It's FUN to be the ARCHENEMY... 

Let’s be serious. If the night doesn’t end with throwing nukes at each other, are we even playing Magic?

OH MY GOD FINALLY SOMEONE SAID THAT YOU SHOULDN'T PLAY cEDH DECKS AGAINST OUTTA THE BOX PRECONS!!!!!!

Played against a tergrid and a nadu deck last week at a “casual commander night” so now I’m bringing my esika/the prismatic bridge land destruction deck! If you can’t beat them, join them!

My friend was the Archenemy and had a disgusting Sheoldred the Apocalypse deck and would target me and my Elesh Norn Mother of Machines deck with Peer into the Abyss every single time.

Being the Archenemy with a theft deck gives yiur opponents the ultimatw dilemma; to lower your power they need to remove other players to put you back. All while you villian laugh saying how their pathetic cards belong to a new master or something. Great fun with Gonti!

I become an archenemy when I play Mothman in lower tables and Omo in mid power tables. See Hardened Scales in mothman? yep that's instant archenemy. Play even just 1 Gate with Omo? Yep they'll go kill you first to stop your assumed maze's end.

I threw in with Ratadrabik… I’m archenemy for life.😅

I was the arch enemy as soon as i joined a local lgs i run narset enlightened master turns out there was a player who ran a similar deck to mine who terroised league nights for a while so i was constantly killed first

I built my atraxa super friends deck with explicit idea of every game is gonna be a 3v1. Its a fun time trying to acrew enough value to either get a win or at least make the other players earn the kill on me.

You'd be surprised how just being friendly and normal helps. I had a rhystic out, but I helped a guy out the turn before with something so when the the guy who was taking 5 min turns and was generally unpleasant mystic remora triggered, that got paid for and I got to draw from my rhystic. People just want to spin their wheels. If you left them do their stuff and don't waste their time everyone has more fun.

I have two decks that are designated 'Archenemy' decks: Sauron and Megatron. I laughed when one of my opponents was like, 'When I play against you, you're no threat but you always seem to win on T5.' But inside, I was like, 'Shit! He figured it out!...'

I love being the archenemy. I was playing Galadriel, Light of Valinor earlier tonight. I built a board full of 27 creatures with +1/+1 counters on them, and every turn, they all get bigger and more numerous. They were desperately trying to wipe my board so one of my opponents cast Supreme Verdict, confident he sealed the deal. In response I casted Inspiring Call, drawing 27 cards, protecting my board, and going on to attack that same player for almost 300 total damage. He then flashed in a Selfless Squire that absorbed all the damage. On his following turn he tried to finish me off by casting Jetmir, Nexus of Revels to give it Trample, so I tried to phase it out with Galadriel's Dismissal. He was however able to give it protection from instants in response, so I sacrificed my Charismatic Conquerer for a timely Flare of Fortitude. After that they admitted defeat and we got to go to yet another good game after switching to different decks.

Patrick Sullivan has a great take on this (para): "Bring it on, swing away; we can always play another game."

I play Esika, aka The Prismatic Bridge, with only monster-heavy-level creatures. Avacyn, Ulamog, Toxrill, Praetors, etc I can confirm that you can both consistently achieve 1v3 status, and see your opponents use more enchantment removal

Every EDH deck I build with Black in it has Scheming Symetry for the explicit purpose of helping defeat Archenemies. Except for Urza, Chief Artificer, because that deck ALWAYS IS the archenemy.

I am often the archenemy simply because my friends don't trust my janky brew and don't know what I'll do when I pop off. Sometimes I don't even know.

I can definitely shy away from calling myself arch enemy. It's difficult to think from your opponents perspective at times when the information hidden from them is visible to you. However, I think decks get labeled as arch enemy a little to easy in my playgroup. I have a Grakmaw +1/+1 counters deck. It isn't a horribly powerful deck, lacking consistent card draw and sacrifice outlets at times, yet my playgroup often views it as a larger threat than it is. I think that mostly boils down to its higher winrate when it first came to be. We were all relatively new, and +1/+1 counters is a pretty easy theme to run away with when everyone has pretty meh decks. Now though, plenty of people are playing stronger decks capable of threatening wins on turn 5 or 6. Despite this, Grakmaw still ends up taking a lot of the heat early game before a clear threat is established. Arch enemy can be really fun when its intended or clear, but it can feel really bad when its undesired or even unwarranted.

with my commander Sarevok and the “Raise by Giants” background I always become the archenemy

My Miirym Dragons deck is always The Archenemy. I told my pod, “I will be The Problem once Miirym is out. Remove him, or get 28 5/5 dragons to the face.” They removed him twice, and I STILL swung with 19 dragons and won.

My Ur dragon deck got me kick off my siblings playgroup so now I scheming real hard to beat them up my Faramir monarch human deck.

No. I am dinosaur. And barbarian. And borbygmos eraged with pet flame tongue kavus

In general, I play with a competitive mindset that usually goes for the optimal play in my opinion. I don't politic much. Two of my strongest decks are Miirym and Voja, and they're usually public enemy #1. I'll politic a little when piloting jankier decks at lower power levels since I'm not all too focused on winning fast.

Got to be the Archenemy with two decks. Braids Conjuror adapt for slamming a blightsteel done on turn 2 (Whole had was mana rocks and the blightsteel.) and Feldon of the Third Path for copying his ability a bunch and had 12 Ulamog's crusher tokens all attack at once.

I built a ( what i thought was a) jank blue white blink deck using not very widely played cards from Baulder's gate and old set mechanics like hideaway. The card advantage and topdeck manipulation hideaway blink provides unintentionally live and breathe being the archenemy. I once soloed an entire 5 player pod with its bonkers card draw alone.

I do rather find it fun when I'm the arch enemy and ruling with an iron fist. I think my favorite moment was when I was playing with 2 other random people, the 1 had a deck that was like same power pretty much and the other one definitely felt like they just started after playing a few turns. Which while being arch enemy and ruling I was giving advice on what to hit and how to take the deck down. Which I lost but it was still rather fun and interesting for everyone!

i normally run a mono black devotion deck and whenever they think that im about to die i drop a grey merchant of asphodel turning the tide on my favor which on an average turns my life total of 4 to 40 or 60 depending of what i have on the field which understandably has incurred the wrath of every player on my play group

Being the archenemy is great- Either my friends team up and win, and have a good time because they cooperated together against me, or I get the biggest win, and it feels SO good!

I play a tiny bones deck i always tell my group I'm gonna be a problem they say okay and then they still dont swing at me early enough and i run away with it and i feel like a maniacle genius as I touch like 4 cards every turn cycle

Do you have a decklist for your bae deck? @Quips&Guac

and the final way to be the archenemy: piss everybody off by playing cards such as "guttersnipe", where you deal damage to the entire table indiscriminately.

This is me piloting Jetmir, Nexus of Revels. I start off just making friends, dropping the odd 1/1 token. Then, without warning, I drop Jetmir and now, I Am The Whole Problem. Why? Because I usually bump a player who thought they were safe to 0. Now, people are scared. It becomes Archenemy, and I have an army of disposable mooks.

I personally don’t enjoy being the archenemy mainly because I play cEDH, I play Oloro so as far as the command zone goes I’m far from the meta, but I use that to my advantage to sneak wins in since nobody expects little ol’ Oloro to pop off. I fly under the radar just casting rocks and enchantments until I Ad Naus on end step and cast silence with more counter spells than you can shake a stick at before casting Thoracle and Demonic Consultation

I love playing powerful decks with salt-inducing cards: Atraxa control, Tergrid, Etali. But our local playgroup is small, and playing these decks tends to make *me* the player the boogeyman. If I win a game with Tergrid, people tend to continue targeting me from Turn 1 the following game, even if I'm playing an entirely different deck.

I have a bilbo birthday celebrant deck that I spent a few months brewing. I’ve played it less than 10 times and won twice. But when I bring it out everyone gets scared of the one game I had an exquisite blood combo and won. That is my archenemy deck but also my pet deck. It’s not usually good enough to hold up to 3 people targeting me, but I make the best of it and have fun

Some other things about being archenemy is it can actually make a power inbalance at a table much more palatable for players. I personally get really annoyed when a person brings a deck that is much stronger than anyone else’s at the table (be it accidently or on purpose), and proceeds to try and gaslight the table that its not their fault their deck is stronger or trys and deflect to another person saying “he is the real problem”. Being the archenemy and playing up the role of “someone you want to take down” has the effect of making other players have to work together to take you down, which can make an otherwise unfun game into maybe a bit more fun. My personal way of being the archenemy charecter is to play up the mad scientist role, one that is passionate about the dumb stuff they are doing. Rather than just swinging at someone with a giant creature when other players dont have any just yet, make it very known that you are going to beat them down with this giant monster you have made. Rather than being silent about peiceing a board of burn tools together about to burn players for a ton of life, i play the mad scientist role that has just assembled some crazy machine or something. The goal is to pull the attention of all the players to my side of the board, as there are times where i need to be stopped for the betterment of the tables play experience. Additionally, never lie. When someone, especially new players, are taking notice of you becoming the main problem at the table, be open and honest. New players have worse threat assessment than us who have played mtg for years, and may not understand when an archenemy arises. “Hey i think this player is starting to be a problem” should be met with a “oh 100% im a problem” if you truely are the issue.

I have not taken it to an LGS yet but once people find out hatred is in my Ramses deck I become the enemy

I need this decklist

my angel deck is hated by people who've played against it at least once and if not twice, every single board wipe is exile, and I run some of the eldrazi titans because why not, I can also very consistently get to 20+ mana for no reason and even if you board wipe me and get a nice clear path to my face, have a nice time trying to kill me with my plentra of I can't lose the game cards plus if none of that works out my commander can go voltron and kill you itself with commanders plate and other gears as well as my exalted effects from some of my cards. All in all anyone who's played against it at least once or twice eventually thinks I'm the threat for no reason whatsoever

I feel like I often end up as the archenemy. But to be fair I build decks that probably deserve it. Mainly my Nekusar wheels deck is what gets people. But I also just have a couple low to the ground aggro decks that make me the archenemy for just getting strong board states really quickly. This is especially true for my ragavan deck.

I have a Tergrid deck… it’s ironically my weakest deck as I get targeted straight away! I’ve never had my commander sit on the battlefield more than one turn!

Me casting Death Cloud for 15 : sure I'm the archenemy and it's a 3v1 now, but you have no land, no hand and no board

bad video cry about it

Tergrid players deserve to lose and lose badly. All the commanders, and you pick that? You're known by the company you keep. Notice what always happens to archenemies? When i sit down and inform the others that i intend to be the archenemy - no matter what i'm playing - someone * always * starts attacking me without letup, until i'm gone. Why give them the excuse to ignore the unspoken rules of the social game? So i don't tell them anymore. And i don't play commanders like Tergrid.