My friend used to play a deck of 99 basic lands with Kenrith as the commander and an Obosh companion. The plan was basically to make deals and group hug your opponents to stay alive until it was a 1v1 then put a bunch of counter and Kenrith and go for a commander damage with with Obosh there to help push damage. That deck picked up wins more often than it probably should have just by being completely transparent with what it was doing.
Thats genius, it puts the social aspect of EDH on display and how absurd it can be as a "competitive" game. Even tho he build his deck like dogshit and openly admits that to his opponents, he can essentially gaslight his way to victory just by whining and being annoying at the table. I used to do something similar with ashling the prilgrim or ragavan, build 99 basic lands.dec and then complain every time someone attacks me that im "just the lands meme guy".
@@ich3730 yes it is genius but mostly because a lot of edh players are fucking retarded. just turn your creatures sideways and if there's free damage to be dealt deal it. that really helps against such decks. also also: if such deck was in my meta all my decks would run cards like darksteel mutation and alike. and I'd just wait until it's a 1v1 and just cuck their commander. maybe remove it first if it already got counters on it.
The funny thing is, most of the time I have ever done the "I'm a smol bean" is when there is clearly a bigger threat on the table and someone decides to target me. Even I will be like "hey, I get that said card can become a problem... but there is a 15/15 with infect on the field and he can give it unblockable... so wtf are you coming at me so hard right now?!".
Yup, whenever I’m asking somebody not to attack me it’s usually because I want somebody else’s life total to go down, not because I’m trying to preserve my own.
The number of games I've seen where the player removing my stuff or wiping the board loses on the next turn to the threat I was trying to warn them about is too high. Yes, I have 40 power on board but that's just about lethal on him and I need to kill him on my turn or he's winning the game.
@@adamrobinson6951 same with me. I have said many times "guys, he's about to win... I'm trying to stop him. So why have you all aimed your stuff at me? I can't win yet... we should work together if you want to have a chance to even win". And then we all lose and they all have the shocked pickachu face on and are like "we didn't know...".
@@adamrobinson6951 that reminded me about one of the two or three games that the maelstrom wanderer won alone (not on a team and that guy play it a lot) was when a guy casted blasphemous act to destroy my ancient forgotten (he was at 12 toughness) and other things, so we wasn't able to focus on him quick enough (which happens most of the time when he plays that commander)
There's a guy in my playgroup who is generally the threat with explosive combos but he adopts a "you die first" anti-threat argument. Which works surprisingly well.
My friend group use to unintentionally deploy the smol bean strategy but we’ve made a decision last year that if it’s like turn 5 and a person hasn’t played a creature yet, then sure swing at them, atleast then it’ll incentivise them to fix their decks. Theres this stigma that you shouldn’t take someone out early because then they can’t play for the rest of the game, but by being ruthless and killing whenever you can, it’s resulted in us being able to actually play more than 1 game
I have only played commander once and my deck was just random jank I had put together from drafts over the years. My friend told me I would stand no chance against his deck which he had been building for a few years and had roughly 1.5k worth of cards. I went through with playing and while I only managed to play like 4 cards before he fucking slaughtered me, I had a lot of fun
"Fight the Table" is such a great way of viewing the format. A few years ago I had this Yeva, Nature's Herald deck I was never really happy when playing, and I couldn't figure out why. It scratched all my itches -- it played aggressively, it used an unusual commander to frequently surprising effect (slamming Green Dragon or Spore Frog during combat, etc.) and it did all the ramping, drawing, and attacking I needed it to do to win. On reflection and seeing this video, it seems clear to me now that it was all about how it played to my opponents. They were vastly overestimating the deck's power because flash SEEMS like a scary keyword to have on creatures, and to them my empty or lackluster board state could always become their worst nightmares, instead of the reality which was the deck did a little ramping, played some creatures, and attacked. In essence, my deck was lying to my opponents about how scary it really was. I rebuilt it as Toski and it's been all the better for it.
If your opponents think a monogreen deck has some kind of hidden plan to win out of nowhere that doesn't include putting big dudes in play and turning sideways, you need better opponents.
My Child of Alara reanimator deck is all about 'fight the table'. I realised a decade ago that it was more fun to win while openly telling people that I was trying to crush them all. No politics, no combo out of nowhere, but pure synergy and value.
Yeah me too, specially because i have a lot of scary commanders like Zacama, Tiamat, Korvold, wich put a target in my back as soon as the game starts and usually when the table kills me im 1 turn away from a win
This channel has put into words issues I've had with my decks, deckbuilding, and across different playgroups, in a perspective I never saw but that feels logical and makes sense. Thank you for your work!
That's not always the case in my experience sometimes the person getting attacked is it's only being attacked because they're open and attacking them will allow the deck to do things like combat damage/attack triggers or life gain
@@zombieslayer2016 oh that's just playing the game and trying to bump value. I'm more or less talking about "shooting to kill" as if trying to bump someone out.
Yeah my experience is that a lot of times though people just want to hit *somebody* to get some kind of value for themselves. My Rakdos, Lord of Riots deck needs to deal damage to someone just to be able to play the commander. My friend's Gishath deck needs to hit somebody to cheat out dinosaurs. The same friend's Isshin deck needs to attack to get value off its double triggers. Interactions like these are really common in my pod, someone is looking to attack and it doesn't really matter who it is. So they're going to hit whoever is open. A really common question at our table is "Who's got blockers?" or "Who's got flying?". For that reason I started running a lot of flying deathtouch creatures like Baleful Strix and Stinkweed Imp. So not only can I say "I have a flying blocker" but "You will lose something if you attack me."
My friend uses smol bean syndrome all the time which is hilarious in its own way because we all know his strongest deck is an Earthcraft/Squirrel Nest/Parallel Lives/Goblin Bombardment combo and the deck's whole purpose is to stall out until he assembles the pieces or dies trying. No wonder we all hit him for damage before his shields go up! I really appreciate the videos you've made, they make me rethink a number of my own deck-building decisions, and I'm probably going to adjust a couple of them as a result. I definitely need better focus in my decks.
Nice video, my playgroup are kind of wierd in that we encourage each other to attack since noone is particularly aggressive as a person, we also acknowledge the archenemy title when it is given to us, even when it usually means last place. I only play commander with friends and it's a lot easier to be as open as possible.
The Smol Bean and transparent gameplan hit the nail on the head for me. My decks are always exclusively built around one aspect of the commander. So an anikthea deck with 35 lands and 64 other enchantments. Preferably big ones and ways to get extra token copies. The plan couldn't be more obvious, as the other player can always see which enchantments go to my graveyard before I resummon them. Then I tend to pull the Smol bean card - because I just got my last 6 enchantments I played blown up immediately so I don't get hit by every creature my opponents have available. And then the removal runs out, I play her for the 7th time and suddenly I have 6 copies of "Song of the worldsoul" and lethal damage on board. I'm always playing with the same friend group and they apparently aren't that tired of my shit that they would kill me before I do my crazy turns. Even though I'm probably sitting around a 50% winrate on our table.
I have been in several pods where I am looked at poorly for playing the game. They cry foul when I attack or when I aggressively try to control a known powerful deck.
Its problem when you only pull out your control deck because you heard that another deck is at the table. Thats called meta gaming, And you’re targeting another player specifically to ruin their chances if you do that, which is uncool. Don’t be “that guy”
No, it's a problem when a known deck goes unchecked. If I pull out a deck specifically because I know what commander someone is playing...it's warranted
@@nicks4802 oh no, you misunderstood. I don't meta game. we only reveal our commanders once we have already picked what we are playing. Most of my decks run a healthy amount of interaction because most of the people i play with use infinite combos.
When I watched your EDH red video I did not realize that this was the beginning of regular videos talking about the difficult, less obvious, and/or controversial topics in my favorite format. I will gladly get on the patreon train for more MS Paint EDH soap box content 👌
I think another important element of deck consistency is cardpool? As weird as that may sound, it's actually a fairly narrow slice of mechanics that are benefited most by Magic's immense cardpool, and trying to build around mill is inherently more likely to be consistent than a "splice onto arcane" deck. Proliferation of one-size-fits-all mechanics like Morophon can mitigate these on some simpler levels, but especially when exploring novel mechanical spaces like Mutate, Splice, Power/Toughness Inversion, Moving Counters, and double especially when exploring those mechanics in a limited color identity in a singleton format, that's often either nowhere near enough, or just simply eclipses the intent of the original mechanic. I've built hundreds of decks in my time playing magic, and left hundreds more on the cutting room floor, and a problem I often run into is 'does this archetype even exist yet?' - sometimes only finding 10 or 15 cards that actually support my main synergy. When the team at WotC is exploring design space, this problem compounds upon itself, as overlooked and underutilized mechanics have a tendency to remain so, while popular mechanics will see "a new twist" or simply power-crept versions, new lords for particular subtypes, and, well, a lot of the stuff mentioned in the Cycling video on this channel. This is further exacerbated by the shift away from the block structure, which has resulted in a lot of one-off mechanics that never get the time or support to shine, and are then promptly abandoned in favor of bringing back the same rotating cast of a dozen near-evergreen archetypes. Holes are dug deeper and deeper, in some cases, new mechanics are even stapled onto existing archetypes rather than being given their own room to thrive, creating a design space less akin to a developed landscape and more akin to a series of cavernous pits, all labeled and reinforced courtesy of EDHrec.
You don't have to have 30+ playable cards in an archetype to make a deck that seems consistent, but you'll probably have to add a sub-theme or two to fill it out, unless you're willing to go a little heavy on cards selection or removal/interaction. 10-15 playable cards or so is already a quarter of your non-Lands, you can expect to see a couple every game. Just don't fill your blank spots with Sanguine Bond or Exquisite Blood, just because you've got a vampire/lifelink sub-theme and have a copy of each from opening random prize packs. It's such an easy trap to fall into. I slotted them right into my garbage-tier Anowon deck.
All my casual decks deliberately can’t do the sudden synergistic/infinite wins out of nowhere. Instead I have opponents trying to figure out what I could possibly be hiding because removing their cards and deploying beaters each turn makes them paranoid. TL;DR great video!
and then after many turns, theyre going crazy trying to figure out your strategy and you point out theyre at 12 life from all the nickel and dimes over the game. "What? you can win over time?"
I've been to about 20 different LGSs over the past year and let me tell you that these logical, analytical people you're playing with are not the norm. I've spent more time explaining to the other aggro deck that we can't be wasting resources on each other while the other two ramp decks do nothing than I'd like to admit.
I don't think this really matches my experience of the format. My favorite comparison point was when I had made 2 decks, Atraxa infect, and a Raff, Weatherlight Stalwart deck based on twiddling lands. Of the two, Raff is just the better deck. Better strategy, better commander, and also.. people think its worse. Atraxa shows exactly what she's doing, and tries to work directly toward a win condition. There's very little hidden there. Every game was a huge slog where people wanted to stop me at all costs. The raff deck? Spellslinging token payoffs + weird white land ramp and lands that tap for more than 1 + twiddle effects. Very weird and techy, way better than the atraxa deck, was almost never the focus of the table. Which mostly meant free wins because nobody tried to stop anything I did. And I know the obvious thing here is "people hate infect", but I think this comparison is just as true for any of my decks that were trying to hit people with creatures, vs. ones that aren't. I definitely think that keeping your threat from being visible makes it easier to play the game.
Same for me. The argument that when people dont get what or why you are playing spells they get scared and thus attack you has never happened to me. When people dont get it they will just ignore it but if you have obvious strong board state that will make you the target
I only Smol Bean when: 1) My opponent is choosing who wins or loses the game (so I gotta convincing him to let me win so I can stomp him later) 2) My opponent is casting removal on my shit when someone else is popping off way crazier. Like I'm trying to deal with this guy's shit over here and you're gonna do that to me? >:(
Arixmathese is a commander that has stuck with me and probably been the most consistent fun I've had with the format, and I'd say transparency and fighting the table are both why. What it says in the tin is what you get. Major ramp, big sea creatures, and a handful of blue shenanigans like bounce and card draw. It has tools needed to deal with the situation should I suddenly find myself as the target, and can generally be read by everyone at the table based on the boardstate. What a well worded, informative video.
I've recently come back to commander and magic in general after 3-4 years (I played at university with my friends but now we can only meet once a year or so, so I had an old deck for special occasions, but nothing more). I've recently found a new group which is pretty chill in my town and I've made very clear every new deck I'm going to build will make the matches fast, because a big problem I had with commander in the past is described in this videos. Lots of times when friends just whined about how they were getting hit with nothing on the table (and sometimes they became very angry/annoying), but then suddenly played an emrakul or something similar and ended up winning. This videos sums up those matches very well.
This explains how I like to play commander very well. Good job with the video. I realized awhile ago that a big part of what makes turn-based games fun, is being presented with a problem and then being given a chance to figure out a solution to it. A deck which combos off out of nowhere, at a table which isn't ready with interaction to deal with it, violates that. The other players had no chance, they just suddenly lost. This is why I've been making decks which have to build up some kind of obvious board state to win or which give the other players at least one turn before winning. Even having a game ending combo being playing out infinite creatures without haste is a much better win con, since it at least gives your opponents each a turn to try and find a board wipe or other way to stop your attack. I for one really enjoy those final turns where I know how my opponent is going to win next turn and am desperately trying to figure out and assemble my deck's answer to it. I also like building consistent and transparent decks which have to build towards a win, since it means I can play to win and have fun without completely crushing my opponents and actually give them a fun experience. I enjoy understanding the threat my opponent's decks present and trying to combat them, so I want to give others the same experience.
Excellent video on commander theory and praxis. 100% agree that this is a great way to play agains newer player but would also like to say that it's a lot of fun to get to figure out what your opponents are doing once you get a couple of years under your belt
@@nonsuperimposableletting newer players know about obscure instant win combos is not the same as being completely transparent! I feel like you misinterpreted the video. You dont need to pull a fast one on people who didnt even know what to play against. How is that fun? You don't telegraph every play, you still can bluff/lie/politic without being obtuse about how your deck plans to win in an average game. I was once a newer player and KNOWING that my opponent has half of their combo on board and figuring out what i can do to win around it or stop them is fun. Random wins out of nowhere are not fun, as a player who has been on both ends of that interaction. You can still play however you'd like, no one is stopping you.
This is some great advice for deckbuilding ideology! I Always make sure to ask what everybody is playing, what their decks are trying to accomplish, and general power level when sitting down at a table. Helps avoid blowout games where you are playing something goofy and your opponent is trying to combo off asap IMO.
Just came across your videos and I'm really impressed. I was playing for a lot of years before I started deliberately removing combos and staples like sol rings from most my decks. it really does lead to overall better games. One thing that might make a good video that I haven't seen people talk about is people with too many decks. I've seen people run into lots of problems: 1. they don't really understand how their own decks work or how their cards interact. 2. they don't have good opportunity to playtest and tune their decks. 3. the rest of the table can't keep track what their decks do and relative power levels
You remind me of this guy I use to know at my old friendly game store. He gave me a rough example just like this video when I started my commander journey. Can only hope he's the judge he was aspiring to be
I Play Magic since 16 years and watch yt videos for mtg the same amount of time and I really like the depth of your videos and the slow paced way you talk.
I'm going to preface this with I wholeheartedly agree with the fight the table ideology, and for the most part have already been doing your suggestions in playing transparently. But you've just made me realize how much I favor decks which are opaque about when they are in pole position. A few of my decks have more moving pieces across multiple zones for most players to keep track of, some of them are just avoiding dying until it hits critical mass for ultra late game control without ever building a scary board, or suddenly go from second place incremental synergy pieces to very far in the lead.
@@xaropevic7918 Sort of. Though I realize that I consider very few nonland permanents to be boardless, and that might not be how others would classify it. But the core is draw go control with a short interaction window combo finish. (I loop turns when I hit 13 mana.) The biggest difference between 60 card and commander is that it needs mass bounce, tap down, or fog once or twice every game. How many cards slots that is entirely depends on the card velocity. These are my priorities for playing this sort of a deck: -As long as you're alive you're still in it -Land drops are the priority -Don't counter more than nessasary -Wait as long as possible to attempt the combo The deck is redundant, but I find navigating the puzzle of commander games to be unique and exciting every time.
I agree that this is great advice. I also believe there is a lot of joy to be had in playing decks that feel completely different to play each game: my ideal deck to play is one that rotates between being a midrange, control, and or combo deck depending on my draws and my opponents.
I have never had somebody explain this theory/ gameplay style back to me before: Enjoy your GD sub. Well done. An upside that you touched upon: I play a lot of pickup games at my FLGS and that includes a lot of new players and a lot of fellow regulars. Playing like this is just, straight up, pro-social and encourages fruitful tabletalk. It's the same kind of gameplay mechanism that open politicing encourages and builds a reputation for honesty and good advice. It's fucking lovely social output sometimes.
Thanks for the advice. I've noticed I've been getting frustrated playing jank, even while acknowledging it's jank, because I frequently enjoy ridiculous synergies that basically ask for no interaction from the opponent. But I realize now I might as well try some more down to earth strategies for a change, so that I can feel like I'm not just getting disruption after disruption to my game plans with few ways to comeback.
I think I generally use fight the table ideology nowadays. Years ago I tried to angle shoot and act weak to sneak in a win, but I find it much more satisfying to just announce "Unless someone stops me, I probably win next turn." I feel it's necessary to be open with how well I'm doing, or can do shortly, since I tend to play higher power level decks than the rest of the table
Embrace the 3 C's. Colors, Cards, Creatures. Do their deck's colors suggest you need to put pressure on them? Do they have enough cards in their hand or a good card advantage engine? How many creatures can they block with and would you benefit from trading with some of those blockers?
I like this, it's just talking about deck construction and playsyles in a generally intelligent way. I feel like I'm usually the bad gal at my EDH table because my decks are consistent, and even though I tell people straight up what I'm doing they don't always have the game pieces to stop me. I like building my decks this way, where they're focused and clear, and I think this is good advice as to how my friends can understand what I'm doing
Your vids are amazing insight into what makes for fun & engaging gameplay. Would you consider making deck analyses/fixings applying your recommendations. I have a Marchesa the Black Rose deck around stealing+keeping and cheating into play stuff but it feels either oppressive or too vulnerable in stronger pods.
A game I remember, not magic but a board game, that ended hilariously because people did the "some else will deal with this". The game is about murdering an old man to get his assets, at any time there are no witnesses of your attempt and you can actually attack him you can try it. Though when you do other players can play cards to go nope and have to build up enough to prevent it. Different weapons in different locations need more or less nope to prevent the attempt, like kicking him off the balcony with a noose requires 20 and "poking him in the eye" (which can be done when you don't have a weapon) requires 1. someone tries the "poke him in the eye" just due to random chance setting up an attempt and they didn't have a weapon. Three other players who declare in turn order if they will interfere. Player 1 big hand of nopes doesn't interfere. Player 2 big hand of nopes doesn't interfere. Player 3 had no nopes so can't interfere. Game that usually takes a couple of hours ended in 10 minutes.
Good to know I do very well in making my decks transparent. Almost all my decks are synergy focused with the commander and aren’t “bursty” as you called it. Maybe not battle cruiser style decks as your Glisa deck is but still cards in hand, untapped lands, and creatures in play are a great indicator of how well the deck is doing. I think it’s due to how I heavily play into synergy so if my commander’s in play, they’re the threat. My best example is my Darien, king of Kjeldor deck and my Karn, Legacy reforged deck. Darien is “I take damage, make tokens, and gain that life back” so most pieces will follow that suit, pump those tokens, or protect my stuff. Karn is even more straightforward, I get tons of mana and play big artifacts, the more artifacts in play the better the deck is doing. My Oloro, ageless acetic deck though wins at “fight the table” it is minor stax, control, and voting, designed to be a slow burn nightmare. It excels at making everyone at the table want to kill you and that is fun since you can also give back to them in a group hug style if they play your game, no silly combos, just good cards.
smol bean syndrome is my pet peeve, its like people forget that this is a game where you summon monsters to bonk eachother, im gonna bonk you, dont take it personally, this is just a bonking game
I totally agree with you about building and playing with transparency, playing towards your goal every turn isn't something suspicious to your opponents, and while they take it seriously you aren't likely to make anyone angry if you aren't an immediate threat I have a very pertinent funny story of an old commander buddy We had a dedicated group at that point and would regularly have 4 or 5 player games of commander, and this guy wanted in, but he had no idea how. So, my friend looked through his cards, and helped him built himself a deck. Dragonlord Ojutai. We used to call it the "completely nonthreatening rise of ojutai", it would take games outta nowhere just by playing fair magic - stick ojutai, save up counterspells, strap him with enchantments, profit? But it wasn't flashy enough for him, so he saves up and buys a budget infinite combo commander list - Mikaeus, the Unhallowed. Just Mikaeus and combo pieces - nothing else. Totally arbitrary and abstruse - and every time his commander hit the table, he would be surprised when we'd group up to keep him in check. The conversation in the game is just too scary, like "Oh, so Mikaeus is out so if we let this turn go around and he has *X* and *Y* or on a rare chance just *Z* alone he could kill all of us like *THAT* " Instead of refining his ojutai deck he stubbornly played the mikaeus deck every time, to the point where he started to just play Destiny when he got knocked out first....
I experience this between my Animar and Hinata decks where despite Animar being objectively an stronger deck he tends to get left alone more because when he isn't doing well they are more certain of it, whereas Hinata keeps all of her war crimes in your hand. They never know when that Comet Storm is coming, but watching Animar's counters go up is a more visible and easier to understand threat. One is a straightforward beater and the other is a spooky magical goat.
I have a deck that USED to be just a g/b deck with the joke being it only has ONE swamp to work with and somehow win, but it was designed for 100-card singleton 1v1, not EDH, so I took the Sapling of Colfenor I had in it and made it my commander, and all of a sudden people were getting upset that they couldn’t tell what my deck’s end goal was as they were losing to it, just because it was meant to have many wincons that could show up at any time. Needless to say, it made for an interesting table any time I brought it out.
While I get why being transparent with what your game plan is can make it less frustrating for the rest at the table, I feel like a lot of commanders themselves are pretty transparent on what they do. For example Brudiclad (which is one of my pet decks tbh) pretty clearly is about copying tokens and swinging for lethal in a turn. Izzet does not have a lot of mass token generating effects so a lot of it is down to creating clones and generic tokens like treasure or food. So when I play Decent into Avernus or Brass's Bounty it should be pretty obvious what I'm trying to do. Even if I don't have a lot of creatures on the board, by seeing all the setup it should be pretty easy to guess that unless you deal with the setup pieces you will have a threat on your hands. So I don't get too salty when I get swung into or targeted even though I don't have a ton of creatures on the board.
I’m a volunteer at a local high school and one of the kids there has a “mono-Green Morophon deck” where the deck only has basic forests for lands….and it’s actually Sliver combo
Im gonna need that Glissa decklist. My decks have always been kind of gimmicky and so have the decks in my playgroup. I'd love to see a transparent decklist and learn from it!
This video makes me want to build more decks around Sarevok, Deathbringer. Not only do more background decks need to exist because they're just cool but underplayed, but Sarevok is usually not trying to trick you about what's happening. It works as a pseudo-Voltron deck where buffing your commander is a big deal, but also incentivizes a little mini-game that different decks play differently. My first Sarevok deck was with Clan Crafter, so i could sacrifice artifacts for card draw and commander buffs while using blue spells to protect my commander.
Great points! I played some very frustrating games recently with random people because they either played deceptively, or didn't know how to talk about their deck. One guy seemed to have 5-6 decks that were most likely all very optimized, because he said pick a number 1-6. The thing I said I really didn't want to see was board wipes all the time. He eliminated his Child of Alara deck, but still, the table was very mismatched. I tried not to outplay the precon player in the pod, but this new guy was clearly trying to hyper optimize every deck.
Henzie is such an easy deck to run it you wanna use this to your advantage. "hey, my board is empty except Henzie. I'm not doing much right now" *blitzes an Ancient Copper Dragon*
This is a good concept. My trouble is with my Kadena Morph Combo deck. I do my best to be transparent without just revealing my hand and saying what my face down cards do, but naturally, being a resilient deck that has lots of interaction and hidden information, people aren’t the hugest fan of the deck. I am transparent with my combo pieces and how strong my synergy cards are, but people still tend to underestimate her until they get locked out of the game.
My usual response to someone with good attacks/potential to kill me is just "I will not beg for mercy." It rarely works but I like to think it's a little more dignified.
I play a very burst and flash mono blue commander with azami. I rarely get upset when someone focuses me down even if there is bigger threats that will end the game. Always stating to my opponents "Well I can always pop off or stop you with one of my many counterspells, so I am always a valid target."
My play style is often the complete opposite: "Come at me bro" with a full grip and open mana. Ironically, this actually works better than downplaying my board state since most players don't want the smoke.
my main deck is a blue artifact deck. I use a lot of counters and fodder to survive the early rounds, before doing massive bursts of damage. I have tezzeret's gatebreaker as well, and no one I play with has any board wipes and the few artifact destruction spells are usually used to try and destroy my mana ramp or my staff of the mind magus so they can try and kill me before I am in a position to sacrifice tezzeret's gatebreaker. my favorite way to play is to wat too attack until I have enough on my board to take people out in one swing. I'm sure I could end games faster if I didn't do this, but it results in this small bean effect most of the time where everyone is focused on each other because the most I'm doing to harm anyone is bouncing their creature back if they target me while everyone else is slapping them down. At a certain point though, my deck snowballs and by the time people realize that I have quietly filled my battlefield to the brim and am very obviously about to play my biggest wincon, it's pretty much too late. I'm never deceptive about it either, everyone knows how my deck works and it's hard to ignore the guy who has chewed through half of his deck in 6 turns, but because I don't attack I'm almost always the smallest threat until it's too late.
I feel like there can be such a thing as being too transparent with your game plan. In my mind if people know your strategy and plan to remove it early before it becomes a big threat to them. Then you’re stuck to the big explosive power except you don’t have all that power as it was spent on the earlier turns and got removed. This is probably me over thinking it but it could be intresting
My transparent decks perform so much better than they have any right to. My Balan deck where I just slap down another piece of equipment each turn and basically say “just you wait until I get to 6 mana” basically gets ignored until turn 6 because everyone knows the deck does basically nothing until it gets to 6 mana. My Kellan, removal deck tends to generate remarkably little hate for removing things (although it definitely still generates some) because everyone knows I’m running 40 pieces of targeted removal and half a dozen board wipes. Yet my Magar of the Magic strings deck with its confusing weak janky reanimator gameplan usually gets rushed down because no one knows that I was a whole turns away from actually doing anything.
I am recently playing this Gyruda deck with a lot of Clones to copy Gyruda - Gyruda usually doesnt change much about the board state, usually just puts a bunch of cards in my graveyard and I end up with some clone card that copied Gyruda... But people are always frightened of it! They just see this Creature's ETB going off again and again and they do not know what is coming - so they are scared even though it's extremely likely to just do nothing. I might try your recommendations of explaining what the card is doing in my deck in the future to see if that helps :P
One of my decks is very inconsistent, and crumbles at the slightest removal spell. However it can easily shart out 80 something damage when things work out. When I am durdling and drawing, I always encourage players to attack me, reminding them that if I get too much breathing room they can die in a turn. I am not a coward, I knew when I built my deck it was inconsistent, I understand that when you gamble you can't always when.
So how do I play with a table that I get bullied at? I tried the advice here and they still bully me. Even when I play underpowered decks, even when I play group hug, I still get bullied. I've had conversations about this and the usual response is, "You're thinking too deeply about this" or "We don't go after you alone, we just prioritize threats as they hit the table"
My Progenitus spellslinger deck has no nonland permanents in the 99. In the early game, all I do is ramp and draw. My opponents might think that I'm just having a bad draw, so they tend to leave me alone. When they do attack me, I wipe the board. I also communicate this to them, and I make good on the threat. What tends to happen is my opponents will attack each other or use their removal on each other, with me using my interaction primarily to prevent one player from running away with the game or just outright winning. I have a couple of spells in the deck that might be game winning, but I don't always rely on them. When it goes to 1v1, that's when I bring out Progenitus, usually with a +1/+1 counter from Opal Palace or it gets a bonus from Cathedral of War. The deck is pretty consistent in what it does, is usually not threatening, and allows my opponents enough game actions that they don't feel just locked out while forcing me to play tactically with my interaction.
Someone had to say it. I model desired behavior by saying something like “I wish you wouldn’t attack me but I understand why you would.” Sometimes that even keeps people from attacking me
Great video! It really hits on a point that I have felt for a long time. EDH is a more social format but that that social aspect has its limits. Its really frustrating playing against someone who protests at every piece of interaction or attack, who thinks they can politic their way out of any situation. there should be an understood baseline that EDH is a game and the objective of the game is to win, so don't get upset when people try to win. That doesnt mean deliberately stomping on noobs but being open and honest goes a long way to create a fun game space.
yeah I try and be careful about using this because decks like my Jinnie Fay deck are designed to usually build off its board state so I try and advise to go after the faster deck while I'm still acquiring parts, but at a certain mana level that falls out the window as a well placed farmer cotton, march of the multitudes, or mioji blooming dawn can put me from just a commander to a win on the turn I play them. I personally balance that out by warning the table that I can kill the table depending on my draw once I get to that point. If I feel like I'm too far ahead of the table then I'll play the part of the big bad and turn the table against me until I get brought down a nautch or I win (trying to 1v3 the table is pretty fun). I still try to win but my goal is for the table to enjoy the game and for the win to be a close one. If people felt my deck was fair then they'll be more likely to play and enjoy subsequent games.
Definitely no video uploaded before this one, and this definitely wouldn't have been my comment on that video Most of my decks fall under the very fair and straightforward category, with a sort of escalating and obvious threat on the board. I generally turn into the main villain of the table, which is good because my deck is also probably the best constructed in terms of power and ability to win the game. Being the villain is actually quite the fun experience, since, even if you don't win, you still significantly impact the game every time. I do have a deck I'm working on for Slimefoot, the Stowaway that sort of breaks my rule but not really. It's a sort of hyper land-ramp deck using untapping abilities and auras that let lands tap for extra mana to just make a shit load of saproling tokens. Basically I want to reach 160 mana sunk into the ability as fast as possible, which will generally not be that fast. I think it's a lot more fun to play a deck like that.
I don't know if "playing like a nerd" is necessarily incorrect. The alternative is you run yourself out of interaction and are unable to protect yourself when you need to. If the threat isn't immediately going to affect you as bad as it will another person, don't remove it for free. Try to negotiate if you feel like bluffing no interaction is incorrect, or only answer threats that hurt you directly. The issue you run into is, by using your own interaction to remove a minor threat because its the "correct" target, also draw attention to you when you are now at a weaker state.
As a mainly werewolf player, a lot of people forget the threat of a deck that has both huge swings and wide token play, they're so focused on weird wincons and sneaky card ply they don't notice the 60 10/10 wolf tokens I'm swining at everyone until its too late
Sidisi Sultai: It’s unclear what I’m doing at all times, I have won with mill, combat damage, and poison. I have stolen win cons from others, sentenced others to death, and recovered to win from as low as 1 life. And not no point will I say I’m not the threat
I only really say what my deck is about for my oldest decks, which tend to basically do nothing more than amuse me. "This goblin deck has a bad mana curve and requires too much math", that sort of thing.
Loving your insights. Do you have any thoughts on how to build a transparent Spellslinger? It's one of my favourite archetypes to play, but it feels impossible to build one that doesn't end up storming off when it performs. I just wanna draw cards and have some fun triggers..
I’d say my greatest fight the table deck is my Voltron deck it’s very much telling on itself when I revolve my equipment and my commanders have abilities that deal with equipment. You can look directly at my board and see how well I’m doing a lot of the time. And I’ll let you know well my sunforger is out so I’m always holding up more interaction then you expect.
My favorite deck, Shirei Black Weenies, is totally open. I show up, I say it's not Stax, it's just little creatures, sac outlets, and a way to get it all back. Sometimes it verges on SBS, in a way, but I'll just say it straight up. "If you really feel like your best play is killing a 2 mana 1/2 that draws a card, go ahead." It makes it a lot more satisfying when I start drawing 5 cards, and draining everyone for 4 at the end of everyone's turn.
I have been playing magic for only 3 years but I feel like these is another Smol Bean Syndrome where a player introduces effects to the game that turns the other players consistent decks into completely inconsistent ones making everyone else real smol beans. Effects that limit combat, get rid of phases, consistently negates all damage, come from commanders untouchable in the command zone(like eminence), or creature gifting that breaks your deck (Demonic Taskmaster, Abyssal Persecutor) as an example.
