What Makes Bad Games?

[BaronCappuccino]

Only non-games due to flood or screw.

[Blank]

I've found that the thing that leads to the least enjoyable EDH games is a difference in expectation from the players.

I'm at a college campus so I've played in all sorts of pods with various friends and sometimes it can be difficult to manage expectations because everybody has different effects that they dislike or think are fair/unfair. Some examples of what I've heard as thought of as unfair or not fun include various mechanics or card/deck archetypes including: Infect, Annihilator (Eldrazi), Chaos (Thieves Auction/Scrambleverse), Group Hug, Control, Tutors, Counterspells, Combo, Stax, Boardwipes, and Resource Denial (Land destruction/discard). Some of these effects you can easily skip in a deck (None of my decks have infect), but some of the effects (control/removal/boardwipes) feel necessary to some extent at certain tables. Moreover, you never know when you'll upset another player - I knew to "sideboard" Iona out of my Mayael deck at certain tables but I had never expected my Boros Battleshaper to catch as much hate as it does at one table.

The other big thing that I've seen disrupt expectations of players is deck-speed. If a player sits down with a flash hulk deck and another player pulls out their mono-artist deck then it is clear that there are vastly different expectations from the game.

One of my biggest fears when sitting down to play EDH stems from this: I dont want to be demonized by another player because I think more cards/archetypes are fair than they do and have included something in my deck that they wouldn't have fun playing against - after all, we're all here to have fun and I don't want to limit your enjoyment of the game with my card selection - however, after a certain number of restrictions I start to enjoy the game less myself so I try to avoid tables where large numbers of cards are deemed unfair.


If you were looking for more direct answers I would note that I dislike high-chaos cards (like Thieves auction, Scrambleverse, and Goblin Game) and Group-hug archetypes (which I find are often accidentally or purposefully king-makers).

[blairwitchgreen]

When a player's strategy and/or game play pushes a game state where their opponents are unable to participate in the game.

[HereticNick]

What -do- you like in Commander, then? Since you apparently dislike anything that gives one player any form of advantage in a game.

58 cards by name, several of which are banned and have been for a while, plus several entire swaths of card types. Including seemingly all X spells.

I'm just identifying all the things that are problematic. I wouldn't say ban all these cards just that these aren't great. I'm saying x spells that reference each player aren't super fun. They are probably mostly fine if coffers is let go.

If I were to get my ideal bans they'd be the 3 mana an less tutors(vamp, imperial seal, mystic, worldy, enlightened, demonic, personal) the fast mana rocks(sol ring, mana crypt, mana vault, grim monolith) and skullclamp, necro, seedborn, coffers, cradle, rhystic study.

Ideally I'd like to add 30 cards to the banlist. Above was my laundry list of dislikes. If the mana and tutors are checked many of the offenders I listed can be managed by the mana system and the randomness of drawing cards which provides people the time to stop these threats and more infrequency with having to deal with them.

Outside of my list there are many ways to gain advantage in CMDR these are just the most prolific as the ones I list are tried and true.

[DrSeaMonster]

If you want to ban entire swaths of card types because you think people shouldn't play the game that way, this isn't the format you want to be playing.

I hate every stasis type effect, if I never played aspect against any kind of stax strategy again, I'd be happy. And I hate any kind of control stealing effects. Play with your own cards, don't steal mine, that's really frustrating. And nothing gets my goat as much as someone using graveyard hate against one of my reanimator or recursion decks.

But I also really like some cards and effects other people hate.

Grave Pact, Elesh Norn, Insurrection, Beacon of Tomorrows, Triumph of the Horde...

If I want to be free to play the way I want to, I have to accept that other people deserve the same freedom. Is someone going to play a card or a deck that makes me angry? Sometimes, sure. Yuriko decks and Nezahal stax come to mind as specific examples.

If I'm having that bad of a time, I'll just scoop. Wait for the next round, try a different deck. Change to a different pod. I've got options.

Point is, a 300 card ban list isn't good for anybody. One of the core concepts of Magic is the ability to make a deck the way you want to make it. If I don't have fun playing against that deck, oh well. I probably have a deck you wouldn't enjoy playing against. That's just the way things are.

[bobthefunny]

3) Any game where one player is drawing more cards than the rest of the table combined and also has more mana than the rest of the table combined. This usually means someone's deck popped off crazy hard pre-turn 5 and the rest of the table is in full mode. This also means that this person's turns are taking longer than the turns of the entire rest of the table combined. Not ok.

Uh oh! My personal theory is that it's not a real game of Commander until all my lands are out! Also, I try to deck myself. And sometimes succeed.

It may be turn 20, but I'm still casting ramp spells. And in some of my decks, once I've got all my lands out, I start saccing them, just so I can shuffle them in and find them again! (that deck though is actually one of the more powerful ones that I play, admittedly).

And in another game, someone decked me with a Cyclonic rift, because casting Prime Speaker Zegana when you have a 15 power Toothy, Imaginary Friend is apparently not actually a good idea. Huh. Who knew?

[Vessiliana]

If I were to get my ideal bans they'd be the 3 mana an less tutors(vamp, imperial seal, mystic, worldy, enlightened, demonic, personal) the fast mana rocks(sol ring, mana crypt, mana vault, grim monolith) and skullclamp, necro, seedborn, coffers, cradle, rhystic study.

Ideally I'd like to add 30 cards to the banlist. Above was my laundry list of dislikes. If the mana and tutors are checked many of the offenders I listed can be managed by the mana system and the randomness of drawing cards which provides people the time to stop these threats and more infrequency with having to deal with them.

Um, some of these things are not like the others. And to be fair, Commander is the format where one can play with (nearly) all the fun, broken stuff.

30 cards to the banlist is a lot.

In my experience, none of the cards you've listed is actually problem. And if a deck becomes too linear (like Zur did...) the meta's groans get it dismantled.

[pokken]

I'm still pro banning dumb combo pieces one at a time until people are vamp tutoring for 3 piece wombo combos because there's nothing left there are simply not that many two card combos.

[PrimevalCommander]

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.

Well said.

I didn't think about long games in terms of Validation, but it makes sense. Even my attrition and control decks are looking for ways to actually end the game earlier to meet this end. Also longer games allow more time for "OOPS, I win" combos and such.

[Taleran]

I'm still pro banning dumb combo pieces one at a time until people are vamp tutoring for 3 piece wombo combos because there's nothing left there are simply not that many two card combos.

How sure are you about this one?

[MRHblue]

I'm still pro banning dumb combo pieces one at a time until people are vamp tutoring for 3 piece wombo combos because there's nothing left there are simply not that many two card combos.

Wow, I am surprised to hear you say that. I think that would easily double the size of the ban list, and thats if you only banned one side. In that idea, does it have to kill the whole table, or is one player killed 'enough'?

[DirkGently]

In order of frequency:

1) power level discrepancy

2) people being dicks

3) people making bad decisions for bad reasons (to come in second, some grudge based on a totally reasonable move made 10 turns earlier, etc)

[pokken]

I'm still pro banning dumb combo pieces one at a time until people are vamp tutoring for 3 piece wombo combos because there's nothing left there are simply not that many two card combos.

Wow, I am surprised to hear you say that. I think that would easily double the size of the ban list, and thats if you only banned one side. In that idea, does it have to kill the whole table, or is one player killed 'enough'?

Eh, I'm not like married to it, but I think if you started with the most efficient ones and popped a few of them it'd improve gameplay all around.

It's surely better than banning fast mana and tutors in terms of deck impacts. I'm talking an action plan like:

Ban flash in 2019, see how it rolls.

Ban whatever the next most common annoying combo piece is in 2020. Take your time at it. See if it haves the impact we'd think.

I think if you started with a list of:
2-card combos that kill the table
2-card combos that generate infinite colored mana (and therefore are functionally a 2-card combo with any general that is a mana sink)

And worked your way through them (from most to least efficient), you'd be really surprised by how short the list is compared to say, fast mana + fast tutors.

-------------------------------

I definitely see a lot of the philosophical problems with all that, so I'm not 100% on board again. I just would much prefer it over the tutors and fast mana bans people trot out a lot

[MRHblue]

Ban flash in 2019, see how it rolls.

Ban whatever the next most common annoying combo piece is in 2020. Take your time at it. See if it haves the impact we'd think.

Before July 2019, did Flash actually even cross your mind as a degenerate combo piece?

What metric would we use to determine 'most common'. I am not trying to nit-pick, but understand the idea.

I definitely see a lot of the philosophical problems with all that, so I'm not 100% on board again. I just would much prefer it over the tutors and fast mana bans people trot out a lot

Wouldn't those ideas ban a lot fewer cards?

[Dunharrow]

When powerlevels were not properly represented it can be very frustrating.
Also, I dislike games that play out the same way time and time again - so tutoring is frustrating to me.

[pokken]

Ban flash in 2019, see how it rolls.

Ban whatever the next most common annoying combo piece is in 2020. Take your time at it. See if it haves the impact we'd think.

Before July 2019, did Flash actually even cross your mind as a degenerate combo piece?

What metric would we use to determine 'most common'. I am not trying to nit-pick, but understand the idea.

I definitely see a lot of the philosophical problems with all that, so I'm not 100% on board again. I just would much prefer it over the tutors and fast mana bans people trot out a lot

Wouldn't those ideas ban a lot fewer cards?

100% when they unbanned protean hulk I thought flash would be dangerous.

I dunno what metric you'd use - prevalence is a common one we've seen identify problem cards (e.g. it's in 10% of EDHrec), but I don't pretend to know for sure.

And no, I don't think they would ban more than the tutors/mana. We're talking 10+ tutors and 5+ fast mana cards vs. potentially just banning a handful of the most egregious combo enablers, and doing it very slowly.

I think the impact would be way lower too. Say your banlist additions look like:

• isochron scepter
• food chain
• flash

vs.

• mystical tutor
• demonic tutor
• vampiric tutor
• enlightened tutor
• imperial seal
• grim tutor
• worldly tutor
• sol ring
• mana crypt
• mana vault
• grim monolith

The list of 2-card combos that actually win the game is fairly small, and of those lots of them are quite inefficient and vulnerable, or require playing very poor cards.

I don't think you would need to ban more than 10 cards (over several years!) to make a serious dent in combos and require people to start making real sacrifices in card quality or play very expensive combos.

[MRHblue]

I don't think thats an accurate representation of combo cards, but we are getting far afield. Thanks for the info. Will PM

[hyalopterouslemur]

Mismatched power levels definitely. Like, if I'm playing Narset, I'm not going to put a bunch of extra turns and/or combat steps in a casual playgroup. And, so long as I don't do anything egregious, she's fine. (Isn't that how it always is with Magic cards?) In fact, in casual groups, I make a rule: No tutors that can find something that is a genuine threat. This means I am allowed ramp spells, landcycling (as in for a basic land or a basic land type), and rebels and mercenaries (though the last one is "a lot of annoyance with minimal reward").

In competitive, basically, it's just the banlist.

[darrenhabib]

Player to go first plays Sol Ring. I go last, game is already over.

I've gotten to the point where it's just better for my sanity to concede rather than play the skewed odds. Life is too short to waste on unbalanced starts.
I don't mind losing to good games, but these are never good games, so why bother.

[bobthefunny]

I don't know... last night I got a start with a turn 1 sol ring, treasure map, turn two Sculpting Steel to copy sol ring, into worn powerstone... and I ended up losing.

Turns out getting hit in the face 3 times by a 7 power Commander is still bad for your health.

[toctheyounger]

I don't get this T1 Sol ring wins thing. It's a good start, sure. Especially if you're following up with a signet/talisman same turn. Even more so pre Paradox Engine banning. But the game is so far from over in the first turn or so that I just think the T1 Sol arguments get a bit hyperbolic. I've dropped a few of these and lost, seen others drop these and beat them. Its not a sure fire, even if it does increase your odds. There are just so many myriad actions through a game that impact the odds of winning that even with a great start like this it's anyones game most of the time. To my mind, the only time it isn't is in a hugely mismatched power level game anyway.

I dunno, I like a challenge and it takes a lot for me to concede. Maybe that's it.

[darrenhabib]

I've played well over 10,000 commander games, so I'm my own inbuilt statistics, and at this stage in my life I know all the patterns and it's just not worth my time anymore with near forgone conclusions. Back in my youth I would have gone in with that "we can do it" attitude, but turns out being a virtual three turns behind just isn't that much fun. It's definitely a jaded outlook, but I think it would happen to anybody after experiencing the number of games I have, and the inevitable statistical outcomes of games like these.
But because I play so many games, in among those they'll be some great games, where there is even starts and everybody is having fun. It's just a shame I have to play soooooo many games to get one. Thanks Sol Ring and Mana Crypt for wasting good years of my life, I could be spending it saving kittens instead, lol. Think of the kittens.

[bobthefunny]

I play Commander weekly, on Wednesdays. Lets estimate that's an average of 4 games a week. There are 52 weeks in a year. That's 200ish games a year. My join date on Salvation is 2011, so that's at least 8 years, probably a bit longer.

I guess my 1600+ games compared to your 10,000 is why I haven't lost hope yet vs a Sol Ring start. I'll circle back after another 8,000 and see if I feel the same way.

[pokken]

Maybe it's just time we suck it up and put sol ring in the command zone where it belongs THAT IS A JOKE SHELDON!

[Sinis]

Maybe it's just time we suck it up and put sol ring in the command zone where it belongs THAT IS A JOKE SHELDON!

no it's not, do it

if you don't, i'll say my voice isn't heard!