Proxies in Commander

Do you like proxies in commander?

Yes
26
31%
No
22
26%
Depends if they are used reasonably or not
37
44%
 
Total votes: 85

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BeneTleilax
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Post by BeneTleilax » 4 years ago

Yeah, your card pool should only be restricted by the social contract of your table and your own creativity. I got into this game when fetches were still reasonable, and never saw cause to put ABUR duals in anything, so I don't proxy unless I'm waiting for something to ship. I want to see proxies at my table. I want to play against people who are experimenting and playing their best vision of their decks. If somebody's gonna be an uncreative pubstomper with proxies, they'd still be an uncreative pubstomper with the actual cards. I don't see how uncreative pubstompers with money are any better than uncreative pubstompers without it. I'm not interested in sacrificing the variety of my tables for what's at best a crutch for a flaky social contract.

The one clause I have is fair trades. If someone's got the real cardboard for whatever I'm hypothetically proxying in my deck, and offers me a fair trade for something I've got in my binder, I should make the trade. This keeps cards circulating, and keeps the spirit of Magic collecting as I see it: a Trading Card Game, not a Buying-Hundreds-of-Dollars-of-Cardboard-from-Online-Resellers Card Game.

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tstorm823
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Post by tstorm823 » 4 years ago

Kavu Enthusiast wrote:
4 years ago
Right now people without a *ton* of disposable income do not get to experience the whole game of magic. They get to experience far less of the game than those who can spend thousands of dollars per deck.

I want to play against you and your ideas, not your wallet'.
I'm not generally an opponent of proxies, I've never refused a game against proxies, and I've only suggested against using them to people with an obvious and problematic lack of deckbuilding restraint, but these parts of your post are backwards.

If one person starts a normal new game of Pokemon, and another person has a modded file with a perfect team of lvl 100s that just auto-win the whole game, it's the second person who is missing out on half the experience, not the first. Building a collection and trying to compete within those means is a part of learning the game and growing as a Magic player. Being the underdog is a formative experience in this game.

Some people, particularly adults entering the game late, may prefer to skip all that and try and be competitive out the gate, and those people can proxy if they want to, but you should not be encouraging that so that new players fit your desired mold of opponent. You got to experience the game through that slow build up, and you probably loved it or you wouldn't still be playing. Let other people have that experience, especially in a casual format. If you want to try and even the playing ground with players lacking your collection, you should be the one to build below your means.
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Atraxian
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Post by Atraxian » 4 years ago

tstorm823 wrote:
4 years ago
If one person starts a normal new game of Pokemon, and another person has a modded file with a perfect team of lvl 100s that just auto-win the whole game, it's the second person who is missing out on half the experience, not the first. Building a collection and trying to compete within those means is a part of learning the game and growing as a Magic player. Being the underdog is a formative experience in this game.
Borrowing from your similitude, proxying cards is like using pkhex to make a pokemon team.
It might not be 100% legit, but if you want to try it out it is much more convenient than going through the motions of breeding for the berfect combination of IV, nature, gender, egg-moves, tutor moves, transfer-only moves.
Not everyone has the time to spend on that, with the risk of having that time investment wasted because your team sucks.

As using pkhex to make a perfect competitive team bypasses the time investment, using proxies bypasses the money investment.

Also, you need experience to pilot a team (you can get an uber team steamrolled by a never-used team if you don't know what you are doing), same way as in MtG you need experience to pilot a deck.

I think that having an idea of what you want to achieve, make it with what you have and proxying the rest is a much more formative experience than making up an half-assed, inconsistent and downright weak deck with what you have or investing a large sum of money for something that might not even work at all.
It allows you to evaluate how the deck works, how it can be improved, how you can adapt it to your personal tastes and may be even how to go for cheaper options and how it can impact gameplay and if you are ok with that before going for the purchase or going for repeated miserable games at the play table.
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Post by if4ko » 4 years ago

House rules at my LGS (non-WPN) are cards you own but are in another deck, are on order, and ABUR duals. Very limited exceptions for cards you plan on buying.

Personally, I don't care about proxying expensive cards as long as they're within reason. I want to build Mishra, Artificer Prodigy to go with my Urza deck, but I can't because one of the cards I need is $500 and unfun for the rest of the table. There's a world of difference between proxying something like a Eureka and freaking Nether Void because the latter helps break parity with your deck.

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Post by BeneTleilax » 4 years ago

Rate of build is wildly inconsistent. Maybe that's just my experience, but it's not game veterans who run the ABUR lands and the Lion's Eye Diamonds. At my LGS, there's 20-year-olds who've got money, or rather whose parents have money, and 20-year-olds who don't. Both cohorts, on average, probably got started sometime around Scars. The veterans, the guys who've been playing since the 90's, they're more likely to play an Alpha Shivan Dragon than an Alpha Volcanic Island. Tune your deck based on how it plays and what your table wants, not based on how much you can spend.
if4ko wrote:
4 years ago
There's a world of difference between proxying something like a Eureka and freaking Nether Void because the latter helps break parity with your deck.
See, that's using it as crutch for a weak social contract. There's no card I'm fine with someone playing that I'm not fine with them proxying. If you want pubstomp my table with the Nether Void you bought, most tables I play at are no more lenient than if you want to do so with the Nether Void you proxied. Proxying at least saves you the money would take to find that out. cEDH needs that even more than Casual. I don't play it, but I'd reckon a lot of the antipathy towards it from the Casual crowd comes from a sense of elitism in cEDH, and the fact that people who might otherwise be interested, but are priced out, have no stake in the format. If we got widescale acceptance of proxies in the cEDH format, I think it could see a boom, and bring more to the table during discussions of matters like the banlist.

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Post by tstorm823 » 4 years ago

Atraxian wrote:
4 years ago
Also, you need experience to pilot a team (you can get an uber team steamrolled by a never-used team if you don't know what you are doing), same way as in MtG you need experience to pilot a deck.
But like, you're straight into talking about competitive pokemon, and I'm talking about the person who's just challenging friends with their in-game team who doesn't know what uber means. Competitive multiplayer is like the post-post-post game of Pokemon, and at that point people should just be doing what they want.

Working through the challenge of designed game limitations is part of the fun, skipping straight to a sandbox is skipping over that part.
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Post by Mimicvat » 4 years ago

I feel proxies are fine. I also strongly dislike playing against heavy money decks and cEDH style stuff. These are not one and the same thing, and I find it interesting that so many people ITT seem to treat them as such. if you have alpha duals and mana drain I don't want to play against it proxy or not.

Proxies let me play lots of different things. Proxies let me play and keep my money for stuff like rent or saving. Proxies encourage jank decks because no I don't want to buy terrible cards that will likely have no future outside of that deck. I have a core of no-proxy "keepsies" decks that I typically own for years at a time, and a pile of jankier decks that are typically brimming with them or even 100% proxied.

No proxies encourages building along the more established and powerful colours and archetypes. Tired of facing super combo, or if that isn't game in your group, UG ramptown? So am I. No proxies discourages people from experimenting with new cards or new decks. No proxies encourages people to run busted legacy tutors etc and say "well I bought it so deal with it"

Yeah, things aren't as black and white as those statements suggest, and varieties of "proxy in this case but not that" blur the lines, but heck the internet isn't a place for nuance its a place for hot takes and absolutes.
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Atraxian
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Post by Atraxian » 4 years ago

tstorm823 wrote:
4 years ago
Atraxian wrote:
4 years ago
Also, you need experience to pilot a team (you can get an uber team steamrolled by a never-used team if you don't know what you are doing), same way as in MtG you need experience to pilot a deck.
But like, you're straight into talking about competitive pokemon, and I'm talking about the person who's just challenging friends with their in-game team who doesn't know what uber means. Competitive multiplayer is like the post-post-post game of Pokemon, and at that point people should just be doing what they want.

Working through the challenge of designed game limitations is part of the fun, skipping straight to a sandbox is skipping over that part.
Then adapting the similitude, supposing you want to use a regular ninetales in your in-game team (because you like that pokemon regarledd of how much it sucks), but can't because you can't catch one in the game (eg. Sun and Moon) and you can't transfer it from other games because you don't want to pay for the pokemon bank and/or pokemon home cashgrab and on the global trading system there are only assholes trading one for a lvl100 shiny arceus.
Proxying one with pkhex is the easiest and fastest way to get one for your own enjoyment.

Some might like the limitations and playing with those, others might just thing: "screw it, I'm playing my own way".
Fun is different for everyone.

Translating it to MtG, and my case to be specific, I love angels and would love to play a 5 color angels tribal.
I have almost all the cards I would want to play with, but I'm lacking a suitable commander.
I might want to build with what I have and use either a 5 color sliver, an Ur-Dragon or Karona as my commander because I have nothign else, or I could proxy a Morophon, the Boundless and see how it works out.
Otherwise I'll have to limit my deck to 2 or 3 colors only (admittedly much easier to build around, but not what I want to do).

Not to mention the manabase.
Without a suitable manabase you are either going to play only mono-color or a subpar deck with exponentially growing inconsistency with every color you add.
Imagine wanting to play an Atraxa, Praetors' Voice +1/+1 counters deck (the cheapest version you can do with that commander) but you can't because you don't have the manabase to support it without going color screwed 3 times out of 4, so that you have to scale down to Vorel of the Hull Clade in order to make a deck with a chance of working.
That's not what you want to play and not what you want to build around and having to just settle for something different or outright worse is a feel bad scenario every time you bring that deck to the table.
Like, I want to play with a Ninetales, but I have to settle for a Macargo instead.
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Post by tstorm823 » 4 years ago

Atraxian wrote:
4 years ago
Proxying one with pkhex is the easiest and fastest way to get one for your own enjoyment.
Easy and fast aren't fun. Games are entertainment by way of challenge and competition. The joy of winning is success in the face of adversity. Easy and fast are the antithesis of a good game experience.
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Post by Atraxian » 4 years ago

tstorm823 wrote:
4 years ago
Atraxian wrote:
4 years ago
Proxying one with pkhex is the easiest and fastest way to get one for your own enjoyment.
Easy and fast aren't fun. Games are entertainment by way of challenge and competition. The joy of winning is success in the face of adversity. Easy and fast are the antithesis of a good game experience.
Depends on what you are looking for in the game.
Your suggestion is that someone has to grind their way for hours, days, months or even years just to get something that might not even be worth the time and monetary investment.
Some may find enjoyment in the grind, while others might find more enjoyment in having access to the deveoper's console and all the commands.
Especially after the second or third playthrough.

If it is the first time I go for the gaming experience as intended by the developer, try to unlock the unlockable and achievements on my own, ecc... But when it is the third or fourth or fifth playthrough, having access to cheats makes things much more interesting (at least for me).

In MtG terms, with your first deck, go ahead and experiment ad much as you want with what you have, then improve little by little if that's what you like. If that's what you like, do so with the rest of your decks.
Obviously at your own risk.
Supposing you want to try the previously mentioned Atraxa +1/+1 deck.
You buy the commander (because without Atraxa it is not an Atraxa deck) and build it with what you have available.
- lose most of the games, reflect on what to improve and buy the improvements.
- they don't work = money wasted. they work, nice, return to step 1 until you are ok
- you like the deck? Great for you. You don't like the deck? You wasted time and money.

But if after the first deck you don't feel like losing every game until you buy a new card, just to lose all the games -1, rince and repeat until you feel your deck is decent, then proxying is a fine solution to save tedium, time and money on botched attempts.
Following the same steps
You proxy the commander (because without Atraxa it is not an Atraxa deck) and build it with what you have available then proxy the rest.
- lose most of the games, reflect on how to improve your game.
- you like the deck? Great for you. You don't like the deck? You wasted minimal money and time
- think about your budget, how to adapt the deck to it and try it
- are you ok? Yed: good, buy the cards. No: start from the step above.

EDIT: this said, on the magic table, in high school, with my friends, I always tried to bring decks made with the cards I owned, even if they were subpar or downright horrible (a white-black reanimator deck missing most of the reanimator staples to fill my graveyard like entomb or buried alive at the time when Fifth Dawn was the newest set wasn't much high in power level and consistency).
While my friends had differen numbers of proxied cards per deck. It wasn't a problem for me as in that way they were able to experiment and change the deck on the fly without having to spend money we didn't have.
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Post by CrazyPierre » 4 years ago

My philosophy on this hasn't really changes whether I have had a large collection or a smaller one (current). People should play with what they have, and we'll adjust our decks to that. As an example, prior to the illness, we had a person with the pre-con Ur-Dragon deck, my Jasmine Boreal jank, a Saheeli Rai and Meren (the Golgari one).
We just played and stuff. I think the Meren player had a Haunted Crossroads proxied, it was w/e. My friend Mike Rahl proxies for his decks, which tend to be more cEDH, but the cards are always in the mail.
I'd prefer not playing against full-bling proxies though, if possible. Proxying a deck for testing is fine, for the most part.

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