It's great fun... as long as everyone playing has agreed on what 'fun' is.
It sounds like you're playing with the wrong group of people.
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Everyone I've played with plays stupid decks that need a million mana to function and when I destroy their gredy manabase with no basics they cry like a 3 year old instead of just playing counter spells or somerthing
If everywhere you go smells like shit, maybe you're the one smelling like shit.
If everyone group you play with has problems, maybe you're the problem.
It's only the commander players that suck. Players who play real formats don't have the same problems
Seems like it would be more productive to play with people who like the kinds of games you do, instead of crying about it like a three year old.
Really, I just agree with the person you replied to. If the people in the pod are looking for vastly different experiences, who's benefiting?
I like Commander.
I'm not the first to say this, but it is definitely unfortunate that Commander has become a lot of people's introduction to Magic - it is strategically incredibly complicated, takes a long time to understand if you don't know all the staple cards, the meta and unspoken rules are completely socially dependent, and there's lots of politics - these are all really difficult for players who are new to Magic or a game store or a social group.
That being said, I think Commander is the most fun format for established players who have a consistent playgroup that creates an ongoing culture. The options are limitless, really, so everyone can express themselves through deck construction. The other way I've really loved Commander is in explicitly competitive formats, like budget leagues or tournaments with set-in-stone rules. If the rules are known up front then everyone knows that LD, Stax, or combos are on the table and salt is just clearly bad sportsmanship. You can't really avoid poor sports in any game, unfortunately.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0la5DBtOVNI
So, anyway. Different people will obviously like different things about EDH. Personally, when I build a deck, I like to do it to play what I find fun or cool, not to build a deck that has the highest win percentage. When you think like that, deckbuilding becomes more like game design, instead of being part of what wins you the game. It's like I'm trying to design a faction of a boardgame - sure, I could design my faction in such a way where it would win every game, but where's the fun in that? Then, when the actual game starts, I do play my deck/faction to win, because where would be the fun in playing if you're not trying to win?
I think you're stuck in thinking about deckbuilding as part of trying to win the game, instead of seeing it as designing an enjoyable game, while trying to win the game only starts at turn 1.
I agree with your take. I played standard for years but I got discouraged over time because the format really limits what you can create and the cost of keeping up became exhausting. Everyone's deck ends up looking and playing the same once you start playing competitively which is boring. This is also true for cEDH, but outside of competitive play the sky is the limit. You like a weird bunch of cards that no one would ever touch then go nuts and build your dream team. Want to limit your games to pauper or jank, go for it. Can't afford to run 4 copies of a ridiculously priced card, don't worry you only need on copy. I find commander easier to keep up and more enjoyable overall.
First, I'd like to say you sound like a very uncomfortable person and I'd probably not want to play any games with you, regardless of the format.
Still your point stands and I'm growing increasingly frustrated with commander just like you. I think commander is bad for the game for multiple reasons:
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It creates bad incentives for WotC. When everyone is playing commander, which is essentially legacy but without any tournament backing to enforce cards are genuine, wizards has to make sure to create incentives to buy new products instead of sticking to yesteryears cards. This leads to the constant powercreep which has ruined yugioh gameplay among others. Modern players complain about this, where every modern horizons set warped the format. You can read jokes that the former top tier splinter twin deck would be a good tier 3 contender should they unban it now in times of ragavan and bowmasters. I imagine this will get much, much worse for commander as long as it stays the premier format. Standard circumvented this problem.
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Commander is horrible for new players. Since every deck play around 80-90 different cards, picked from a random janky pool of 30 years of game design, new players have to wrap their minds around 300+ cards just to play the game. To play the game good is another thing entirely. Every time we have new players in the store, the owner recommends they buy a precon and get going on commander friday. When these players sit down they have no idea what is happening, they don't understand who is ahead. Suddenly they are dead after the urza player sucessfully convinced them the other precon is the problem five minutes ago.
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Four player free for all is boring. After the first few turns the turn length goes wayy up and suddenly you look at a ten to fifteen minute break between each of your turns. This gets worse as the boards get filled with value engine permanents, where any game action will put approximately fifteen triggers on the stack. Naturally, the two blue players want to consider their option for each of those triggers and stare at their hands and the board for minutes at a time. I have on multiple occasions started a second 1v1 game with either bored players on other tables or the guy next to me in the same game. Unfortunately most chess clock aren't designed for more than two players.
I mostly agree with you but have some thoughts.
- I think is true but that it's WOTC's fault. EDH was the purest when it was a fanmade format that celebrated a way of playing that wasn't baked into off-the-shelf products. It was a way to see an existing card pool differently. But now EDH is no longer just a different way to play Magic but due to the printing of Command-exclusive cards has diverged and essentially become its own game. There are cards that are legal in EDH that were never legal in Regular Magic first. It's a soulless commoditization of essentially house rules.
Hard agree on 2). I don't think I have ever met anyone who has both the social and gaming acumen to have fun with their first game being EDH. IF you're social enough that you're fine being there until the game is over then you probably aren't also a gaming savant who can pick it up for the first time and also have a chance. I think all EDH players ought to maintain healthy expectations by playing 60 card formats alongside 100 card ones but for new players it's a requirement.
For 3) it's undeniable that the board can become a complete mess that takes a minute to resolve whenever anything happens...However I think the solution is to be more engaged with what's going on rather than checking out of the game. When someone else is muddling through their triggers on a storm turn I think it's legitimately more fun to help them track triggers, mana, etc and to try to anticipate exactly what cards or kinds of cards are coming up. I enjoy seeing others puzzle things out so maybe that's what makes watching people play enjoyable for me.
Re: chess clocks. My table has a player who is known for their long turns lost in thought over the best way to drop two mana rocks and pass the turn. I ended up finding and Android app called "Board Game Clock" by SECUSO on F-Droid that supports chess clocks for any arbitrary number of players. I never got to use it because the threat of using it was enough to speed things up a bit.
Yes, I used to have the same problem. It used to feel like it was full of invisible and unwritten rules that all contradicted each other. Getting bullied if cards are too strong or too weak.
Casual EDH, that is: as you point out, competitive EDH doesn't have the same problem.
What I finally realized was that I shouldn't approach it as a game. I should approach EDH deckbuilding like a crossword maker approaches making a crossword:
To try to create something that is a challenge but beatable.
It's easy to create an unsolvable crossword. Just a bunch of white noise in a grid. But that's just no fun to anyone. A good crossbow maker wants the crossword solver to have fun and to enjoy the puzzle, to tease them a bit but keep it realistic and grounded.
Now, a game of EDH isn't a puzzle, but it's an experience.
I started out making my first EDH deck super weak (it's built around Tolarian Serpent) and have gradually been adding powerful cards or interactive cards or cards where I just like the art or the experience or the memory of when I first opened the card. I have a foil Rethink even though there are a lot better stack interaction cards, but it was just the first foil I ever opened so playing it makes me happy. The deck is still weaker than many of precons are out of the box so I still have a ways to go with it but that can be a gradual process of tweaking and modding.
I hope this helps.
Playing intentionally bad cards and shuffling them around for an hour doesn't sound like a fun experience
Yeah, it's still not my fave format.
It can sometimes be super boring. But sometimes it can be really charming and fun. For people who get into the lore, the experience, the flavor, or expressing yourself through weird combos. 🤷🏻♀️
For a Magic that's more akin to D&D than to chess or poker.
It's not good of people who wanna 💯 win. Which, granted, often is me, but that's when I reach for other formats 🤷🏻♀️
But the point of magic is not be D&D. In my opinion D&D is a terrible game because the rules are arbitrary and you're supposed to sit there and hallucinate or something. What makes mtg a good game is that there are concrete rules and a clear objective, if you have arbitrary nonsense like rule 0 and aren't even supposed to win then you might as well just not play, the whole point is to win like I don't get it
I don't like a lot of "on a whim" lolrandom hatpullery either, but rule zero can be great if it's done with enough advance notice. House rules can be wonderful at creating fair, unusual, and skill-testing formats, where you can compete and test your mettle even when you can't afford the hottest meta decks.
D&D can feel meaningless with a DM with a finger on the scale, but not everyone plays D&D like that.
There is more than one way to enjoy Magic, and not everyone needs to be into every way to play. I don't wanna try to force you to play EDH, and I wouldn't even if it was one of my fave formats, which it's not.
It's just that I used to have some of the same problems and frustrations with it, and my new approach to it (to approach deckbuilding as if I were a game designer, sort of like how I'd build a cube or set or battlebox or set of duel decks) solved some of those problems while other issues remain.
idk playing for some lore reason or whatever seems boring to me the point of the game is to win. And when I tried playing it's not always even the hyper competitive decks but I like stuff like mass land destruction and prison. But they players don't want any interaction refuse to play boseiju,fow or any of the cards to defend themselves from others decks. They just want to police what you play they want to force you to play what their useless deck that ramps for 6 turns before even pretending to do anything and anything that interacts with them in ANY way is toxic because they don't even want to play just win themselves with no opposition to feel good about their shitty deck. Like you want to play mono green ramp but I can't destroy your lands, kill your creates or counter your spells? That seems fair
We're just repeating ourselves and talking in circles now.
When building a casual EDH deck, the point isn't to win. It's just not.
That's what I was getting wrong, too. I was like "how can I build a deck that can win when you keep springing these arbitrary rules on me like no land destruction and no stax? You'll just have an endless list of things that you'll think is 'too good'; if I find other things that aren't on your ban list you'll just add it to the banlist. And you bully me if my deck is too weak. And the games themselves are kingmakery bullshit where you hurt the leader just for leading."
That's where I was. So I get it.
I'm trying to explain another way to view it, where I'm now—if you don't wanna hear it, that's fine. You don't have to play EDH.
But if you're not even trying to understand, it's not fair of you to slag all EDH players, either.
Have you ever heard of a boardgame called Zendo? It's pretty great. Or, better yet, 20 Questions.
In 20 Questions, one player comes up with a secret thing like "Brad Pitt" or "A pencil lead" or "My mom's shoesize" or "The feeling of regret when missing out on bowling night" or "running with scissors". And then the other people ask yes & no questions until they can figure it out. The goal of the people guessing is to find out the secret thing. For them, that's "winning" in some sense of the word. But for the secret-keeper, they aren't trying to come up with the universe's hardest word. That just wouldn't work. It's easy for them to come up with something that the other people don't even know exists! The secret-keeper's job isn't to win, it's to come up with an enjoyable, challenging, but possible secret for them to guess.
Same goes for building an EDH deck. You're trying to create an enjoyable challenge for your friends while also participating with your own fun in the challenges they've brought to the table.
Yeah, yeah, EDH as a format has its fair share of fundamental brokennesses that inevitably there are always going to be a high risk of bad experiences, but if you're still in "the point of the game is to win" mode, you've yet to learn the 101 foundational thing which is that EDH is using the Magic cards for something else. You might think that thing is a waste of good Magic cards, that's fine, but it's another thing to do with them beyond trying to win.
You have a good basic point: The reason game designers put victory conditions into games in the first place is to guide play. Faffing around with cardboard with pictures and weird spell names on them is a pretty weird human activity in the first place. The thing that guides and structures that weird activity, normally, is that both players are striving for that W.
Casual EDH doesn't have victory as a goal (in the deckbuilding stage). We'll have to reach for other forms of guidance and structure there. Such as what would be entertaining and fun for ourselves and for the group.
60 card formats are my jam, but I thank the commander players for making the game I like cheaper. Keep selling that boring land you got from a booster pack to the front counter at the store for half it's value. I thank you for your service.
U mad bro?
Yes
Yeah I also miss the times when 60 card casual/standard/extended decks were the norm. Today you go to a LGS and everyone just plays Commander, which is fine, but is is sad to me that nobody plays their 60 card decks anymore, like for example a fair elf deck. Because of this, I am forced to build Commander decks myself and my 60-cards non-competitive decks became a little bit useless. A lot of those decks are very cool, that's why I also dislike Commander a bit.
For Commander, just build Tax and Stax and live off the tears and anger of your enemies. The less fun they have, the more I do. Nothing better than jamming a winter orb on the table and see 3 grown men REEEE :)
yeah but commander players will just cry if you play stax
What a warped view to have. It sounds like you're projecting a small number of negative experiences onto the whole community who plays by just another set of rules.
Sounds like you should be playing cEDH. Commander is not for everyone but lots of people enjoy it.
Cedh players atleast aren't toxic 3 year olds but Legacy is better
Okay, so play legacy then. Why insult people for enjoying something you don’t? I don’t understand the point of this post.
Because sometimes I want to play something different and whenever I destroy their lands they get mad
Nope, everyone hates it and only plays it out of spite.