Community Best Practices

[Sheldon]

Anthony and I are going to do an upcoming episode of Commander Community about community practices. The tagline of the show is "everything beyond the tabletop," and we know what we do. We'd like to talk about some of the things that you do. What are your things that make your community fun? What are you actively doing to contribute to the mood and culture of your local environment (such as your home or LGS in pre-COVID times and your online environment now)? Do you have special foods you serve or bring? Communication techniques? Inside/long-running jokes? Organizational habits? We'd like to share your best stuff that's not part of the game, but is part of YOUR game.

[Treamayne]

I haven't had an in-person playgroup in a decade, but I've been working to make MTGO more accessible for people who are willing to try it out, but don't have the money to invest up front without know if they will like it. I created a pool of cards to give to people wanting to try MTGO on the cheap. If they want to join my clan, they can (which gives them access to clan chat and the ability to see if friends are online, in a game, etc.) Even if they don't join the clan I will generally give them a few hundred cards, some generals and staples so they can build a basic deck or two to play with. I make myself available for questions and help them learn the interface if they need it. Otherwise, I just enable them to poke around, use the deck editor, play a game or three and decide for themselves if they want to invest any additional time/money in the client.

Post-Covid:
@bobthefunny Put this awesome resource together

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I find this a bit difficult to answer in totality because so many of the things my playgroup does to balance out social issues are largely small detail work. A few I can think of off the top of my head:

1. Throwing free cards at new players. My friends can be jerks sometimes (can't we all though?) but generosity has never been in short supply. All of us have large collections, so when we make a new friend, we get their decks up to par really quickly so we don't blow them out of the water in future encounters.

2. Answering questions honestly and fairly when asked. I've found it isn't always obvious to new people what might be their best options on a complicated board. So when someone asks "so what's/who's the biggest threat right now?", we'll all chime in about the terrors or lack thereof our decks are capable of. It also removes the salt of having your stuff removed if you can acknowledge one's own threat level.

3. Sticking up for the little guy. So I'll admit, I hang out with a rough bunch. Combative, competitive, but fundamentally good people, inclined to dogpiles, pecking parties, and %$#% contests by nature. One of the things I've personally tried to mitigate the possible nastiness involves taking up the defense of a dogpile casualty if I feel like the smacktalk is verging on ruining their game time. I've found that it's easier to combat meanness with an ally than endure it alone. Furthermore, it's a lot harder to pick on someone when someone else is actively calling you on it, much like verbal flanking. Lots of sentences start with "To be fair though..." in such exchanges and end with equivalencies clearly drawn.

That's all I can think of. I'm sure we all do more little things than that, and I'm sure I made us all look like asshats, but really we do try. Occasionally things get out of hand but ultimately we do our best to remain good friends and bury our taunts alongside our hatchets at the end of the day. It's the best we imperfect few of Durham can do, and by god, we shall continue.

[toctheyounger]

I don't know if it's fun or bettering the experience, but every time I'm up against my wife's Gishath, Sun's Avatar deck, she starts chanting 'Dino SAUR! Dino SAUR!' and getting herself hyped for some stomps.

It's her version of the scene in Jurassic Park with the cup of water, and it's hilarious.

Otherwise in terms of actual gameplay I'll do everything I can to stop a pubstomp or give the table a heads up that one is coming. I like a fair shake at a win myself and that cuts both ways for everyone at the table.

[bobthefunny]

We tend to have a small group at my store, and we know each other fairly well.

We tend to throw birthday parties whenever a birthday rolls around, Pizza, Soda, etc. We've also occasionally just done a potluck style night, or sometimes someone will just bring in a bunch of food to share for the heck of it. The store doesn't mind, so long as we clean up after ourselves. One player in our group buys people a pack of their choice (from among the normal priced packs!) for their birthday as well. Oddly enough, he seems to get a lot of packs back on his birthday as well! :D

Commander is the main player base for my store now, so I've become the store's TO for events, and I am allowed to hand out some prize support on Commander night. We tend to keep it to a flat prize structure, primarily for attendance, that way we don't encourage any meta gaming or power spikes.

I also tend to give out a set of 'holiday cards' every year these days. It started when I saw a cool alter of a frost titan altered to be holding a Christmas tree. I felt that Frost Titan was underrepresented in EDH, and it looked like a fun thing to do, so I made a bunch of them to hand out. Subsequent years saw Sun Titan, Kiyomaro, First to Stand, and Sword of the Animist (then a $1 card). Usually the overall $ value didn't really stretch too high. Later on I changed it up a bit, since not everyone plays all the colors equally, I thought it was a bit off to make all the same card for everyone. I decided to try out a 'gift exchange' approach. I made two cards of each color, and then when people joined in that night, I would hand them one randomly. The rules were that you had to play with the card in the Command zone, and if you eliminated someone, you could trade your card for theirs "white elephant" style. I would flip over three randomly, and if a player eliminated me, they could choose any of the three. Usually, at the end of the night, a bunch of trades happened anyways if players wanted specific cards rather badly. I have a different idea for this year, but it's going to take a lot more preparation, so we'll have to see how that goes.

When my brother had his son, he obviously dissappeared for a while. He eventually returned and tried out having his son in a play crib at the end of the table to see if it would work, with the caveat that he might not be able to keep it up. Well, that worked out fine, and the next caveat was that he might have to stop showing up once his son outgrew the crib. His son outgrew the crib, but was able to be placated with toy cars, and everyone in the playgroup was pretty happy to take turns keeping him occupied while he watched their games as well. My nephew is now 5, and has his own Commander deck, which was built during the pandemic. He hasn't played it yet in the full group, but he likes the theme of "Vehicles" and likes to pilot a Sram deck. His other favorite deck is Zetalpa. Apparently big flying indestructible dinosaurs are big and fun!

One running joke in our group is "Just give him one more turn, what's the worst that could happen?!" This stems back to a game during my kokusho testing era, when I was playing Chainer, Dementia Master. I had been hammered all game, had no non-land permanents, no cards in hand, and was under 10 life. One player was considering eliminating me, but wasn't sure about leaving themselves with less defense overall. Someone said the iconic phrase, and a lucky topdeck later, in a single turn I managed to recover my board, my life total to an absurd degree, and nearly killed all three remaining players. I might have been able to if I had made some slightly different choices. Since my board and life total were so high, it took all three of them working together to kill me, with one player making my brother's commander - Sliver Queen unblockable, and the other player giving it double strike and putting a +1 counter on it, while my brother gave it the final +3/+3 for the Commander damage kill. This has been more than several years now, and I can safely say that I can count on one hand the number of extra turns I have been given, on account of that night. :p

Due the the prevalence of during a certain time that my brother, another regular member, and I would regularly run Wing Shards in every White deck, people checking to see if was up was more frequent than checking if blue players had up. It became a considerable in-joke about attacking into untapped white mana. It also became a prevalent bluff when someone started to declare attackers by giving them a mini-heart attack by asking "So, how many spells have you cast this turn?" Doubly fun if you didn't actually have the mana up, and triply fun if you weren't playing white, and still made them flinch!

A good while back a kid had played with us with a clearly new deck, primarily built out of draft chaff. A bunch of us managed to flip through trade binders, cards set aside for upgrades, or in some cases even from decks since we knew we had spares at home to replace them. I had happened to have an extra Command Tower, Burnished Hart, and Scavenger Grounds on hand, while some other people contributed a Sol Ring, Solemn Simulacrum, and some big Angels and Dragons to help improve the deck. He may have also received a lot of deckbuilding advice, some of which may have been contradictory as certain people's building styles clashed a bit... During this pandemic, I've become interested in Budget building again, as well as what cards would be good for new players to have, so I've decided to stock up on a bunch of these staples while they're cheap. Between gifts to my playgroup, or helping out new players, the idea is to have something on hand to be able to help improve their game experience.