Threat assessment: The player or the deck or both?

[Hermes_]

When you're playing what do you base your threat assessment on? Is it the player,the player's deck or a combo of both?

[motleyslayer]

when I play commander, it depends on the group I play with. The main group I played with at my main local store before Covid knew I tended to have more powerful decks than them so they'd go after me more to varying degrees depending on the deck I was playing. My Sharuum usually got me gone first in the group, Kess usually had me watched. I haven't played at that store in a while, so I wouldn't know how they'd feel towards other decks

The guys I've been playing with lately don't usually go after me more since our decks are pretty equal

[WizardMN]

When I play, I generally pay attention to the deck moreso than the player (with one exception). First, I don't want to be "that guy" who just guns for someone because of what they might have done in a previous game. Especially if they changed decks.

I think going after a single player isn't really threat assessment. Every game should be treated as its own (for the most part). If one player is at 3 lands and not doing anything while someone else is at 7 and committing to the board, and you go after the guy with 3 lands, this is normally a very bad play,

The exception in my case is one player who insists on bringing infinite combos to the table. The last deck was one they built for cEDH but wanted to "try out" first. That has gotten grief from the rest of us so he changed it up...to Stax. So, I will more often go after him irrespective of the board state. More so than anyone else anyway.

[toctheyounger]

Short answer, and a long answer: it depends.

When I see a commander that has a clear and dangerous route to victory, say for example Aminatou, the Fateshifter I'll totally have eyes fixed on that deck. Even then, though, targeting that person down doesn't get you very far, it's more a case of keeping an eye on them until they make their move and hold an answer for that point. A sense of false security goes a long way. Or, in more classical terms, pride comes before the fall.

It really does depend on the pilot in almost any other circumstance though. If the decks are ones I know don't have easy wins baked in I'm assessing the plays people make and going from there.

[Mookie]

I base my threat assessment on a mix of several factors.

• The player's current board state - if a person has a ton of mana available or some scary permanents, I'm going to be more concerned than if they don't have anything of note.
• The person's deck - if they're playing a powerful general or I know the deck to be more competitive, I'll assess them as a bigger threat. Decks playing more colors tend to also draw more hate, as do decks with higher budgets.
• The player's card flow - if they have tutored recently, drawn a bunch of cards, or just done a lot of card manipulation, that will make them scarier than a player that is hellbent and topdecking. This also tends to be harder to track, and is easier to forget about. Still, all other factors even, I'll attack whichever opponent has the most cards in hand.

....I generally don't take the exact person piloting a deck into account directly, but I will take it into account indirectly by assuming that stronger players have built stronger decks. On the other hand, I'll generally be less concerned if someone says they are a new player or are playing a precon.

I'll strongly disagree with any sort of static threat assessment based on the player or commander - you have to take the current board state and hands into account. It's fine to target a person a bit more if they won the last game or two, but I would never do that at the start of a play session.

[materpillar]

I'll strongly disagree with any sort of static threat assessment based on the player or commander - you have to take the current board state and hands into account. It's fine to target a person a bit more if they won the last game or two, but I would never do that at the start of a play session.

I don't actually agree with this. I don't think you should target players more if they won the last game. I don't think that's good threat assessment.

More over, I do "target" some players more at the beginning of a play session. Specifically, I've met some people that like winning the game with huge game-state invalidating spells like Expropriate, Insurrection or Torment of Hailfire. They've randomly won enough games completely independent of the boardstate that I have to play assuming they'll cast whatever flavor of this card is in their deck. Often that makes me overlook massively impressive boardstates because they're not as threatening as the bomb I know this person is actively working towards.

[DirkGently]

Not that these numbers really make anything, but:

70% current visible game state (boards, hand size, graves, etc)
25% what I know or surmise about the non-visible cards in those decks
5% the strength of the player playing the deck.

That's a bit oversimplifying, though. A lot of my estimation of a deck might be dictated by the person playing it and if I know they play powerful decks. And depending on what I know/surmise about the deck, I might give a lot of credence to the non-visible cards (i.e. if I suspect it's a combo deck) or I might give relatively little credence to them (i.e. if it's a pretty face-up aggro deck).

If the player is good, it's probably going to come out in the game state at some point. If I know they're a good player but they're clearly getting their ass beat, then I'm not really going to give a lot of weight to their strengths as a player without the means to leverage that skill. I also generally assume my opponents are going to make the right play, even though that's obviously not always the case. In an otherwise equal situation I might go after the player I think is best at the game, but it's rarely more than a tiebreaker. I might pay more attention to them on the assumption they're more likely to be clever about what they're doing, but I'm not going to just throw hate at them without having a good reason to suspect that's the right play.

[schweinefett]

I kinda think in this order most of the time:

1. What I know of the deck
2. The game state
3. The player piloting it.

My playgroup has been toning it up somewhat recently, so just knowing what the deck is like plays a lot in my threat assessment. It's usually the deck that limits what the pilot can pull off, which is why I focus on that a bit. If my opponent is on a blue deck, and leaves UU open, maybe theres a counterspell. If my opponent is playing mono-white, the chances of a counter is somewhat slimmer.

It's all a bit of guesswork, really. I don't think there really is any definitive method to figure it out exactly. But Ive seen the same number of decks some number of times now, so I know when there's trouble brewing, and when the coast is clear.

I think the scariest is when we sit with someone we're not familiar with, whips out a deck with say a stereotypically cEDH power general, and the words "it's not THAT deck". Cuz at that point, no one has any idea how to assess the board state properly.

[Sinis]

Eh. IME, if the decks are roughly within the same universe, the players who better in a technical sense tend to win, so in the absence of other factors, I tend to target them. However, there's usually other factors present; even the best players can't wriggle out of a powerful board state if they don't have any resources.

In the early game, though, I tend to try and keep every life total even (albeit, lower), just so I can potentially push players out of the game if their board develops into something to be concerned about.

[materpillar]

Not that these numbers really make anything, but:

70% current visible game state (boards, hand size, graves, etc)
25% what I know or surmise about the non-visible cards in those decks
5% the strength of the player playing the deck.

I feel like a huge portion of "what I know or surmise about the non-visible cards in those decks" is based upon the person piloting the deck. Obviously, this isn't the case for your literal first game against someone.

For example, if you, me and 3drinks sit down in a 4-man pod and we each reveal Pramikon, Sky Rampart as our commander. The 4th player is going to surmise rather different things about the non-visible cards in those decks.


I just randomly generated a commander. A four player pod with 3 Pramikon, Sky Ramparts sounds awwwwful. xD
@3drinks. This is way off topic but I'm super curious, how would you go about building a Pramikon, Sky Rampart deck? It seems very not your style and I'm fascinated by the question.

[DirkGently]

Not that these numbers really make anything, but:

70% current visible game state (boards, hand size, graves, etc)
25% what I know or surmise about the non-visible cards in those decks
5% the strength of the player playing the deck.

I feel like a huge portion of "what I know or surmise about the non-visible cards in those decks" is based upon the person piloting the deck. Obviously, this isn't the case for your literal first game against someone.

The very next thing I said...

That's a bit oversimplifying, though. A lot of my estimation of a deck might be dictated by the person playing it and if I know they play powerful decks.

Unless you're quibbling over the difference between "huge portion" and "a lot".

Tbh, though, now that I've thought a bit harder about it, I think it's actually a relatively small percentage once the game has gotten past the first couple turns. Sure, as we're sitting down, if I know one of the players tends to play powerful decks or is a particularly skilled player, I'd take that into account as I'm sizing up the table, but that's before actual threat-assessment in any meaningful sense. Once the game has actually started, if the strong player is playing Soraya the Falconer, that's going to count for a lot more than any possible information I have about that player going in.

Every time someone plays a card, the more information I have about that deck - what does their budget seem to be? Are they playing any cards that might indicate they're trying to set up a combo? What does their plan seem to be? Etc.

If someone is known for playing powerful, non-budget decks, but now they're playing a bunch of guildgates in a 3c deck, then that initial information I had about the player is presumably pretty worthless in light of this new information. And if they usually play weaker budgety decks, but they've just played gaea's cradle, then again, that information is pretty worthless. Granted, in most cases, the information you went in with is validated, but I think it's a mistake to use that pattern to justify thinking that your initial information was what was valuable. The validation is everything, initial information is worth precious little without evidence to back it up.

While the player might give me an indication of whether they're likely to be playing combos, MLD, and other frowned-upon things, I'm still usually going to be paying a lot more attention to the cards than the player when deciding what to actually do in the game. If it's a known combo player, but right now they're playing zombie tribal, then I'm probably assuming they're not playing combos unless I see something that might indicate otherwise.

Honestly Pramikon isn't something that I'd ever consider building either, although I could see someone thinking it might be my cup of tea from a distance.

[3drinks]

@3drinks. This is way off topic but I'm super curious, how would you go about building a Pramikon, Sky Rampart deck? It seems very not your style and I'm fascinated by the question.

Typically, my jeskai builds start from Zedruu with the object to be utilizing her as a positive Phyrexian arena with a finisher of Sunforger beats (Zedruu is a four turn clock this way, and the forger allows me to protect with ease thanks to all the multicolour counterspells I can pull out).

Though I've been known to rock Numot when I'm feeling particularly wildfirey. 😉

[Candlemane]

This is a hard question to answer now, but when I could go out into the world it would be dependent on what commander and who was playing it.

In my main group we have a variety of playstyles, but I can also count on one to be more competitive, one to be filled to the brim with value engines, and one to play very competently even with a budget deck and come out on top (and one to almost always be mana screwed and one to have blood vendettas). This all skews a bit since our games are/were 6 players on average, because two 3 player pods suck, so there is often time to build out and gaze down the table at any number of threats.

Then it comes down to who is playing what. The Value Engine player loves Sisay and Golos, and loves to keep us from interacting, BUT the budget player also has a Sisay and Golos, which are much more on the "fair" side of the spectrum being Shrines/Enchantress and a land matters deck that used to be Genju of the Realms. (We also have 2 Kenrith decks, but I use Niv Reborn because hipster :D ).

Then there are the politics from most of the other players. Two of them are a couple, and two others in addition play together before the usual host and I sit down with them for a game, so grudges may carry over along with the politics of the couple. Then sometimes people come from the LGS the others played at to join us. The threat level goes down on someone if there ends up being a feud between one and another player (this is usually over someone dropping a certain card rather than personal).

You honestly never know what will happen. The challenge is usually playing around it all. It's great though :D

TLDR: It all depends, and it's complicated (and that is just one of the metas I play/ed in).

[3drinks]

When you're playing what do you base your threat assessment on? Is it the player,the player's deck or a combo of both?

1) do they have island|2ed, partners, or Golos, Tireless Pilgrim? If no, proceed to step 2.
2) are they playing dumb kingmaker garbage decks like group hug or chaos? If no proceed to step 3. Lookin at you, you stupid purple hippo.............
3) are they playing a known douchebag commander that wins if not kept off the board? I.e. Zur, Derevi, Edric, Brago. If no, proceed to step 4.
4) did they run an efficient, hard to interact with, two card combo to win last time? If no, proceed to step 5.
5) play the game and assess as you go.

I don't typically get past step one, and if I do, I don't get past step 2.

[ISBPathfinder]

If you give a tuned deck to someone who doesn't understand what its supposed to do or is newer to magic then it won't perform the same. I tend to threat assess given a combination of things involving current boardstate, player, and what their deck is.

[DirkGently]

Lookin at you, you stupid purple hippo.............

Um, how dare you?

[3drinks]

Lookin at you, you stupid purple hippo.............

Um, how dare you?

Lmaooooo #GotEm

That dang hippo. Should take it out back and have a bbq. Should be more than enough grilled hippo to go around.....👀👀

[DirkGently]

I come from a long, proud line of winged hippos, I'll have you know.

Lmaooooo #GotEm

That dang hippo. Should take it out back and have a bbq. Should be more than enough grilled hippo to go around.....👀👀

In response, DirkGently returns to its owner's hand.

Someone who isn't 3drinks can draw a card.

[Gwathnar]

I try not to single out a known troublesome Commander (unless I know the player and what they usually build).
I treat every game like a new one and wait for a board state to build before I start reacting.