The Flexible Meaning of Rule Zero with Chief of PlayEDH | Casual Magic Ep. 216 

Thanks for having me, Shivam. I had a great time. Sorry for my slightly disheveled appearance here. I forgot that we were going to be recording both audio AND video!

Caught you on Spike Feeders the other day (nice turn 1 w/ Kinnan haha) I’m trying to establish a Rule 0 for my playgroup. Our games consist of anywhere from 4-6 players. 2 of the people in the group haven’t played much EDH, one of them is really new to Magic in General. One has a bunch of cEDH decks, and I’d say upper-mids. Runs some of the spicier cards, but we agree they’re not cEDH. But he gets mad we all don’t have cEDH, and gets wicked salty One only runs 2 cEDH decks, then gets mad when we take him out for getting the best/explosive start. One runs a lot of cEDH decks, but doesn’t know how to pilot them. One gets shoehorned into playing the same deck week after week because two of the guys complain if he plays any of his other 2 decks. I run a lot of mid tier decks. I don’t often win, but I’ve been known to put a few outta nowhere. Could one “argue” that a “good” Rule/Turn 0 would be: “This is my Commander, this is what I’m doing (theme), here’s a description of a combo, and/or here’s a combo piece to look for”? And then if people ask for further explanation you can give them some? I’m tired of people being completely shut out of games because decks are bad matchups. I personally laugh it off for a while then hate the game, but others just get salty, or sulky. We play cards on Friday to unwind, distress, and have fun. But it’s not fun when it’s bad matchups.

My first game of commander at an LGS was in 2010 and I ran out an Armageddon on turn 6 when I missed two land drops. My logic was I was using the card to catch up, I didn’t know anything about the social norms, and I had one of the players lose his mind on me screaming and shouting and he walked out of the store. Funny part is that guy was the owner of another LGS one town over that I had been going to for years, and he lost a customer that day because I never went back to his store again because he yelled at me without explaining 😂