materpillar wrote: ↑2 months ago
I mostly agree with a lot of your above paragraphs but you are over simplifying a bunch just like me.
Ruhan of the Fomori being a "type giant" is a mechanical incentivize to play him as the commander for Giant tribal. If you want to play
UWR giant tribal, he's the only legendary giant of those colors. If your gameplan is playing large giants and beating face
Ruhan of the Fomori is mechanically perfect for that.
Let me put it this way - I don't think people are looking at Ruhan and thinking "oh man, this is the perfect giant tribal commander". I think people want to play RUW giant tribal, and see him as the only option (erroneously imo).
Similarly, if your gameplan is to lose the game in the lowest amount of turns as possible curving
Howling Mine into
Phelddagrif is mechanically perfect.
Pretty sure I can beat that score with my
Phage the Untouchable fast mana deck.
From what I can tell you seem to be viewing "mechanical incentivizes" as "how does this card push people to play the card in game/deckbuilding" but you're analyzing cards in the way the card should be utilized in game/deckbuilding to maximize win%. A lot of people don't do that.
A lot of people don't PRIORITIZE it, I would say. I don't think very many people are building without any consideration to win%, but it's typically not 100% of their priority unless they're playing cEDH.
That said, people can prioritize whatever brain-worm nonsense gets into their head. That's fine, you do you king. Hell, I've got my own specific foibles as far as deckbuilding is concerned. But there's not much point to analyzing that because it's essentially arbitrary. Win% is the one common language that binds us, and which can be rigorously analyzed.
Anyway, to bring things back. Just because
Humble Defector mechanically incentivizes bad players to make bad deals doesn't mean the card is in itself bad. In fact if you're playing
Humble Defector, analyzing your opponents' skill levels is also fairly important on who you give it to.
If I had a nickel for every time I saw someone use dice to decide who to attack or to default attack the person with the most life.
I see people make decisions at random with defector way more frequently than with attacks etc. WAY more frequently. Because, unless you have some important triggers you're looking for, the reward for attacking is hurting someone else, so deciding who needs hurting is pretty important. Whereas with defector, the reward is the cards, and the person you choose is just whatever, whoever, I don't care, just give me those CARDS.
I don't think it's nearly THAT disparate. Humble defector is drawing 2 per turn for multiple players as a 2-drop, that's pretty %$#%$#% efficient. A hell of a lot more efficient than divination. Sure it takes a turn to warm up, but once it's going, it's going pretty fast. For more casual decks, drawing 2 extra cards per turn might be easier to use than having one big glut of cards all at once (unless they're running reliquary tower or w/e).
Regardless, you said creating a bipolar game was an upside to the card. If creating a bipolar game is a positive thing, then why not be okay with trade secrets?
It literally is THAT disparate.
Divination is draw 2 once. Defector is draw 2 per turn - for multiple opponents, as viewed from the outside. That is not a fair comparison. I have no problem with
Secret Rendezvous.
The correct line with
Trade Secrets is almost always to draw your whole deck and then try to immediately win through the other player who drew their whole deck while the other 2 people just kinda die.
Trade Secrets almost certainly immediately loses the game for the other two people unless deck powerlevels are really really really low.
At high power level the person you choose should never repeat the process, because you're the one with the opportunity to use most of your fast mana first and win immediately. So then it shouldn't even be a problem, outside of a trap card for the inexperienced.
It's in middish power games where things can actually drag on for a bit with 2 players being massively more powerful than the others, in a bipolar fashion.
Though I admit it's been a little while since I've played with or against the card.
HARD disagree. That's like saying
Bringer of the Blue Dawn is equivalent to
Concentrate - if bringer cost less than concentrate. Meaning a 3 mana mono-color bringer...pretty sure that'd see some play.
I disagree heavily. It's just less about explicit verbal deals and more about managing board states while creating loose alliances.
I don't see how symmetrical hug effects that you have no control over once you've played them allow you to do those things reliably. That's why I want to separate them.
Also I don't always do verbal deals with Phelddagrif. It depends on the meta.
I think I tend to be pretty clear about what my meta is like and how that it is biasing me. Your meta is doing the same to you. Hence, the only way to guess about other metas is theory crafting. As several other people have mentioned, they also seem to think that control will probably lose more often if a group hug deck is at the table.
Certainly my current meta isn't representative of commander at large, but I've played in many disparate places with many disparate people. I can't claim to be unbiased but I think I have a broader view of the format than most players.
Sure. I'm not saying that group hug is a hard counter to control. I'm just saying its a pretty bad matchup for control compared to glass cannon combo or a pile of midrange stuff.
I think it's a bad matchup for whoever is ahead. If an aggro player is ahead, and now his opponents are drawing 3x the removal to answer his aggressive threats, he's in trouble. If a control player is ahead, the other players are now drawing 3x as many threats for him to answer (setting aside wipes for the moment). If the control player is frequently ahead in your meta, then sure.
That's all pretty abstract though. If you want to get more specific about what sorts of control we're talking about, I might agree, but it depends. A staxy
Winter Orb list might not give a crap about you giving people CA if they can't cast anything, for example. The wipey control list might not care how many permanents get played if he's going to blow them up. A pillow fort deck might not care how many creatures are out since they can't attack him. Someone slinging out 1:1 answers is possibly in trouble - though answers are typically much more efficient than threats, so it depends on how lean the other players' threats are.
Ultimately if you're juicing CA, then efficiency is what matters most. An aggro player's
Goblin Guide is more efficient than a control player's
Aetherling, but a single board wipe or
Ghostly Prison can stop a hundred attackers. So it really depends on what sort of control deck we're talking about imo.
Control players tend to have the strongest end game. Hence, if left alive the longest their win % tends to go up the most.
Sure, I agree with that. But if group hug is helping everyone go bananas, then I would think the players with shorter-term game plans become more concerning in the immediate term. Balancing effect of multiplayer and all that. Personally if I was an aggro player, I'd probably be focusing the combo players first in the abstract. If I kill the control players first, I'm just begging to get KOed by a combo.
It's weird to me that everyone keeps calling
Insurrection a combo card and my deck a combo deck but w/e.
I think I heard PleasantKenobi refer to insurrection as a combo card while watching one of his videos after referencing my assessment of your Yurlok deck where I said it was combo xD It's not a perfect categorization but I think it most closely matches the current taxonomy.
I mean, if I'm sitting on 7 life and you've got 12 mana and I know comet storm is in your deck, I'm going to target you more aggressively than the guy with mike/trike. Mike/trike was a bigger threat earlier in the game, but at this point comet storm is harder to stop and it only requires drawing 1 card.
I'm not saying people should gun for you out of the gate, but if they're still slapping each other while on low life, knowing you have several 1-hit-KO cards in your deck to use against them, and you've drawn a lot of cards...that seems like it's probably not a smart move for them. But idk the specifics ofc.
materpillar wrote:Group Hug benefits aggressive/assertive/combo strategies. I'm aware of this and it is a deliberate deckbuilding choice. I'm building a deck that floods my opponents with resources so that they kill off the control players and do tons of damage to each other. It's specifically anti-control tech. For me Humble Defector is to control what Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is to storm. Anyway, because of that it doesn't surprise me you hate the card.
DirkGently wrote:Sounds unreliable. I prefer Boseiju, Who Shelters All, Lightning Greaves, etc.
materpillar wrote:Please. Boseiju, Who Shelters All and lightning greaves are significantly less reliable than having the person to your left eating all the removal and counterspells because their boardstate is more threatening. You know this just as well as I do..
DirkGently wrote:Another player maybe being more threatening and maybe being perceived that way and maybe eating enough counterspells to give you a window (while you're feeding more counterspells to the counterspell player) is more reliable than an uncounterable card that just says "counterspells don't work on me"?
Okay...
materpillar wrote:That's like the entire game plan and point of your
Phelddagrif deck isn't it?
I thought it was worth chasing this conversation back up the chain to remember what we're talking about. Your argument seems to be that juicing up other players (I'll be charitable and assume you don't literally mean the player to your left), will draw the attention of the control player away from you, and thus be "anti-control tech".
When I hear "tech" I think of "some specific pieces or elements of a deck". I don't think of "the entire deck revolving around this thing" the way Yurlok or Phelddagrif operate. So my assumption is that you're referring to defector specifically - a piece of "anti-control tech" the way thalia is a piece of "anti-storm tech". In that role - no, I don't think putting defector into a random deck, that way one might put thalia into a random deck to combat storm, is a reliable way to counter control. For all the reasons I already outlined. If you're trying to get a wincon through counterspells, what's more reliable - passing a defector back and forth, hoping to juice up another player enough that they absorb all the counterspells (without leaving any remaining, and without fighting past them and winning)? Or just playing Boseiju (or, for something more flexible,
Vexing Shusher) and guaranteeing that counterspells won't work against you?
Your strategy to me sounds like using a grenade to open a safe. Maybe you'll get lucky and bust into the safe without damaging the contents, but the results seem unpredictable.
As far as "the entire game plan and point of [my] Phelddagrif deck" - let's break it down.
1) Just to clarify - in Phelddagrif I am generally attempting to deflect attention by being less threatening than the other players - in that sense, they are similar. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm juicing them up with draw, more likely that I'm just letting them run free and not blowing up their stuff as much as I might. And I usually have the ability to step in and start blowing that stuff up if things get out of control. But anyway.
2) That's not "anti-control tech". That's a very broad strategy that applies to any group of opponents. I deflect the attacks of the aggro player in essentially the same way. That's why I don't buy this is as "anti-control tech". Defector could just as easily be used alongside the control player against the aggro player. It's a blunt weapon, not a tech piece.
3) If you're passing the defector back and forth with one other player, that will make that other player a bigger threat, sure, but you're also drawing cards, so it makes you a bigger threat too. Both of you are bigger threats relative to the other players. So it seems like it would draw more attention to you, relatively-speaking, rather than less.
4) If you're passing the defector off and not getting it back, then...I mean, good luck I guess, but that sounds very much like throwing a grenade and praying to me.
Ah, but pulling off a strategy while under a rigid theme constraint is just delightful. You're missing out, but we've been over that particular difference of opinion enough.
I like a good constraint. I build my set-commander decks. That's a constraint I can vibe with - a clearly defined puzzle that I can solve. What kind of constraint is "chaos"? How chaotic is chaotic enough? Is
Carnage Interpreter chaotic? Are basic lands chaotic?