Things That Annoy Commander Players | EDH Pet Peeves 

As someone who has only been playing for less than 6 months, I thoroughly enjoy people reading their cards when they play them. Basically everything is brand new to me and it makes me feel stupid asking every 5 seconds "oH wHaT dOeS tHaT dO?"

"There is a limited amount of fun to be had, and it belongs to me" - storm and stax players, 2022

I have a completely different take about not ending a game. Actually I think your advice is kind of bad. I've done it a couple times. Specifically I remember not comboing off in a game where the "new" player was in a winning position and visibly excited about it. The most important part is to shut all the way up about it. If I had asked, like you two are suggesting it, what would he have said? To let him win instead? That would have been a very hollow victory at best. So I just didn't combo, nobody at the table ever knew that I could have, new player won, everybody was happy for him. That's how you do that!

Had a game where I was CLEARLY the threat and was gonna win. Someone was going to attack me but then a friend moved his sandwich like 6 inches. He attacked him instead and it was hilarious 😂

Regarding the Mansplainer thing, I would like to point out that there are also plenty of people who do the opposite - they rapidly play a land then a bunch of spells then pass, all without even saying the name of the cards as they play them.

One of the worst experiences I’ve had was against a guy who said he was playing a combo deck (totally fine) but ran no tutors (also fine) so it would take him a bit of time to actually set up the combo (thus giving us time to interact with the setup). He then won by tutoring for 3 combo pieces in one turn. I don’t care that he ran tutors or combos, what really bothered me is how he blatantly lied to the table for no reason other than to pubstomp us.

The one thing that stood out was the phone point. All things equal, I get it. But 10-20min opponent turns when you know what you're doing each turn definitely sees me pulling my phone out.

I hate players that are the opposite of the mansplainer infinitely more! The players who just play their cards silently and expect everybody else to already know exactly what each card is. It’s fucking aggravating to say the least

I'd prefer to have a "mansplainer" than someone who just vomits their cards on the table. I do not know every magic card. Reading it when it's played ensure the entire table now knows what it does.

Played a game against a grixis player storming off, only he didnt really know how to win because he just built the deck. The other player walked him through the lines because he was in his position in the past and had trouble winning and wanted to help out. In the end, the storm player won with guidance and i couldnt complain because it was pretty nice.

One side note about "scooping in response", if an opponent has you dead on board and decides to take you out, you should trade off anything they have before you lose via blocking or removal. It seems like a spite play on the surface but it presents a cost to the opponent which can affect their decision to take you out.

Cherry notes that he doesn't like when cards are flipped towards him, but I do this for two reasons: 1 - It helps to identify which creatures are still effected by summoning sickness 2 - It invites the other members of the table to read and see the card if they're unfamiliar After a turn expires with the card upside down, I'll flip it around normally. I feel like it's a nice way to invite people to ask "can I read that" so that they don't do the pet peeve thing of taking the card without asking.

In my opinion the most annoying thing in commander is when you interact with a specific player once and then they throw everything at your the rest of the game. A good example of this is when I attacked someone with a 1/1 and then they focused me the whole game after that.

For the targeting complaints I think sometimes it can be valid. If 1 or more people in your play group are clearly spending all of their resources to attack 1 person then a discussion needs to be had. I play with a couple and the first few play sessions they would avoid targeting each other and instead focused on me even when I had the weakest deck at the table. When I finally brought it up and pointed out that they were teaming up too often the problem lessoned and the games became more varied and fun.

I DO sometimes play simulated 4-player games with myself just to test some changes I made to my decks. I do have to admit that I just give up when the boardstate gets too convoluted and it’s too hard to pretend like I don’t know the cards that each "player" has in hand.

1 of my biggest pet peeve is when someone can win the game at the moment and doesn't And when someone tries to deal with their board, the person threatens to win

People that put their lands up top don’t deserve birthday shout outs in my humble opinion.

"Non-creature permanents whose use may reasonably be associated with either the land or nonland area (e.g. an artifact whose only ability is a mana ability) may be located in either area, provided the overall layout is, in the judgment of tournament officials, clear. However, permanents that are also creatures (e.g. artifacts with March of the Machines on the battlefield, Dryad Arbor, or a Treetop Village that is currently a creature) must be placed in the nonland area. Players may not use other cards to intentionally obscure the presence of a permanent in any area of the battlefield."

For me, probably the biggest peeve is people not playing interaction. Often this is paired with complaining about losing to hyperlinear aggro decks.

I think one that really gets on my nerves that you brought up is when people stack all of their lands on top of each other in one pile, I've seen people cheat on mana this way before and unless someone notices they don't get caught.

In addition to grabbing cards, also be gentle when you do. I was at my LGS once where someone kept reading another guys cards (ok whatever) but was flicking/bending them back onto the table. He was called out for it like 5 times too, it was borderline awkward to witness...and the culprit kept claiming it was all accidental

As someone who's only been playing for less than a year I explain what my cards do and appreciate when others do as well. Not reading the text verbatim unless it's short, just it's ability. However, I try to make my turn as quick as possible while doing so. I find myself asking "and what does that do" or asking if I can read someone's card if they don't. Revenge play or king making is more annoying. A player in my pod always tries to make me win when it's clear he's gonna lose. I dislike it and continue to encourage him to always try to win for himself.

"I wouldn't do that in constructed magic" is a really good point. I was frequently the grabber.

My pet peeve is when you have a pet card in your deck that you play, you're excited about it because you love the card not because it's a great card that's gonna have any real impact on the game immediately or in the near future and somebody removes it with no good reason. Example playing scute mob while also having a vorinclex or atraxa on the battlefield and someone removes the scute mob instead of the actual threat.

Joe: Rules lawyers are awful, it doesn't matter Also Joe: spends 5 minutes talking about how you're not allowed to tap mana rocks beside lands

The way my friend taught me how to choose threats was to usually defend yourself or something that interrupts your gameplan/strategy and when i played a spell, he just says “ok now choose your targets, you cant take it back once you choose because we play official rules. So ill analyze and choose and then he’ll say “not bad, ill tell you what you could’ve did after the match” and then he’ll give me a synopsis on basically what i can do for next time to get better and improve. sometimes i see plays after i screwed up or later but you should be responsible for your own triggers, errors, misplays and grow as a player.

My biggest pet peeve is someone sitting down at a casual pod and playing a very non-casual deck. While a bunch of new players have shown up at my LGS the past month, some of them have very… unfun or very competitive decks or they just claim “oh it’s only power level 5” when it’s an 8+. We even have special pods you can sign up for for playing competitive with prizes. Or I don’t know, maybe winning turn 4 is just casual nowadays with all the power creep. Edit: also revenge play yeah. I have one friend who heavily focuses me because I mind slaver locked him once 2 years ago (with his own deck)

My personal rule with scoops is: if your scoop affects the *current* board/someone's hand (if they drew from your deck) in any way at all you don't scoop. You shouldn't scoop if it hurts someone else, even if you won't win. If you really want to 'scoop' we have a rule to "auto pass" where whenever your turn comes we pretend you just skipped. You can do whatever you want as if you'd scooped, but mechanically you're still in the game so you don't mess with everyone else's stuff

I feel like every turn in my play group takes ages because whenever a permanent is targeted with removal the owner(mainly two players) makes a big fuss and tries to point another permanent as the problem. They also say(somewhat jokingly) “aw can’t believe this targeting!” And the entire rest of the table. Responds by saying something like, “it’s not targeting it’s just proper threat assessment.”

The one thing that allows annoys me, when there's already so much on the table, is one person going "Did I play a land this turn" or after bunch of things happened, or even went into someone else's turn already and they go "Oh hey, I think I forgot to draw cards from this", when we don't even remember if they did already or did not.

Yeah, complaining about being targeted… I agree! Personally, I usually enjoy being targeted because it means the rest of the group realizes I’ve put down a massive threat and now I have to work around not having a particular combo piece. In fact it can give me an opportunity to find improvements I could make. Alternate win conditions or redundancies for combo pieces.

My group use to play with only proxies. But..... we followed a budget of $300 All of the cards had to add up to that price and we used card kingdoms highest market price as the guide. I think this is a great way to play kitchen table magic with friends

Extra turns are like when your older brother tells you that you can play Halo with him but he gets 3 deaths per turn and you get 1

I played a pod where the guy next to me was missing several land drops, so I played pir's Whim and declared his friend so he'd hopefully be able to actually get in the game and have some fun.

18:44 "the cards that are important are not the lands..." Me looking at my $500 deck with $300+ of it being mana base: 👁👄👁

The revenge play one plagued my playgroup at one point. I had a friend that graduated and either gave away or sold all his cards and all of a sudden, we started having fun again. The threat assessment one is also really annoying.

Yall mentioned "reverse pubstomping" in cedh, that is unironically one of my biggest pet peeves. When you all say youre going all out, and one or two people sit down with decks WAY below what we said we were doing. Now obviously sometimes newer players dont know and other times a player has convinced themselves their deck is a 9 when its really a 5-6, but its frustrating when you expected a 4 player game and 1 or 2 people are irrelevant because theyre playing at a much lower power level. Going right in hand with that, being the only person at the table playing any responses. This is probably just a me pet peeve but maaaaan is it annoying when youre the only person whos playing any answers and have to police the entire table all at once. That could speak just to my playstyle, im sure a no-response arms race is fun for alot of people, but its def not for me lol i like playing an interactive game.

Waiting for y’all’s video to drop everyday so I can listen to it during work is probably the most excitement I get lol.

The phone thing is probably my biggest peeve. A little under a year ago I got to play my first edh game in years. This one player was a young female who just wouldn't get off her phone even during her turn, and kept talking to us about stuff like what do you think he meant by this, you know standard teenage girl talking to a crush thing, which is fine she was likely a teenager. But her turns took ten freaking minutes. If we were lucky. And she'd interrupt other turns with the same. And this was my first chance to play in years. Eventually my nco called me in for work related stuff and never even got to finish the game, and haven't been able to play again since.

Regarding the Mana Rocks in Lands thing, I know I generally put my mana rocks together in their own stack in the back, much like where I would put my lands, although I keep the Mana Rock stack seperate from my lands stack. So far, I've found this system works quite well, but curious to know what you think of it.

Idk if it counts as soft locking, but pacifying an opponent's Rankle, Master of Prankles is still one of the funniest things I've ever done. Shut his whole game plan down and he was pissed.

This reminds me of one game where I had 3 lands that cast for colourless and 1 for white and I was mana screwed. I only drew into my green or 2 white mana creatures and couldn't play anything. I was laughing the entire game, mostly because I found the situation to be hilarious.

For the ugly tokens, I think an okay budget solution is sticky notes. Write down what the thing is and put the power/toughness in the bottom right corner of the sticky note. If you can draw, make a cool doodle, too! Or, if you're able to, go to an online card proxy website and make paper cards that you can print and cut out to put into some extra card sleeves you might have laying around. I don't think it's necessary to buy custom tokens or spend extra money as long as you have something consistent that everyone understands and is okay with.

Thanks for bringing up my proxy point. You both got it down perfectly, I'm not getting mad, it's just weird. Thanks for including that in the video. Great content as always!

The exact situation with Aetherflux reservoir happened to me. The guy had 60 life and passed, and because I knew someone had to take a hit, I cast a tutor to get an answer. I died immediately, but the person after me took out the reservoir player. I got last, but it was very funny

Rules lawyers bother me too, like them people who say “it’s the rules of magic that lands and rocks have to be separated” 🤣

I am with you guys on the hostage situation. One time my brother played Child of Alara and I just immediately blew it up. Easier to rebuild now anyway lol I am not going to walk on eggshells for 5 turns that's just uncomfortable, I will charge the gun everytime.

those who always has 'next turn lethal' or 'if I draw that you will never have a chance' hit me very hard

I just had a game where a sefris player was popping off with a Radiant Solar with a Voidwinnower as backup and the other two players were on their phones because either turns were taking too long or whatever. Eventually I find a line of play (Urza's saga for a Soul-Guide Lantern with another piece of removal) and I ask for help to like... deal with the Voidwinnower and the answer was for the dude on his phone to... Vandalblast the board when the Sefris player had no artifacts and said "oh I was trying to answer something" then went back to his phone after that.

a couple different people in my play group consistently do some of these its funny to hear you guys talking about it.

Our LGS has a house rule: If you want to use a proxy you must have the actual version ready to show people if challenged. It lets some of us have only one copy of a good card, but use it in multiple decks...

On the topic of extra turns: I have a sefris deck that was ~really~ good at venturing the dungeon. But I finally just took that deck apart BECAUSE of how good it was at venturing. In one turn I’d venture on average 10 times and my turns would take way too long. I’d win plenty, but it just wasn’t fun for anyone

In all fairness planning ahead can change not based on what's in my hand but what others play ahead of my next turn. But yes pace of play matters for enjoyment.

My biggest pet peeve is people that complain about everything.

Two pet peeves. People who don’t plan their turn ahead and take way too long figuring out how to play their turn. People who play creatures and never swing at players with them. The people who “chill” on their turns and don’t do shit. I see this happen way too often. People are like scared to attack somebody due to revenge. UGH.

Hey I'm early! I watch your content daily. Never ceases to amaze me how high the quality of content is every day. Love you guys! Good sleeves 👍

NPN warms my cold dead heart at the end of a long week

I don't mind mana rocks being in the land zone so long as they are still separated out from normal lands. Same with the artifact lands

I think a flip side to not planning your turns ahead is over thinking. I have a bad tendency to plan a play ahead of time, then create plan B-Z just to end up defaulting to the plan A I had in the first place. It’s also embarrassing…

That is a great topic. I hate when people give wrong rules information. I had that happen to me a lot. then you have a discussion about it and at that point I just do not want to play anymore (even if it is not effecting me)

About the land counting thing. I know some folks might not be doing this but in my situation I have adhd and I simply “forget” even immediately after counting. Love ur content ❤

Proxies are usually fine with me with the following caveats: Proxy to match the power level of the table. Proxies should clearly identify the card they are and be distinguishable from other cards in your deck. (No mono white decks with plains as proxies)

revenge plays, suboptimal threat assessment, ending the game whenever i see fit and attacking however i like (yes, even randomized) are the heart and soul of casual edh my guys

I've got the box of tokens all my decks make. Makes life easy

8:16 lands in front are generally used by extreme lands matter decks where they are sacrificing a lot of them for value and recuring them. Thats the only time when I see them played up front and not back row

Actually Cherries, the exact place that specifies lands must be behind creatures, allows mana rocks to be among lands it says Non-creature permanents whose use may reasonably be associated with either the land or nonland area (e.g. an artifact whose only ability is a mana ability) may be located in either area, provided the overall layout is, in the judgment of tournament officials, clear. However, permanents that are also creatures (e.g. artifacts with March of the Machines on the battlefield, Dryad Arbor, or a Treetop Village that is currently a creature) must be placed in the nonland area. Players may not use other cards to intentionally obscure the presence of a permanent in any area of the battlefield. I do agree with your points, as I've 100% accidently not had my mana rocks be destroyed (and I don't even normally keep my mana rocks with my spells but sometimes tapping for spells gets them mixed up)

I feel the soft locking joined a pod and no one told me power level turn 2 some one had a card that was indestructible and prevented people from casting 3 or less so I couldn’t do anything cause of my deck. Just scooped

As a Karador combo deck i can plan out my turn then top deck something. I need to plan the line to make sure I have enough resources. Plus a lot of my lands are utility so I need to figure out if I have enough mana to cast and sac, or reanimate and sac, and how to do it. Thats why i go through my lands 4 times. Not to count but to visualize the lines im calculating. However a lot of these fall into the two categories of advance the game state and be a good opponent. Things that i hate are “you play blue you die first” or you play combo so you die. Even if im extremely out of the game. Or if someone paths my llanowar elf and i have nothing else on board and someone is actively showing lethal. Or kingmaking. Just why.

For the "Don't give unsolicited advice" bit, I usually put it forward as a question to give them the benefit of the doubt that there was a reason. "Hey, is there a reason you didn't X?" tends not to grate as much.

I always say that randomized attacks is the cowards way out. Make a choice! Glad that got mentioned.

My biggest pet peeve is when people do not speak up, and choose not reading cards they play for an advantage against others. It's cringe. I'm targeting your board directly if you can't say what you put on the battlefield.

The problem I have with power level/pubstomping/rule zero conversations is that it's a matter of perspective. A player who plays a $50 upgraded precon and destroys his playgroup constantly will say, "This deck is strong, I win a lot with it". So when I bring out an optimized Chainer, Nightmare Adept deck, which from my perspective, is a lower power level than say, a %100 optimized Aesi deck with fetchlands, crucible of worlds, and craterhoof behemoth. Suddenly I'm pub stomping with Chainer. Never tried to, we communicated clearly what level we were playing, but our perspectives were mismatched.

Sometimes I would say occasional mild undirected complaining would be legitimate... I used to have a Jeskai deck built round the Awaken mechanic so a fun silly deck... But it was invariably hated out of the game as everyone at the LGS hated every Jeskai commander "on principle"

On the telling people how to play their deck, I do that occasionally but I try to be good about it. I am often explaining interactions or rules that newer players did not know about. Or, because I help people make decks I am explaining to them some of the synergy I built into it that they don't see. But I try to do it in the same way I would explain things about a board game that I knew better than someone.

I shouldn't be surprised but yall really hit it all I can't think of any other peves beyond the ones yall listed

last game I played it was my turn, I had priority and player to my left was just like "While you are figuring out your play I'm going to brainstorm" I was like woah what are you doing, you cant just cast stuff out of turn", and they accused me of rules lawyering. there is no pleasing everyone I guess...

I can forgive people not paying for Tithe/Rhystic. That's because I won't always pay so I can feign holding interaction. Like I'll hold 2 blue and make the Rhystic player go "Is he gonna counter my big play?". With Tithe it's even more effective, because they might need the extra mana to make the play. They'll always dump all mana into a turn 5-6 Ur Dragon if they see no threats, but they won't always push for the turn 4 Ur Dragon if they see me keeping enough mana to interact, for example. However if I know my hand will be empty, I won't hold that mana, it makes no sense.

On the Bad threat assessment front, I hate when people waste their time killing my mana-dorks or low CMC creatures. Only to not have an answer to something nasty like Sheodred or Tegrid.

Knowledge Pool Teferi has a couple outs ranging from the very practical (Cycle New Boseiju or Colossal Skyturtle) the more extreme (Cycle Dismantling Wave or Cycle Nimble Obstructionist counter trigger) to medicine that is worse than the cure (Cycle Decree of Annihilation). XD

I feel most, not all, of these complaints are mostly annoying with strangers. My playgroup does most of them and with close friends (enjoying the game casually for a good time), it feels way less annoying. Especially that one friend that will hold grudge if being targeted. He built his reputation for almost 10 years now playing Gishath... We play with the Monarch always on the board (1st blood gets it) and it happens often that we will purposely not attack him to avoid his wrath. It's legendary at this point... We did came up with the dice rolling for random targets to mitigate his aggro and so far it worked XD.

When you mentioned attacking with lifelink and the player scoops in response to spite the attacker to not gain life I have been in the situation several times. It hasn't happened as me as the attack but when someone does that I do the same thing which is to allow the player to gain the life anyway. I my opinion you should never scoop. Not because you have no chance of winning but the thought that you don't contribute to the game is never true. You are 40 life that your opponent has to go through. If you see that you are dead to an attack and scoop, especially at instant speed, then you are allowing that player to no longer have to attack you to then go after other players. You allow that player that was already ahead to get further ahead. I have seen it so many times where if a player didn't scoop they would've died to the attack but then the player would've been forced to attack them. Instead they scoop because they don't think they have a chance and it allows that player to attack me instead and it puts me out of the game where I could've had 1-2 more turns to find an answer or out had they not scooped. You started the game with intention to play the game. You are a player in the game regardless of your draws, regardless of your starting hand. To say you contribute nothing is a copout to justify your decision to leave the table. I get it, sometimes things come up and you have to leave early. But do not leave because you aren't drawing well and you want to join a different pod or you want to go look at cards to trade. As you can tell by the rant this is definitely a pet peeve of mine.

The discussion on power level is always tricky. At my LGS the rule zero rarely happens, I generally start with a ‘7’ and change decks based on the results aiming for a %25 win rate.

"Good thing you won, I was gonna do THIS and THIS and then THIS next turn!" I know a guy, after every single game, always...games I've won he takes over with how he WOULD'VE won next turn. It's like 'okay man, but you didn't. I did. So shut up.'

About lying on power level, I have a Sram equipment deck that might be a 6-7 at best. However I do have some of the “swords of” in it. I sat on a table we had a talk about what game we wanted to have. I got called a liar about the power just because I had sword of feast and famine… I was annoyed about it and got targeted for the remaining of the game. I got stomped relatively quickly after that.

I feel like playing against you two would be fun and I can learn a lot from you two

I roll to attack the first time with Obuun because the way I've built the deck my first swing may VERY well be over 10 damage so if no one's the threat I roll and then who ever I attack isn't an option to get attacked next time. Just for clarification I roll for who to attack out of 3 players first, then next turn I roll for the remaining 2 others, and then the 3rd time around I attack whoever hasn't been attacked yet. From there I choose who to attack because at that point you've all got stuff going on :)

Number 1 thing that annoys me? Never being able to guess the Moxfield shoutout

I completely agree with ending the game when you can. I am always tinkering with my decks and need to know if I need to add certain cards to have answers.

my one thing w/ proxies is that the deck has to stay at a similar power lv to the other people, so i always check what the average price is among the people there and choose my deck/switch out card around that. also i just use proxies cause i cant even justify buying a 100$ deck

The thing I hate the most is when someone misrepresents their power level, rofl-stomps me because of it, then when I'm packing my cards up or shuffling or whatever, I'm stuck listening to them showcase what's in their hand or whatever they were going to tutor for or combo into. Dude, you won, I get it, I don't care about everything your deck can do. The game is over. You wanna show me? Do it in game in a more even match. I will get on my phone to be petty when someone's taking a 10-minute turn. When they're not self-aware enough, it's even funnier. Also about counting lands, I will say as a person with pretty bad ADHD I do that a lot, especially late game. I'd rather recount lands than realize I don't have the mana mid-turn (and possibly have to backtrack moves). Great video topic! People need to be aware of these things.

Idk what category this falls under but had a jeleva player get really salty at me the other day for not playing many instants and sorceries in my creature reanimation deck. I was like “well, creatures with the same effects have more synergy in my deck” and he went on this big thing about how creatures aren’t powerful and that’s not the right way to make a deck…like, okay? I have fun with my deck and the people I play with generally enjoy it, there’s no reason for me to just make an entirely different deck..?

10:55 should be the start of a new youtube chapter "Land Destruction Without a Win Con"

A friend of mine has a habit of just never tapping his lands because “I know how much mana I have” the only reason I give him any slack is because he’s a red and green deck and doesn’t have much removal or counters

I play Moxfield with four tabs open all the time, love it, it's a great way to see if I actually want to build the decks IRL

I had a game where a player had the win on board but did not see it. When i mentioned the line to him, he proceeded to win. The other 2 players went on to abuse me because i helped him win. It was not exactly help, he had the win already, i just pointed it out. It wouldn't feel right beating this guy, simply because he did not see it. However i should not be abused by the other 2 for doing so.

I also recently won a game due to bad threat assessment, but to be fair I wouldn’t have seen it coming either. I was playing an upgraded riveters rampage precon at my local game store, because everyone kinda brought a precon level deck, and because Henzie was making my big stuff cost less, people started killing him whenever he was out. However, what they forgot, was that Henzie reduced the cost of my big stuff for each time I cast him from the command zone, and because I had ramped so much in the early game and I was basically hitting every land drop, I ended up easily pulling through with a 4 mana avenger of zendikar

Thumbnail with the Infuriate art was a very nice touch.

When it comes to priority ill typically ask if people have a response if all we get is silence for a few seconds.

I'm definitely guilty of mana rocks with lands and had no idea that was actually against the rules!

Love you guys. Keep it up