themselves in the playgroup. Since a new player might come in with what they call a "strong deck" when what they really mean is "the best deck at their high school lunch table," while one player at the lgs might have a Gadwick deck consisting of nothing but counterspells, extra turn spells, card draw, and Thoracle (to be fair my LGS runs a point system and one of the things that gives you negative points is extra turn spells. Last month they decided not to do negative points as a one-off thing so that one guy played his Gadwick deck specifically to get it out of his system while he still could lol. the first time I played against that deck I thought it was the most bs deck I had ever seen because he popped off, and to be fair I would say it's somewhere in the realm of high power, but a couple weeks later I played against it again with my mid-power casual Wort, the Raidmother deck and won because he just didn't hit the right draws or land-drops meanwhile I got out all my best ramp spells and synergy pieces.) tl;dr good video I think I basically agree with everything you said, though it still doesn't really change that getting into commander when almost everyone at your LGS is probably an enfranchised player can be a very rough time.

I know it makes sense to, but I hate having just a bunch of removal in all of my decks. I’ll add versatile ones, and ones that fit the theme, but when a tenth of my deck is only removal, it doesn’t feel like my deck anymore.

If only these pubstompees built frogs smh. Now that's real power Frog/10

I "quit" MTG back in 2019. I recently got back into the game and the most jarring thing, more than whatever new mechanics there are, why there's so many diffetent types of booster packs, or any of the new cards, is what the fuck a 7/10 means. Rating commander deck power by number is a new thing and it just doesn't work. If possible I just give an estimate like "mid power", and if someone wants to learn more I'll let them look through my deck

In my experience, the problem isn't pubstompers's, but timid game play. Players will have open attacks and choose not to because it "wouldn't be fair." Never mind the factt hat the player with no creatures is a combo player who is drawing 6 extra cards per round.

So I’m curious how you’d rank decks that flux in power depending how it’s played?