Unreleased and New Card Discussion

[tstorm823]

that's an oxymoron.

No it isn't.

[DirkGently]

While I also think the card is pretty bad, it can absolutely be used politically,

How?

Personally I would define politics, within commander, as something along the lines of "Using the table's perception of the board state in order to manipulate it towards desirable outcomes." While, to some extent, any card can theoretically be used within that framework, a card like this, which has so little control over how it resolves, seems among the least politically-able cards in existence to me. How would you use it to steer the table towards your desired outcomes when you have so little idea how it's going to resolve (especially since the wheel is optional - someone could easily vote for wheeling over recursion even if they plan not to wheel)? You could make an effort to identify how each player will vote in the service of looking for a particular voting outcome, but unless you have Telepathy (and even with telepathy tbh) it's probably going to be pretty difficult to guess accurately since their decisions aren't otherwise based on visible information (outside number of cards and how much they've tutored/scryed/etc) and even if you have full information and know exactly how they'll vote, you still don't have much ability to change it if they aren't voting the way you want them to. And even if you have great information, great guessing ability, and the desirable outcome is the one you want (or you have some way to make it the desirable outcome, i.e. with Phelddagrif bribery), both outcomes are still very weak, so you've gained nothing with all this effort except a still-mediocre card.

How would you define politics, and how can this card be used in that way?

and while I hate group hug decks, this certainly seems like a perfect fit for that style of deck.

Sure, I don't disagree with that. Group hug style isn't an oxymoron.

Conversely, you can also make this a "heads I win, tails you lose" sort of card. If you're running effects that exile graveyards and punish/steal/turn off extra draws, it can read as either you get 2 cards from your yard, or you wheel and everyone else discards their hands and draws 0 or 1 cards. I think there are certainly better cards for this approach, but I can see it.

...or you could just play Restock, a card which sucks and nobody plays.

And note that the wheel, even after the table voted on it, is still optional, so nobody will be forced to lose their hand no matter how it's voted.

Also...One With Nothing exists.

One with nothing saw sideboard play vs owling mine. Break Open is probably my vote for worst card ever, but most cards in contention for "worst cards ever" were printed quite a while ago. To see such an incredible stinker in 2023 in a commander precon is pretty surprising to me.

Especially when they've also printed Erestor of the Council, who is desperate for voting cards, you'd think they could have made sure they were at least semi-decent. Poor Erestor, maybe by 2045 you'll have a decent deck.

How so? Is it that a group-hug situation cannot be strategic? Or is it the idea of a "group hug?"

Individual cards have group hug effects, i.e. Font of Mythos. Stacking up a bunch of them without some means to exploit it doesn't constitute a strategy, though. Charitably, it's like saying "cards that start with the letter 'B' is my strategy". Uncharitably, it's an anti-strategy, since "hugging the table" in almost all cases puts you behind.

If the deck does exploit them in some way - mill, draw-pain i.e. Nekusar, intentionally looking nonthreatening by being extremely terrible, etc - then that's the strategy, not group hug.

No it isn't.

See above.

[tstorm823]

Individual cards have group hug effects, i.e. Font of Mythos. Stacking up a bunch of them without some means to exploit it doesn't constitute a strategy, though. Charitably, it's like saying "cards that start with the letter 'B' is my strategy". Uncharitably, it's an anti-strategy, since "hugging the table" in almost all cases puts you behind.

If the deck does exploit them in some way - mill, draw-pain i.e. Nekusar, intentionally looking nonthreatening by being extremely terrible, etc - then that's the strategy, not group hug.

"Individual cards have Stax effects, i.e Smokestack. Stacking up a bunch of them without some means to exploit it doesn't constitute a strategy, though... If a deck does exploit them in some way then that's the strategy, not stax."

As though altering the resource management in the game can't be done strategically...

[DirkGently]

"Individual cards have Stax effects, i.e Smokestack. Stacking up a bunch of them without some means to exploit it doesn't constitute a strategy, though... If a deck does exploit them in some way then that's the strategy, not stax."

As though altering the resource management in the game can't be done strategically...

Stax as a strategy does require a means to break parity. When someone says they have a stax deck, everyone would assume that they're playing (1) symmetrical hate effects (typically symmetrical sac/discard/cost increase/etc) and (2) a way to break parity with those effects. Those are the things that define that deck type, and it constitutes an actual strategy (albeit a somewhat broad one, as sac focused stax can look fairly different than tax focused stax etc - language is imprecise, whaddyagonnado).

Group hug commonly does not break parity in any meaningful way, nor intend to. When someone says they have a group hug deck, I don't think most people would assume anything beyond the inclusion of symmetrical hug effects (draw/ramp/etc). Group hug is possibly the only type of deck where I'd wonder if the deck has any way to win at all, let alone a way to break parity. Not to say that doesn't happen, but it's certainly not integral to the deck type in my experience.

From the wiki:

Stax:

Stax is often referred to as a "prison deck" because of artifacts like Smokestack, Tangle Wire, Sphere of Resistance and Lodestone Golem which restrict the opponent's ability to play spells and keep permanents in play. These permanents, in principle symmetrical, become asymmetrical in Stax as it plays a considerably higher number of permanents than many other decks in the format, thereby allowing it to maintain a solid mana base while destroying the opponents'.

Group Hug:

Group Hug is a deck archetype for multiplayer games. Often Group Hug decks do not have a way to win on their own. Instead, the goal of the player piloting is to extend the game as long as possible by supporting whatever player is currently behind, and moderating the effects each player can play and resolve.

I don't think I've ever seen a group hug deck/player that "altered resource management strategically", mostly they just play a bunch of hug effects and then get upset when people target them. I'm curious what you had in mind by that sentence, but I don't think it reflects the reality of group hug as it exists in the vast majority of the format. I guess you can go no-true-Scotsman if you want to?

[Serenade]

Dwarves in this set make me think about Strixhaven. Since STX we have received more interesting interpretations of excavations than Lorehold provided. Surveil! Unearth! Strike It Rich! Whatever Mines of Moria is doing! Too bad Treasures center on Prismari . Each school having a focus on an artifact token type would be neat.
Treasure - Prismari
Clue - Lorehold
Blood - Silverquill
Food - Witherbloom
??? - Quandrix

(Hopefully this stuff does not drift into speculation. Sorry about that.)

[tstorm823]

I don't think I've ever seen a group hug deck/player that "altered resource management strategically", mostly they just play a bunch of hug effects and then get upset when people target them. I'm curious what you had in mind by that sentence, but I don't think it reflects the reality of group hug as it exists in the vast majority of the format. I guess you can go no-true-Scotsman if you want to?

Have you really never read any of my Zedruu thread?

[DirkGently]

I don't think I've ever seen a group hug deck/player that "altered resource management strategically", mostly they just play a bunch of hug effects and then get upset when people target them. I'm curious what you had in mind by that sentence, but I don't think it reflects the reality of group hug as it exists in the vast majority of the format. I guess you can go no-true-Scotsman if you want to?

Have you really never read any of my Zedruu thread?

I think I glanced at it a year or two ago, just long enough to know it wasn't really my thing.

But how you personally build group hug isn't particularly relevant - from my experience, the experience of nearly everyone I've talked to online, and from a perusal of the top search results, when people say they are playing group hug there is no consistent strategy behind it. Often their deck doesn't intend to win, but if it is, the hug pieces are most often put in "to make friends", which doesn't even make sense with symmetrical effects. And yes, some decks have more thoughtfully-considered hug cards in service of an actual plan, and even more rarely a plan which couldn't be more effectively done in numerous other ways without hug cards...but the proportion of those is plenty low enough that, when someone declares they have a group hug deck, that the insight gained into the strategy of their deck is effectively nil.

That's really my whole argument and the only relevant point to this discussion. If you think your Zedruu deck is "group hug done correctly", then I think you'll find yourself in a Scotland quite devoid of Scotsman. But since you brought it up, I'll take a quick look at your primer.

I haven't read the whole thing, nor have I ever played with or against your deck, so feel absolutely free to dismiss my opinion for the ignorance that it is. But the most relevant section, I think, titled "Group Hug", doesn't quite makes sense to me.

The first couple sentences make sense theoretically, however I think in practice it's much more difficult to exploit the symmetry of something like Font of Mythos in a way that gives you a distinct advantage purely from "rebalancing the resource management". Under a strong stax deck, opponents can be prevented from doing essentially anything, so a deck that can function under them comes out on top. But under group hug, everyone else's decks should, with rare exceptions, be working at LEAST as efficiently as they normally do, and probably much more efficiently. So you'd need to exploit the increased resources by quite a lot more to gain a relative advantage, especially when most symmetrical effects hit you last. And considering that most group hug cards really aren't that much more efficient than non-symmetrical cards fulfilling similar roles - Spending 4 on Font probably gets you personally less draw than a Beast Whisperer at the same mv, for example - that's a near impossible task. In a theoretical world where Font costs, idk, 1 mana, and other hug cards were similarly efficient, then I'd be more inclined to believe that you can get an edge by "rebalancing the resource management", but with the game as it exists now, not really. They're just not good enough of cards unless you can not only take greatest advantage of them, but actually make the downside an upside - i.e. nekusar - and I don't see your deck doing that.

Moving on, this bit in particular I don't think holds up to scrutiny:

A normal Commander deck builds with a curve, it wants to play a land and a spell each turn, it wants to have redundancy for consistency's sake, and tutors for even better options. Zedruu plays no tutors, only 33 lands, and a pile of unique 6+ mana effects. It looks bad on the surface, but when drawing 3-4 cards a turn, everyone else has fist fulls of redundant effects that they can't play all of, and Zedruu is developing towards a synergy or combo win safely in hand.

First off, when everyone is glutted on cards, having a lower curve is much more desirable than "6+ mana effects". If your opponents are drawing so much they can't empty their hands of low curve cards, seems like having a grip of expensive cards would put you in even worse shape.

If you're playing a combo deck, then tutors absolutely make the deck more powerful. You can of course choose to weaken the deck by excluding them - and I think that's absolutely the right call for making the deck fun, which seems to be the driving factor in your deckbuilding ethos - but claiming it's actually a strategic advantage I think is kidding yourself.

As far as redundancy, I'm not really sure what you mean. Most decks run a lot of "redundant" ramp, for example, to ensure they hit the points in the curve they want to, but it's not like additional ramp becomes useless, as long as you have stuff to cast with the mana (which, ofc, your draw effects provide). I can't really think of hardly any times where a card is completely redundant. The only thing I can think of is A + B combos, i.e. Persist + a way to negate the -1 counter, but even then, having backups to combo through removal is pretty desirable. Sac outlets, I guess, get kinda redundant? I think the vast vast majority of effects are "the more, the merrier" though. And having a bunch of separate combos that don't share pieces, while I completely agree is a lot more fun and cool and all that, is not a strategic benefit. Especially if you're forced to discard to hand size and have to pick which combo to bank on. Sure would be a lot easier to ditch the redundant halves on an A+B combo rather than needing to predict which combo will be completed first.

The last paragraph seems reasonable, and is an interesting point. Of course it would be much easier and more reliable to prevent interaction in other ways, though (Silence, orim's, abolisher, abeyance, etc). So while I do think you're probably correct in your assessment to some degree, it doesn't sell me.

And, I should point out, for as much as you talk about it, your deck doesn't really have that many hug cards. Not enough that I would call it a group hug deck. I'd call it a combo deck, albeit one with atypical draw engines.

My honest assessment, looking at your list, is that I think you wanted to build a unique deck that combos in ways that are fun, and plays in a way that doesn't follow more established lines of play. And I think that's an admirable goal. But I don't think the group hug stuff is actually very effective from a strategic standpoint. I think you've biased yourself towards them by wanting to do something unique, so you're finding ways to justify them strategically that are either nonexistent or pretty minor. You've maybe found a few corner cases where the significant downside of those cards can be a minor benefit, but I don't think your deck has found a secret strategic goldmine lying at the heart of a joke archetype.

[pokken]

Zedruu group hug breaks parity by zedruu drawing more cards off the donated hug effects.

Group hug remains a dumb gimmick mini game that is so very tiresome in every form. It invalidates most rules of deck construction and strongly rewards the most efficient deck at the table. That is usually me. So I like the free W but it feels pointless.

group hug is political in the sense that fake news is political. If you're dumb it works on you.

"Oh hai you can draw 3 cards per turn. I wil draw 5. That is me helping you kay "

[Hermes_]

The ring has been found and graded. I think it will take a couple of weeks for prices to readjust.

[Lifeless]

The fact that it's already graded really validates my suspicion that it wasn't really distributed randomly in the first place.

[pokken]

The ring has been found and graded. I think it will take a couple of weeks for prices to readjust.

Sounds like it is cranking away at prices already. Cue the nearly free collectors boxes lol

[DirkGently]

Zedruu group hug breaks parity by zedruu drawing more cards off the donated hug effects.

I didn't comment on that because I don't know enough about how the deck plays, but if the deck is actually using Zedruu as a draw engine then I think the hug effects become significantly worse. I'd much rather have myself at +3 cards and my opponents at +0, rather than me at +5 and my opponents at +2. The relative value of each card goes down as you draw more, so letting your opponents draw cards 1 and 2 in exchange for you drawing cards 4 and 5 is almost always worse than symmetrical.

[pokken]

I didn't comment on that because I don't know enough about how the deck plays, but if the deck is actually using Zedruu as a draw engine then I think the hug effects become significantly worse. I'd much rather have myself at +3 cards and my opponents at +0, rather than me at +5 and my opponents at +2. The relative value of each card goes down as you draw more, so letting your opponents draw cards 1 and 2 in exchange for you drawing cards 4 and 5 is almost always worse than symmetrical.

I mean yeah I agree it's bad. But they do it so the people will let them draw with zedruu. Otherwise he becomes a target. It's basically a way to prey on people who are bad. It definitely works sometimes.

I would like to see some recorded gameplay sometime but literally every time I've seen a zedruu deck with mines I've roflstomped it. I don't know that I've ever seen it win a game. My buddy has a stax version that has symmetrical stax effects it gives away and that one is alright. But he still doesn't win much against anyone who isn't stupid.

[MAGUSZANIN]

Conversely, you can also make this a "heads I win, tails you lose" sort of card. If you're running effects that exile graveyards and punish/steal/turn off extra draws, it can read as either you get 2 cards from your yard, or you wheel and everyone else discards their hands and draws 0 or 1 cards. I think there are certainly better cards for this approach, but I can see it. .

The wheel is a may effect, and the opponens choose on resolution. So no, that still doesn't work.

Not saying that it's the worst card ever or anything, but in a deck like Xyris, the Writhing Storm, or if you have a Notion Thief? The opponents will likely just choose not to Wheel.

Edit: that also means there is a 100% safe for the opponent way to play this every time. Voting for the wheel then choosing not to take it means that the caster just cast a 4 mana wheel for only themselves. Not bad, but hardly advancing an actual game plan there.

[tstorm823]

But under group hug, everyone else's decks should, with rare exceptions, be working at LEAST as efficiently as they normally do, and probably much more efficiently.

If they were playing solitaire, that is true. But this is a multiplayer format, most often a four player format. If you tap out to just play solitaire and try to race the whole table, you're probably going to lose.

The worst thing, and the thing I think you imagine, is someone tapping out to play hug effects and telling people to have fun, but I advise strongly against it. That's not any different than people slamming mass land destruction without a win condition, and yet I believe you can see there is strategic opportunity in resource denial, even if some people are doing it just to be trolls.

So you'd need to exploit the increased resources by quite a lot more to gain a relative advantage, especially when most symmetrical effects hit you last.

You really don't. You need to take best advantage in some sense, but not in the way you're thinking, because in Magic, people's resources negate each other. If everyone gets an extra card, and the other 3 players use them against one another, you still come out ahead without having done anything particularly special at all

First off, when everyone is glutted on cards, having a lower curve is much more desirable than "6+ mana effects". If your opponents are drawing so much they can't empty their hands of low curve cards, seems like having a grip of expensive cards would put you in even worse shape.

Big splashy expensive cards are very powerful. Having them at the right time is an advantage. But a deck overloaded with 6 and 7 drops is bad, not because those are bad cards, but rather because you need mana-efficient cards to play the early game and interact with people. When you draw a 7-drop that you chose to play over a 2-mana spell, you are drawing it with the opportunity cost of not having the cheaper spell, which can truly lose a game for you. When you go into a game expecting to draw 3-4 cards a turn for most of it, that opportunity cost becomes meaningless. When people are discarding to hand size, you lose nothing by drawing something you can't play yet. The other decks aren't the only ones with more low mana plays than they can play, I also draw more efficient spells than I can empty my hand of, but also have that expensive, highly impactful nonsense that goes way over the top of nearly any other deck given the opportunity.

If you're playing a combo deck, then tutors absolutely make the deck more powerful. You can of course choose to weaken the deck by excluding them - and I think that's absolutely the right call for making the deck fun, which seems to be the driving factor in your deckbuilding ethos - but claiming it's actually a strategic advantage I think is kidding yourself.

This is another thing that is true if you're playing solitaire, but its a multiplayer format. It is entirely rational for players to target more interaction at the person who played Demonic Tutor than the person who played Howling Mine. For exactly the reason you're saying, the person tutoring is doing something more powerful, they are the bigger threat, they are the correct target to take down.

I certainly wouldn't suggest that Howling Mines are good against focused, competitive decks, politics isn't sufficient to overpower the most cutthroat strategies in Magic, and those certainly use tutors. But if instead you are playing Magic with good players trying not to be hyper competitive, a strategy that will let you set up for victory innocuously is preferable to one that paints a big stupid target on your face. I know you know that. It's your favorite thing to do.

And, I should point out, for as much as you talk about it, your deck doesn't really have that many hug cards. Not enough that I would call it a group hug deck. I'd call it a combo deck, albeit one with atypical draw engines.

Zedruu gives people things, Unbender Tine can act like a mana rock for other people, Swans of Bryn Argoll can feed people cards, Replication Technique shares the benefit, Forbidden Orchard gives people creatures, a niche interaction between Zedruu the Greathearted and Lore Drakkis can let me let somebody else grab a card from their graveyard, Eye of the Storm and Bonus Round are symmetrical spell doubling, and then there are the 8 ways to let people draw more cards. Is that really not sufficient?

My honest assessment, looking at your list, is that I think you wanted to build a unique deck that combos in ways that are fun, and plays in a way that doesn't follow more established lines of play. And I think that's an admirable goal. But I don't think the group hug stuff is actually very effective from a strategic standpoint. I think you've biased yourself towards them by wanting to do something unique, so you're finding ways to justify them strategically that are either nonexistent or pretty minor. You've maybe found a few corner cases where the significant downside of those cards can be a minor benefit, but I don't think your deck has found a secret strategic goldmine lying at the heart of a joke archetype.

The honest truth, I didn't start out trying to do anything but draw cards with Zedruu. My deck started winning games before it had any of my now carefully planned silly win conditions, all on the back of the principle that symmetrical draw in multiplayer settings can let "worse" decks win.

I mean yeah I agree it's bad. But they do it so the people will let them draw with zedruu. Otherwise he becomes a target. It's basically a way to prey on people who are bad. It definitely works sometimes.

So, what's the correct play, oh talented one? If you let my Howling Mines stick, my deck will operate as intended, I won't need Zedruu. If you destroy them, I'll play Zedruu as my draw engine. If you kill all of it to keep me from drawing the way I want to, you're just focusing me down while other people are still in the game.

I would like to see some recorded gameplay sometime but literally every time I've seen a zedruu deck with mines I've roflstomped it. I don't know that I've ever seen it win a game. My buddy has a stax version that has symmetrical stax effects it gives away and that one is alright. But he still doesn't win much against anyone who isn't stupid.

Another Zedruu aficionado played on Muddstah once:

[pokken]

So, what's the correct play, oh talented one? If you let my Howling Mines stick, my deck will operate as intended, I won't need Zedruu. If you destroy them, I'll play Zedruu as my draw engine. If you kill all of it to keep me from drawing the way I want to, you're just focusing me down while other people are still in the game.

It varies by deck and how dumb everyone we're playing with is. My general strategy to group hug decks is to pressure their life total and kill the pieces that break parity. My other strategy is to combo out first if my deck has something such a gameplan. Most of my comboey decks will pretty easily grab a couple pieces of interaction on top of combos

Part of this is that I play strong decks and group hug as a strategy is just worse than most of what I'm playing. So it's probably a power mismatch thing and not something I'm trying to brag about.

The last time I lost a game to a group hug deck that then went on to win was in 2018 against a kynaios and tiro deck where another player intentionally knocked me out so he could come in second (read: very dumb). I track this specific deck type because I hate it so very very much and they are so horrendous against my play style. I did lose a game a couple years ago where a nekusar mine deck was involved but they didn't win or even come close (they drew my buddy into a combo, shocker).

I would seriously rather have diarrhea than play against Howling Mine.

The fundamental issue is that letting powerful decks draw a bunch of extra cards drastically %$#% with the randomness of the game. Suddenly my combo deck draws 10 extra cards without needing to exert effort the odds of me hitting a nut draw go way up.

So what happens usually is *someone* gets a random ass nut draw and stomps the table. If people are playing good decks and trying to win.

Since the group hug deck is full of trash ass group hug cards instead of good cards they inevitably lose.

I think I'm a fairly special case again. I build my decks in a particular way where if you give me tons of extra cards I will go bananas every single time. There is no resource glut and I'm not going to tap out. The tolerances are tight enough where if I don't need to exert effort to draw cards it's gonna get ugly.

I'm sure that sounds like bragging but you could scrape my discussion history for Howling Mine - it's been pretty consistent since like 2015 lol. "So and so played some group hug %$#% so I combod out with backup, it really ruined the game" is the average game report.

TLDR the group hug resource management dilemma doesn't work against people who are playing good cards and trying to win.

[TheGildedGoose]

Only 69 days until Wilds of Eldraine releases.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Only 69 days until Wilds of Eldraine releases.

Nice.

[Guardman]

Only 69 days until Wilds of Eldraine releases.

Nice.

I don't come here for the immature humor, but I do appreciate it.

[DirkGently]

If they were playing solitaire, that is true. But this is a multiplayer format, most often a four player format. If you tap out to just play solitaire and try to race the whole table, you're probably going to lose.

The worst thing, and the thing I think you imagine, is someone tapping out to play hug effects and telling people to have fun, but I advise strongly against it. That's not any different than people slamming mass land destruction without a win condition, and yet I believe you can see there is strategic opportunity in resource denial, even if some people are doing it just to be trolls.

I guess I've been somewhat oblique in saying this before, so I'll say it clearly: I think this is a no true Scotsman fallacy. The vast majority of group hug, from my experience, is doing the bolded, and when people talk about group hug, that's what they're talking about. The same is not true for Stax - stax has a consistent plan across all stax decks (with some variation of course). As far as the original point was concerned, this is the end of my argument. The rest of this is just for fun.

You really don't. You need to take best advantage in some sense, but not in the way you're thinking, because in Magic, people's resources negate each other. If everyone gets an extra card, and the other 3 players use them against one another, you still come out ahead without having done anything particularly special at all

That's a very big "if" you're counting on.

Yes, good political play can make you less likely to be the target of disruption/attacks, but that's true with or without symmetrical draw engines and there's huge potential for backfiring with symmetrical draw if you do become targeted.

Big splashy expensive cards are very powerful. Having them at the right time is an advantage. But a deck overloaded with 6 and 7 drops is bad, not because those are bad cards, but rather because you need mana-efficient cards to play the early game and interact with people. When you draw a 7-drop that you chose to play over a 2-mana spell, you are drawing it with the opportunity cost of not having the cheaper spell, which can truly lose a game for you. When you go into a game expecting to draw 3-4 cards a turn for most of it, that opportunity cost becomes meaningless. When people are discarding to hand size, you lose nothing by drawing something you can't play yet. The other decks aren't the only ones with more low mana plays than they can play, I also draw more efficient spells than I can empty my hand of, but also have that expensive, highly impactful nonsense that goes way over the top of nearly any other deck given the opportunity.

I should have taken a closer look over your decklist before making this point, because I think I missed another issue - your deck doesn't actually have expensive bombs. The only cards I'd put into that category are inferno titan (which looks underwhelming here, but maybe I'm missing something?) and sphinx of the second sun...and that's kinda it. The other expensive cards are all (I think) highly-contextual combo cards. Which obviously can be high impact, but only in the same way that any other win-the-game combo would be (except of course less so, as you've restricted yourself to 4-piece combos with expensive cards instead of low-variance combos with cheaper costs - reasonably so from a gameplay standpoint, but from a strategic standpoint obviously weaker than the alternative).

Setting that aside and focusing on the theory, though, I still disagree pretty strongly. Sphinx of the second sun, which is the only card I think unequivocally qualifies as a big bomb in your deck, is a removal magnet that's likely to cost you 6-7 more mana than it costs to kill it. Answers are much more efficient than threats, for the most part, so spending your whole turn on a single big easy-to-remove bomb - when you're supplying your opponents the answers they need to remove it - is tempo suicide. And that's even if I grant that a 6-drop is stronger than 2 3-drops, which I don't agree with either. Double-spelling is good. Lots of powerful cards come at low costs. You play Sphinx of the second sun, and your opponent plays skullclamp, ophiomancer, and grave pact for the same cost...I don't think that exchange favors you.

Also, I don't think running a handful of symmetrical draw cards - only two of which, by my count, cost 2 or less - means you get to declare that card advantage has been rendered irrelevant from the onset. I see plenty of opportunity to be choked out on expensive cards you can't cast early in the game before you're able to draw through your cards quickly, especially with the low land count. People don't avoid running a bunch of 6-drops because they're worried about drawing a 6-drop on turn 12, it's because they don't want to have them in their starting hand and get stuck - which I don't see the deck avoiding any more than any other deck.

This is another thing that is true if you're playing solitaire, but its a multiplayer format. It is entirely rational for players to target more interaction at the person who played Demonic Tutor than the person who played Howling Mine. For exactly the reason you're saying, the person tutoring is doing something more powerful, they are the bigger threat, they are the correct target to take down.

If there's concern that tutoring will make you a target, there's an easy fix - just hold fire on tutoring until you're ready to assemble the full combo at once. Which isn't cost prohibitive if you have an efficient combo you're searching for.

To preempt the argument "in subsequent games, they'll anticipate you're waiting for the OTK combo" - given enough iterations and (perhaps unreasonably) good players, theoretically the table should equalize with a 25% winrate across the board, more-or-less regardless of how strong the decks are (unless they're way out of whack, ofc). That does give everyone leeway to build to the power level they want to, of course, and is a huge strength of the format...but I don't think it means that building a weaker deck is actually stronger. It just means anything is going to balance out given time.

I certainly wouldn't suggest that Howling Mines are good against focused, competitive decks, politics isn't sufficient to overpower the most cutthroat strategies in Magic, and those certainly use tutors. But if instead you are playing Magic with good players trying not to be hyper competitive, a strategy that will let you set up for victory innocuously is preferable to one that paints a big stupid target on your face. I know you know that. It's your favorite thing to do.

Few would disagree that tempering the power level of your deck is necessary to create enjoyable games in this format. I think the way you've tempered your deck makes a lot of sense for the goal of avoiding repetitiveness while still being a combo deck - few pure combo decks manage to be properly casual. But don't mistake concessions made for good gameplay as strategic decisions. If I wanted to make a combo deck that won as often as possible regardless of gameplay quality, you best believe I'd be running tons of tutors. I'm not sure why that would "paint a big stupid target on my face" any more than any other deck that's egregiously above the power level of the table. But then we run into "worse = better" antilogic.

Zedruu gives people things, Unbender Tine can act like a mana rock for other people, Swans of Bryn Argoll can feed people cards, Replication Technique shares the benefit, Forbidden Orchard gives people creatures, a niche interaction between Zedruu the Greathearted and Lore Drakkis can let me let somebody else grab a card from their graveyard, Eye of the Storm and Bonus Round are symmetrical spell doubling, and then there are the 8 ways to let people draw more cards. Is that really not sufficient?

I doubt most of those would be common optimal uses of those cards within the deck. And I don't think most of those cards or applications are integral to the strategy of the deck. You could build roughly the same deck with asymmetrical draw, a different land, a different untapper that only targets your own stuff, etc. Making a stax deck without the stax cards...not so much.

The honest truth, I didn't start out trying to do anything but draw cards with Zedruu. My deck started winning games before it had any of my now carefully planned silly win conditions, all on the back of the principle that symmetrical draw in multiplayer settings can let "worse" decks win.

Bad decks can always win in multiplayer. Nature of the beast. Symmetrical draw does disproportionally benefit decks that are specifically bad at having enough draw, which being less beneficial for decks that have good built-in draw, but that's only one axis of badness and the fact that you're spending the cards and mana and (usually) getting last-crack at them means that you've put yourself in a significant deficit. If your objective is to make opponents' decks that have bad draw win more, then Font etc are perfect strategic decisions, but when we're talking about strategy the commonly assumed reference frame is with the objective of winning for yourself.

So, what's the correct play, oh talented one? If you let my Howling Mines stick, my deck will operate as intended, I won't need Zedruu. If you destroy them, I'll play Zedruu as my draw engine. If you kill all of it to keep me from drawing the way I want to, you're just focusing me down while other people are still in the game.

If I knew the decklist, I'd probably camp on a couple pieces of interaction and otherwise ignore you - the deck looks trivially easy to disrupt. Draw all you want, if I'm answering 12-mana combos with 2-mana counterspells I'm not concerned, Zedruu yourself silly. If I think you're providing a big advantage to my opponents, I might resort to removing the symmetrical engines or focusing you down in combat, assuming killing those opponents isn't feasible.

If I didn't know the decklist but you kept playing cards like eye of the storm, pandemonium, and possibility storm, though, I'd probably assume you're a griefer and target you as hard as possible tbh.

[5colorsrainbow]

Only 69 days until Wilds of Eldraine releases.

N I C E

Jokes aside, I'm very excited. Love fairy tale stuff, hope to see adventures returns and looking forward to see Will and Rowan post-desparking and Ashiok being an antagonist.

[tstorm823]

I guess I've been somewhat oblique in saying this before, so I'll say it clearly: I think this is a no true Scotsman fallacy.

You're not the one being oblique, but you're the one who committed the fallacy. "If you've got a win condition, that's the strategy, not group hug" is effectively "no true group hug deck has a win condition." I haven't come in here to tell you everyone playing group hug is a strategic mastermind or even trying to win, just that it's possible to, and you've argued that doesn't count as group hug then.

I should have taken a closer look over your decklist before making this point, because I think I missed another issue - your deck doesn't actually have expensive bombs. The only cards I'd put into that category are inferno titan (which looks underwhelming here, but maybe I'm missing something?) and sphinx of the second sun...and that's kinda it, The other expensive cards are all (I think) highly-contextual combo cards. Which obviously can be high impact, but only in the same way that any other win-the-game combo would be

I mean, have you seen an Eye of the Storm resolve? It's a 7-mana pseudo-"do nothing" spell that also completely flips the entire game on its head.

Answers are much more efficient than threats, for the most part, so spending your whole turn on a single big easy-to-remove bomb - when you're supplying your opponents the answers they need to remove it - is tempo suicide.

Good analysis. I pretty much never do that. If I'm playing a 6-8 mana spell, it's either on someone else's end step or I have 10+ mana available.

If I knew the decklist, I'd probably camp on a couple pieces of interaction and otherwise ignore you - the deck looks trivially easy to disrupt. Draw all you want, if I'm answering 12-mana combos with 2-mana counterspells I'm not concerned, Zedruu yourself silly. If I think you're providing a big advantage to my opponents, I might resort to removing the symmetrical engines or focusing you down in combat, assuming killing those opponents isn't feasible.

You'd get Possibilitied Stormed out of the game, I guarantee it. Enjoy your 2-mana counterspells that don't work, I'll be storming for the next 5 minutes, thank you.

I'm sure that sounds like bragging but you could scrape my discussion history for Howling Mine - it's been pretty consistent since like 2015 lol. "So and so played some group hug %$#% so I combod out with backup, it really ruined the game" is the average game report.

TLDR the group hug resource management dilemma doesn't work against people who are playing good cards and trying to win.

I have had at least a half-dozen people over the years come and ask something like "hey, I love your deck, but I play with some more competitive people. How can I make it more competitive?" And my answer is usually something like "don't expect a particularly high win rate, but if you really want to try, the best bet is probably going heavy on cheap interaction and police people with stronger decks." So, I agree, in a sense, that people at a certain level of competitiveness are likely going to beat my deck.

Amazingly, none of the people asking these question at any point called anyone bad or stupid or cursed at them. They were just looking for ways to have more interesting games with a wider variety of people. If your decisions are cutting out opportunities to play interesting games, that's something I think you can recognize and appreciate, not call it bad and curse at it. There are hundreds of strategies invalidated by people playing the best possible decks: I'd bet mill decks have a bad record against you, I'm sure you're pretty favored against shaman tribal... but you've obviously aimed particular ire at this one thing. That doesn't make it stupid, that doesn't make it not a strategy, that's you deciding to hate it.

[pokken]

Group hug is bad *and* creates a very lame experience imho. I don't think it creates interesting games at all. And I think the only reason it works at all at any power level is either 1) out powering the meta or 2) preying on people who don't understand it.

Your mileage may vary. This isn't a right or wrong thing.

[DirkGently]

Something I thought on a bit more after posting, this bit:

But if instead you are playing Magic with good players trying not to be hyper competitive, a strategy that will let you set up for victory innocuously is preferable to one that paints a big stupid target on your face. I know you know that. It's your favorite thing to do.

One way of looking at card analysis is the power of a card versus its perceived threat, where the "best" cards are the ones with the largest ratio between the two. That's a lens I used most extensively when working on Phelddagrif - while everyone knows STP is a strong card, if you know someone is running STP in their deck it's probably not going to make you want to target them more. And if you cast it, it probably raises your threat level by close to zero. By contrast, something like Sen Triplets is honestly not that great of a card but it pretty much guarantees that everyone will rain hellfire down upon you, because the perception of its power is much greater than its actual power.

So, to the savvy deckbuilder, running as many cards as possible that look like STP and as few that look like Triplets is a good way to make a strong deck that wins "innocuously". And that is absolutely something I like to do. The goal isn't building a bad deck, the point is to build a good deck that doesn't set off alarm bells because the things its doing aren't overtly threatening.

But I don't think that's what's going on with your deck. Cards like eye of the storm are, in my experience, hate magnets on a par with sen triplets if not even greater, and I don't suspect (having not played the deck, granted) that its actual power in the context of the deck justifies the hate it's likely to call down upon you. Honestly a lot of cards in the deck, I would score very badly using the aforementioned metric.

But of course that's entirely dependent on public perception. If your meta sees Eye of the Storm as a fun time, rather than justification for a tar and feathering, then maybe it's not as big of a problem.

Either way, I think you've tempered the power level of your deck by eschewing tutors and running symmetrical draw engines, which is totally reasonable, but that's not the same process as I described above. You can build for any power level while keeping the deck innocuous. I don't think your deck is constructed to be innocuous, I think it's just low powered.

You're not the one being oblique, but you're the one who committed the fallacy. "If you've got a win condition, that's the strategy, not group hug" is effectively "no true group hug deck has a win condition." I haven't come in here to tell you everyone playing group hug is a strategic mastermind or even trying to win, just that it's possible to, and you've argued that doesn't count as group hug then.

Those two things are absolutely not equivalent. I'm not saying group hug is a strategy without a win condition. I'm saying group hug isn't a strategy at all. It's a descriptor of the deck, but not one that pertains to strategy. That's why I said "group hug strategy" is an oxymoron.

"How does this boat propel itself?"
"It has 6 seats."
"Uh, the number of seats doesn't tell me anything about how the boat propels itself."
"So you're saying a boat with 6 seats can't propel itself?"
"..."

There are certainly group hug decks with wincons - probably most of them - but telling me it's a group hug deck does next-to-nothing to help me understand its game plan. So when I ask what the deck's strategy is, and you say it's group hug, it's like saying the propulsion of the boat is it's seating capacity. You're telling me information about the thing, but not the information I asked for. It's a non-sequitur.

I mean, have you seen an Eye of the Storm resolve? It's a 7-mana pseudo-"do nothing" spell that also completely flips the entire game on its head.

Oh yeah, it's extremely annoying for sure. But I don't think it qualifies as a "bomb" in the traditional sense unless it's reliably going to benefit you in a major way - which I don't see it doing in your deck. You don't even have a particularly high number of instants and sorceries, so it's super plausible for someone else to take greater advantage than you. It's more of a "bomb" in the sense of blowing up the game.

Good analysis. I pretty much never do that. If I'm playing a 6-8 mana spell, it's either on someone else's end step or I have 10+ mana available.

Most good answers are instants. But even setting that aside, whether you spent the mana on someone else's endstep or not, if it gets removed on the next player's turn you probably didn't get your money's worth unless you comboed out. Which, sure, but you don't need expensive bombs to do that.

You'd get Possibilitied Stormed out of the game, I guarantee it. Enjoy your 2-mana counterspells that don't work, I'll be storming for the next 5 minutes, thank you.

How are you guaranteeing anything when you have no tutors?

But if you do draw it, a draw-go deck is probably not going to let Pstorm resolve, for obvious reasons. Tap-out control decks might not have an answer up of course (though there is a lot of free countermagic these days).

But Pstorm isn't as disruptive to a control deck as you might think. You're a little time-restricted in when you can cast counterspells, and ofc it's a bit of a coin flip on whether you hit a counter off your counter. But if you don't hit a counter, decent odds you hit removal which could solve the Pstorm issue (or something else, if something else is more pressing or it can't hit enchantments). Depending on deck composition, ofc. But instants are relatively restrictive in their effects, so the variance isn't really that high for most decks. You're not hoping for an answer and hitting a mana dork. If you cast an instant you're probably getting an answer of SOME kind. It won't always line up, but it's still a lot easier to play control under a Pstorm than under City of Solitude.

If your decisions are cutting out opportunities to play interesting games

Pstorm + Eye of the storm + knowledge pool sounds more like a waking nightmare than an "interesting game" to me, but I guess that's personal preference.

There are hundreds of strategies invalidated by people playing the best possible decks

True, but the power level is going to end up somewhere. No matter how weak you build, you're always cutting out decks that are weaker.

To a certain extent, ofc, it doesn't matter. The commander meta is what it is, power creep is what it is. You can build bad decks and have fun with it, but you're probably not going to have an appreciable impact on what is viable within the broader meta.

That said, I think the vast majority of reasonable strategies are viable to some extent. Mill can be okay (I once had a pretty nasty lantern control Phenax, God of Deception deck). If grave value is a concern, Oona, Queen of the Fae is a solid mill deck (or you could just run leyline or something). I'm sure The Archimandrite could make a decent enough monk tribal deck. Name me an archetype and I can all-but-guarantee that I could build a deck around it that matches the power level at an average LGS. If you go down the list of types you could find some types that have zero synergy and probably wouldn't succeed at a deck, but honestly what's the unique experience we're losing from not being able to run homarid tribal anyway? There are dozens if not hundreds of decent tribal decks already available. Outside of the aesthetics of the cards you've pretty much got your pick of anything you can imagine mechanically.

That doesn't make it stupid, that doesn't make it not a strategy, that's you deciding to hate it.

Nope, it's nothing to do with hate - group hug is not a strategy because the term "group hug" doesn't describe a strategy. It describes a feature of the deck, but not one that clarifies what the strategic aims of the deck are. You don't win by hugging people.

[Hermes_]

So, to the savvy deckbuilder, running as many cards as possible that look like STP and as few that look like Triplets is a good way to make a strong deck that wins "innocuously". And that is absolutely something I like to do. The goal isn't building a bad deck, the point is to build a good deck that doesn't set off alarm bells because the things its doing aren't overtly threatening.

You know this past week, i thought about you and your group and wonder how'd you do there with a deck list that had a total value of the cost of a precon i dunno why i thought about that lol