[Off-Topic] Community Chat Thread

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Like many here, online play has not been a great experience for me. At first, I was enthralled by building entire edh decks for 4-5 tix on mtgo. Then I realized how toxic, dull, and distant online edh feels and gave up after about a month.

IMHO, edh is an in-person format only if you want the full effect with all the toppings and trimmings (which you should, you filthy antisocialite). MTGO, etc are good for limited and vintage and that's about it.

[pokken]

Like many here, online play has not been a great experience for me. At first, I was enthralled by building entire edh decks for 4-5 tix on mtgo. Then I realized how toxic, dull, and distant online edh feels and gave up after about a month.

IMHO, edh is an in-person format only if you want the full effect with all the toppings and trimmings (which you should, you filthy antisocialite). MTGO, etc are good for limited and vintage and that's about it.

My favorite thing about magic remains people. And if the people suck I'm not interested. Learned that fast online.

[Guardman]

I agree that people are important. Especially for EDH. For example, while a lot of people I like from the old shop go to the new shop by me, there are also a lot of new people that are just annoying to play with. Not bad people mind you, just annoying in ways that I hate playing against them and it has really put a damper on my enthusiasm to go over and play there. For example, there is one guy who insists on putting a die on creatures to denote pump effects. He usually plays a lot of Glorious Anthem type cards and insists that he puts dice on his creatures to track the pump. Then when he puts +1/+1 counters on creatures we finally got him to start using a second die to track that instead of the same, but it is very annoying and confusing to play against, but he refuses to change. And since the store likes to pair people up at random for EDH, it isn't like you can just say you don't want to play against someone.

A separate serious question - Why the hell does a Periodontists think its a good idea to have a giant screw in their logo? That is the last thing I would want people to see before walking in.

[kirkusjones]

I agree that people are important. Especially for EDH. For example, while a lot of people I like from the old shop go to the new shop by me, there are also a lot of new people that are just annoying to play with. Not bad people mind you, just annoying in ways that I hate playing against them and it has really put a damper on my enthusiasm to go over and play there. For example, there is one guy who insists on putting a die on creatures to denote pump effects. He usually plays a lot of Glorious Anthem type cards and insists that he puts dice on his creatures to track the pump. Then when he puts +1/+1 counters on creatures we finally got him to start using a second die to track that instead of the same, but it is very annoying and confusing to play against, but he refuses to change. And since the store likes to pair people up at random for EDH, it isn't like you can just say you don't want to play against someone.

A separate serious question - Why the hell does a Periodontists think its a good idea to have a giant screw in their logo? That is the last thing I would want people to see before walking in.

Sounds like bad graphic design/marketing to me. "Wattley Periodontal: Where Everyone Gets Screwed/Drilled/insert double entendre here"

[Lifeless]

All of ya'll who have to play with randoms have my respect and sympathy. I would rather play Eggs the rest of my life than go back to playing mean randos with wacky personal definitions of what EDH should and shouldn't be.

[DirkGently]

For example, there is one guy who insists on putting a die on creatures to denote pump effects.

With my current group, and at LGSs in the past, people use dice to track the current power of their creature, base included. So an Almighty Brushwagg with its pump activated, 2 +1/+1 counters, Holy Strength, Nightmare Lash with 3 swamps, and a Spear of Heliod on the board would have a dice with 11 on it. How much of that is +1/+1 counters, if someone plays Solidarity of Heroes? Did they remember to bump it up when they played that last swamp? How much does it go down at eot? How do you track toughness? Who the %$#% knows.

Luckily I've mostly convinced my playgroup to cut that %$#% out.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

And since the store likes to pair people up at random for EDH, it isn't like you can just say you don't want to play against someone.

Whoa, no way I'd put up with that. If we're playing for prizes, sure, I'll play against anyone. But there's no chance in hell I'm going to let a T.O. dictate my casual magic time. I'll make new friends when and if I feel like it, tyvm.

[Guardman]

And since the store likes to pair people up at random for EDH, it isn't like you can just say you don't want to play against someone.

Whoa, no way I'd put up with that. If we're playing for prizes, sure, I'll play against anyone. But there's no chance in hell I'm going to let a T.O. dictate my casual magic time. I'll make new friends when and if I feel like it, tyvm.

I guess I should clarify, on most nights you can play anyone you want, the problem is finding people who brought EDH decks (or want to play EDH). On EDH night (Wednesday), the store makes the groups due to the fact there can be anywhere for ten to twenty people.

[TheGildedGoose]

Awkwardly standing around with my arms crossed and offering color commentary is my time-honored variation of putting my quarter on the arcade machine.

[DirkGently]

Whoa, no way I'd put up with that. If we're playing for prizes, sure, I'll play against anyone. But there's no chance in hell I'm going to let a T.O. dictate my casual magic time. I'll make new friends when and if I feel like it, tyvm.

Personally I prefer having more organized play. Otherwise, as I'm often the new guy who doesn't know anybody, it can be easy to get left out. Especially when groups get really sniffy about keeping to strictly 4-person pods, and/or came with the people they planned to play against all evening. I've had instances where I ended up sitting around for an hour or more waiting for a game because nobody wanted to "make new friends". Screw that.

Organized play does have downsides, though, like being forced to abort a game because pods are getting redistributed, and being a lot more likely to cost money and/or have some asinine league rules.

[pokken]

I just walk around saying hey do you need a fourth or want a game. The Boomhauer method but with nerds.

Or I'll set up my play mat and get my deck out if there's no open pods.

[TheGildedGoose]

Or I'll set up my play mat and get my deck out if there's no open pods.

Ah yes, the "Khajiit Has Wares" gambit.

[DirkGently]

@pokken Of course I do those things. There was one particular place that tended to get going really early (like 3-4), and people would show up in groups of 4 with no plans to play with anyone else. If you show up once things have gotten going, it was achingly hard to get a pod, especially if you were #17 and everyone else is podded into 4s. And then the outside doors closed at 6 so then there's nobody new coming in and you're pretty much SOL. I had at least a couple times that I'd just leave rather than spending all evening begging strangers to let me into their exclusionary insular "community".

EDIT: granted, that was an outlier, most places aren't terrible to find a game even if you end up waiting a little bit. But it doesn't take a lot of bad experiences to make me appreciate someplace where you don't have to worry about it.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Personally I prefer having more organized play. Otherwise, as I'm often the new guy who doesn't know anybody, it can be easy to get left out.

.
Showing up is 90% of success, as they say. After all, there's gotta be some drawback to being a globetrotting Bond-esque fellow like yourself. We natives have home field advantage.

Especially when groups get really sniffy about keeping to strictly 4-person pods,

I hate 5+ player games myself, so I wouldn't say that's sniffy, just sane.
Edit: Breaking 6 into 2 threes is always fine though imo.

and/or came with the people they planned to play against all evening. I've had instances where I ended up sitting around for an hour or more waiting for a game because nobody wanted to "make new friends". Screw that.

As someone who organizes a weekly edh carpool, EDH night is one of the only times I can regularly see some of those friends due to life and logistics. I'm not saying I never play with randos (they're nice to fill out gaps to get to 4) or that I never have wandered alone looking for a game with hat in hand. I am saying that if I'm going to commit the gas, time, and money to hang out with my friends, that's exactly what I will do. I don't feel that's unfair or unreasonable.

Organized play does have downsides, though, like being forced to abort a game because pods are getting redistributed, and being a lot more likely to cost money and/or have some asinine league rules.

True in every place I've encountered it.

[DirkGently]

@TheAmericanSpirit Sorry, don't think I can give you absolution on this one. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you need to go out of your way to include new people - ideally someone will have a pod of 3 looking for a 4th, or 4 odd-men-out will form their own pod. Usually something does work out. But if someone is clearly struggling to find a game and their only other option is sitting on their hands for hours on end, I think being unwilling to sacrifice the sacrosanct 4-person-experience to let them play is pretty selfish. If you don't want the mere possibility of meeting new people, go play at a friend's house rather than a public space on a public commander night.

[pokken]

I will always sit out to let someone play vs play a 5 pod. 5 pod is worse than reading on my phone 100% if the time.

[DirkGently]

What do people have against 5 man pods? I mean, given the choice I'd rather do a 4-man, but as long as people play quickly enough and have decks that don't durdle endlessly (which is also true for 4-man, to be fair), 5-man seems fine? 25% more players really takes the game from "a hobby so good I'll happily dedicate thousands and thousands of hours to" into "I'd rather read my phone"?

[TheGildedGoose]

4 > 5 > 3

[kirkusjones]

5 is tough because the game is so spread out. I feel like there's always someone's field I can't see and asking to read/have a card read gets old really, really fast.

[Myllior]

I vastly prefer 5 to 3; a good number of my favourite games were 5-player. In my experience, more players allows for more opportunity to have answers when they are needed and this contributes to games with more of the back-and-forth that I love.

[DirkGently]

@Myllior I find that 3p games can really exacerbate power differences, both in terms of the decks/players overall or if someone happens to stumble. It's really easy to turn into a 1v1 game if someone misses their third land drop or whatever. 5 players can sometimes be a bit over-balanced where it's hard for an on-board deck to pull ahead, but I do still prefer it to a 3p game on average. Plus it's a bigger challenge to win a 5p, which is fun.

[pokken]

I vastly prefer 3 over 4 5. Meant to say 5.

No one pays attention in 5 man games.


I am close on 3/4 tho. Honestly people tend to play a lot better in 3s.

[Gentle Giant]

Yeah, I prefer 5 to 3, for the same reasons as Dirk. My two playgroups are people I'm good friends with, so I often play pods of 5 simply due to the size of one of them. I can see the issue with 5 player games when every permanent can be a combo piece, but luckily that's not the case with my games.

@TheAmericanSpirit : kind of the same question as Dirk: why do you play at an LGS when it seems as though you're doing the same as I do (playing with friends). Can't you play at someone's place?

[TheAmericanSpirit]

@TheAmericanSpirit Sorry, don't think I can give you absolution on this one.

With all due respect, your approval was never necessary, nor your absolution sought in this matter.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you need to go out of your way to include new people - ideally someone will have a pod of 3 looking for a 4th, or 4 odd-men-out will form their own pod. Usually something does work out. But if someone is clearly struggling to find a game and their only other option is sitting on their hands for hours on end, I think being unwilling to sacrifice the sacrosanct 4-person-experience to let them play is pretty selfish.

Is it? What if I'm not the only one who doesn't like 5p? What if the enitre pod votes nay on the fifth player? Is that still selfish, or just democratic? . I'd argue the enjoyment of the four outweighs the negativity of the one excluded, but that's a trolley problem I guess.

If you don't want the mere possibility of meeting new people, go play at a friend's house rather than a public space on a public commander night.

This is so obviously fallacious it barely dignifies recognition. Is this North Korea? No? Then I'll go and do as I please, with whom I please. Public spaces are public. There's no compulsory order to be social to be in public, and I don't need to be inviting into the plans I've made with others unless I feel inclined. Next thing you're gonna tell me I need a private beach to take my girlfriend swimming, right? Get real.

Overall, I'm not sure what you think I owe to you and odd-man-outs everywhere, but I assure you I don't. Then again, I've also spent the better half of a decade ingraining myself in a community, establishing reputation and rapport, learning faces and names. If you'd like what I have, you're welcome to go work for it too. If you can't or won't, that's on you. But no one just waltzes in and gets preferred seating because they're an unknown quantity. Even Southern Hospitality has its limits.

[DirkGently]

@TheAmericanSpirit if I accept as a hypothetical that 5p is anathema to your group then I'm forced to agree, but personally I have a hard time imagining why someone would find a relatively small change to the structure of a game to be particularly disruptive. In a 4p game 75% of the time is other people's turns. In 5p 80% is. Is that really such a big issue? I guess I just don't get it, and clearly I'm not alone in finding 5p to be basically fine given other responses to this thread.

I find this line of conversation somewhat equivalent to:

"I think people ought to offer their seat on the bus to octogenarians."
"Well I find the act of standing up for 5 minutes to be more torturous than a century of hellfire."
"Uh….okay…we'll I guess if it's really that big of an inconvenience for you then I guess don't…?"

As far as being democratic, again I'm forced to accept as hypothetical that 5p is a horrible hardship, but personally I'd consider the downside of playing not-exactly-the-thing-I-wanted to be much lesser than not getting to play at all. Is it democratic when 4 people vote to throw the 5th to the lions for sport? Bit academic I guess.

CAN you play in an exclusionary group at your LGS? Plainly yes. As you say, this isn't North Korea (famous for playing exclusively 5p commander, despite the Geneva conventions). I'm not arguing legality, though, I'm arguing morality.

Let's take me and my globe-trotting out of the picture and imagine a new commander player. He learned the rules on Arena, but he wants to engage with the social aspect of magic in a casual context. So he buys a precon and goes to the publicly-advertised commander night at his LGS, hoping to make new friends. And instead he ends up stuck on the sidelines because the community is too entrenched in their own groups to let him play.

Where else is he supposed to go, exactly? He's gone to the one venue that's advertising for people to play public games of commander and got completely rejected.

Of course, one pod wanting to play strictly 4p games among people they know doesn't itself a problem create, but when everyone is like that it creates a community that's hostile to new players, and I think that's something to be strongly avoided.

Magic is a nerdy-ass hobby. It attracts a lot of people (myself included) who take refuge in that social space. If you're bad at socialising, an open commander night gives you the opportunity to meet people in a setting where you have something in common and an activity to engage in.

Personally I've often found comfort in the fact that, wherever I am, there's almost always a place nearby where I can meet people and have a good time playing a game we all know and love. I think that's really powerful, especially for people who aren't great at socialising. I think it's important to keep the LGS as welcoming as possible. Give us your tired, your poor. Sit down and draw seven, brother.

So yeah, I do think it's kinda uncool to put your preference for a 4-player game over that.