What Makes Bad Games?

[Sheldon]

I know what *I* think makes bad Commander games. I'm curious of the list of things that other folks find make games unpleasant. It might eventually be a useful poll of some kind, but for now it'll be useful to just hear opinions.

[FoxOfWar]

When deck powerlevels don't match. Too many times I've brought my casual tribal jank into a table that gets wrath-spammed into an infinite combo or a competition between two combo decks. Sadly a bit of a problem at my local store at the moment.

Another thing that's more of my pet peeve is when people don't focus on the game. Trading, messing with phones, and then asking 'oh what happened?' all slow down the already-sometimes-glacial multiplayer pace. If you're there to play, please please actually pay attention to the game you're playing.

[DrSeaMonster]

The only issues I have with Commander games are situational ones. Bad deck match-ups or bad draws where I'm limited in what I can do about the situation.

It's more of a personal issue, maybe, I get a similar feeling when I play other board games. Any time where I feel that my decisions or actions cannot have a meaningful effect on the state of the game.

I don't think this is actually something that can be effected by any sort of rule change, but like, you asked for opinions.

[SocorroTortoise]

Any time where I feel that my decisions or actions cannot have a meaningful effect on the state of the game.

This is exactly it for me. I'm equally happy to lose an interesting game or to play through all sorts of nasty as long as I feel like I'm actually playing the game. Games that end or where I'm completely locked out before I have a reasonable chance at interacting aren't satisfying. I'll note that I don't encounter a lot of these games in large part because I play with a consistent group where we've come to consensus on what kinds of games we like to play.

I also much prefer games where I see something more unusual, but that's not something with any inherent value and not something to codify in rules.

[Taleran]

Too Many players in a game is the one that I would say is beyond the scope of the individuals involved or the decks, anything beyond 4 is just unwieldy and I would rather sit out than play games with more than 4.

[ISBPathfinder]

1) When people aren't playing the same level of decks. Like, if I walk into a game with a mono white deck to find out that you are a Doomsday combo deck I am not going to have fun. It doesn't happen to this level too often on me but there are a number of decks that my opponents play where its not really cool to walk in blind against and they do it to me all the time.

2) Games where your deck backfires and you just can't draw that one more land that makes the whole hand come alive. (RNG)

3) Games where your opponent's commander or concept counters what you are playing. Like if you were playing a graveyard deck and an opponent is playing Anafenza, the Foremost,

4) When my opponent reveals that Grand Arbiter Augustin IV is their commander. I jest but I have seen a lot of moans from others when on occasion I see someone play one.

[toctheyounger]

For me it's when one or more of the players at the table decide that their enjoyment level is more important than that of the other players, whether it's a conscious decision or not.

Delving deeper on what enjoyment consists of in a game, it's how well I'm able to interact and have an impact on the game. Give and take is important, so I don't enjoy being a Machiavellian puppet master controlling the entire board any more than I enjoy having that inflicted on me either. I do like a challenge though, and seeing what my decks are capable of in extreme circumstances, so it's pretty rare that I'll actually scoop.

[Rumpy5897]

Just gonna echo the thread sentiment of people being non-factors in games, be it due to screwy draws, power mismatches or whatever else. My playgroup has a house rule reminiscent of the original mulligan rule, that if you've got no more than one land in your seven you can reveal it and take a free mull to whatever mull level you were previously at. This works at our power level, but the fact I keep joking about building a one-land oops all spells thing means this can't really be brought out to wider waters.

[Morganelefay]

Games where someone spends half an hour just playing things and in the end nothing changed at all. A bit of durdling is fun, but put some pace in it and have some haymakers, please.

[Mookie]

To answer the opposite question, I would first declare that the games I most enjoy are the ones in which each player contributes a similar amount - everyone gets to play the game, and there is some back-and-forth as players put forth threats and answer opposing threats.

So, as a result, the games I feel the worst about are the ones that don't have that balance, which generally comes down to one of three categories:
-one or more players don't get to contribute to the game - maybe they get manascrewed, or maybe their deck gets hated out (ex: Stony Silence against an artifact deck, or Rest in Peace against a graveyard deck).
-one player accelerates into a commanding position before anyone else gets set up (often off the back of fast mana, but ramping into a 7 or 8 drop on turn 4 off something like Azusa, Lost but Seeking can also cause this)
-the game ends in an unsatisfying way that feels like it invalidates most of the rest of the game (ex: Maelstrom Wanderer cascading into Jokalhaups, Torment of Hailfire for X=lots, or Tooth and Nail fetching two combo pieces) - these usually feel like they win out of nowhere with minimal setup.

All those situations can result in a good game - if the game lasts long enough for a player that was far behind can get back into it, or multiple players gang up on the archenemy and knock them down a few pegs, or a player has a critical counterspell or spot removal for a big play - but that depends on there being sufficient back-and-forth.

[Candlemane]

Not being able to play the game, whatever the reason is. I don't play cards if it provides for a locked out experience for others, the exception being mass land destruction. However, I only use it when I can win relatively quickly, and that's only in my oathbreaker deck, and only one card.

Super stax cards, mass land destruction because, counter-everything decks... Just no, and as a player, I don't use them myself either (sarkhan exception). I also limit my commanders in a similar fashion. If it is a combo piece that can go infinite, I refuse to use the commander.

[Sinis]

I'm curious of the list of things that other folks find make games unpleasant.

Primarily, when players are looking for different kinds of games.

1. When there's a drastic power mismatch. If one player is trying to play Lounging-in-chairs Tribal, and another player is playing something stronger, like an optimized stax deck, it's not fun for one or more players. This can be either through aggregate individual card strength (like Mana Drain over Cancel, but for every card in the whole deck) or through synergies. I find card strength is often flattened by playing multiplayer, but not always.

2. When players haven't reached some agreement of acceptability of win conditions. If player A doesn't play any combos (or 'insurmountable synergies'), player B is willing to play Craterhoof Behemoth or Insurrection (aka, conditional 8-mana I-win cards), and player C is playing Tymna & Thrasios Flash-Hulk, any player floating underneath the most powerful wincon is going to feel like their decisions didn't matter. Player A is going to feel like turning creatures sideways is hopeless, and even though they might have gotten people to ~20 life, none of it mattered. Player B is going to feel like his wincons are clunky and they didn't get a chance to create a board state where they had an opportunity to win. Player C might feel like their deck was just too powerful for the table, and the other players didn't have a chance, or weren't playing sufficient answers.

3. When at least one player willfully misrepresents their decks in any conversation that might happen for 1 or 2. I've played with people who say "oh, my deck is a 5 out of 10" and then their first turn is Mana Crypt some other rocks that net-gain mana and a Timetwister. "Gosh how lucky for me", they've said. I've also had players roll out their degenerate 2-card combo like Entomb + Reanimate a Jin Gitaxis, claim that it's fun and interactive from their perspective and then say "well, you could play better answers".

4. When one or more players gets locked out of the game usually because their resources get destroyed without much recourse. Usually this means creatures with Annihilator 4, but, I think if someone played Armageddon or similar, they'd arouse the same ire.

-----

The people I play with on a regular basis are intentionally low power. We don't play infinite combos unless they're more than a few cards deep, not including a general, and if we do that, we generally shy away from tutors that would help it along. We shelved our ridonkulous cards unless they're thematically appropriate (Like The Abyss in a robot-themed artifact creature deck) or helping out a general that really badly needs it (like a Mana Crypt in Seshiro the Anointed). None of us think that this is the only "correct" way to play, but my group definitely wants to play this kind of game. We are often years ahead of the ban list. None of us has played Iona (or DEN, or Palinchron, creatures with big Annihilator numbers, etc.) in many years. We played with them, noticed they detracted from enjoyment while adding nothing to the game, and quietly removed them from our decks.

We still play against randoms at our LGS, but we're very careful to have conversations about what kinds of games we want to play.

[Taleran]

3. When at least one player willfully misrepresents their decks in any conversation that might happen for 1 or 2. I've played with people who say "oh, my deck is a 5 out of 10" and then their first turn is Mana Crypt some other rocks that net-gain mana and a Timetwister. "Gosh how lucky for me", they've said. I've also had players roll out their degenerate 2-card combo like Entomb + Reanimate a Jin Gitaxis, claim that it's fun and interactive from their perspective and then say "well, you could play better answers".

In a vacuum playing some Mana Rocks into a wheel isn't actually any indication of the power level of a deck, that is a pretty typical play to refill ones hand after emptying it. Budget and when those cards were acquired by the person are a different story.

It isn't impossible for that deck you described to be a 5/10 and have a Crypt and a Timetwister in it.


Likewise Entomb Reanimate a Big Scary Monster isn't that surprising nor degenerate especially considering how often those 3 cards have recently been printed it only stands to reason people would want to use them and again 3 cards don't really point well to the intentions or power of a deck IMO.

[HoffOccultist]

I have a different outlook on things than a lot of players, and I have rarely had an unenjoyable game of EDH.

The few that have been not great have boiled down to one of a few factors:

1) Out-of-game Personality Issues: Playing at an LGS in a league, we played against whomever. Some folks just don't get along with others, and decide to bring that to the table. That makes games less fun, but is ultimately unavoidable if people can't act reasonably. Almost all of the poor games I've had have been due to this.

2) Too many or too few players: 4 or 5 is about right. I can handle 6 players in a game, but have been made to endure 7 before. 3 is also pretty miserable.

3) Egregious play decisions. I don't just mean garden variety poor threat assessment here, I mean decisions that negatively impact the game for no reason. I don't mind stax, or LD, or fatties with hexproof, or hard locks, or anything like that--they're puzzles to try to solve. What I'm talking about here is the guy who rolls a d6 to decide who to target with a burn spell so he doesn't have to discard, and ends up targeting the player who has a single land in play on turn 3 with a precon because that's what the die told him to do. I'm talking about the folks who make a play, then try to take it back when a player has an answer to it (doubly so if that answer is on board or was revealed somehow). It gets worse when those egregious decisions come back to bite them and they have the gall to complain (you Bolted the player with one land and ended up helping someone else with a spell? Shocking)

It's hard for me to not get enjoyment out of an EDH game, and it almost always involves how the people are acting and interacting, rather than anything with the cardboard. Even playing underpowered decks against tuned lists is fun for me (though I'd rather people who want to play tuned list play at pods of tuned lists, because that's way more fun for me as someone who enjoys cEDH and is always looking for more people to jam games at that level). EDH is ultimately a social game, and that's what drives the enjoyment for me.

[Hermes_]

For me, it would have to be a game in which a player plays a deck that is basically solitaire for example drawing all the cards in their deck to win ala labman or Aetherflux Reservoir

[Sinis]

In a vacuum playing some Mana Rocks into a wheel isn't actually any indication of the power level of a deck, that is a pretty typical play to refill ones hand after emptying it. Budget and when those cards were acquired by the person are a different story.

It isn't impossible for that deck you described to be a 5/10 and have a Crypt and a Timetwister in it.

K. When I write "Willfully misrepresenting their deck", I mean that they won the game in the next couple of turns, well ahead of everyone else's setup. The gist of it is supposed to be that it clearly wasn't 5/10, and they knew it.

Likewise Entomb Reanimate a Big Scary Monster isn't that surprising nor degenerate especially considering how often those 3 cards have recently been printed it only stands to reason people would want to use them and again 3 cards don't really point well to the intentions or power of a deck IMO.

Specifically Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur. The guy that functionally prevents other players from playing the game. The context missing from this is that it was the early part of the game. I think the player to the right of this guy played land + Rampant Growth on their turn.

Honestly, I'm not sure what you meant to get out of your post. What's your point? That my opinion about what's 5/10 is wrong? That we shouldn't have conversations about deck strength before a game because someone might have a radically different idea what "5/10" means?

How about I simplify/clarify it for you:

3. When a player says they're playing a "weak deck" when it's actually really really %$#% strong.

Is that clear enough for you?

[Taleran]

All I was saying is that the specific examples you were giving do not necessarily mean what the post was saying, with more context it becomes clearer.

[Sinis]

All I was saying is that the specific examples you were giving do not necessarily mean what the post was saying, with more context it becomes clearer.

Sure. I think it was pretty clear what I meant when I opened with the sentence "When at least one player willfully misrepresents their decks in any conversation that might happen for 1 or 2." and I'm fairly certain everyone else got it.

Honestly, your original reply comes across as terribly disingenuous wherein you simply decline to accept that this might have been in a context where people did not, in fact, enjoy discarding their hands. It's kind of meta and funny in its own way. I'm talking about people being disingenuous when they say "oh, well I don't consider it degenerate" knowing full well the other person would not have agreed, and you come along and say "oh, hmmm, well actually, it doesn't seem all that degenerate to me" while simultaneously sidestepping the entire point.

[toctheyounger]

I have a different outlook on things than a lot of players, and I have rarely had an unenjoyable game of EDH.

The few that have been not great have boiled down to one of a few factors:

1) Out-of-game Personality Issues: Playing at an LGS in a league, we played against whomever. Some folks just don't get along with others, and decide to bring that to the table. That makes games less fun, but is ultimately unavoidable if people can't act reasonably. Almost all of the poor games I've had have been due to this.

2) Too many or too few players: 4 or 5 is about right. I can handle 6 players in a game, but have been made to endure 7 before. 3 is also pretty miserable.

3) Egregious play decisions. I don't just mean garden variety poor threat assessment here, I mean decisions that negatively impact the game for no reason. I don't mind stax, or LD, or fatties with hexproof, or hard locks, or anything like that--they're puzzles to try to solve. What I'm talking about here is the guy who rolls a d6 to decide who to target with a burn spell so he doesn't have to discard, and ends up targeting the player who has a single land in play on turn 3 with a precon because that's what the die told him to do. I'm talking about the folks who make a play, then try to take it back when a player has an answer to it (doubly so if that answer is on board or was revealed somehow). It gets worse when those egregious decisions come back to bite them and they have the gall to complain (you Bolted the player with one land and ended up helping someone else with a spell? Shocking)

It's hard for me to not get enjoyment out of an EDH game, and it almost always involves how the people are acting and interacting, rather than anything with the cardboard. Even playing underpowered decks against tuned lists is fun for me (though I'd rather people who want to play tuned list play at pods of tuned lists, because that's way more fun for me as someone who enjoys cEDH and is always looking for more people to jam games at that level). EDH is ultimately a social game, and that's what drives the enjoyment for me.

This pretty well sums up my bad experiences. Most of the issues I've had have been circumstances where players do the wrong thing, not the cards. Sure there's busted ass pieces of cardboard, but as a deckbuilder you know which decks have these and when it's appropriate to play them or not.

Mostly it comes down to treating people how you want to be treated:

[I_amOzymandias]

In my opinion games that stretch out a lot and take super long to end make for bad gameplay. I get often bored in such games and I can't hold my attention and interest that long on one game.

Similiarly too fast games make for a bad gameplay experience since there aren't enough opportunities for interactions, there is no progression or setup; rather the game just ends.

I play cEDH style games often, and I personally find the sweet spot to be the kinds of games where there are lots of interactive slower blue combo decks (often referred to midrange/adaptive combo decks).

Since these decks are still highly tuned decks with a high powerlevel, each turn starting from turn 1 is a relevant turn, sometimes even a very explosive one. But due to the more interactive approach of the decks these aren't attempting to race for win, but rather setup Long term advantage engines to grind advantage and slowly build up to a win they can protect, while interacting with the board trying to prevent the opponents from ending the game prematurily.

In conclusion: I dislike games where the games are too short to have opportunities for meaningful setup and interactions, while I also dislike games that stretch too long that I can't keep my attention span or interest there, and where plays on early turns don't matter (no meaningful early setup) or that we're too long into the game where most plays aren't big enough to have an impact safe from larger bombs.

[cryogen]

My feel-bad games.tend to result from:

Obnoxious players: info just can't stand sitting at a table with someone I'm probably not going to enjoy the game

Games where I'm stuck against my will: I'll throw down stax and cEDH with the best of them.... when I'm prepared. But when I'm playing a tribal chairs deck and you drop Stasis and I'm stuck playing draw-go for 10 turns then that's when I start checking Facebook and Twitter. It's not even a disproportionate deck level, because those games tend to end quickly and we can shuffle up a new game that's hopefully more evenly matched. But if you draw the game out so I can watch you play, nuts to that.

[braden]

I'm a spikey cEDH player.

I dislike games where I feel like I have no control or effect on the game. I love playing against stax.

My least favorite deck I've played against is Norin Randomness.

[pokken]

I don't have very many bad games., because most of what I want to do in games is see my deck do what it's trying to do.

When I have bad games the recurring themes are:
* Opponents are not fun people to hang around with
* I am mana screwed
** I am mana screwed and someone tries to make it worse
* Watching people durdle because they don't know what to do with their deck
* When someone fails to read the room and plays an overpowered stax deck - most other overpowered decks I am fine with. I don't wanna watch you go face with Lavinia for 20 minutes.

For god's sake goldfish your deck a few times**

(The reason I know this is so annoying is because I have been that guy a bunch over the years. We can smell our own. But I've really spent a lot of time getting faster).

[MrMystery314]

As someone who leans more toward the cEDH side of things but plays casual decks too, a few things stand out to me (note that I generally play online with random people, so this isn't rooted in a specific playgroup but my overall impressions):
-As people have said above, gross power level mismatches. I don't mind if some decks are clearly better than others at the table, but if it's a wholly insurmountable advantage it feels bad for everyone. If I'm playing Blood Pod, I don't want to discover that nobody is playing disruption, and if I'm playing something like copy tribal, playing against Shimmer Zur doesn't feel great. Still, even in the latter cases I personally play enough decent cards to where it isn't completely lopsided, but even if it's a fun challenge for me it isn't fun for everyone else. This is compounded when people think they're playing competitively or casually when they're on the wrong end of the spectrum; if I join a competitive room, ask everyone else how competitive it is and they say "very strong decks," and I'm playing Blood Pod against 75% Freyalise and Oloro and win on turn 4, nobody has a great experience.
-Players imposing their definitions of "casual," "competitive," "fun," etc. on other players in an arbitrary manner. I most often notice this in the middle of games, generally when somebody is close to winning or has already won: suddenly, whoever wins was playing "too competitive" or "too unfun" of a deck, even when the power level was not that different from everything else at the table. It is fair for people to hold their own opinions about what is "fun" or "casual"—I've had a lot of fun games either playing with or against stax decks, and my idea of casual is "not cEDH or anything that would not be grossly unfavored against cEDH decks"—but forcing other people to feel guilty for playing counterspells, mass disruption (e.g. Cyclonic Rift or Wrath of God), or other strategies that are not inherently competitive does not make it fun for anyone. The people making the judgments feel their game was ruined, and the people who have suddenly learned that Confusion in the Ranks is the most broken card in the game are also soured on the experience. I suppose it is a personal pet peeve of mine when people make arbitrary judgments about what's competitive in Commander if they have little experience; no, mono-red chaos is not a competitive deck just because I played a Mana Crypt. The social contract applies for specific playgroups that are familiar with the decks being played, not random rooms online; just because Sheoldred is considered the bane of your pod at home does not mean that everyone else should be expected to have the same standards. Whining endlessly about how Armageddon on turn 10 is wrong because it's a competitive card and should be banned (I know a few cEDH decks have ran Armageddon at some point, but it's a small minority), or that someone reanimating somebody else's Avacyn is a game-breaking play equivalent in magnitude to turn 2 Flash Hulk, or anything along those lines never leaves anyone satisfied.
-People getting mad when others are playing to win. Even in casual games, I think it's fair that people try to win as much as possible with what they are playing, and I think it's fair, especially with jank strategies like copy tribal, that people optimize as much as possible to make the most out of a bad strategy or deckbuilding handicaps (for instance, chair tribal or "no letter "a" tribal"). Getting mad when people aren't willing to play politics, if they're willing to play board wipes if they think they'd benefit, or if they target the player in the strongest position makes it unfun for everyone; some people are going to feel like they're being punished for trying to play the game, and other people are annoyed that people are being selfish for not wanting to lose. It feels bad when someone is punished or criticized for making the right strategic play; this applies at all levels of competitiveness, although more competitive pods generally complain less when people make a concerted effort to not lose.
-This applies to all games to some degree, but generally those more in the middle of the power level spectrum, but people not playing interaction. People deciding that counterspells or Swords to Plowshares ruin the game, and then wondering why the Atraxa player was able to get a gajillion planeswalkers to ultimate, makes games needlessly lopsided, especially as without interaction games become a pure race to the finish line. When I win with an easily-stopped, janky strategy when I arguably shouldn't have been able to because everyone else was ill-equipped, especially when the power level isn't that high, it makes the game somewhat boring; likewise, being unable to stop someone from slowly winning doesn't feel great either. Interaction doesn't necessarily need to be high-powered, but even casual games are a lot more fun when people are cognizant of what's happening across the table and how to stop it.

That's enough ranting for now, but I think most of the above can be summarized to "be aware of power level differences." Instead of complaining when a chaos deck plays Confusion in the Ranks, think that there's something wrong if your deck's power level is below "let's have everyone play each other's decks" tribal; if your idea of an unstoppable competitive deck is the Atraxa Superfriends you're playing, don't complain when you are surprised in a real cEDH game. Just because you aren't having fun doesn't mean everyone else isn't, and if you're the only one at the table complaining that someone played an Animate Dead on someone else's Elesh Norn after being mana-screwed for five turns, consider things from other people's perspectives too.

[tstorm823]

I think there are certain things people want in gameplay in general, and losing those things is what causes a bad experience. To name just a few:

Variety- People like to have new and different experiences. So if you lose variety in a format, people stop enjoying it. Commander has this baked into it unless someone goes way out of their way to be a one-trick glass cannon (or they cheat, cheating tends to make for repetitive gameplay).

Agency- People want to make decisions. When decisions are taken from them, they feel bad about it. This is why people don't like stax. They want to be able to do things and have an active role in the game. Even if there's a perfectly good game leading up to it, people still hate endings like Teferi Pool, because even if the outcome is functionally the same, people would rather just lose a game than be told they can't do anything anymore and have to concede. This is also, I think, part of why people hate short games or blowouts. If all someone gets to do all game is play a couple land drops and then they die, they didn't really get to make decisions. They shuffled up and then got nothing out of it.

Validation- People want a sense of justice in the outcome of a game. The idea that good decisions are rewarded and bad decisions are punished. This is why people hate kingmakers and chaos decks and senseless group hug things when they make no attempt to win but rather just screw with the game state. When one person wins because someone who is theoretically their opponent hands them the win, it's dissatisfying because the outcome wasn't a validation of the journey. I also think this is why very long games are often dissatisfying (though not always), because in a game with 10,000 actions, it becomes unclear what decisions were good and which were bad and the winner starts to approach being arbitrary.