[Off-Topic] Community Chat Thread

[toctheyounger]

"git gud" is appropriate. I wouldn't explicitly say that to someone, but I would maybe imply that there are choices they made that led them to their defeat. Indeed, the beauty to me of control is that it greatly rewards those who consistently make good decisions and greatly punishes those who don't. Due to the level of interaction a control deck runs, be it countermagic, removal, or discard, the decision trees become incredibly complex. Do you counter that draw spell? Do you bolt the bird? Do you Mind Twist on turn 4 for 4 (yes)? With so many variables, you're bound to make mistakes eventually, but because you theoretically know your deck better than your opponents know your deck (unless you're Dirk and are playing with toddlers that lack object permanence) you should theoretically make better decisions regarding what is or isn't a threat for you and can react accordingly.

My Erebos deck is in fact predicated on this idea, only in reverse. Yeah, I have my decision trees, but what the hell is the token player going to do about Tainted Aether until they draw enchantment removal? Oppression absolutely wrecks storm and spellslinger decks. Hope you've got mana rocks for Infernal Darkness. By forcing my opponents to make decision after decision, I increase the likelihood that they will make mistakes exponentially. Since it relies on proactive control rather than reactive, my deck's decision trees are comparatively simple. Poop out two or three disruptive enchantments or planeswalkers, draw a bunch of cards while the board is stalled, and activate Erebos to have a formidable blocker to hang out all while accumulating resources to inevitably drain the table out. The most difficult decision is often what to tutor for in a given situation, specifically whether or not to aggressively tutor for Cabal Coffers versus a control element. Meanwhile, my opponents are trying to figure out what to discard to Necrogen Mists or how to deal with Lethal Vapors without jumping on the grenade.

I think there's a fundamental similarity between my Erebos, Dirk's Phelddagrif, and I suspect almost all control decks in that they exploit the tragedy of the commons. Ostensibly, after the combo player, the control player is the most threatening player because of their inevitability, so it's in the best interest of the table to band together and rise as one and slay them. Because of the typical control deck's capability for retaliation, and because of a given deck's inability to truly answer the control player on its own which necessitates politicking with the other players (which most people suck at) it creates a situation where despite a clear common goal the individuals, all struggling and jockeying for their own interests, fail to work together and as a result lose.

This all sounds pretty on point to me. Control is kind of the puppet master, pulling strings enough to make life difficult for everyone else, and more importantly, difficult to interpret. The more successful this is, the more wiggle room you have to profit from that.

I have decks myself that run similarly to Erebos in terms of 'what do I do with all of this misery', Bruna being one and the other notable being Tayam, Luminous Enigma - that one is geared to cedh, but with like....a serious shoestring budget comparatively. They both run pieces that gum the board up without locking it completely, if for nothing else to give me space to get things rolling. Bruna needs it, being in mono white, and Tayam is just very good at keeping the board under wraps, without having to have too much to do with the stack. In my experience, I've found the best way to make control successful is to only do what you need to do. The moment the board locks down entirely you're the bad guy, your opponents have a common cause, and your days are numbered, whereas if you can give yourself a little bit of breathing space with minimal effort, you're going to fly under the radar and be able to put together a plan a lot more easily. It also leaves people guessing what you're up to, too - are you missing pieces to lock the board, do you have a wipe, what is he doing? And that just leads further down the road of decision paralysis or taking a wrong turn on the decision tree.

Funnily enough, I had a game rather pertinent to this on-topic off-topic discussion yesterday. One of my friends was oddly enamoured by Toxrill when he got printed, and finally jumped him on us via Cockatrice. This led to a no-punches-pulled gameplay experience, as when the Toxrill is out to shred your board then you've got to act. I was on Daxos and managed to Path him pretty quickly upon landing, which took the surprise Jeweled Lotus bump away with it. Toxrill made a surprise premature reappearance as a chain of rituals and a Crypt Ghast appeared out of nowhere, with my own Urborg being partially responsible, but I then chained a Doomwake Giant and Grasp of Fate to calm the mana production and take out the big bad again. This was admittedly a good draw for Daxos, as I also had omega bomb Skybind to work with by the time Toxrill landed a second time, and I ended up walking away with the win eventually. However, Toxrill's sheer grossness led to the gloves coming off and more interactivity happening than is typical within our group.

Our removal use is relatively restrained, unofficially reserved for big ticket bombs that steal games. It's almost deterministic what dies, and while that leads to its own interesting mini survival game where you're trying to play around that happening it can mean that interaction can be too little too late. This is particularly the case with ramp-and-draw goodstuff decks, as they are likely to set up very well for a rebuild even without the high-end haymakers coming out. Interaction density is a continuum, and killing everything on sight is not particularly fun, but it could be interesting to try to see if there's some less obvious spot where it's vulnerable and would get slowed down a bit.

As for proactive elements, I ran those in that same Daxos for a number of years. It turned out a bit close to "no fun allowed" on the interactivity slider and I've been having more fun with the deck since I took them out, as have my opponents. This is ultimately a social activity, and I agree that the best games are the ones where everyone gets to twirl their moustache a bit. I'm just starting to wonder if that table-wide twirling would be best accomplished by knocking people down a peg rather than just waiting for everyone to get their twirl on

This seems to play into my point above; a light touch is better. I haven't played Toxrill, so I don't really know how rough it is, but I think in most scenarios when it comes to removal there's a sweet spot where you've got enough room, eyes are not on you, and no one is quite at a sprint yet. If you can keep your opponents at or close to that sort of level they're constantly expending resources just to stay in the race, and that doesn't win games, whereas you, having delicately pulled the right strings and accruing the pieces you need are positioning yourself well to take the game out for a minimal outlay of your own resources. I think it's important to aim for this purely because no deck has the resources to answer every threat at the table, and it's a fool's errand to try. The more efficiently you can get yourself the breathing room you need, the more resource you have to throw at getting yourself to the finish line.

It seems like this is where control, midrange and stax are at their best, to me. A board lock isn't really a win, neither is making a prison in which nothing resolves, not to mention people mostly hate these scenarios. With a little delicacy and diplomacy, everyone has a bit of a mustache twirl and actually flex their piloting muscles, and that's where magic is most fun.

I do sort of agree with Goose regarding Thoracle lines, they don't inspire me. But I can't wait for the day I get to pop a Memory Jar with someone's Thoracle trigger on the stack, too. Each to their own, but I like an uphill battle to some degree and I like a bit of a grind in my games. I'd rather lose a close fight than cruise to a win with no contest whatsoever.

[TheGildedGoose]

This all sounds pretty on point to me. Control is kind of the puppet master, pulling strings enough to make life difficult for everyone else, and more importantly, difficult to interpret. The more successful this is, the more wiggle room you have to profit from that.

I have decks myself that run similarly to Erebos in terms of 'what do I do with all of this misery', Bruna being one and the other notable being Tayam, Luminous Enigma - that one is geared to cedh, but with like....a serious shoestring budget comparatively. They both run pieces that gum the board up without locking it completely, if for nothing else to give me space to get things rolling. Bruna needs it, being in mono white, and Tayam is just very good at keeping the board under wraps, without having to have too much to do with the stack. In my experience, I've found the best way to make control successful is to only do what you need to do. The moment the board locks down entirely you're the bad guy, your opponents have a common cause, and your days are numbered, whereas if you can give yourself a little bit of breathing space with minimal effort, you're going to fly under the radar and be able to put together a plan a lot more easily. It also leaves people guessing what you're up to, too - are you missing pieces to lock the board, do you have a wipe, what is he doing? And that just leads further down the road of decision paralysis or taking a wrong turn on the decision tree.

...

I do sort of agree with Goose regarding Thoracle lines, they don't inspire me. But I can't wait for the day I get to pop a Memory Jar with someone's Thoracle trigger on the stack, too. Each to their own, but I like an uphill battle to some degree and I like a bit of a grind in my games. I'd rather lose a close fight than cruise to a win with no contest whatsoever.

Absolutely agree with the part I underlined. It's vital to walk a fine line and exploit politics as a control player. If you blow up someone's Swarm Intelligence, for example, you not only build good will with the other player, but you can also tell the owner that they would've won otherwise. Indeed, one of my refrains during a game is, "You know what you did."

I liken Erebos to a deadly disease. By the time you realize what's happening, it's often too late. A single disruptive permanent is annoying, but manageable, and since I'm a treat to play with personality-wise I can generally politic my way into people ignoring it. The second one is when people get leery, but it usually comes shortly before or, ideally, after a board wipe, where there's not too much that they can do in the short term. All this time I've been developing my mana and sculpting my hand, usually inch by inch. This obviously puts me in a vastly more advantageous position than my opponents. When they're rudderless, I can usually go for a big mana kill with Torment of Hailfire or Exsanguinate by fishing up Bubbling Muck, Coffers, or Ol' Dirty Ghastard. To an outside observer, my victory was inevitable; to the other players, they ruminate on their mistakes (hint: always pressure my life total).

As for Oracle, well, for me it's mostly representative of fast and non-interactive combo decks. I wouldn't mind seeing it go, but the same can also be said for cheap combo enablers like Food Chain or Flash before it. I don't think Food Chain is a particularly problematic card in that it doesn't see much play, but on ideological grounds it doesn't do anything except combo off rather quickly and for that reason I think it should go. But that's just my vision for the format, and I expect many others disagree, so, here we are.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, kill the combo player first, because [expletive deleted] that guy.

EDIT: I start my new job today and I'm spending my morning poo posting on an obscure Magic: the Gathering forum. I should reexamine my life choices.

[kirkusjones]

@TheGildedGoose so you're telling me you're getting paid to post about Magic whilst you poop? Seems like a pretty good deal to me…

[materpillar]

I do sort of agree with Goose regarding Thoracle lines, they don't inspire me. But I can't wait for the day I get to pop a Memory Jar with someone's Thoracle trigger on the stack, too. Each to their own, but I like an uphill battle to some degree and I like a bit of a grind in my games. I'd rather lose a close fight than cruise to a win with no contest whatsoever.

I think the best response to Thoracle is Angel's Grace.

My favorite way to win EDH games is to manipulate everyone into killing everyone else so that the game falls to a 1v1 but manipulating the game in such a way that my last opponent is too weak to 1v1 me even though his deck is objectively stronger. As such I need enough removal/wraths to keep the stupidly explosive combo/pseudo-combo decks that will wipe the entire table in one go from doing their thing. Extra points if one or more people have had clear lethal on you but you persuade them not to kill you because they'll just immediately die to the stronger combo decks at the table. Putting actual, reasonable win-conditions in a deck is so trite. Anyone can cast Expropriate or Thassa's Oracle. I kill people with Chromium on the regular.

As such my decks tend to be more mid-range-ish than hard control. I need to have enough bite to actually win a 1v1 but I need to appear weak. Hard control decks tend to not appear particularly weak. I try to find lower power pods though, if all three of the other players are going for Oracle wins I'm usually in for a bad time.

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So I think for me the biggest takeaway for why I'm able to consistently win is an issue of situational awareness.

When I look at my win with Rise of the Dread Marn, vehicles wouldn't have played the gearhulk if he was aware of the face-up-in-the-middle-of-the-table dread marn...but he wasn't paying attention to it. I think the Creeping Tar Pit might have been something he wasn't aware of either...it's really hard to be fully transparent with lands since they're kinda just a huge pile. I'd played the tar pit a million turns before and it didn't matter until just then. I was pretty vocal about playing gavony township, KWW, and VotA since I knew I'd be using them right away.

But at the end of the day, I think most of the time that information tends to kinda go in one ear and out the other. A big part of the issue is that, because most of the time they're very passive, boards tend to get really big and complicated, so the ability they have to conceptualize the important elements dictating the shape of the game becomes overtaxed, causing them to play even more defensively since they don't really know what's going on.

Whenever I do things, it often seems to come as a surprise, even when it's on-board and I've been as clear as I can about what it does. Sometimes they seem to regard almost everything I do as a "gotcha", to the extent that sometimes they'll say "oh god..." when I just like...play some minor draw spell or something? They know I'm scary, but they don't necessarily know the when or why or how.

When they have removal, they'll often use it on subpar targets - for example, attempting to vindicate Garth when I had riptide up and a haste enabler in play. It's a common problem I've seen in weaker players that they'll fire off removal at the first thing that moves, but I think this is also compounded with not being able to correctly assess what threat I pose. They know I'm a good player and likely to win, so they'll fire hate at me early when I'm not really doing anything, but then late-game when I'm going in for the kill, they're focused on squabbles amongst themselves until it's way too late because they haven't reassessed.

As far as how to build decks that they'll be better equipped to fight against and maybe actually %$#% kill me on occasion, I think it might be ideal to focus on decks that generate more easily-grokkable board states? Lands can become somewhat opaque because important lands get buried among all the rest. I think Evelyn has been a relatively good fit, since she's mostly finding wins off their own cards and usually pretty slowly, she doesn't have any important lands or frankly hardly anything important in her whole deck, but somehow she's still undefeated. If I went 99 lands with a non-5c commander, that would obviously be a lot more limiting in terms of the number of important utility lands, but I am concerned I might end up just sitting there doing nothing all game, and it won't look like much of a contest.

Thoughts?

You just really need to build a non-optimized decklist. Stop optimizing inside of a parameter, basically any parameter you pick isn't going to be restrictive enough. You're too good at deckbuilding. Stop trying to optimize creating decks that can win. Optimize on what your opponents would find interesting to play against. It sounds like to me like you should build Tatyova, Benthic Druid with at most 5-6 Rampant Growth effects and no other ways to get extra lands. Throw in a pile of mediocre 3-5 cmc common draw spells like Divination and Foresee. Round the list out with a handful of crappy fight based removal spells (preferably sorcery speed) like Prey Upon and maybe two disenchants. It should be able to answer a threat every now and then but definitely not more than one threat every three turns or so. Then, fill out the list with 35 silly dumb beatsticks that cost <$1.00 each. Definitely don't have protection/hexproof and ideally don't really have evasion. Giant Adephage is basically perfect. Ideally the deck should just cast 1-2 random large durdle monster a turn and then you attack people with them. They shouldn't be particularly threatening or a massive clock individually. Maybe if people ignore you it'll build up into a murder ball but it'll be a really obvious and really easy to interact with murder ball. You shouldn't recover quickly from wrath spells, You should basically never cast more than 1-2 spells a turn, nothing the deck does should feel mana efficient.


That being said I mean I can give you some restrictions that'll cause you to lose, but they'll result in a decklist so awful you won't have any fun at all either.

Highlights include the A to Z challenge. Build decks where the name of every card in the deck that isn't a basic has to start with the same letter. Not going to be particularly successful since you'll still probably pubstomp with "A" and such but I guarantee you won't be able to win with some of the later stuff like X. Unless they can't beat Xanathar, Guild Kingpin helming Xathrid Gorgon, Xathrid Necromancer, Xathrid Slyblade, Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed, Xander's Pact and 94 basics. Because that's the best deck "X" has to offer.

Alternative, deck restriction. Build a deck. Any deck. Every time you lose increase the mana cost of every card in the deck by 1. Eventually you will lose.

Alternative deck idea. Build a deck using only cards you've never put into an EDH deck before. If you win, rebuild the deck with the same restriction. Eventually you will lose.

Also, you should probably blanket ban yourself from utility lands. Also, if you read a legendary card and think "huh, this card could probably do something" pick a different legendary creature.

[TheGildedGoose]

@TheGildedGoose so you're telling me you're getting paid to post about Magic whilst you poop? Seems like a pretty good deal to me…

Actually it was my morning movement at home. Currently I am just wasting company time.

It's great.

@materpillar You may as well ask water not to be wet. Dork and I share an unhealthy fascination with optimization.

[materpillar]

@TheGildedGoose so you're telling me you're getting paid to post about Magic whilst you poop? Seems like a pretty good deal to me…

Actually it was my morning movement at home. Currently I am just wasting company time.

It's great.

@materpillar You may as well ask water not to be wet. Dork and I share an unhealthy fascination with optimization.

I understand.. This just reminds me of the 3drinks "why does everyone hate me out first?" Followed by "I counter spell Cultivate, and I'm proud! My prefered play style is hard locking people out of casting spells." Well, that's why people hate you out first.

Dirk: "How do I create highly optimized murder machine that when piloted won't utterly murder these people in a highly optimized fashion?"
Wrong question here my friend. Wrong question.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

@TheGildedGoose so you're telling me you're getting paid to post about Magic whilst you poop? Seems like a pretty good deal to me…

Actually it was my morning movement at home. Currently I am just wasting company time.

It's great.

@materpillar You may as well ask water not to be wet. Dork and I share an unhealthy fascination with optimization.

Did you seriously just refer to Dirk as Dork? God, I hope that was intentional. It is simultaneously hilarious, supremely savage, and ballsy as hell.

I understand.. This just reminds me of the 3drinks "why does everyone hate me out first?" Followed by "I counter spell Cultivate, and I'm proud! My prefered play style is hard locking people out of casting spells." Well, that's why people hate you out first.

Ah, the great and sprawling saga of 3drinks vs the social contract. It's been a while since we got a new chapter in that story, but it's probably one of the strongest narrative through-lines from MTGS to MTGN. I dunno if it's concluded, but I hope not. Those conversations are always straight gasoline.

[TheGildedGoose]

Did you seriously just refer to Dirk as Dork? God, I hope that was intentional. It is simultaneously hilarious, supremely savage, and ballsy as hell.

I do what I want, where I want, when I want.

Ah, the great and sprawling saga of 3drinks vs the social contract. It's been a while since we got a new chapter in that story, but it's probably one of the strongest narrative through-lines from MTGS to MTGN. I dunno if it's concluded, but I hope not. Those conversations are always straight gasoline.

I've said it before, and I will inevitably say it again: the social contract isn't worth the paper it isn't written on.

[toctheyounger]

Absolutely agree with the part I underlined. It's vital to walk a fine line and exploit politics as a control player. If you blow up someone's Swarm Intelligence, for example, you not only build good will with the other player, but you can also tell the owner that they would've won otherwise. Indeed, one of my refrains during a game is, "You know what you did."

I liken Erebos to a deadly disease. By the time you realize what's happening, it's often too late. A single disruptive permanent is annoying, but manageable, and since I'm a treat to play with personality-wise I can generally politic my way into people ignoring it. The second one is when people get leery, but it usually comes shortly before or, ideally, after a board wipe, where there's not too much that they can do in the short term. All this time I've been developing my mana and sculpting my hand, usually inch by inch. This obviously puts me in a vastly more advantageous position than my opponents. When they're rudderless, I can usually go for a big mana kill with Torment of Hailfire or Exsanguinate by fishing up Bubbling Muck, Coffers, or Ol' Dirty Ghastard. To an outside observer, my victory was inevitable; to the other players, they ruminate on their mistakes (hint: always pressure my life total).

As for Oracle, well, for me it's mostly representative of fast and non-interactive combo decks. I wouldn't mind seeing it go, but the same can also be said for cheap combo enablers like Food Chain or Flash before it. I don't think Food Chain is a particularly problematic card in that it doesn't see much play, but on ideological grounds it doesn't do anything except combo off rather quickly and for that reason I think it should go. But that's just my vision for the format, and I expect many others disagree, so, here we are.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, kill the combo player first, because [expletive deleted] that guy.

EDIT: I start my new job today and I'm spending my morning poo posting on an obscure Magic: the Gathering forum. I should reexamine my life choices.

Those are solid life choices, nature calls but it's also important to do what you love. Grats on the new job by the way, I start a new one myself next week. Very much looking forward to a significantly smaller travel time and a more engaging role.

I'll be honest and say a lot of my control I can't really sneak under the radar. Partially because mono white is kind of notorious for doing nothing great or stax, but also because people are pretty trigger-happy when it comes to the stax witch-hunt. Everyone wants to point a finger without actually looking at what I'm achieving by playing these pieces. So often I'm the hero the table needs but doesn't want, or I just have to survive until it's a 1v1. Such is the life of a mono white control player I guess. You never can tell though, I've had games where someone jumped out of their skin The Crucible style for me playing Thalia, Heretic Cathar on the curve( big yikes), and on the other end I recently took a game down to 1v1 against a Razaketh, the Foulblooded with a single Cursed Totem that no one could get rid of. I felt bad that he'd done literally nothing the entire time and allowed him to get rid of it, at which point he went off, but I kinda felt like I'd won already anyway for taking the game that far, so I didn't mind letting him have it in the end. Even then, I fought him out for the win when I could've just kept the Totem in play and kept squeezing, so it felt like he earned the win and I learned more about my deck, which feels really, really good. We both walked away happy, which can't be said about the guy that griped about Thalia 2. Perspective is important and people tend to get really hung up on getting a W.

At any rate, I've been delving a little into the prevalent podcasts and youtube content regarding stax and control, and it seems like we're more or less on the money. Going all in on a board lock is generally not advised, if you want the win be delicate, politic to keep your pieces if you can, and hold the board back gently while advancing your plan. This seems to be the best advice at any given power level, be it cedh or lower on the spectrum.

As for the thoughts on Oracle's legality, my thoughts are that there's always going to be a best card in the format. If it's not Oracle, something else will come to the fore. The card I think is most viable to leave the format is Dockside Extortionist, but even then I'm not convinced it's really needed. It is very game-warping and enables a ton of loops and combos, but it is very dependent on your opponents establishing a board state, so it gets a bit of wiggle room in terms of game to game variance. I wouldn't be sad to see it go, but I don't think it will. I just think it needs either printing into the ground or to get gone, it can't stay at it's current price. It's literally a must include for every deck in red, there's almost no reason not to play it. But I'm also fine with the format staying the way it is, it's healthy at virtually every power level.

I think the best response to Thoracle is Angel's Grace.

My favorite way to win EDH games is to manipulate everyone into killing everyone else so that the game falls to a 1v1 but manipulating the game in such a way that my last opponent is too weak to 1v1 me even though his deck is objectively stronger. As such I need enough removal/wraths to keep the stupidly explosive combo/pseudo-combo decks that will wipe the entire table in one go from doing their thing. Extra points if one or more people have had clear lethal on you but you persuade them not to kill you because they'll just immediately die to the stronger combo decks at the table. Putting actual, reasonable win-conditions in a deck is so trite. Anyone can cast Expropriate or Thassa's Oracle. I kill people with Chromium on the regular.

As such my decks tend to be more mid-range-ish than hard control. I need to have enough bite to actually win a 1v1 but I need to appear weak. Hard control decks tend to not appear particularly weak. I try to find lower power pods though, if all three of the other players are going for Oracle wins I'm usually in for a bad time.

Grace is a very good card. I liken it to Teferi's Protection because its obvious usage is similar, despite Protection covering more scenarios. That said my preference is for Grace because it can sweep the rug out from your opponents, not just with Oracle wins, but a variety of others too.

I enjoy the same sort of wins myself. I'm very prone to building midrange too, it's what I've always gravitated to, so even if there's no overt control there's no guarantee that I have a strong path towards an obvious win con. I do tend to bake in a combo in one way or another these days because games need to end and my spare time is very finite as a parent of a young child, but I don't build combo shells, they're always with the intent to be otherwise synergistic pieces anyway. But yeah, I also very much enjoy the 'gotcha' moment. A pet card of mine that's managed it many a time is Rakdos Charm. Bleeding the board out once AvengerHoof goes to combat is always a feel good. It's pretty board state dependent, but I feel like a lot of decks could use just one or two 'pull in case of emergency' cards just to get that endorphin rush of seeing a combo line fall apart like a soggy biscuit in the goldfish player's hand. It's always a delight and a beautiful display of hubris and I love it so much.

[toctheyounger]

I'm now a L3 forum spammer. There's 6 of us sitewide. Not sure if that's something to be proud of or not.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I've said it before, and I will inevitably say it again: the social contract isn't worth the paper it isn't written on.

It's easy to say that, but to some degree we are all beholden to collective expectations. You can cast armageddon (for example) only so many times before the gen pop catches wise and either your win% tanks or you can't find a game in all the salt you've sown. C'est la vie.

[TheGildedGoose]

I've said it before, and I will inevitably say it again: the social contract isn't worth the paper it isn't written on.

It's easy to say that, but to some degree we are all beholden to collective expectations. You can cast armageddon (for example) only so many times before the gen pop catches wise and either your win% tanks or you can't find a game in all the salt you've sown. C'est la vie.

I used to be anti-pre game discussion, finding it silly and annoying that it has to be done when that's kind of the banlist's job, but I've since changed my mind. It is imperative to have a localized understanding of what type of game you want, be it for that single game or a persistent group. No amount of banned cards is going to account for chair tribal or mono-white (sorry toc). With so many moving parts in Magic, it's inevitable that there will exist vast power level disparities between decks. Thus, the importance of the pre game huddle.

Unfortunately, the discourse surrounding EDH is largely a dumpster fire. 75%? Optimized? Jank? It's all vague and ambiguously defined to the point it renders power level discussion meaningless.

As for the social contract, well, a) Rousseau sucks and b) one man's trash is another man's treasure. There's no accounting for every perspective of what is or isn't appropriate. Armageddon my face, but God help you if you Animate Dead a very particular dragon.

[BeneTleilax]

Unfortunately, the discourse surrounding EDH is largely a dumpster fire. 75%? Optimized? Jank? It's all vague and ambiguously defined to the point it renders power level discussion meaningless.

Does it need to be meaningful? It only matters for the people you're actually sitting down to play with; someone on another continent casting Smokestack has never made me sacrifice a permanent. If you're playing with cockatrice randos, that's a raw deal because y'all may have no common understanding, but even if you have no local EDH community, or you work a night shift, Discord exists, this site exist, hell, Cockatrice chat exists, you can find or make a virtual playgroup that can build shared definitions and understandings.

The one place that the broader EDH debates really matter is on bans, and those only happen when something has gone wrong across local groups. The disorganized crosstalk is a better diagnostic for that that than it is a consensus mechanism for the format at large. All the guys generalizing their weirdly specific experiences with their playgroup still give you data points on their playgroups, and it almost doesn't matter why a card is making games unfun, only that it is making a sufficient number of games unfun.

[DirkGently]

@Jemolk literally Phelddagrif.

@materpillar So you start off saying "there's no limitations that will make you weak enough" and then slide into "but also these limitations will definitely make you lose" xD

I mean, as you demonstrated yourself, with the right limitations it's fully possible to make a deck that essentially cannot win. So we're just trying to figure out what the limitations need to be.

I don't really like Tatyova, so I hope you didn't spend too long on that pitch. But I will say that my "build only from the most recent set" experiments certainly result in me using some terrible cards. Here's a few of the cards I'm running in my (undefeated) evelyn deck:

• incriminate
• body dropper
• security bypass
• paragon of modernity
• case the joint
• halo scarab
• midnight assassin
• call in a professional
• suspicious bookcase
• gilded pinions
• psychic pickpocket
• demon's due
• ominous parcel

So I see your Giant Adephage and raise you an Ominous Parcel. Sad thing is, that card is really good in my deck since my fixing is so incredibly awful. I only get 6 nonbasics in a 3c deck...

I think most letters in the A-Z challenge would be pretty easy tbh. Though one resistance I have to a lot of challenges is that I probably don't have all the best cards for a particular letter or whatever, because they've been superseded by cards that start with other letters. How do you search for cards that start with a particular letter, anyway?

Not sure how you mean about the cost increase. Like replace every card with another one that costs 1 more? That gets extreme pretty fast, I'd just end up playing the high-mv-tribal deck pretty quickly. Or do you mean, like, errata every card to cost 1 more? That's even more brutal lol. But also then the first game is sort of a forgone conclusion. I don't think errata'ing my cards is something most people would be down with, though I suppose I could just secretly require I leave up extra mana for no reason every time.

I have ~10000 cards. I think I've played maybe 1/3 of them. It'd probably take a pretty long time to start getting into the serious dreck, especially considering there's dumb decks like Unesh, Criosphinx Sovereign where I just play all the trash sphinx's but they play great within that particular deck so I'm not really losing out. But the biggest downside would be the bookkeeping, jesus christ. I can't even imagine how I'd keep track of that sensibly.

But I loooove utility lands I think the real problem with 99 lands is that garth is just too freaking powerful. When you have nothing to do except Garth, Garth does a lot of work. With another commander, I think suckitude can be accomplished.

I feel like 3drinks is usually kinda resistant to wanting to modify his playstyle, though. I've been trying pretty outrageously hard to lower my power level here. I mean, calling evelyn an "optimized murder machine" seems a taaaaaaad harsh.

@TheGildedGoose *eyes narrow*

But true.

To the optimization and the namecalling.

@TheAmericanSpirit lol what do you think I'm going to do to him that would make it ballsy? xD

@toctheyounger I'm coming for you. Give it another couple months.

[toctheyounger]

@toctheyounger I'm coming for you. Give it another couple months.

I look forward to it! Maybe by then I'll have some spare time to actually, yknow, play in person. New job in a week, much closer to home, pretty good chance. Hit me up whenever.

[Yatsufusa]

Unfortunately, the discourse surrounding EDH is largely a dumpster fire. 75%? Optimized? Jank? It's all vague and ambiguously defined to the point it renders power level discussion meaningless.

Does it need to be meaningful? It only matters for the people you're actually sitting down to play with; someone on another continent casting Smokestack has never made me sacrifice a permanent. If you're playing with cockatrice randos, that's a raw deal because y'all may have no common understanding, but even if you have no local EDH community, or you work a night shift, Discord exists, this site exist, hell, Cockatrice chat exists, you can find or make a virtual playgroup that can build shared definitions and understandings.

The one place that the broader EDH debates really matter is on bans, and those only happen when something has gone wrong across local groups. The disorganized crosstalk is a better diagnostic for that that than it is a consensus mechanism for the format at large. All the guys generalizing their weirdly specific experiences with their playgroup still give you data points on their playgroups, and it almost doesn't matter why a card is making games unfun, only that it is making a sufficient number of games unfun.

This.

Rule 0 is technically one those "weird" things that actually work pretty well in a localized setting, but literally has no application on a global scale. That is precisely the point of the rule, it if it was applicable on a global scale, then why isn't it an actual numbered rule? "Unfortunately" (I'm saying this in the context with rule establishment, not to the game itself), the rise of randomized online games makes the lines blurred for some people.

On a personal level, it must feel like you turned the world into your random LGSes you visit and play with strangers, so Rule 0 should be applicable right? No, because ultimately you draw from a global playerbase instead of a "local" one and Rule 0 cannot cover for that. It looks like some folks make it "work", but that's because they maintain a "local playerbase" (actually closed group, since geography doesn't matter anymore) small enough for them to utilize Rule 0.

The change in technology to play from your home (or somewhere else with internet connection) instead of the LGS is independent from the playerbase you play with. Yes, the same technology lets you play with people you will otherwise never play with in an LGS, but it's not bundled together, you can also use the same technology just with the same playerbase/ecosystem as your physical LGS. Of course, this space is actually pretty un-utilized because a lot of folks go "then, might as well go the LGS if it's the same group people then" and honestly, as someone who doesn't play online, I'm guilty of that myself.

Then there's the issue of trying to form the "online LGS experience". Those who successfully form those were mostly likely already acquainted from an actual LGS and are the few that found the other advantages of playing online (no need to leave the house, etc) to be superior to the other problems it brings (in-game "theft" effects are a pain-in-the-arse to manage), so even amongst actual LGS groups, only a minority fully transition online with few problems. Trying to do that from scratch is another few tiers of difficulty, anonymous people online tend to be... less polite, so to speak and trying to corral them is like trying to fish in the ocean using equipment used in fish farms rather than ocean gear. Rule 0 is basically almost impossible to enforce to form a new group in this case.

Same goes for actual rule-making. The RC's best source of information is probably hearing out all the rabble that comes from the various "fish farms" across the globe, rather than looking at the pacific ocean and wonder if a Neon-Ink Cyclonic Rift that costs 0 to overload exists at the bottom of the Marianna Trench. The people who get salty are either those that live predominantly in the ocean, think their fish-farm is the only one of the world, or think the RC only listens to its own Fish Farm in Sheldon's home (double points for hypocrisy if they accuse the RC of the latter and rant on their own experiences the exact same way later).

Is the RC perfect? No, of course not. They can't possibly discover every fish-farm out there and even with the ones the have they might not always draw the "right" conclusion, but some people will never feel validated until they feel like the RC listen to them (only). At the same time, the RC could do a bit of work and sort of acknowledge the ocean-dwellers do exists and don't act completely surprised when they bring fish-farm fish into the ocean (Yes I will never let the "Sheldon goes to GP and gets surprised by how complete random matchups actually go" event fade from memory, because that reaction really did display some ignorance that I find critical) and then run into sharks. There are "shark farms" in the world (and I'm not even saying cEDH groups, just powered-EDH groups) and it would do the RC some good to pay attention that disseminates from the disorganized crosstalks of farms of that level.

Technically, the RC has already done that, with the introduction of the CAG, but it was admittedly sort of a double-edge sword of it's own, although mostly because the RC admittedly isn't stellar at marketing (and to be bluntly honest, when you're in charge of the most popular casual format, you sorta need some), so it allowed some hatemongers to just run with (false) stories to make it look like the RC only expanded their outlook to another larger, but still isolated groups of "popular social media users" or other personalities who already had connections with the RC. I'm sure reality is that the RC is relying on the CAGs as the eyes over more "fish farms" that otherwise the RC will never look over, but if that fact wasn't clearly presented/reminded each time, the double-edge social knockback on the RC I would personally analyzed as "you did it to yourself".

[TheAmericanSpirit]

@DirkGently I'm not sure tbh, but the last person here I'm going to casually denigrate with my typos is Dirk "Retaliation" Gently. I'd sooner start a land war in Asia.

[DirkGently]

@toctheyounger I'm coming for you. Give it another couple months.

I look forward to it! Maybe by then I'll have some spare time to actually, yknow, play in person. New job in a week, much closer to home, pretty good chance. Hit me up whenever.

Lol I just meant I'm close to 3K posts. If you wanna meet me halfway at hobbymaster after a prerelease this weekend though, I'm down.

[toctheyounger]

@toctheyounger I'm coming for you. Give it another couple months.

I look forward to it! Maybe by then I'll have some spare time to actually, yknow, play in person. New job in a week, much closer to home, pretty good chance. Hit me up whenever.

Lol I just meant I'm close to 3K posts. If you wanna meet me halfway at hobbymaster after a prerelease this weekend though, I'm down.

Ah, gotcha. This weekend will be tough but some day it'll happen. At any rate, neither of us will ever catch @pokken. Aside from Feyd he is the forum's lifeblood of posting.

[DirkGently]

Ah, gotcha. This weekend will be tough but some day it'll happen. At any rate, neither of us will ever catch @pokken. Aside from Feyd he is the forum's lifeblood of posting.

I mean, it really just depends on how many times people bring up banned as a commander. Every time my post count goes up by a hundred.

[toctheyounger]

Ah, gotcha. This weekend will be tough but some day it'll happen. At any rate, neither of us will ever catch @pokken. Aside from Feyd he is the forum's lifeblood of posting.

I mean, it really just depends on how many times people bring up banned as a commander. Every time my post count goes up by a hundred.

Yeah I tend to go all in on the 'should cedh splinter off' discussions. My Varina thread has got me up there too. I suspect you'll overtake me eventually, I'm not as active here as I've been in the past and with my upcoming job that's likely to decrease again.

[Dragonlover]

Not even at 400, which when you consider that I've been here since the start, have multiple decklists (including a Primer) and read the forum every day is woeful really. But then, none of those decks generate much chat, and I'm a habitual lurker at the best of times.

Not that post count matters, but it's always interesting to think about the dynamics of a forum and its definitely part of that.

Dragonlover

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Showing up is 90% of success, as they say.

[DirkGently]

Showing up is 90% of success, as they say.

And nothing says success like a gold trophy for spamming on a forum for a card game on a distant corner of the internet.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

@DirkGently The collective they never specified success at what, but see, now we know.

Edit: inapt adjective