When it it Okay to Unleash the Hounds?

[Sinis]

It's around turn 8 that I feel like anyone who is going to meaningfully participate in the game already has.

[Airi]

Any point after turn 5 is fair game imo. If no one had answers, no one had answers. It happens some times. Usually that means games actually end on turn 8-12, people have to actually start using answers for things to wrap up.

[Kemev]

I'm with the folks who said 45 minutes to an hour.

The number of turns varies wildly... if everyone's on the ramp-into-battlecruiser plan, the table can get through a lot of turns of "land, Rampant Growth, pass (I'll finish searching and shuffling on the next person's turn)" pretty quickly. The game might take 45 minutes, but it might not end before turn 15.

If everyone's on the fast, complicated combo deck plan, and each early turn is, "fetch land, play 3 mana rocks, tutor, play some counterspells," then that 45 minute game might only cover 7 turns.

[Dunharrow]

I don't get this question... If a game ends in the first 6 turns I think it stinks.... but that doesn't mean that if I drew really well and can clear the table on turn 5 that I would not 'release the hounds'.

To me, how the game ends is more important than when the game ends. Turn 14 topdecking a tooth and nail to win on an empty board is not fun. It is also not fun on turn 3, on turn 5, on turn 7.... really, never fun.

I know that Krenko will try to win by turn 7 or 8 or else they will run out of gas. If Krenko wins on turn 6 I do not feel like it was a bad game.

[Pengutim]

If you can threaten to take the game, you should. If you Christmasland a T1 hand, show it off and win. If its T5, win. As long as everyone else has the capacity to either threaten in the same time period or has answers, then its fun.
I like casual to cedh and if I play a 5/10 with other 5/10s I expect T10ish. If I am running 10/10 with a table of like, then I expect T3 to be critical... but one of the most fun games I've played was a cEDH game that took 2 hours and we canned 3 dramatic scepter combos with interaction.
What I find super UNFUN is when someone sandbags because they could win but want to let people play their decks. Or because the shop has rules that they have to wait til turn 10. Games are meant for fun, but I find it makes it less fun knowing someone is self-handicapping. Just win and if it was too fast, change to a less tuned deck.

[FoxOfWar]

I like M:TG to play out at sealed deck speed. I wanna see libraries getting perilously short. It's best when players are responding to each other, lots of attacking&blocking, fog, countering, bounce/kill spells etc. but that's no longer the reality of the format - people play giant threats and spells which unsubtly destroy entire orders of permanents, and someone starts doing something which is too good to beat when in my mind the game has just begun. feel homeless in magic as a result, anyone wanna play Tarpan casual with me? =P

My sentiments exactly.

Then again, I love my durdleballs of doom that Might One Day Win Too, so I am biased. But the back-and-forth is what makes a game, not the race to the top.

I can't really give a turn number, since I pay so little attention to which turn of a game it even is in my games. But games that go on longer without a clear leader/winner are the more fun ones.

[jturn314]

I'm in the camp of if I have it I'm going for it, and I expect you to do the same, and I expect you to try to stop me.

I want games where people set up for a few turns, then start playing base layer threats, then start jockeying for the win. If it's turn eight and you're just playing your fifth land to drop a Gilded Lotus, I'm sorry, but you're too late to the show. If I play an Extraplanar Lens on turn three and by turn six you haven't destroyed it and let me untap with >12 mana to spend, you're asking for me to end the game with an Enter the Infinite, Primal Surge, Exsanguinate, etc. In the same vein, if I go for that win and you disrupt me, AWESOME!! Great job, I'm moving on to plan b and the game goes on. I WANT more than anything for you to have the answer and then try to make your move once I've spent my resources and you broke it up.

People need to, in general, play better ramp and play more interaction. Every color has access to ramp and removal in their own ways. If you're not playing them, its really hard for you to win the game. I'm constantly tinkering my decks to reduce CMC and remove cards that don't feel like they're doing enough or get stuck in my hand too often. I adjust "power level" of my decks by way of type of land/rocks and whether or not I include tutors. In decks I want to keep closer to a 6 or so, I'll put more basic/tapped lands, a Commander's Sphere instead of a Sol Ring, and no tutors. My 8/9 decks will have all the off color fetches and no tapped lands, all the <2cmc rocks, and all pertinent tutors.

I don't know what turn I would say it's ok to go for it. If you're allowed the resources for long enough to find your win, you should be winning. If you're using that 10 mana you untapped with to play a Deep-Sea Kraken instead of an Omniscience, then you aren't really trying to win.

***All of this is very much subject to the rule 0 chat. If someone specifically says they're on a strict budget and can't afford anything >3$ or a precon, I get it, I'll play a slower deck too or make non-optimal plays to make fun for everyone. But if you say your deck is a 6 or better, which is most people, then you better come to win the game.

@[mention]Sheldon[/mention]: For the longest time I have felt that, even though I am very much NOT a cEDH player, the RC and I were never on the same page when it comes to expectations from a game. Most people in my playgroups felt the same way. But after reading your game log article on SCG this week I really feel that a lot of the negativity you guys get is through translation. While a couple of the cards you guys played would probably never see any of my decks, it was nowhere near the durdle "all fun no competition" fest I was expecting. The way you guys talk about "EDH is for fun" sometimes really makes it sound like you're advocating for less interaction and fewer actually good cards to be played. That's not really what I saw in your game log though, as you all made counter plays and destroyed things and such. I don't really know what I'm trying to get at, just portraying an observation.

[cryogen]

Having played with them as well, it most definitely isn't a durdlefest playing against them.

[CubJay]

Always depends on the table. If you've got Triumph in your deck and you can knock everyone out, go ahead. Then if there were feel-bads that you stomped people, at least it didn't take forever to get there. You can quickly replace it with Overrun or something, shuffle up, and go again with a more meta-appropriate deck.

[3drinks]

Depends what I'm playing. If I'm OG Kaalia, games have to end fast before I've just lost any chances of winning.

In a more conventional control deck, if I can play to t15, I'm virtually unstoppable now.

In your average pickup game, you just want everyone to have a moment where they feel like they "could have won".

[RxPhantom]

Try to win if you're ready to win. I understand the feeling of not wanting to steamroll the table too early, but deliberately handicapping yourself isn't fun, and I wouldn't want to win because another player was holding back.

[toctheyounger]

In your average pickup game, you just want everyone to have a moment where they feel like they "could have won".

This is a pretty reasonable catch all phrase for a game everyone enjoys, I find. As long as everyone got to have a go at shooting their shot, usually they're all happy.

[JqlGirl]

In your average pickup game, you just want everyone to have a moment where they feel like they "could have won".

This is a pretty reasonable catch all phrase for a game everyone enjoys, I find. As long as everyone got to have a go at shooting their shot, usually they're all happy.

I would say it's still a good game if one player doesn't get their chance because a savvy opponent saw what they were trying to do and stopped it before it could happen. I think it's more the possibility of "if you didn't have that removal spell" rather than "I tried to do X, but it didn't work."

[Eyecut]

Ten turns for me, or past the 1 hour mark. I have limited time per week for EDH similar to benjameenbear so I enjoy shorter games with lots of back and forth swings and interaction, and sometimes have to concede in the middle of the game if it takes too long.

[toctheyounger]

In your average pickup game, you just want everyone to have a moment where they feel like they "could have won".

This is a pretty reasonable catch all phrase for a game everyone enjoys, I find. As long as everyone got to have a go at shooting their shot, usually they're all happy.

I would say it's still a good game if one player doesn't get their chance because a savvy opponent saw what they were trying to do and stopped it before it could happen. I think it's more the possibility of "if you didn't have that removal spell" rather than "I tried to do X, but it didn't work."

Oh yeah, totally. Those are more or less in the same bracket to me.

[HoffOccultist]

[mention]Sheldon[/mention], this is a great question--but one that's really hard to pinpoint on a macro scale (I imagine), because at all ends of the format (for me at least) game "speed" is less important than the content and context of the game.

What stands out to me is the interaction in the game. For instance, a cEDH game can end very quickly and still be highly interactive (it just happens on the stack instead of the red zone, for instance). Typically most cEDH games are highly interactive, regardless of when they end, which is part of the draw of it for me. And, of course, games can take much longer as well to increase that period of interactive play--it's why a number of cEDH content producers talk about the "critical turn" of cEDH being turn 3 (be able to threaten/prevent/interact with a win on/by that turn) despite a huge proportion of cEDH games going much longer than that.

At lower power levels I look for the same. Usually most games are interactive enough that no one feels too bad if they end around turns 5-10, though they sometimes take longer. And sometimes people just have the win, and I'd rather they go for it than sandbag--if the game ends, then we can just shuffle up and play again, no hard feelings.

Coming from the standpoint of enjoying tuned lists, the worst for me is when games end up taking inordinately long because all the interaction gets used up, and then everyone's just slowing drawing off the top. Games that go on for hours because the only way people are getting there is with chip shots from mana dorks have been, in my experience, some of the least enjoyable times I've had playing EDH.

[Pengutim]

I'm in the camp of if I have it I'm going for it, and I expect you to do the same, and I expect you to try to stop me...

...People need to, in general, play better ramp and play more interaction. Every color has access to ramp and removal in their own ways. If you're not playing them, its really hard for you to win the game.

This.

My pet phrase for edh is "Pack answers or pack up and go home having lost." Even in less tuned decks run spot removal. If you hate the games turning into a race to combo then leave mana open and threaten answers. If you are sick of being interrupted in your path to winning, run interaction. And this is from a Rakdos player, there are more answers than counterspells!

[Amalek0]

[mention]Sheldon[/mention] I don't play a lot of commander--I'm generally judging events, and the nights where I can make it out to play are usually legacy or modern. From my perspective, I don't have a strong investment in any one "speed" of edh because my shop has everything from casual "artist" tribal to top-tier CEDH. The people I tend to play with (because of schedule alignment) are the CEDH crowd, and my full-power 100% build of chain-veil teferi isn't competitive or fast enough to do better than maybe play spoiler to one or two other players in the pod ( I maybe win half of my "fair share" of games).

That doesn't mean the games aren't fun for me--because the fun is in the gameplay, not necessarily who wins. When everyone is playing at the extreme "gloves off" level, there's still a mix of combo, control, and full stax decks, and even if the game is over in 3-4 turns, generally at least 3/4 of the pod got to interact and do meaningful things; I've played the same CVT list with the "50%" deck crowd, and the games have been some of the most unsatisfactory games of magic for everyone involved because the stax pieces and interaction from CVT don't really disrupt decks at that power level, and many of the games seem to devolve into "someone sweeps the board-->whoever topdecks a threat next wins the game" because everyone seems intent on "doing their own thing" and ignoring their opponents, just like in modern.

To me, the format is interesting when either EVERYONE at the table is playing at a 95%+ build, in which case you "unleash the hounds" ASAP, or when EVERYONE is playing at that 75% range, where, again, you "unleash the hounds" ASAP because the decks are powerful, consistent, do their thing, and have a cohesive gameplan; because they pack substantial broad interaction to be able to play at a variety of power levels, the games naturally last more than 3-4 turns, but players going for it ASAP could lead to anywhere from turn 5/6 kills due to just value birthing pod lines, for example, or turn 15+ wins because haymakers trade back and forth.

It has nothing to do with the length of the game in turns, it has everything to do with the quality of interactivity and gameplay. That happens when decks play at reasonable powerlevels or at relatively balanced powerlevels, and the turns fall where they may.

[Maluko]

For me, an enjoyable Commander should last between 10 and 15 turns. More than that and players start getting tired and losing focus; less than that and you may feel like your deck did not have enough time to show off its strategy.

There are exceptions to this, of course. I've had some laughs losing earlier than turn 10 because the table was failing miserably at stopping the aggressive player from winning. Likewise, I've had intense games that lasted very long because there was always back and forth interaction between players. It all depends on the circumstances and the emotions those games elicit in you. But generally, if I were to give a time estimate for the most enjoyable games I've ever had, I would say they lasted between 10-15 turns.

[motleyslayer]

I'll usually try and end a game if it's been going on longer than an hour. I'm more concerned with people having fun rather than winning so I don't try too hard to win though, so I won't go for the win unless the game goes on for over an hour

[bobthefunny]

The journey is more important than the destination for me.

An by that I mean that I've played games that have been an hour, but already felt like a slogfest, but I've played 2hr+ games that still felt fresh and interesting. I've played games where I was essentially dead turn 2, but still had fun trying to make the most of it, and games where at turn 20+ it had gone on too long, to another game that lasted well over 30 turns, but there was always still a hand in the ring.

Because of that, I don't like to give a hard turn count or a duration, because there's always exceptions - but by and large usually the best games tend to be around an hour long, though there have been positive and negative experiences on both sides of that mark.

Generally though, the biggest disappointments have been games that perhaps started to get a bit long, but were still interesting - only to abruptly end by a single play that no one could interact with. Torment of Hailfire has been the current bogeyman of that type, but the occasional combo or Craterhoof can have that same effect at times.

[ISBPathfinder]

My preference is for a game to go 10-15 turns. I have decks that are faster than that as do my opponents but I feel like there is a decent back and forth at that point. I would say an ideal game of commander runs something like an 1 - 1.5 hours.

I would generally say that anything that ends in seven or less turns is not a great outcome.

[Legend]

on what turn do you think it's reasonable to end a game?

11

[darrenhabib]

Turn 1 is fine. You just get to shuffle up and play again.

[braden]

I think for me it's entirely dependent on what the boardstate is like. If everyone has 6 mana and they're setting up value engines on turn 2, I don't mind winning on turn 2. If it's turn 8 and everybody has only been ramping, I feel a bit bad about going for the win so I might wait a bit.

In cEDH I feel bad if I win on turn 1 before someone gets to play, but generally people just laugh and shuffle up for another game. The new mulligan has definitely made winning on turn 1 more annoying since we mulligan much more often.