The top three worst strategies to play against

[pokken]

I've been thinking about how to put this intuitive sense I have into words, but here is my top 3 list of the worst strategies to play against in commander and why (in reverse order)

3. Mana Denial
You know the culprits: Static Orb, Living Plane Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Jokulhaups combos, Blood Moon, etc.

These effects are not super bad if they just close the game out, but they are miserable if people have to fight their way back or they get disrupted in a way that resets the game. In general, you should strongly avoid these types of strategies unless you're playing at a power level where people should be reasonably expected to interact with them consistently.

So there's the rub: If people should be expected to interact, and they will, you need to think about the gameplay experience that presents where everyone has to stuff your Static Orb to play the game (and then kill your Academy Ruins to keep you from looping it and so on).

The play patterns of trying to set up asymmetric mana denial are generally toxic, unless:
* opponents will scoop to a hard-ish lock, and you can set it up often enough that it's a sometimes winning pattern
* you have other strategies that are potentially successful so you can respond to the responses

Overall, I would not completely reject these strategies, just be mindful of the shortcomings in gameplay and use them judiciously.

My deck that runs these is Thalia and The Gitrog Monster Living Plane stax -- Living Plane is strong with Thalia period, so that's the alternative gameplan to gain a ton of tempo, with the backup of Opalescence / Parallax Wave. This deck is one of my stronger decks and I usually only bring it out when I know people will not be bugged by it.

2. Seedborn Muse / Non-Deterministic Extra Turns
(honorable mention extra combat steps that behave like Seedborn Muse)
(formerly Prophet of Kruphix.dec)

The cardinal sin of commander is taking too much active player time. Monopolizing game time excessively is annoying. It makes people check out, it makes it easier for mistakes to be made because people are F6'd, and it's generally tedious to pay attention to. We should closely watch out for any system of effects that sets up multiple virtual turns during other people's turns, or where your turns last a lot longer without closing the game out.

The tip offs here are things like:
* chaining a bunch of extra turns non-deterministically with commanders like Narset, Enlightened Master
* anything that involves untapping your stuff during other people's turns and then using all your mana every turn. also untapping all your stuff during your turn, see Paradox Engine.

I run Seedborn Muse effects and non-deterministic extra combat steps/turns in a few decks, but generally with caution;
* Tatyova, Benthic Druid tap effects; if I get to untap in your turn with a seedborn it's probably all over, so I'm not trying to do it all game long. One turn cycle of activating Yisan, the Wanderer Bard a bunch of times is probably GGs (or Elvish Reclaimer).
* Kenrith, the Returned King storage lands - this deck is just awful and Seedborn Muse is another functional copy of Zirda, the Dawnwaker / Biomancer's Familiar. It has minimal interaction so most of its seedborning is passive rube goldberg crap you can tune out safely.
* Xenagos, God of Revels has a number of non-deterministic Savage Beating type effects, but the end state of Xenagos' ability doubling doubling is that the game is probably over after one or two, and the deck is extremely fast to play otherwise due to minimal triggers and casting few spells.

In general, this effect should be used cautiously and you should think hard about the effect on the play patterns and what your path to victory is. If your goal is to tutor for Unwinding Clock and then clumsily limp toward victory over 5 turns of monopolizing active player...think twice.

1. Creature Machine Gunning, aka the Glissa, the Traitor effect
The first time I saw this deck was Glissa, the Traitor so I remember it from that, but I've seen a million scenarios of Goblin Sharpshooter, Dismiss into Dream, double striking Sword of Fire and Ice, Niv-Mizzet, Parun, and on and on and on. Containment Priest Eldrazi Displacer and Parallax Wave / Opalescence too.

This effect is the absolute worst for a bunch of reasons:
* Most commander decks run lots of creatures across a wide spectrum of power levels. So the odds are really good that you're shutting off most of the table's ability to develop.
* And then there's 1/5 decks that don't run creatures they care about, so you're actively assisting them.
* And then there's the need to lord your power over the table by letting people have some creatures and threatening to get them to do your bidding. UGH.

This strategy is awful and everyone should avoid it unless it instantly wins the game; I run it in one deck:

Thalia and The Gitrog Monster runs Parallax Wave / Opalescence because it hard locks the game and the correct response is to scoop 99% of the time...and it will usually allow infinite draw or infinite mana or infinite creatures as well somehow. Plus, all my enchantments attack, so chances are everyone is dead to combat damage the turn it drops. In no situation do I sit there machine gunning creatures for 2 hours while I build an unassailable board state, or facilitate someone comboing off.

Much like Seedborn Muse.dec - think about the play patterns. Are you going to make a bunch of people sit there draw-going while you dance around, or are you actually ending the game? Can your shenanigans be disrupted by a removal spell, creating a situation where you removed all the creatures and let a control deck ride you to victory?

This is the #1 effect to really think hard on because it craps on almost any power level of game.


---

And that concludes this issue of Why your strategy is annoying but it's fine when I do it magazine.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

@pokken good lord, yes. Creature machine-gunning is such a slog to play against. I am actively dreading the release of Orcish Bowmasters for that reason. Someone is going to stick a Basilisk Collar on it and eat my lunch, I just know it.

[materpillar]

Add Aristocrats + Grave Pact to your list of annoying creature murder machine guns. That one used to be really popular.

I'd much rather play against creature machine gun than extra turns. The former can usually be stopped with Disenchant and usually turns the game into archenemy until an answer is found. The later can only be stopped with Counterspell and usually just ends the game after the obnoxious player has 30min of durdling with everyone watching.

[Avacyn Believer]

Interesting topic. I agree that setting the right expectations is important. When I play a casual deck I definitely do not enjoy facing someone who is hyper stax or control, but when I use my "competitive" deck I want to see what people can throw against it and how my deck can perform. Then it becomes fun to see the worst of the worst.

The extra turns points also makes me think about just taking too long during a turn because you have too many triggers and keep casting spells. It can happen to me with my Sythis deck and even I get to a point where I am bored of doing too many things If I am going to combo I prefer those that when I get the cards together I win unless someone can stop it right there and then.

The last point kind of amuses me because I've built a Rhonas the Indomitable deck where the point is to fight other creatures, but it's far from infinite or on free repeat. I do think the worst games happen when someone is grinding the game out to a halt in some way, be that no mana, no creatures or no casting allowed, and they can't win on the same or at least the next turn. It's just boring for everyone at the table. I don't think I will ever understand the thinking behind those decks. Thankfully I only have to suffer them once because if people insist on playing them, I'll go play with someone else

[DirkGently]

Huh, I really can't say I've played against creature machine guns as an archetype per se. Sometimes it comes up within a game and then typically someone will remove whatever is doing the machine gunning and then the game resumes. Grave pact decks can be annoying at some power levels but again it's typically solved with a single removal spell so it's not that big of a deal imo outside a pubstomp situation. Something like mana denial can prevent you from answering them by preventing you from acquiring the mana to do so, or extra turns can go off without giving you the chance to untap for an answer etc, so I do get how those are ass to play against. But I have a really hard time seeing machine gunning as a huge problem tbh, especially when it costs a substantial amount of mana as in the eldrazi displacer example. And am I missing something, or doesn't a single enchantment removal solve the "99% concede" opalescence/wave lock? Is running enchantment removal really so rare that you're only giving it 1% across all opponents?

[duducrash]

I hate playing against decks like either Sissay that tutor once a turn, it takes too long. Cascade can be similar in that.

One thing that can be boring are pod style decks like Oswald Fiddlebender or Prime Speaker Vannifar , because every game becomes the same game

[pokken]

Huh, I really can't say I've played against creature machine guns as an archetype per se. Sometimes it comes up within a game and then typically someone will remove whatever is doing the machine gunning and then the game resumes. Grave pact decks can be annoying at some power levels but again it's typically solved with a single removal spell so it's not that big of a deal imo outside a pubstomp situation. Something like mana denial can prevent you from answering them by preventing you from acquiring the mana to do so, or extra turns can go off without giving you the chance to untap for an answer etc, so I do get how those are ass to play against. But I have a really hard time seeing machine gunning as a huge problem tbh, especially when it costs a substantial amount of mana as in the eldrazi displacer example. And am I missing something, or doesn't a single enchantment removal solve the "99% concede" opalescence/wave lock? Is running enchantment removal really so rare that you're only giving it 1% across all opponents?

You've never run into a Glissa, the Traitor deck? Weird! That's the most common one I've seen. There're quite a few recent ones too that're slipping my mind..Chatterfang, Squirrel General is probably the most egregious that I run into regularly. "hey would you guys like to never have creatures again as long as chatterfang is on the battlefield? yay!"

Opalescence / Parallax Wave requires you to have removal while one of them is on the stack, or else everyone's creatures get exiled - and the removal needs to be exile or else the inevitable enchantress recursion will bring it right back (Hall of Heliod's Generosity, etc.). And once it sticks the odds are high there's another infinite combo. Once it sticks, you're playing to the out of "draw/get an enchantment removal piece" -- which is fine if you have a reasonable chance of doing so without ever keeping a creature on board...and taking an alpha strike from my enchantments who are dudes before you do it.

Not impossible, but I have yet to lose if they both resolve personally. If anyone tries to play it out it goes pretty fast.

--

I should add that it doesn't surprise me that you aren't overly bothered by creature machine gunning; you're a higher removal player and generally a higher iq player than most, and you play fewer creatures. Your signature deck is wrath tribal.

So you're the target demographic of "guy who gets kingmade by a creature machinegun deck"

[3drinks]

@pokken good lord, yes. Creature machine-gunning is such a slog to play against. I am actively dreading the release of Orcish Bowmasters for that reason. Someone is going to stick a Basilisk Collar on it and eat my lunch, I just know it.

It's an x/1. Pump one into your Pestilence and be done with it. I mean c'mon even the lowly Fire Imp solves it.

I've been thinking about how to put this intuitive sense I have into words, but here is my top 3 list of the worst strategies to play against in commander and why (in reverse order)

3. Mana Denial
You know the culprits: Static Orb, Living Plane Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Jokulhaups combos, Blood Moon, etc.

Okay, but counterpoint; turbo ramp. I don't wanna sit here and watch you vomit 18 basics from your deck because you assembled stone-seeder hierophant + thawing glaciers while you screech from the top of your mana reflection + nyxbloom ancient that ramp is a totally fair and reasonable archetype and that everyone wins. And there's far more ramp than good stax payoffs............

Just reanimate your Big Dumb Finisher^TM onto the board already and be done with it.

The cardinal sin of commander is taking too much active player time. Monopolizing game time excessively is annoying. It makes people check out, it makes it easier for mistakes to be made because people are F6'd, and it's generally tedious to pay attention to. We should closely watch out for any system of effects that sets up multiple virtual turns during other people's turns, or where your turns last a lot longer without closing the game out.

Counterpoint, stop rushing me to hurry up and finish when I just finished cracking fetch on the player to my right's end step. This is a two way street. I like to interact and yes I do have responses and play lines, and yes I would like to get my Vial Smasher triggers on more than just my turn. Let me take the time to properly assess where my Kolaghan's Command should be best pointed, or plan out my Fire Covenant adequately.

[pokken]

Okay, but counterpoint; turbo ramp. I don't wanna sit here and watch you vomit 18 basics from your deck because you assembled stone-seeder hierophant + thawing glaciers while you screech from the top of your mana reflection + nyxbloom ancient that ramp is a totally fair and reasonable archetype and that everyone wins. And there's far more ramp than good stax payoffs............

Generally speaking it's more fun for everyone if you just kill the Stone-Seeder Hierophant than lock down everyone's mana. That said, there's a time and a place for everything.

Or just go ahead and lose, it's OK to lose

Counterpoint, stop rushing me to hurry up and finish when I just finished cracking fetch on the player to my right's end step. This is a two way street. I like to interact and yes I do have responses and play lines, and yes I would like to get my Vial Smasher triggers on more than just my turn. Let me take the time to properly assess where my Kolaghan's Command should be best pointed, or plan out my Fire Covenant adequately.

No, play faster It's OK to mess up. The only way to learn to play fast is to play fast and suffer the consequences.

[DirkGently]

You've never run into a Glissa, the Traitor deck? Weird! That's the most common one I've seen. There're quite a few recent ones too that're slipping my mind..Chatterfang, Squirrel General is probably the most egregious that I run into regularly. "hey would you guys like to never have creatures again as long as chatterfang is on the battlefield? yay!"

Opalescence / Parallax Wave requires you to have removal while one of them is on the stack, or else everyone's creatures get exiled - and the removal needs to be exile or else the inevitable enchantress recursion will bring it right back (Hall of Heliod's Generosity, etc.). And once it sticks the odds are high there's another infinite combo. Once it sticks, you're playing to the out of "draw/get an enchantment removal piece" -- which is fine if you have a reasonable chance of doing so without ever keeping a creature on board...and taking an alpha strike from my enchantments who are dudes before you do it.

Not impossible, but I have yet to lose if they both resolve personally. If anyone tries to play it out it goes pretty fast.

--

I should add that it doesn't surprise me that you aren't overly bothered by creature machine gunning; you're a higher removal player and generally a higher iq player than most, and you play fewer creatures. Your signature deck is wrath tribal.

So you're the target demographic of "guy who gets kingmade by a creature machinegun deck"

Lol I used to run Glissa the Traitor but I'm not sure what you're referring to. pinger equipment only lets you kill one creature per turn cycle generally, or there's that one egg that casts terror but it can't hit black creatures and it costs 3 every cycle. I mean Glissa tends to kill creatures a lot but I don't think that equals "creature machine gun".

I guess I don't consider a board wipe happening being an automatic game over from the opalescence combo if you play removal after it resolves. There are plenty of board wipes that are just board wipes on their own, why would that be game over?

I've been locked out by grave pact decks way more frequently than these very specific combos it seems like you're talking about. Annoying, sure, but as long as someone has enchantment removal the game typically resumes and stabilizes. I just don't see how they compare unfavorably to something like turns where you're literally unable to do anything except twiddle your thumbs.

[pokken]

Lol I used to run Glissa the Traitor but I'm not sure what you're referring to. pinger equipment only lets you kill one creature per turn cycle generally, or there's that one egg that casts terror but it can't hit black creatures and it costs 3 every cycle. I mean Glissa tends to kill creatures a lot but I don't think that equals "creature machine gun".

I guess I don't consider a board wipe happening being an automatic game over from the opalescence combo if you play removal after it resolves. There are plenty of board wipes that are just board wipes on their own, why would that be game over?

I've been locked out by grave pact decks way more frequently than these very specific combos it seems like you're talking about. Annoying, sure, but as long as someone has enchantment removal the game typically resumes and stabilizes. I just don't see how they compare unfavorably to something like turns where you're literally unable to do anything except twiddle your thumbs.

You never ran Executioner's Capsule? sheesh what were you doin.

yeah Grave Pact are the most egregious of the creature machine gun decks for sure.

re: parallax wave - yeah you shouldn't scoop if you can untap and remove it immediately I guess, but a one sided exiling board wipe that hits enchantments and creatures is different than most board wipes to be fair. The vast majority of the time if it sticks for a sec Eidolon of Blossoms or Living Plane till make it a table kill. And if I'm playing you, you're getting alpha striked by enchantments first =P

[DirkGently]

there's that one egg that casts terror

You never ran Executioner's Capsule? sheesh what were you doin.

Yeah that's what I meant. I was obviously aware of it, I can't remember if I actually ran it though. It's one of those things where it's so face-up that if you're playing a grindy control deck you're basically forcing an archenemy game and/or ensuring your commander eats a lot of removal, which might not be a tenable position.

Either way, though, 3 mana per kill is a good rate but it's not so effective vs token decks for example, or decks with a black commander, or shroud/indestructible. You say "creature machine gun" I think more along the lines of Goblin Sharpshooter + Basilisk Collar where creatures are basically prevented from existing on the battlefield. If you have to pay 3 mana per kill, then even setting aside the aforementioned workarounds, 3 opponents should easily be able to overwhelm a single glissa player just with raw tempo. I mean it's not that much more efficient than Slaughter, which requires zero synergy, and people don't even play that card, even in lifegain decks that could ignore the life cost. I guess it's less reliable vs sac outlets, but still, I think the gap between "worst strategy to play against" and "literally unplayed" should probably be wider than that.

re: parallax wave - yeah you shouldn't scoop if you can untap and remove it immediately I guess, but a one sided exiling board wipe that hits enchantments and creatures is different than most board wipes to be fair. The vast majority of the time if it sticks for a sec Eidolon of Blossoms or Living Plane till make it a table kill. And if I'm playing you, you're getting alpha striked by enchantments first =P

I'm not denying it's a strong play (although "wins with living plane" is a pretty low bar tbh), I'm just saying that putting it amongst, let alone above, absolute cancer like turns.dec is way too far for me. Especially when it seems like you're talking about a one-off combo in an otherwise normal enchantress deck, or one card in a glissa deck. I think some of my board-wipe focused decks, despite lacking a repeatable loop for killing creatures, are surely a lot more frustrating to play against. For one thing, vs a lockout combo (or "lockout" in the case of glissa) you can stop playing creatures and figure out a plan to solve it once it's been established. Whereas with a deck playing a bunch of individual wipes, you probably just re-commit to the field post-wipe, only to get BTFO yet again. My Nahiri, the Lithomancer comes to mind - I think that deck runs 20+ board wipes, plus Humility, which can solo a lot of games on its own. But there's no "machine gun" so I guess it's A-OK

[pokken]

I'm not denying it's a strong play (although "wins with living plane" is a pretty low bar tbh), I'm just saying that putting it amongst, let alone above, absolute cancer like turns.dec is way too far for me. Especially when it seems like you're talking about a one-off combo in an otherwise normal enchantress deck, or one card in a glissa deck. I think some of my board-wipe focused decks, despite lacking a repeatable loop for killing creatures, are surely a lot more frustrating to play against. For one thing, vs a lockout combo (or "lockout" in the case of glissa) you can stop playing creatures and figure out a plan to solve it once it's been established. Whereas with a deck playing a bunch of individual wipes, you probably just re-commit to the field post-wipe, only to get BTFO yet again. My Nahiri, the Lithomancer comes to mind - I think that deck runs 20+ board wipes, plus Humility, which can solo a lot of games on its own. But there's no "machine gun" so I guess it's A-OK

I wouldn't really differentiate wrath tribal from creature machine gun styles, tbh. If your deck says "you cannot have creatures" it's probably toxic garbage. Nobody wants to play against that.

The machine gunning is annoying because it says "nobody but me can have good creatures and so now it's archenemy...except for the guy with a low creature deck that just won. yay." Wrath tribal decks do the same thing.

Humility.dec does the same thing. etc.

Even if it can be interacted with, if when it goes off it's no fun at all, it should suggest a second look.

[3drinks]

Not just the capsule but glissa also works with Triangle of War if you want to go deep. I didn't mind it at all. I preferred recycling Nihil Spellbomb on The Mimeoplasm player over and over though until they finally scoop since they have to play fair.

[DirkGently]

I wouldn't really differentiate wrath tribal from creature machine gun styles, tbh. If your deck says "you cannot have creatures" it's probably toxic garbage. Nobody wants to play against that.

Ehhhhh...but I looooove it Creatures are toxic and they must be purged.

The machine gunning is annoying because it says "nobody but me can have good creatures and so now it's archenemy...except for the guy with a low creature deck that just won. yay." Wrath tribal decks do the same thing.

Well now I'm a bit confused on where the line is. How much removal is enough removal to define it as "machine gun"? Are we cancelling Visara the Dreadful now?

Anyway I don't think "low creature decks" necessarily benefit from heavy removal decks. For example Mizzix of the Izmagnus is a very low creature deck, but if Mizzix can't stick on the board the deck kinda falls apart. And something like grave pact is going to be much more effective at locking mizzix down than, say, a token deck or even a go-wide nontoken deck.

Humility.dec does the same thing. etc.

I feel like we're kinda overextending on our deck descriptors here. Humility is but one card, there aren't a dozen different versions of humility where you can run a whole archetype around it. Nahiri could run enchantment tutors for humility, sure, but the deck still probably can't rely on it since there aren't that many tutors and it's plenty vulnerable to removal. Is it a strong card in the deck? Absolutely, very much so. But the deck certainly isn't defined by a single good card. It's not like, for example, Sorrow's Path in SPG where the deck is completely built around it. I wouldn't even necessarily call Nahiri board wipe tribal since it's also synergizing around planeswalkers and equipment, but at least describing it as board wipe tribal makes some degree of sense. Calling it humility.dec would be like calling The Ur-Dragon Miirym.dec. Yeah, it's a good card, maybe the best card, but it doesn't define the whole deck.

[pokken]

Well now I'm a bit confused on where the line is

The line isn't anywhere, it's a spectrum like everything else pretty much. Knowing when your deck is creating bad play experiences.

If it constantly craps on creatures that's a thing to watch for ... and imho, creating a super hostile environment for creatures is the most likely thing you can do that'll create a bad experience, because:

1) people play lots of creatures
2) it's easy to feel justified in doing it because it's not Winter Orb

[DirkGently]

@pokken

I'll agree that it's easier to create a bad experience inadvertently by playing too heavy of a heavy control deck - though I would generalize it to any heavy control deck, I think the term "creature machine gun" threw this whole conversation down an unnecessarily confusing tangent because that's not really necessary to what you're describing, and in fact Glissa + capsule is a very moderate version compared to something like Child of Alara + Corpse Dance, which is much harder to interact with and impossible to out-tempo.

But setting that aside, when you're talking about the worst archetypes to play against, I'd kinda assume we're past the point of considering their relative frequency or likelihood of happening via accident, and assuming that we're already in a game with them. And if I'm sitting down at a table and somebody is playing Glissa and happens to draw executioner's capsule, that's not remotely close to as annoying as someone playing name-the-blue-based-spell-commander and taking 5 consecutive turns which nobody can interact with in any way.

[pokken]

I disagree but I don't care to think hard enough about why

[TheGildedGoose]

The worst deck to play against is the one that wastes my time.

[DirkGently]

I disagree but I don't care to think hard enough about why

I'm mostly curious if your position is:

-I think turns/stasis is more fun to play against than heavy creature control, full stop.

OR

-I think turns/stasis is less fun to play against than heavy creature control, but I think heavy creature control is more likely to appear in places where it shouldn't.

Beyond me understanding which of those two positions you hold, idk that there's much more to discuss. But I am curious.

[Dunharrow]

on the subject of number 2, I would like to recall playing historic brawl on arena when my opponents Prime Speaker Vannifar durdled out an early Nyxbloom Ancient and protected it from removal on my turn.
I went and took a nice long shower, came out, and they were still going. Lol. I have no idea how many turns they took.

[NZB2323]

I run Grave Pact in my cleric tribal deck, and feel like it's not too bad. I once had a guy scoop to me while he was playing Galea, Kindler of Hope deck, and I didn't understand how his baby deck didn't have any enchantment removal.

My cleric deck does have sacrifice outlets, can get creatures back with Ravos, Soultender, and can get GP back with Hall of Heliod's Generosity, but I only have so many creatures to sacrifice, and a lot of times I don't want to sacrifice my creatures.

I'm good friends with him and he's beat me with cards like Contamination so I don't feel bad.

I feel like clerics is a pretty low threat tribe, and the deck mainly runs creatures like Beloved Chaplain and Changeling Outcast so I can draw with Tymna the Weaver. I wouldn't define it as a machine gun deck. I feel like the deck needs Grave Pact to deal with hexproof creatures and keep threats in check.

[Treamayne]

You've never run into a Glissa, the Traitor deck? Weird!

Lol I used to run Glissa the Traitor but I'm not sure what you're referring to. pinger equipment only lets you kill one creature per turn cycle generally

Not just the capsule but glissa also works with Triangle of War if you want to go deep. I didn't mind it at all. I preferred recycling Nihil Spellbomb on The Mimeoplasm player over and over though until they finally scoop since they have to play fair.

The Glissa machine Gun is specifically with Thornbite Staff - often recurring a sac-for-mana artifact or with either Ashnod's Altar or Krark-Clan Ironworks to sac the recurred artifact to make it "kill everything."

I wouldn't really differentiate wrath tribal from creature machine gun styles, tbh. If your deck says "you cannot have creatures" it's probably toxic garbage. Nobody wants to play against that.

Well now I'm a bit confused on where the line is. How much removal is enough removal to define it as "machine gun"?

The Line is (to me):
- Targeted removal = Kill the threat
- Wraths = Reset the threats
- One-Sided Wraths = WinCon (if not used to win in a turn - this is egregious)
- CMG = "Nobody but me gets to keep a creature and I still won't win for turns and turns"

And that is why I would never play a second game against somebody piloting a CMG deck. Not as much the mechanic of killing all other creatures, but the sheer hubris of playing a deck that says loud and clear "I care about nobody else's enjoyment of the game - I am the only one that matters." (Other decks with the same message also garner the same response from me - "Good game* - but I will never sit down at a table across from you again")

*Obligatory white lie in the name of consideration

[pokken]

I disagree but I don't care to think hard enough about why

I'm mostly curious if your position is:

-I think turns/stasis is more fun to play against than heavy creature control, full stop.

OR

-I think turns/stasis is less fun to play against than heavy creature control, but I think heavy creature control is more likely to appear in places where it shouldn't.

Beyond me understanding which of those two positions you hold, idk that there's much more to discuss. But I am curious.

I think it's partly both in practice;
1 - I think that turns/stasis unify the table instantly and people are capable of correctly assessing its threat on fun
2- creature killing loops people tend to be like ok it's fine that they're killing all of the threatening player's creatures with Executioner's Capsule, let's attack that player while they're down...oh look we lost to the guy looping removal, weird.

I think that's *part* of what makes creature machine gunning worse than sweeper tribal and even grave pact; sweeper tribal is more likely to turn you into archenemy, and Grave Pact too. But if someone threatens remove 2-3 creatures a turn cycle but someone feels like theirs might survive, they're politically vulnerable.

I see it pretty regularly that like, someone sets up a Dragon Tempest and people are like okay as long as you're not whacking my creatures, go ahead and murder everyone else's, oh, dang, now you're killing my stuff.

The way that these effects prey on idiots the less politically gifted is I think the biggest problem? But even at a table full of people who are paying attention and trying to win, it can be pretty awful -- like Treamayne says, these decks have a strong tendency to durdle and not really use it as a wincon. (Dragon Tempest above is not the best example of that because it will close it out pretty fast, but I've seen it drag out quite a lot sadly:P)

[onering]

Horobi is basically just a creature machine gunning deck, and there is one thing you have to keep in mind while playing a deck like that: you don't actually have to clear the board if that's just going to be helping another deck. That's just a failure of diplomacy if you do that. The ability to do it serves as a rattlesnake and deter attacks, and your creature based opponents should take the deal because it allows them time to try to find an answer. Sure, if it craps on all decks at the table you can just wipe the board and start beating face, so having to hold back so you don't just hand it to the obvious combo deck or the control deck does hurt you, but that makes the deal more attractive to the rest of the table if you can explain it. You're taking on a risk that they'll find an answer by letting them live, but your ok with that because you don't want to just screw up the game by blowing them out only to have the last player roll you.

Although Horobi is also more vulnerable than most of these sorts of decks, and also gives your opponents the ability to take advantage of it.