Top 5 Current Commander Concerns or have another freak out over Sheldon's thoughts

[toctheyounger]

whenever someone plays a color hoser against anyone other than the blue player

Props for the Schitt's Creek gif as well as the accuracy. Anyone who tells you you can't hear images hasn't seen this one.

[vandertroll]

But banning Hullbreacher or Narset because they create soft locks with wheels can lead to very niche-y bans in my book. Why not ban Entomb and Reanimate as well? They can lead to very oppressive plays as well. The list could go on forever

Well, I would not lump hullb and narset together, Hullbreacher is problematic because it's goodstuff that combos with wheels. Narset is much less problematic because she's not universal.

Hullbreacher creates extremely problematic patterns just by its text though - even without wheels it's really awful to play against, shutting down a massive part of the format in a one-sided way that also provides ramp at the cost of 3 mana, with flash so it can provide a counterspell effect for draw spells too. The card is too strong period. Its interaction with wheels is grotesque but far from its only problematic aspect.

If you think about how powerful 2-3 mana hate creatures are in magic, they're almost always symmetrical when they are extremely powerful (see Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Hushbringer and Eidolon of Rhetoric). Being asymmetrical and in fact beneficial is just way too much.

Entomb and Reanimate are simple enablers. They don't have basically anything in common with Hullbreacher

I think that if we were able to gather data about how much Hullbreacher hoses games and how many treasures are created before it gets removed (barring wheels of course) in a turn cycle, the amount would be less than more people think. Anyway, perhaps my play experience is very different so that's why I disagree on this one.

[DirkGently]

I'm not one to partake in these discussions, but the article was a big one, and I suppose my voice is as welcome as any other.

eh.

Idk, I enjoyed bringing a modern commander deck, with modern sideboard to actual modern FNM events...and winning, becoming a pseudo celebrity at the LGS for a few weeks for it. Most wouldn't, but the deckbuilding exercise and understanding of the meta was great fun.

Lol least subtle brag ever.

Not everyone wants to carry a ton of decks around and open themselves up to becoming a theft victim. This isn't a feasible option, especially as the secondary market roars uncontrollably and makes such things even more enticing. One, two decks tops...otherwise I'm getting really nervous. And definitely one deck if I'm playing a lot of old cards like my BB gauntlet of might or guardian beast.

I'm sure it depends where you live but I've been throwing around expensive cards for a decade and I've never been robbed, despite keeping almost comically bad track of where my backpack is at any given time. The vast, vast majority of players are honest, and it's not hard to keep track of a big box with a couple decks in it.

I suspect this is an issue where one guy gets robbed once, and a million people hear about it and spend thousands of times more money and effort on theft prevention than was ever stolen in the first place.

Keeping only 1-2 decks is among the more absurd restrictions I've heard anyone undergo in the name of theft prevention and honestly sounds like debilitating paranoia to me. Maybe you should get one of those wallet chains and attach it to your deckbox

I've played Boil|tmp and Omen of Fire for years, Hall of Gemstone and Carpet of Flowers in the current Ayula WIP, and I feel no remorse for playing those to those affected. Even Compost in said Ayula. If people didn't want to get blown out, they shouldn't have brought their Urza or Yawgmoth (imagine Yawgmoth panicking because his bloodghast loops keep my hand full thanks to Compost) deck. Popular commanders have targets. People that despise those commanders - for whatever reason - are going to find ways to stop them from ruining their card night. In my young days I used to get used and abused by an Azami deck, I'd get out-tempo'd by efficient Rafiq Bantvalue decks and I grew tired of losing to the same stuff. The moment they saw my Boil come from nowhere, in the middle of a counter-war with no means to stop it, they looked at me like I wasn't serious. "It resolves, yes?" For the same reasons, I run Perish in Alesha, and Meltdown vs mox decks.

What's my point. These players shouldn't feel slighted because they lost to their weakness. They should congratulate someone for finding it, and exploiting it because nothing is bulletproof. Players don't do this though. It's much easier to cry and ostracize another for playing something they didn't like. People don't rule zero for fun, relaxed games. They abuse the concept of rule zero to ensure they play against what they can beat, to "win" as though there was cash money on the line. I'm competitive, I admit I'm guilty of this...but I don't hide it. I accept this game has all sorts of things I like and don't like, and I don't see a problem losing to stuff that beats me.

And if it's really just about losing to mana denial (I really don't think it is)...add w, play Sacred Ground, which is the OG "F your Wasteland" card. Decks are not sacred. If you can't be arsed to update your deck and adapt to what you see, then you don't have the right to whine and complain about losing to the same thing. That's not socially responsible.

Imagine being so proud of how inbred your meta is that you brag about it on the internet. Christ I'm so glad I don't play in the sort of environment where someone would run a targeted hate card just to counter one of my decks specifically. That seems like a potentially huge downside to playing with the same people every time.

Also I 100% agree with @pokken - having a card that says "screw X color" is not exactly big brained "exploiting your opponents weakness". It's winning a game of rock paper scissors. That's why WotC stopped printing that kind of crap. Especially since they dunk 10x harder on monocolor decks, who are already at a disadvantage. If you want to brag about how you've found the weak point in your opponents armor, it'd probably look a lot more impressive if that weak point wasn't "lol they're playing blue so I played the card that hurts people who play blue."

[folding_music]

it's funny, on the subject of hosing people out of the game, that one of the best strats to prevent linear Commander decks winning the same way every time is a bunch of wheels and mutual discard, Burning Inquiry and Tef's Puzzle Box and all that, but people seem desperate to deem that Not Commanderish too, giggle

I guess this impossible-to-negotiate pet hate dynamic is the last remaining reason you could consider the format casual

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I definitely have Boiled my fair share of people. I've slung Armageddon, Ruination, Boiling Seas, Cataclysm and Tsunami too. Thing is, it works like a charm. Absolutely devastating to the players they affect.

But you won't make any friends with them. In fact, I've probably lost more games overall for playing them and people remembering that I played them than I would have lost showing up with draft chaff.dec. TBH, it took a good long while to rehab my reputation (2015-2017) at my lgs after stepping off the stax train for good. Heck, some people still bring up the daretti deck I used to play, replete with all the Wildfires, Static Orb, Winter Orb, etc. They're usually not referencing it as a compliment.

In tournament magic, I'm cool with all those brutal stax things. That's the whole sideboard thing. Of course I'm going to Stony Silence your affinity deck, c'mon jack. I even like the ideas behind most stax cards and the deck-building challenge of breaking parity under symmetrical duress on paper. But in practice it just makes people miserable.

I've come to realize EDH isn't the place for any of that stuff. There's enough %$#%$#% negativity in Magic and the world without my contributions. Besides, if I wanted to spend my time "punishing" people for their choices, I could just go be an insurance adjuster and deny claims the whole ding-dong day.

Edit: I guess my point is, it's incumbent on all of us to try to improve EDH as individuals rather than waiting and praying for sweeping dogmatic decrees to fix EDH's problems. I know it's a cliche, but you gotta be the change you wanna see in the world.

[3drinks]

[This post has been deleted at the request of the original poster.]

[materpillar]

These players shouldn't feel slighted because they lost to their weakness. They should congratulate someone for finding it, and exploiting it because nothing is bulletproof. Players don't do this though. It's much easier to cry and ostracize another for playing something they didn't like. People don't rule zero for fun, relaxed games. They abuse the concept of rule zero to ensure they play against what they can beat, to "win" as though there was cash money on the line. I'm competitive, I admit I'm guilty of this...but I don't hide it. I accept this game has all sorts of things I like and don't like, and I don't see a problem losing to stuff that beats me.

This mentality is highly flawed. Effectively every single deck I own loses to Thassa's Oracle + Demonic Consultation with counterspell backup. I'm sure as hell not going to congratulate someone for beating me with a cEDH deck.

If I sit down with my Chromium deck and you Ruination me. I'm just not going to play with you again. I sat down with an Elder Dragon in the format Elder Dragon Highlander and you used LD/Stax to lock me out of casting my general from which the format is named after. That's not me being salty and needing to get good, that's you hilariously misunderstanding the point of the format (or at least what I want to get out of the format).

[TheAmericanSpirit]

That's not me being salty and needing to get good, that's you hilariously misunderstanding the point of the format (or at least what I want to get out of the format).

Having been on both sides of MLD, I can't say it's ever all that hilarious. I think "tragically" is a more operative term.

[DirkGently]

Here in the states, there's an epidemic going on of thefts both personal and as far up as the LGS themselves, because the secondary market is entirely out of control. People realizing they can make more by risking jail time to steal painted cardboard than working an hourly job. That's both an issue with the job market and a lucrative card market (browsing card trader and other international sites tells me these cards aren't retailing for nearly as much as they do in the states). And, I've had a deck stolen, back in 2012 right before I left Phoenix. I don't intend to ever let that happen again.

I'm glad I've gone so headstrong into the mpcautofill game. At least IF it happened again, I'm out $40 instead of $400...and they're stuck with a bunch of clear fakes (no holo symbol at the bottom, sometimes different arts, or frames those cards don't come in).

Call me crazy but I'm kinda doubting your average thief is spending time browsing scryfall to stay updated on price trends. And I don't think a card being worth a bit more is going to make an honest player into a thief, nor do I think people are going to get into magic for the thieving. So at least intuitively I'm not seeing a reason why rising card prices would correlate with a significant theft increase. Do you have any evidence?

In NZ most people are using US card sources as price points, though actually acquiring cards is a lot more annoying. Some individual stores with spotty overpriced stock, or the expense of importing them. Luckily people tend to trade/sell at reasonable rates if you can find someone with them for trade, but the market is still tied to the US economy. Less so in Europe since they're all using MKM (one of the things I miss most about living in Europe tbh). Idk about elsewhere. Haven't heard of any theft happening here afaik.

All that said...are you for reals? You've got a deck full of proxies worth less than the price of a precon and you're STILL too paranoid to bring more than 2 decks? How do you even leave the house with your phone in your pocket? Like honestly you might want to look into therapy or something.

[umtiger]

This mentality is highly flawed. Effectively every single deck I own loses to Thassa's Oracle + Demonic Consultation with counterspell backup. I'm sure as hell not going to congratulate someone for beating me with a cEDH deck.

If I sit down with my Chromium deck and you Ruination me. I'm just not going to play with you again. I sat down with an Elder Dragon in the format Elder Dragon Highlander and you used LD/Stax to lock me out of casting my general from which the format is named after. That's not me being salty and needing to get good, that's you hilariously misunderstanding the point of the format (or at least what I want to get out of the format).

I think every deck (even cEDH) loses to Consult+Oracle & backup. But that's a different discussion.

I agree that playing with and winner off the back of hosers (e.g. Boil) is different from building against a weakness (e.g. playing Enchantress vs. a meta soft to enchantments). But let's not act like players don't get upset from just losing and focus too much on "winning" over fun, which is why some players will put stuff like Oracle+Consult in even their "casual" decks.

If they play Ruination, they might not just be playing it against you. There are other opponents as well. Plus, you might not even be playing Chromium. Unless you get equally upset at Ruination when you're playing your Jaya Ballard deck, I don't know.

It's definitely a nice luxury to have more than one deck available and/or cards to sub in for the next game. I mean, some people might even get salty when they see someone running The Walking Dead cards. Beyond just Rule 0, players should communicate/debrief at the end of games too.

I think Ruination is okay. Someone else might not. Someone else might draw the line at Blood Moon. Others might think that's too far.

[pokken]

I don't object to MLD in principle though I don't run it anymore myself because of my ethos of trying to make sure all my win conditions can be interacted with by every color (at least in my non-cedh decks). Ruination and even Armageddon are things I will just say "ok, shuffle up" to and be sure to play decks that can compete with that effect in the future.

I do think playing color hosers, even anti-blue hosers, is foul. Playing Boil should be so obviously taboo based on the banning of Iona, Shield of Emeria.

Compost is a great card and it doesn't impact anyone's ability to play. That's not a color hoser. Not any more than Verity Circle hates on green decks. Neither of those is likely to outperform Sylvan Library or Rhystic Study on the regular anyway.

[3drinks]

I never should have entered this conversation.

[duducrash]

Back in the day I played allies in modern. Going to my LGS tuesdays and saturdays, playing the same match ups over and over tired me, the breath of fresh air was limited. When I started drafting things got much better.

Cmdr legends was an opportunity to change up and experience a new commander variant. Due to the pandemic it was unsafe for us to actually try it, but it could be fun, who knows. I hope the variants bring changr of pace to the format

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I never should have entered this conversation.

That's not true. Counterpoints can and should exist. Everyone here knows you're a vocal minority on these topics. IMHO, it's your tone that needs work. You come across so angry, so bitter and that immediately puts people in defensive positions. I think audiences would be a lot more receptive to what you think if you didn't stage your arguments as justifications to punish people who don't share your mentality. The cards people play are never an excuse, a warrant, or an entitlement to abuse them or make them miserable.

Just the two cents of somebody who's done a fair amount of public speaking. Fire and fury doesn't sell quite like compassion and understanding. For example, if you phrased your argument along the lines of "these x things are known to be problematic, has anyone considered experimenting with this class of cards to combat them? I've seen some success with them in my meta because we've cultivated said meta to be more open to playing that type of game" (or something like that), you'd still be the minority and maybe still a villain to some, but you'd be a sympathetic villain instead of seeming unnecessarily vindictive. Kindness and calm begets productive discussions better than rage, on here and in life in general. We're all here for productive discussions, right?

[TheGildedGoose]

It also doesn't help that Dirk can be abrasive and condescending. Telling someone they need therapy is dismissive and marginalizing.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

It also doesn't help that Dirk can be abrasive and condescending. Telling someone they need therapy is dismissive and marginalizing.

Yeah, lines were definitely crossed there. But this is what I mean by tone making people defensive. Dirk's flagship deck is based around the idea of massive retaliation, that doesn't come from nowhere. He's a known quantity in that regard. But the point remains, if you enter any topic with aggression, people will naturally return in kind. We all need to be nicer to each other and that will in turn make this a nicer place to be. If we just want to trade barbs with randos, reddit is a better cesspool for that brand of mudslinging.

I come here because that toxicity is exactly what I want to avoid. We can totally be above that %$#% if we try.

[3drinks]

They and I have been on opposing ends many, many times over the years, and will likely continue so in the future. It can't be helped I guess. But that's not important. I lose my points when I start these discussions, and end up down a rabbit hole of a rant that's distanced myself from the attempt at making a reasonable, open contribution. Let's try this again.

I, in my experience, play the cards I play because I've been in the bad experiences I have. I've watched hundreds of masturbatory Azami decks over the years and in turn, it's time to make them sit and watch with no lands, rather than I sit and watch the whole "in response, I draw a card, in response, I draw a card, in response, I draw a card..." ad infinitum that happens with the deck. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. When this happens over years, it's impossible to have trust that others doing this won't do the same thing you've seen before, especially when you've never met the person prior. If you see someone playing Yuriko, responsibly you have to treat them as though they're playing some variant of ANT and if you don't pressure them, they're going to win. It just, in this case helps that these colours are so omnipresent that such hoser cards are seldom dead. I expect the worst and thus prepare for the worst - I wouldn't be shocked to see someone touting around a Douse or Chill if they regularly expected me to pop up, either. This format is very, very flawed, and it's so easy for things to go sideways really quick, and you can either be on the right side of that, or the losing side. Especially in pickup games where there's no telling when you're gonna run into the sweet Kess, Dissident Mage deck that shelled out for an Arabian Nights City of Brass, or the Hans Eriksson that wants to cheat their Flameblast Dragon onto the battlefield.

In MY experience with Alesha over the years, I find a very hard time swinging past Big Dumb Green Things™, ergo I opted to add Perish and Nature's Ruin to my deck. That doesn't seem hateful or spiteful, that's sound strategy to cover my deck holes. If I struggle with interaction, by that same token, sneaking an Omen of Fire in there can help mitigate that, if it resolves (it should never resolve). Too often, I feel people are attached to their decks and don't want to change things because it wouldn't be "their's", or they couldn't play pet card x. And so they make up excuses to themselves why they shouldn't have to "well people don't use MLD because I don't think it's fun" or "People don't use counterspell decks because it's boring" or whatever, insert strategy here. Then when people run into that strategy, they blame the person for being a jerk because they don't play or build the same exact way as they do. Look, I hate counterspell decks as much as the next person, probably more as has been well documented. But they do have a place as much as everything else that isn't banned. Bring your Baral, Yawgmoth, Golos, Chulane, or whatever that's legal. It's fine. But at the same time you can't be surprised when you face strong hate for your strong cards. That's also fine. Suddenly your Chulane doesn't like sawft locking itself because my Korvold can balance Tainted Aether huh? Well we don't like watching you do cloudstone curio things for the umpteenth time either. I'm getting into rant territory, lem'me stop.

On the subject of not bringing lots of cards because I don't want to appear to be a target? Even as I use mpcautofill a lot more these days, money is still money, I work 50hr weeks to earn that, I'm not going to throw that away because I walked into a store with a bunch of decks - you can only play one at a time anyway. Not to mention the excess space that stuff takes up both on your person and inside the LGS. No, I'm gonna be respectful to others that need some space too. I can bring two decks in my nice DEX Protection box, with a handful of dice, tokens, and maybe a couple of cards to switch out between games. I don't need to bring a giant suitcase of a 32 deck chromatic project though.

I hope this comes off more elegant than initially.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

@3drinks Better! You could still ease off the gas a little imho, but much better.

[pokken]

I think that if we were able to gather data about how much Hullbreacher hoses games and how many treasures are created before it gets removed (barring wheels of course) in a turn cycle, the amount would be less than more people think. Anyway, perhaps my play experience is very different so that's why I disagree on this one.

In my experience it rarely makes all that many treasures. Usually people are locked out of drawing cards for a turn or two and then they lose.

the games I remember with Hullb:

2x I resolved hullbreacher + Echo of Eons in Sygg (intuition is a good card)
1x I stuck it and rode it for a few turns with Ephara, no one drew any cards and then I won because I drew a lot of cards
1x I stuck it and rode it for 2 turns while it shut off a Consecrated Sphinx then I wrathed it so I could Body Double the consecrated sphinx and win the game.
1x I stuck it and it ate removal so I Karmic Guide'd it and then everyone scooped

(my win rate is 100% when it even hits the board on my side lol)

2x. lazav deck entombed it, copied it with lazav and then wheeled (UGH)
1x lazav deck cast it in response to a Wheel of Fortune and I am forced to counter the wheel since if I counter Hullbreacher he instantly copies it as lazav. He eventually tutored up windfall and windfalled us but he shut off Ephara, God of the Polis and got 5 treasures from Omnath, Locus of the Roil and won handily by combo-killing me with Phage the Untouchable (while we all had no hands due to windfall, then everyone else scooped)
1x yuriko deck cast it, I immediately untapped and slammed Supreme Verdict and I won that one

[Treamayne]

I, in my experience, play the cards I play because I've been in the bad experiences I have.
<snip>
I'm getting into rant territory, lem'me stop.

I empathize with this, bad play experiences have dominated what little EDH I have been able to play for the last few years. Unfortunately, since that has been on MTGO (last paper game was 2017), rule 0 is a no go. However, I've taken a similar philosophy, but an alternate path.

I, too, build the kinds of decks I want to build and play the decks I want to play. I just refuse to use the tools I don't like playing against. Until I can successfully get a clan of like-minded players (hopefully enough people that most times of most days will have enough people to get a game) that can have Rule 0 discussions, I just don't play a second time against the players using those tools. The closest I get to "anti-color" is Roots of Life in my Golgari Blanket of Night/Hecatomb deck.

That said, I can absolutely respect your position and philosophy - especially when such a high volume of games are "pick-up" style.

This post may be old, but I tend not to post decklists. It is still fairly typical of my deckbuilding style.

I hope this comes off more elegant than initially.

It does. Thanks you.

[DirkGently]

It also doesn't help that Dirk can be abrasive and condescending. Telling someone they need therapy is dismissive and marginalizing.

I can see how it reads that way in the context of the rest of it, but I didn't mean that part as an insult. To me it does genuinely sound like he's had some bad experiences and might need help recovering from them. Being too worried about thieves to bring a third deck - full of proxies - and believing that doing so would paint a big target for thieves does sound kinda worrying to me. I could be wrong and maybe it's more justified than I think it is, but in my (extremely not-expert) opinion it sounds like the sort of thing that might be impacting daily life, and worth talking to someone about. Probably not my business though.

They and I have been on opposing ends many, many times over the years, and will likely continue so in the future. It can't be helped I guess. But that's not important. I lose my points when I start these discussions, and end up down a rabbit hole of a rant that's distanced myself from the attempt at making a reasonable, open contribution. Let's try this again.

I did go a bit overboard, and I'm sorry about that. I'll try to do better.

I, in my experience, play the cards I play because I've been in the bad experiences I have. I've watched hundreds of masturbatory Azami decks over the years and in turn, it's time to make them sit and watch with no lands, rather than I sit and watch the whole "in response, I draw a card, in response, I draw a card, in response, I draw a card..." ad infinitum that happens with the deck. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. When this happens over years, it's impossible to have trust that others doing this won't do the same thing you've seen before, especially when you've never met the person prior. If you see someone playing Yuriko, responsibly you have to treat them as though they're playing some variant of ANT and if you don't pressure them, they're going to win. It just, in this case helps that these colours are so omnipresent that such hoser cards are seldom dead. I expect the worst and thus prepare for the worst - I wouldn't be shocked to see someone touting around a Douse or Chill if they regularly expected me to pop up, either. This format is very, very flawed, and it's so easy for things to go sideways really quick, and you can either be on the right side of that, or the losing side.

While I can sympathize with not enjoying those sorts of games, I think the attitude you've taken away from that sounds kinda angry. It sounds like you're playing these cards out of some kind of vengeance, and that's probably not a good reason to play those cards, nor the game in general tbh. I can only speak for the places I've played in, but while some small percentage of people may be pubstomping with powerful decks, the vast majority are not, and bringing a nuclear missile in that's going to Boil both the urza and the Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive decks alike is just perpetuating the cycle of unpleasant games imo.

Incidentally (ad time?) this was part of my intention behind building Phelddagrif. You can blow cEDH decks up nice and pretty by killing all their stuff and countering all their spells, but you're not obliterating casual decks. The response is always proportional. Boil isn't going to be proportional unless you're playing cEDH, imo. It's also just a lame way to lose. It's like if your name is Kevin and someone has a card that says "target Kevin loses the game". I guess the card isn't OP because it's dead a lot of the time, but it's not exactly the sort of exciting back-and-forth gameplay I usually look for. Boil and geddon are appropriate in roughly the same metas I guess, but I'd find losing to boil way more obnoxious even in a high-powered game because it feels like you just got a lucky matchup. (let alone omen of fire which hates on white, I mean c'mon that's just rude)

Especially in pickup games where there's no telling when you're gonna run into the sweet Kess, Dissident Mage deck that shelled out for an Arabian Nights City of Brass, or the Hans Eriksson that wants to cheat their Flameblast Dragon onto the battlefield.

Not really relevant, but I'm confused - what does an arabian CoB have to do with how fun a deck is to play against? I generally consider kess to be fairly un-fun (hello infinite time warps...) regardless of which expansion their lands are from. Or was that supposed to be an example of a hard matchup in contrast to the Hans example which is relatively casual, in which case why are we focusing on the lands instead of the relevant cards? I'm confused.

In MY experience with Alesha over the years, I find a very hard time swinging past Big Dumb Green Things™, ergo I opted to add Perish and Nature's Ruin to my deck. That doesn't seem hateful or spiteful, that's sound strategy to cover my deck holes. If I struggle with interaction, by that same token, sneaking an Omen of Fire in there can help mitigate that, if it resolves (it should never resolve).

Perish is less obnoxious than boil at least - after all, they should anticipate their creatures could die to a damnation or cyc rift or whatever, whereas most people wouldn't anticipate their lands getting blown up, let alone asymmetrically - but I would still find it an irritating card on both sides of the fence. From the recipient side, it feels like you got punished just for playing a color. On the caster side, it's a coin flip whether the card is useful or dead weight.

For alesha, I would think a much more satisfactory experience on both sides would be something like Retribution of the Meek or Citywide Bust, or even Meekstone. For one thing, someone playing mono-green can actually shore themselves up against that weakness by running some smaller creatures, whereas with perish there's usually a lot less they could do (they could run artifact creatures I suppose but those might not really fit with what they're trying to do). For a second thing, it's actually targeting your weakness - creatures of large size - rather than something relatively arbitrary - their color.

(I will say that I think weak color hosers are basically fine, stuff like Sanctifier en-Vec which (1) have a use outside of color hate and (2) don't completely shut down the targeted colors)

Too often, I feel people are attached to their decks and don't want to change things because it wouldn't be "their's", or they couldn't play pet card x. And so they make up excuses to themselves why they shouldn't have to "well people don't use MLD because I don't think it's fun" or "People don't use counterspell decks because it's boring" or whatever, insert strategy here. Then when people run into that strategy, they blame the person for being a jerk because they don't play or build the same exact way as they do. Look, I hate counterspell decks as much as the next person, probably more as has been well documented. But they do have a place as much as everything else that isn't banned. Bring your Baral, Yawgmoth, Golos, Chulane, or whatever that's legal. It's fine. But at the same time you can't be surprised when you face strong hate for your strong cards. That's also fine. Suddenly your Chulane doesn't like sawft locking itself because my Korvold can balance Tainted Aether huh? Well we don't like watching you do cloudstone curio things for the umpteenth time either. I'm getting into rant territory, lem'me stop.

While I agree that people can be whiny about, well, everything, I feel you're conflating a lot of separate types of players and assuming that every player represents all of those things. The Baral counterlock player is probably a lot less likely to get upset over an armageddon because they probably built their deck with a high-powered mindset. Whereas the players who are saying "counterspells aren't fun" are probably much more casual. This is why it's really useful to have multiple decks, or at least to have decks that aim closer to the middle in terms of power level and social contract. There are players who are doing degenerate things but who will welcome you retaliating in kind. There are players who want to play a chiller game. It's hard to make a deck that's going to satisfy both opponents at once (except Phelddagrif ).

Now, commanders like Golos can end up in an unpleasant spot because they're "casual" but they're also very strong with relatively little effort. A golos player is likely to get a bit salty if you counter golos 3 times in a row because that's "not fun", even if that was almost objectively necessary to stop them from running out of control. You've got my sympathy on that one. The best you can really do, imo, is to explain your threat assessment and tell them that if they don't want to get targeted, they should run a less powerful commander.

On the subject of not bringing lots of cards because I don't want to appear to be a target? Even as I use mpcautofill a lot more these days, money is still money, I work 50hr weeks to earn that, I'm not going to throw that away because I walked into a store with a bunch of decks - you can only play one at a time anyway. Not to mention the excess space that stuff takes up both on your person and inside the LGS. No, I'm gonna be respectful to others that need some space too. I can bring two decks in my nice DEX Protection box, with a handful of dice, tokens, and maybe a couple of cards to switch out between games. I don't need to bring a giant suitcase of a 32 deck chromatic project though.

There's a fairly big gap between 32 and 2. I'm not suggesting you should bring in a duffel bag full of decks, but maybe like 3-4? Sure, you can only play 1 at a time, but having multiple options to match enemy strength is really helpful to creating a good game and you can't really know in advance which one you'll want to use. At the very least, having a competitive deck and a casual deck is probably going to go a long ways towards meeting audience expectations. If 2 extra deck boxes is cutting into other people's personal space then you should probably stop playing in a crawl space.

The idea that you're "throwing [money] away" because you brought a handful of decks into a store is the sort of thinking that I do think is a bit worrying. Look, a certain amount of risk is unavoidable. If you're already proxying your decks, I'd say you've done about everything you reasonably can to eliminate it, and frankly a bit beyond. Taking a tiny risk is not the same thing as throwing money away. Think of it like an EV calculation - the risk of a deck getting stolen is probably on the order of 1 in at least a thousand (probably a lot lower actually but it's roll with it). So if it's worth $40, that means on average you're losing 4 cents to bring it. I think the increased enjoyment you'll get from having a deck to match the level of your opponents is worth more than 4 cents.

And also hopefully restore some of your faith in your fellow man. A lot of what you're saying sounds really bitter and distrustful, both within the game and without, and I think if your goal is to enjoy this hobby more those are things you might want to work on (I've got things I work on too, btw - we've all got our %$#%).

[Henlock]

I, in my experience, play the cards I play because I've been in the bad experiences I have.
<snip>
I'm getting into rant territory, lem'me stop.

I empathize with this, bad play experiences have dominated what little EDH I have been able to play for the last few years. Unfortunately, since that has been on MTGO (last paper game was 2017), rule 0 is a no go. However, I've taken a similar philosophy, but an alternate path.

I, too, build the kinds of decks I want to build and play the decks I want to play. I just refuse to use the tools I don't like playing against. Until I can successfully get a clan of like-minded players (hopefully enough people that most times of most days will have enough people to get a game) that can have Rule 0 discussions, I just don't play a second time against the players using those tools. The closest I get to "anti-color" is Roots of Life in my Golgari Blanket of Night/Hecatomb deck.

That said, I can absolutely respect your position and philosophy - especially when such a high volume of games are "pick-up" style.

This post may be old, but I tend not to post decklists. It is still fairly typical of my deckbuilding style.

I hope this comes off more elegant than initially.

It does. Thanks you.

I kind of started refusing to use some cards in my builds. Personally, at some point I decided that spending my first few turns ramping was turning pretty boring and dismantled most of my decks to build new ones replacing boring cards with things that looked fun to play. Nowadays I actually keep the artifact ramp at the bare minimum, focusing mostly on color fixing when I need to and I am quite happy with that decision. I don't really feel a huge impact on my game wins since then and I get to try some new stuff and adapting my deckbuilding to that decision like dropping the rampy tribal and keeping a solid threat density in Brion Stoutarm or focusing on low curve and recovery in Tuvasa the Sunlit rather than enchanting up my mana and I found both approaches worked quite well: I am playing games, winning some, having fun.

The "recipe" approach is a bit annoying, too. I don't really like it when I am asked "Why are you playing that?" or the endless chit-chat in my LGS community about how bad cards are. Sure, I get more of that in other formats, but sometimes is very difficult to explain to certain people that you built your deck just for the fun of pulling up infinite storm with Spontaneous Artist + Greenbelt Rampager + Song of Freyalise. Now I bought the Osgir deck because I dream of hitting people hard by slapping four copies of Inquisitor's Flail on an Angel token, I literally had a dream about doing that. XD.

I don't really feel strongly about Hullbreacher, it can be annoying sometimes but the same can be said of many other cards. The group I am.playing now frowns upon it so it is not being played,

[3drinks]

While I can sympathize with not enjoying those sorts of games, I think the attitude you've taken away from that sounds kinda angry. It sounds like you're playing these cards out of some kind of vengeance, and that's probably not a good reason to play those cards, nor the game in general tbh. I can only speak for the places I've played in, but while some small percentage of people may be pubstomping with powerful decks, the vast majority are not, and bringing a nuclear missile in that's going to Boil both the urza and the Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive decks alike is just perpetuating the cycle of unpleasant games imo.

It's more just out of experience. When I warn the table about the Urza deck, or and especially about the Edric deck "hey, if we don't band together to knock this person out, they're going to run away with the game". That falls on deaf ears and they do their own thing and, surprise surprise, they run away with the game with all those crazy extra resources. "It's only Edric, how bad can it be to draw a couple extra cards a turn? I want to draw a card as well!" You hear this time after time after time and you shake your head because you know that's not how it works and their own woeful ignorance is going to turn this game into a non-game. You can't beat those decks on your own, especially with players like that (and don't kid yourself, there's always that one player at the table) so you need some help. You leverage some powerful hate to stop the game from spiraling out of control. Make that Urza deck squirm under the pressure of a Null Rod/Cursed Totem + Scald. Make the Edric deck cry under a Lightmine Field/Powerstone Minefield.

For alesha, I would think a much more satisfactory experience on both sides would be something like Retribution of the Meek or Citywide Bust, or even Meekstone. For one thing, someone playing mono-green can actually shore themselves up against that weakness by running some smaller creatures, whereas with perish there's usually a lot less they could do (they could run artifact creatures I suppose but those might not really fit with what they're trying to do). For a second thing, it's actually targeting your weakness - creatures of large size - rather than something relatively arbitrary - their color.

(I will say that I think weak color hosers are basically fine, stuff like Sanctifier en-Vec which (1) have a use outside of color hate and (2) don't completely shut down the targeted colors)

When you're already on the Retribution of the Meek plan, the Citywide Bust, Meekstone, Marble Titan, you need more. Those are four cards, which makes up just 4% of a 100 card deck. You might not even see them, so you look for redundancy. Of course you have a dearth of universal tutours, but then you have that crowd. You know the one. The ones that screech and reeeee about how TuToUrS aRe AgAiNsT tHe SpIrIt Of ThE fOrMaT from the top of their twenty-seven lands and a mana reflection that what they're doing is cool but your not, because you're the one person trying to stop them.

While I agree that people can be whiny about, well, everything, I feel you're conflating a lot of separate types of players and assuming that every player represents all of those things. The Baral counterlock player is probably a lot less likely to get upset over an armageddon because they probably built their deck with a high-powered mindset. Whereas the players who are saying "counterspells aren't fun" are probably much more casual. This is why it's really useful to have multiple decks, or at least to have decks that aim closer to the middle in terms of power level and social contract. There are players who are doing degenerate things but who will welcome you retaliating in kind. There are players who want to play a chiller game. It's hard to make a deck that's going to satisfy both opponents at once (except Phelddagrif ).

Now, commanders like Golos can end up in an unpleasant spot because they're "casual" but they're also very strong with relatively little effort. A golos player is likely to get a bit salty if you counter golos 3 times in a row because that's "not fun", even if that was almost objectively necessary to stop them from running out of control. You've got my sympathy on that one. The best you can really do, imo, is to explain your threat assessment and tell them that if they don't want to get targeted, they should run a less powerful commander.

The real problem is there's always that one player that joins the pickup game with their Yuriko Ad Naus deck, Golos, etc. People don't "waste" time talking, they just ask "do you have commander? let's play." And then you have that person with the Ruric Thar Ogre Tribal deck that never saw the fully optimized Najeela deck that completely steamrolls the table. Typically the Najeela pilot is friends with the Yuriko pilot, and they worked in tandem to ensure one of them wins...

Not really relevant, but I'm confused - what does an arabian CoB have to do with how fun a deck is to play against? I generally consider kess to be fairly un-fun (hello infinite time warps...) regardless of which expansion their lands are from. Or was that supposed to be an example of a hard matchup in contrast to the Hans example which is relatively casual, in which case why are we focusing on the lands instead of the relevant cards? I'm confused.

It's a reference to someone that's blinged out their big power Kess deck with expensive, hard to acquire, certain set cards (like looking spoecifically for Arabian Nights over the much easier to attain MM1 version of CoB), relative to the fun Hans deck that cheats out an innocuous Flameblast Dragon.

There's a fairly big gap between 32 and 2. I'm not suggesting you should bring in a duffel bag full of decks, but maybe like 3-4? Sure, you can only play 1 at a time, but having multiple options to match enemy strength is really helpful to creating a good game and you can't really know in advance which one you'll want to use. At the very least, having a competitive deck and a casual deck is probably going to go a long ways towards meeting audience expectations. If 2 extra deck boxes is cutting into other people's personal space then you should probably stop playing in a crawl space.

The idea that you're "throwing [money] away" because you brought a handful of decks into a store is the sort of thinking that I do think is a bit worrying. Look, a certain amount of risk is unavoidable. If you're already proxying your decks, I'd say you've done about everything you reasonably can to eliminate it, and frankly a bit beyond. Taking a tiny risk is not the same thing as throwing money away. Think of it like an EV calculation - the risk of a deck getting stolen is probably on the order of 1 in at least a thousand (probably a lot lower actually but let's roll with it). So if it's worth $40, that means on average you're losing 4 cents to bring it. I think the increased enjoyment you'll get from having a deck to match the level of your opponents is worth more than 4 cents.

And also hopefully restore some of your faith in your fellow man. A lot of what you're saying sounds really bitter and distrustful, both within the game and without, and I think if your goal is to enjoy this hobby more those are things you might want to work on (I've got things I work on too, btw - we've all got our %$#%).

It's a different mindset when you've had a deck (or any personal possession stolen from you). It changes you, and yeah you do become more distrustful of people's motives. You start to wonder "who's next" and you become guarded. It's entirely psychological because you don't want to go through that again. Back in 2012, what was supposed to be the final night at my LGS in Phoenix, my Kaalia was stolen. This was my farewell to the shop as I moved up north, and this wasn't even a full year after I had primerized the deck back @ mtgsally. It was hot, it was my pride and joy, and even though the deck was far different to how it looks now, it broke me. I was devastated to lose something I cared for so much and poured so much time and love into. Even though when I got up here, a couple users on sally had reached out and sent me cards to rebuild the deck, it didn't erase what had happened. And I had sworn to never let myself go through that again. Imagine for a moment, if someone had swiped your prized Phelddagrif deck, all the emotions that went into it's building, the money and the sweat equity that went into building, writing the primer, how would that make you feel? How would that shape your future?

Don't say it wouldn't. You talk about that deck way too much to feel indifferent. That deck is your Kaalia.

[TheGildedGoose]

Honestly if someone swiped my Erebos deck I would sell my remaining collection and find another hobby, so I get it. That said, given your other LGS problems, this sounds like a localized issue. I'm very vocal about who I think the threat is and why, including myself. I'm very much a competitive player and an optimizer deckbuilder, so while I think playing for other people is rude I don't mind giving them unsolicited advice. People listen to me, but I have a certain raw, animal charisma.

Pubstompers are the worst, though I occasionally do it on accident when I open with a Sol Ring into a 2mv rock. My Erebos deck is far from cEDH but is highly tuned regardless, and my ability to pilot it is very high, so there are times I just roll over my opponents. I usually apologize, because I know it can't be fun for them.

[pokken]

My Erebos deck is far from cEDH but is highly tuned regardless, and my ability to pilot it is very high, so there are times I just roll over my opponents. I usually apologize, because I know it can't be fun for them.

People these days have such ridiculously short deck attention spans that it feels like everyone I play against is in the process of learning to play their deck all the time. Lots of indecision, don't remember what's in there, don't realize their path to victory, etc.

Part of me wonders if a lot of the problems people have in Commander relate to not really knowing how to play their deck because they change them so often or don't get enough reps. And another part of me wonders if maybe that constant flux is what keeps commander feeling fresh.

Back in the day when I had an established meta things did get kinda inbred quickly as we played the same decks over and over against each other